(Meg's POV)
Labor doesn't begin with warning.
It doesn't whisper. It strikes.
The first pain rips through me in the middle of a dream. One second I'm asleep; the next I'm upright, clutching the sheets, lungs locked and useless. The sound that leaves me isn't a word—more a broken gasp caught between disbelief and instinct.
Another pulse of pain follows, lower, heavier, shaking through my bones until I can't tell where my body ends. For one stunned heartbeat, I think the binding has failed, that my magic is tearing loose. Panic slams into me, hot and absolute. Then it happens again, deeper this time, and the truth lands cold and simple.
This isn't power.
This is birth.
I double over, fighting for breath, fingers digging into the mattress. The air in the cabin feels too thin, the world too bright. Outside, the moon hangs low and full, swollen almost to bursting, its light bleeding through the cheap curtains and painting the floor in pale silver.
I whisper through gritted teeth, "We do this quietly."
The next contraction laughs at the idea.
Pain rolls through me like a wave that doesn't break. My knees tremble. The air changes. It's not just in me now—it's around me, thickening until the room feels smaller. The walls seem to lean closer.
Something is wrong.
I stumble out of bed, one hand on the wall, the other wrapped around the curve of my stomach. The living room greets me with too much light. The floor glows faintly where the moon touches it. I blink, trying to steady my vision.
Then I see it.
The light isn't random. It's gathering—pooling into a circle at the center of the room, every beam bending toward the same point.
My pulse stutters. "No," I whisper. "No, not now."
The binding was supposed to hide me. It should have muted every trace of power. No one, nothing, should be able to find me here.
But the child inside me isn't quiet.
The next contraction tears through me, sharper than the last, and I cry out, dropping to my knees. My hand scrapes the wall, skin tearing. Blood smears across the wood.
The circle answers.
Symbols flare into existence beneath me, silver lines etching themselves into the floorboards, alive with fire and memory. The markings twist into shapes I recognize too well.
Old runes. Forbidden ones. Summoning.
Terror claws up my throat. "I left," I choke out. "I gave everything up. I hid."
No one replies. But the air grows heavier until it feels like breathing through water. The moonlight thickens, humming with a rhythm that doesn't belong to the earth.
Then the presence comes.
It doesn't arrive with footsteps or a sound. It folds into existence, vast and intimate, a truth too enormous for walls to contain. The room bends around it.
Daughter of rare blood, the voice says without sound. You carried silence with courage.
Tears blur my vision. "I didn't want courage," I whisper. "I wanted safety."
And you shall have it, comes the reply. But safety is not the same as invisibility.
Another contraction hits, brutal enough to wrench a scream from my lungs. Something cracks open inside me—something more than muscle. Power floods my veins, searing, wild, too strong to be mine. It burns like silver fire.
It's his.
Martins' blood, his lineage, his raw Alpha power woven through the child.
I collapse into the glowing circle, every nerve alight. My body takes over, ruthless and ancient. There's no thinking now. Only breath. Only pushing.
Time ceases to make sense. I float between pain and pressure, between the world narrowing to a single sound—my heartbeat crashing against the cries I don't yet make. Somewhere distant, the bond flickers to life, faint but sharp enough to pierce the haze.
Martins feels it.
The realization hits me like a shout in my skull. I sense him reaching through the bond—fear, fury, desperation all at once. He's too far to stop it, but not too far to know.
I push again.
A sound rips from my throat that doesn't feel human. Then everything releases. The world tips, and for a single impossible instant, there is silence.
Then a cry—thin, raw, alive—fills the air.
My son slides into my trembling hands. Warm. Slick. Perfect.
The circle erupts in light.
Silver flares upward, turning the room blinding white. The symbols pulse gold now, spiraling around us until the air vibrates. The cabin groans, wood straining like it's about to splinter. I clutch him to my chest, shaking.
He's crying. He's breathing. He's here.
And he's glowing.
Not the faint shimmer of rare blood. This is different. Stronger. Pure. His skin blooms with silver patterns—thin lines curling around his wrists and chest, like old language written into him before birth. When his eyes open, I stop breathing.
Moonlight stares back at me.
The Goddess' presence fills the space again, quieter this time, but even more vast.
The Moon-Touched lives, she says. The Heir of Balance is born.
"No," I whisper, rocking him instinctively, shielding him with my arms. "You don't get to name him. You don't get to claim him."
He is marked, not owned, she answers.
The words chill me. "What does that mean? What happens to him?"
A pause. The air thickens, humming.
He will choose where others obey. Where Alpha blood demands dominance, he will demand consent. Where packs divide, he will decide who remains.
My heart lurches. "You're describing a battlefield."
I am describing inevitability.
Henry's small fingers clutch at my skin, grounding me back to the world that's still real—the world of breath and warmth and crying and heartbeat. I press my lips to his forehead. "He's a child," I say. "You don't get to make him your weapon."
The presence doesn't grow angry. It softens.
Protect him, she says. Love him. That has always been the only defiance that mattered.
Then she's gone.
The light fades. The runes cool into ash. The cabin falls silent, the kind of silence that hums in your bones after thunder.
For a few minutes, it's just us—the sound of his breathing, the smell of sweat and blood, the slow unsteady rhythm of my heart learning calm again.
I I stare down at him, at the faint shimmer of silver beneath his skin. His crying slows. His eyes blink open, calm now, ancient in a way no newborn's should be.
My throat closes. "You're safe," I whisper, even though I already know it isn't true.
Because the bond ignites again.
Martins.
He's moving fast, the sensation a current racing under my skin. But he isn't alone. I can feel other signatures—distant, but converging. Curious. Predatory.
They felt it. The birth. The surge of light. The mark.
I stumble to my feet, legs shaking, clutching Henry tight against me. My clothes are soaked. The air still carries the faint scent of burned magic.
Outside, the wind shifts. Somewhere far off, a howl rises—not wild, not random. A signal.
Then another answers it.
I glance toward the window. The moon hangs pale and enormous above the treeline, as if it's watching us. I can almost feel her gaze pressing through the glass.
Henry stirs. The markings along his wrists pulse once, bright enough to light the room again. My pulse jumps in answer. His power reacts to mine, or maybe to my fear. Either way, it's already awake.
"Easy," I murmur, rocking him gently. "We'll figure this out. I promise."
He quiets, but the light beneath his skin doesn't fade completely.
Outside, the howls grow closer, echoing through the mountains.
Exile has failed.
Every measure, every sacrifice meant to hide us, gone in a single night. The world knows my son exists now. The packs will come. The councils. Maybe even the Goddess again.
I hold Henry tighter, feeling the fragile weight of him against my chest. He smells like earth and rain and something new—something that doesn't belong to either of our bloodlines.
My tears fall before I notice them. I press my cheek to his head and whisper, "They'll have to go through me first."
The moon slips behind a cloud, and for a heartbeat, the cabin goes dark.
But the child in my arms still glows.
And somewhere in the distance, Martins' roar answers the howls—fierce, unstoppable, already coming for us.