We sit there together on the half-finished bench in the half-finished house with the documents spread around us like evidence of intent, and for the first time in a very long time, the future does not feel like a tactical map.
It feels like work.
Honest work.
Messy. Ongoing. Vulnerable to weather and bad paint choices and policy reversals and all the ordinary indignities that come with trying to live rather than merely survive.
Good.
That is the only kind I want now.
Outside, the neighbor’s saw finally stops. Wind moves through the scrub at the edge of the property. Somewhere in the district a child is laughing hard enough to make even the walls feel less temporary.
Selene reaches for my hand.
I let her take it.
CHAPTER 39
SELENE
The first contraction feels like a lie.
Not because it doesn’t hurt. Because it arrives in the middle of something so stupidly ordinary that my body has the nerve to pretend this is just another passing indignity. I’m standing at the kitchen counter in the house outside the capital ring, arguing with a kettle that has decided boiling water should sound like a political warning, when the pain pulls low through my abdomen and wraps hard around my spine.
I grip the counter.
The world narrows.
Then it lets go.
I stare at the chipped ceramic mug in front of me like it personally betrayed me.
From the next room, Rhyx calls, “You’ve gone quiet.”
I draw in a breath carefully, feeling the cool morning air from the cracked kitchen vent brush damply against the back of my neck. Outside, the day is pale and bright after a night of rain. Water still drips from the eaves in slow irregular ticks. Somewhere across the lane, a child is laughing at something shrill and delighted. The whole district smells like wet dirt, cleanwood, and the sharp green scent of plants trying their best after weather.
“I’m thinking murderous thoughts at the kettle,” I call back.
He appears in the doorway a second later anyway.
Of course he does.
He takes one look at my face and stops moving.
Not frozen. Focused.
There’s a difference.
“What happened?”
I rest both hands flat on the counter because the surface is cool and real and I suddenly need real things in excessive quantity. “I had a contraction.”
The words sit in the room for one beat.
Then another.
Rhyx does not panic.
