Laughter rippled through his soldiers, drifting like smoke across the scorched earth, feeding the dread pressing in around her. Around us. But still, she didn’t move. Not even a flicker of fear crossed her face.
She just pressed her palm tighter against her belly. Against me.
A silent vow. She would die before she let him touch me.
“I will never let you have her.”
My mother's voice rang out, but the king just laughed. A low, cold sound, serrated with cruelty. It didn’t echo—it devoured. The soldiers around him followed like puppets.
Then he stepped forward, and I held my breath.
He was like a predator with all the time in the world. Each boot crushed the damp earth beneath him, and it felt like the ground itself recoiled in his wake.
And still—Selene didn’t move.
Not even a breath of hesitation as I moved closer just to be near her, even though this was just a memory.
“Funny,” he remarked, tapping the edge of his blade against his gloved palm, a hollow sound. “You speak as if you have a choice.”
There was no soul behind his eyes. No warmth or mercy. Only hunger.
The inhuman emptiness that whispered of what he was—something far worse than a monster.
“So, here’s what’s going to happen,” he said, his voice dropping into something soft—almost tender. A mockery of kindness.
“You come willingly. You give birth. You hand it over.” A pause. The blood moon caught the cruel glint in his eyes. “And I let you walk away with your spine intact.”
He stepped forward again, a cruel smile spreading across his face.
“Or I carve you open right here and now… and take what’s mine from the ruins of your body.”
His gaze, just as he spoke those words, slid to the dagger in my mother’s grip, his expression tightening just for a breath. It was subtle—barely there—but I caught it. A flicker of something… not quite fear, but close enough to crack his mask. Recognition. Hesitation. The way his fingers twitched, curling slightly, told me everything.
He knew that blade. And it unsettled him.
Selene, of course, noticed too. Her stance sharpened, her grip on the hilt tightening like a promise.
“You’re pathetic,” she spat, each word like poison. “Torturing. Killing. Trying to create monsters because you hate the one staring back at you every time you look in a mirror.”
Her voice didn’t waver. Not once.
“You could’ve ruled a realm—had loyalty, power—but that wasn’t enough for you. It never is. You want to consume everything. Own everything.”
She exhaled sharply, hand instinctively drifting to the curve of her stomach again.
“But you’ll never touch my baby,” she hissed. “You power-hungry, egotistical, sadistic piece of shit.”
The air thrummed with tension because I knew that look on her face. That fire in her eyes. I’d seen it a hundred times growing up—when she stood between the helpless, when she went toe-to-toe with people twice her size, when death stared her down and she didn’t so much as blink.
Even now—outnumbered, outmatched, carrying me—she was a fortress. The amazing woman I looked up to all my life and always will.
A lump formed in my throat, the ache bringing tears to my eyes.
She had raised me to be just like her. Stubborn to the bone, reckless as hell, the kind of girl who met monsters with a smirk and raised a middle finger. And by the stars, I missed her. I miss her every damn day.
But in this moment, watching her stand her ground against the monster who would one day rip her from my life, without so much as a flicker of hesitation—I didn’t feel grief.
I felt pride.
