Maeve
It’s snowing in Crescent Falls. I watch the landscape rush by as I ride in the back of a blacked out SUV, resting my hands on the swell of my growing belly.
I’m nearly eight months pregnant now. The reality of my situation hasn’t set in yet. I think back on that day when I’d sat on the bathroom floor with Jane, spilling my heart out, often. Everything since that moment has been a blur.
Within days of confirming the pregnancy, I started my grand tour of Eastonia. First, I traveled through Moonrise and the towns and villages surrounding the main city, formally introducing myself as their queen. Then, I spent a few weeks in Veiled Valley with my family while navigating my royal duties and guarding my secret. I didn’t tell my mom I was pregnant. She still doesn’t know. I don’t know how to say it.
I left Veiled Valley and traveled through the Roguelands, with many dozens of stops, meeting face to face with every Alpha, Beta, and Luna. I sat in on pack meetings, listening to the trials and tribulations of the people I’m meant to rule and guard. From there, I went to the Deadlands, where I spent over a month and a half traveling, speaking publicly, and attending their fall festival before taking a boat to Emberfyll where I spent a few weeks with Brie and Logan and toured their strange island home. But even then, I couldn’t tell anyone. I kept my growing belly hidden using my powers, putting a shield around myself that made it impossible for anyone to pick up my scent and see the changes happening–like how tight my clothes began to fit, how much more rounded I was becoming.
I didn’t tell Brie. I couldn’t do it. Telling her would have meant opening the floodgates and saying the name I’ve spent the last eight months trying to forget.
My tour of Tarsian was the distraction I needed to get through the worst of it. When I left Emberfyll, I spent over a month back in Moonrise where I quickly started to spiral. Nothing worked. Nothing made me feel better. My heart felt like it had been cleaved into pieces, and there was nothing I could do to put it back together again.
With my tour of Tarsian, the largest kingdom by far, approaching, I kept myself busy preparing for what that would entail. Tarsian is a mess as it stands, even now, after my tour. It’s far too big, even with three Alpha Kings ruling at one point. But, its mass and the sheer amount of Alphas and high-ranking officials I had to meet with kept me busy and distracted for over a month, and by the time I returned to Moonrise again for a break, six months had passed since I last saw Soren.
You’d think I’d be over it by now, right?
While in Moonrise again, wasting time until this current journey for the summit in Crescent Falls, I… took a trip on my own.
It had been a rushed decision. My pregnancy hormones are to blame, I assume. I snapped my fingers and jumped, using my magic to travel for the first time in months instead of joining the procession of warriors and guards in cars and trains, and I jumped to the cabin in the dead center of the Roguelands.
It was quiet. The small, two-story cabin blended with the dark trees under a canopy of deep gold and muted crimson. Leaves were falling in the lightest breeze, crumpling to the ground as the wind carried a stiff chill, and the dark clouds overhead promised the first snowfall of the season.
When I’d been there last, it had been early summer. Everything had been the brightest green and just… lovely. Gorgeous. But that day, it was a shell of what it used to be. I crossed what could be construed as the front lawn, noticing the empty, leaf covered chicken coop on my way to the house. The windows were boarded tight, and the front porch hadn’t been swept in ages.
No one was there. I figured it would be that way. Even if I had come back, and Soren had been there, I didn’t have anything I could have said to him. I’m still not sure what I’d say if we were ever face to face again.
But I’m pregnant.
The fact that he doesn’t know, and I have no way to tell him, has been killing me.
So that day, after sitting on the porch for an hour, I wrote him a note. It wasn’t anything long or wordy. Just a few words, words I hoped he’d one day read and know that I was still thinking about him.
“I miss you.”
I didn’t sign it.
I simply… jumped back to Moonrise and went about my life and my royal duties for a month hiding an advancing pregnancy, and now I’m in another car, driving to another place, my last stop on this grand, seemingly never ending tour.
I feel a pinch of exhaustion in my powers when the massive gates of the castle in Crescent Falls open, and the driver, one of my warriors, silently takes me down the long drive lined with snow covered trees. Everything is white and silver in the moonlight as the car kicks up snow. I lean my head against the window with a sigh. Tomorrow is the summit where I’ll meet the heads of both Celestoria and Lunaria, Crescent Falls neighbors to the north, and the northernmost kingdoms of our great continent.
And, yes, I’m aware of what the media is spinning about me meeting Alpha King Julius’s son, Prince Eric of Lunaria.
The castle comes into view after a winding turn, and before I can blink, the car rolls to a stop in the rear of the castle. My guards in the trio of cars behind us quickly fan out, and I exit the car, not bothering to wait for one of the guards to open my door.
Sarah rushes out of the exterior door leading off the garage, her violet eyes shining in the moonlight. She wraps me in a tight embrace while my magical shields simmer, making it look, and feel like I’m the same as I’ve always been… not growing more and more round and swollen by the day.
I can thank my ability to shape-shift for this trick, even if my powers are easily drained these days. I’m itching to drop the shields and go to bed, but Sarah takes my face between her hands, beaming up at me. “You’re late! You missed dinner!”
“We got held up on the highway,” I say with a sigh. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. We’re just happy you made it. The last storm was terrible. I feel like the winters are getting worse year after year.” She guides me into the house while the guards deal with my luggage. The castle expands around me in a mix of dark wood and cream-colored walls. Great Grandma Isla’s design touch hasn’t been changed since her death two decades ago. Floral wallpaper greets me as we walk down a long, narrow hallway and pass the informal, family style kitchen and cross into the grand foyer where she turns me toward the formal sitting room with yellow wallpaper and a roaring fire in the white marble hearth.
Sydney smiles as I walk into the room with Sarah at my side. Liam, their second oldest son, is resting by the fire with a book in his lap but looks up at me and grins politely. He’s the spitting image of his mother with icy blonde hair and a softly handsome face. His violet eyes are muted, however, compared to Blake’s and Sarah’s. He has the eye color, but none of the powers that come with them.
Their twin daughters both attend Wellington University and aren’t here, and neither is Noah, who’s also away at the University of Tarsian in Serpentia, which reopened ten or so years ago, after the war.
But it’s the woman leaping from her perch on a nearby couch that steals my attention. My breath leaves my lungs in a huff as Brie’s body collides with mine.
“What are you doing here?” I gasp as shock ripples through my system, making my powers tremble. I rein them back in so I don’t blow my cover, but they nearly slipped through my fingers this time.
“It was supposed to be a surprise, but you’re hours late!” Brie replies excitedly, holding me at arm’s length. I haven’t seen her in months, not since I visited Emberfyll. She searches my eyes before releasing me but grips my hand tight.
“Ready for tomorrow?” Sydney asks before sipping from a glass of what I believe is scotch, knowing him.
“I believe so. Is there anything I should know about the Alpha Kings and their Betas before the summit?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing we haven’t already discussed.”
“You look exhausted, Maeve. You should go to bed. We can all have breakfast together in the morning before the summit starts, okay?” Sarah bustles me out of the sitting room with Brie hot on my heels, and within minutes, I’m ushered into a guest room on the third floor of the castle, surrounded by my luggage. A maid already laid out the outfit I designated for tomorrow.
Brie is staying in the room next door. She’s not here with Kieran and Logan, but she briefly explained why before telling me she was going to take a shower. The whole family is meeting in Maatua next week for Winter Solstice, and Logan and Kieran are traveling there with Aviva and Ryan, giving Brie what sounds like a much needed break.
Unpacked, I run myself a bath as the castle goes quiet, and the moon rises high overhead. I shed my robe, sighing as I drop my shields and let my shapeshifting magic finally rest after a full day of travel, and sink in the tub. My fingers splay over the tight rise of my belly where the baby rests.
I’m having a girl.
I wonder if she’ll have his eyes or mine.
I close my eyes against a torrent of tears. This grief comes in waves–some soft, others violent and crashing, leaving me curled in a ball in the middle of my bed.
This can’t be right. I already know this feeling isn’t rational. He’s the only man I’ve ever kissed, ever lain with, ever let myself touch… and somehow that bound him to me for life.
He probably hasn’t thought about me since we parted ways, has he?
Feeling ridiculous, like usual, I step out of the tub and dry off, the robe barely covering my stomach as I brush out my hair. My mind drifts back to Soren, pushing past the barriers I’ve been building to keep his memory at bay, when the sound of the door opening in the bedroom alerts me to someone’s presence.
Brie calls out my name, but I don’t have time to lock the bathroom door nor shield myself with my powers before the door opens and she steps inside. “Do you have toothpaste I can borrow? I must have left mine at the hotel I–”
My heart skids to a stop as Brie’s eyes leave my face and drift down to the very noticeable swell of my stomach. Her lips part in a sharp gasp just as my chest caves in.