LOGINSkyeFive months later…My office at the University of Moonrise is in a spire overlooking the back half of the sprawling, ancient city of gold and the lake, which shines a deep turquoise in the mid-summer sun. I juggle several books as I move like a snail up another spiraling staircase, pausing several times to catch my breath and wave away the curious, concerned looks and pleas to help that my fellows throw in my direction. I’m due at the end of the week, and while joining the university as a fellow and researcher with plans to start lecturing again next year has been the best kind of distraction, this pregnancy has been awful, and I am so ready to be done. It’s been a marathon, and I’m not a runner by any means. Lately, I've been desperate to shift, but I’m too far along to risk that now. So, I walk around the lake. I hike up and down the staircases in the palace, where I’ve recently taken a suite at Kenna’s urging because, according to her, I could give birth any day, and it feels
SkyeTwo more weeks pass in a blur. At first, it seemed like a hundred years. I was constantly poked and prodded and wasn’t deemed healed enough naturally to have Misty and Kenna step back in with their magic, but finally, the morning came when I managed to swallow without pain, and the rush to heal me completely returned with fervor. Misty arrived, working her magic, sewing me together from the inside out. Kenna managed the baby, keeping whoever this tiny person growing inside of me is safe, but I wasn’t out of the woods yet. The worst thing about this recovery was the sharp and violent return of my pregnancy symptoms. I traded being bedridden with a catastrophic injury for being bedridden with nausea so severe that I lost ten pounds in a matter of days. Alex was amazing through all of it, but I know conversations were being had in the background about the ability of me returning to Lunaria, because right now, it doesn’t seem like an option. And, this morning, the option to return
SkyeIt is not, in fact, all over. “What?” I croak while Mom aggressively fluffs my pillows and settles me upright in my bed. I was right–I’m in my old room in my parents’ house in Moonrise. Thick, impenetrable curtains hang from my windows, blocking out ninety percent of the sunlight, only allowing strips that Alex seems to walk through without any issues. I don’t remember anything, save for the first moments of the attack and glimmers of hazy images of my dad’s office before it all grows black and blurry. “The Alpha of Aurorium wants someone to take the fall for the murders,” Maeve, who spirited into the room ten minutes ago, explains with overt annoyance. She’s perched on the edge of my bed, dressed casually in a dark red sweater and matching pants, with her extraordinarily thick brown hair piled messily on top of her head. Kenna left the room twenty minutes ago. To do what, I have no idea, but Alex remains, pacing and tapping his fingertips on his chin while watching every brea
SkyeI’m dead. I must be because I open my eyes to grainy sunlight highlighting a room I’d be able to see fully in the dark. I know this shallow, cream-colored carpet. I know there’s a bright purple nail polish stain in the corner of the walk-in closet on the far side of the room, hidden beneath a stack of boxes. I doubt my parents know it’s there. There’re three windows along the wall–circular and wide. My grandma Leona fussed so much over the fact that Dad designed windows no one could make curtains for, and by some miracle, she managed it herself. But the curtains in my childhood bedroom aren’t… familiar. They’re different. Thick and black, they block out the majority of the light, only letting fractals of what I believe is the sunset through. Am I in hell? Is this what it looks like? Being thrust back into my awkward teenage years? I fist the comforter–velvet corduroy–my favorite. I turn my head away from the strip of light flickering over the room and watch speckles play acros
AlexBlake looks at me for a long, long time. His stare is exactly like Skye’s–unyielding, expectant, and unnaturally violet. She wasn’t wrong about that. I’m the one who breaks from his gaze to look down at my filthy hands. They’re caked in Kai’s and Skye’s blood. It doesn’t feel like enough. Ripping him into sections before tearing his head clean off his shoulders doesn’t feel like enough. I curl my hands into fists. The woman, the queen, which is the only person she can be, cautiously moves around the desk in my direction. “Skye’s pregnant?” She’s just as beautiful as Skye described, with thick, dark brown hair and sea-green eyes that swirl with power I can taste. The other man, the one who kindly shut the curtains to shield me from the spray of sunlight ghosting through the clouds, does not move to stop the woman who is, obviously, based on their mingled scents, his mate. She is in charge. But she’s not nearly as powerful as Skye’s father. That’s really, really fucking clear.
BlakeThe man falls to the ground in a flurry of goose down, black nylon, and a shower of glass at the very second royal warriors burst through my office door. I can’t breathe. My lungs strain against the torrent of panic driving every move I make as I whirl to the warriors storming the room and shout for them to subdue the stranger, but I can’t hear my own voice over the rapid thunder of my heartbeat in my ears. My daughter is lying lifeless on the carpet of my office. The same office she grew up in, spent entire days rolling my crystal spheres across the carpet and racing around on Soren’s shoulders. I see her like that now–a child. Rage storms my senses. My roar of fury threatens to splinter the windows as my knees hit the ground by her head. I reach down, trying to gather what’s left of her in my arms. Kenna bursts into the room, breathless, her silver eyes wide and frantic as she reaches my side. “HELP!” I shout, clutching Skye to my chest. “Kenna!”“Lay her down!” Kenna is
LexaAn entire day passes. I count the hours, the minutes, the seconds, until time bleeds together in my head. My mind pounds like a drum, my temples splitting, and the only thing keeping me lucid is a near constant array of healing drafts being poured down my throat every hour on the hour, as if t
Aris“You didn’t have to come,” Roman says. We walk side by side through the market that’s held in Ruby every weekend. It’s crowded with locals and summer tourists alike, but through the noise and bobbing crowd, I catch a glimpse of Posey’s reddish-blonde hair as she weaves toward a stall selling a
PoseyIt’s an overcast, drizzling day. I watch raindrops trickle down the circular windows of the one-room cabin in Aris’s sailboat, tracing their trails with my index finger. My stomach is tied in multiple tight knots as the boat rocks on the choppy water. Fog hugs the horizon as far as I can see.
LexaIt only takes one smooth motion for Kaleb to catch me around the middle and take me to the ground. My back hits the soft carpet with a thud that rattles my bones, and I jerk, diving to drive a knee between us. He gathers my wrists, pinning them above my head, and thrusts his knee between my le







