Chapter 2 - The Severed Bond and the Seed of Life
By the time Elara crossed Nightfall’s border, the mate bond tore through her ribs like burning wire. She collapsed against a pine tree, her wolf screaming for Cassian, but she forced herself onward. Royal trackers were already behind her, so she crossed streams to break her scent, crushed ghostroot over her skin, and limped through the night until she found a healer’s cottage marked with the neutral crescent.
An older woman opened the door. “You smell like a burned bond,” she said.
Elara tried to answer, but her knees gave out. When she woke, the healer—Miriam—was pressing a moonstone instrument against her lower abdomen.
“What are you doing?”
Miriam’s expression softened. “Confirming what your body has been trying to tell you.”
Elara pushed herself upright as the room tilted. Then she heard it—a tiny heartbeat, followed by another, two separate rhythms.
Elara stopped breathing. “Twins,” Miriam whispered, “about eight weeks.”
Her hand moved over her stomach. Cassian’s children. For one terrible second, she remembered him before the trial, half asleep and reaching for her in bed, before remembering him above Elias, choosing his throne.
A knock slammed against the front door. A courier stood outside carrying black mourning cloth. “Elara Wind?”
May you like
She stepped forward, and the man lowered his eyes. “Elias Wind’s sentence was carried out at first bell.”
The world shattered. Elara sank to her knees, pressing the mourning cloth to her mouth so the scream wouldn’t escape. When she could finally breathe again, she placed one palm over the two tiny lives inside her. Elias was gone, Cassian had chosen, and now she would too.
