Chapter 62 Mira
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Mira
The drainage tunnel smelled worse every time.
My knees found the same grooves, my shoulders grazed the same rusted pipe junctions, and the nausea hit at the same bend near the eastern exit.
I emerged into the forest and started the eight-mile walk south.
The bond pulled me toward camp with a gravitational force that made the distance feel offensive.
Percy’s channel burned bright. Solomon’s channel was quieter. A low frequency that pulsed with awareness. The third channel stayed closed. Lucian’s. And the absence of it ached in a way I couldn’t ignore much longer.
Camp materialized through the trees just after midnight.
Farmon had left prenatal tea beside my bedroll, still warm, which meant Solomon had ground the herbs and Farmon had brewed them and neither would admit to the coordination.
I sat in the den Solomon built, drank the tea, and let the two open channels wash through me until my hands stopped trembling.
A voice carried from the perimeter.
Annora sat at the eastern watch post with Giselle. Heads close, conversation pitched for wolf ears only. The moment my gaze found them, both went silent. Annora met my eyes across the clearing and didn’t look away. She wanted me to know they’d been talking.
Giselle’s posture had shifted since the last time I’d seen her. She used to angle toward Solomon, oriented around his authority. Now she sat angled toward Annora. The soldier had chosen a new commanding officer.
I rolled my eyes, finished the tea, and went to sleep.
***
The briefing ended at noon. Solomon was focused on patrol logistics. Lucian was at the command area with Wyatt to review schematics while Percy joined the converted hunters for a training rotation near the eastern tree line.
The camp thinned out. Bodies dispersing to their assignments, leaving the central clearing quiet. Just me and the sound of water filling my canteen.
I was crouching at the supply station when a shadow fell over me.
“You look terrible.”
Annora stood three feet away, arms folded. Her gaze ran from my mud-caked boots to my tangled hair. The tunnel grime was still on my clothes, dirt under my nails, dark circles carved beneath my eyes.
“You smell worse,” she added. “Is this what a future queen looks like? Crawling through drainage pipes and kneeling in filth?”
“It’s what someone who actually does the work looks like.” I stood and capped the canteen. “But I’m guessing you wouldn’t know.”
“I know what Veyndral expects of their queen. Poise, breeding, with centuries of preparation.” She gestured at me, head to toe. “Not this.”
“And yet here I stand.”
Her jaw tightened. “Enjoy the position while it lasts. Lucian and I have a connection that you can’t erase with a bond.”
“Do you want me to congratulate you?”
“I am the next queen of Veyndral.” She said it with the absolute certainty of repeating it to herself every morning for a hundred years. “The only thing standing between me and that crown is a biological accident growing inside a disgusting human who doesn’t belong here.”
My hand went to my stomach as I grit my teeth. “Don’t involve my children in this.”
“Why not? They’re half-breeds.” She smirked. “Abominations. Three lives that should never have been conceived.”
“Be careful of your words, Annora.”
“The bond was a mistake.” She stepped closer. “And the sooner Lucian realizes that, the sooner this little fantasy of yours ends. He’s done it before, hasn’t he? Rejected you once already.”
Her smile turned vicious. “He’ll do it again. And this time you won’t have anywhere to run. Save yourself the heartbreak.”
“You think bringing up the rejection hurts me?” My voice stayed level. “I survived it. And I’m still here. Can you say the same?”
“You’re just here because they knocked you up.” Her eyes traced the bump under my shirt. “You’re a pastime, Mira. A distraction he’ll outgrow. And when the war ends and the politics settle, Lucian will see what everyone else already sees. That we are not on the same level.”
She tossed her braid over her shoulder. “He’ll find his way back to what makes sense. And it won’t be you.”
I laughed. “You’ve been waiting for hundreds of years and he’s yet to make you his queen. But sure. Keep telling yourself that.”
Her composure broke.
The shove came with the full weight of her anger. I stumbled and my back hit the dirt. The impact jarred through my spine and my elbow cracked against a tree root.
I curled instinctively. Both arms around my belly, knees drawing up, every survival instinct screaming protect them.
For two seconds I didn’t breathe. Just pressed my palms flat against the bump and waited for the kicks. The relief almost broke me.
Then the anger buried everything else.
I got up. Dirt grinding into my knee, mud on my palms, the ache in my elbow pulsing. Annora watched me rise but she didn’t expect me to grab her braid.
My fist closed around the base and I yanked. Her head snapped back and she shrieked, a sound that stripped centuries of aristocratic composure in under a second. I dragged her three steps toward the stream, my grip twisting tighter as she clawed at my wrist.
“You dare push me to the ground.” I forced her head down toward the muddy bank. “Let’s see how you handle it.”
Her knees buckled. I shoved her face toward the water, close enough that the mud splattered her cheek and the stream lapped at her chin. She thrashed against my grip and her nails raked my forearm but I held on.
“My children are not abominations.” I pushed her closer. “Say it.”
“Remove your hands from me!”
“Say it!”
“Let her go.”
Giselle’s voice. From behind me.
I turned my head. Giselle stood four feet away, claws extended. Full shift on her hands, curved points catching the midday light. She’d appeared from the eastern perimeter without making a sound.
“Walk away, Giselle.” I didn’t release Annora’s hair. “This isn’t your fight.”
“It is now.” She moved closer, positioning herself between me and the retreat path. “Look at yourself. Dragging a noblewoman through the mud. This is what you want Veyndral’s queen to look like? Tactless. Feral. A human with dirt on her face and violence in her hands.”
“She pushed me to the ground while I’m carrying three babies.” I tightened my grip. Annora whimpered. “What did you expect me to do? Curtsy?”
“I expected you to prove you’re better than this.” Giselle’s claws caught the light. “But you keep proving the opposite. Stringing three men along, playing house with a bond you can’t sustain, and now assaulting the woman the council sent to oversee this operation.”
“Stringing them along?” The accusation hit the wound she was aiming for. “I didn’t string anyone along. Every single one of them came after me.”
“And you let them.” Her voice dropped raw. “You don’t deserve him. A decade I stood beside Solomon. A decade of loyalty, of waiting for him to see me. You walked in with your human blood and your pretty eyes and took him in weeks.”
“Giselle-”
“It should’ve been me. I know him better than you can ever know him. I was there at his worst. Not you.”
“You’re a human playing house with lycans.” She raised her claws. “When this war ends and you realize what you’ve trapped yourself in, you’ll leave. And he’ll be destroyed. Again. You will never deserve him.”
I released Annora’s hair. She scrambled away from the bank, mud streaked across her face, her braid ruined.
Two of them now. One with political fury, one with grief wearing the costume of aggression. Both with claws that could open my throat before I blinked.
My body ached. The fall had done more than I wanted to admit. My elbow throbbed, my knee burned where the skin had broken, and a cramp had settled low in my belly that I was actively refusing to think about.
But my voice held steady.
“Go ahead, Giselle. Put those claws in a pregnant woman carrying your commander’s children. See how that plays out for you.”
The claws trembled.
“Or how I will slit your throat before you even try to harm my kids.”
“You want to know the biggest mistake you both just made?” I looked between them. “It’s not the insults. Call me what you want. Whatever gets you through the night. I’ve heard worse.”
My hand went to my stomach.
“The mistake was involving my children.” My voice dropped. “I won’t need Lucian or Solomon or Percy for what I’ll do to you if you try this again.”
A patrol whistle cut through the trees. Two short blasts. The signal for the perimeter rotation returning to camp.
Bodies would be moving through the tree line within minutes. Voices, footsteps, the camp refilling with witnesses.
Annora straightened. Wiped the mud from her face with the back of her hand. The mask reassembled itself, piece by piece, but the cracks were visible underneath.
“You’ll learn your lesson soon enough,” she said.
Giselle retracted her claws. One finger at a time. She repositioned beside Annora, and the alignment was complete. Soldier and politician. Retreating together.
“Count on it,” Annora added over her shoulder.
Neither looked back.
Seriously. Aren’t they centuries old? You’d think maturity would come with age.
I stood there until their scents faded. Until the patrol whistle sounded again, closer now, and the distant murmur of returning voices reached the clearing.
Then my legs gave out. The quiet surrender of a body that had been running on adrenaline and stubbornness.
I made it to the stream. To the fallen log. Sat down, pressed both hands to my stomach, and waited for the kicks.
One. Two. Three.
All there. All moving.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “Nobody’s touching you. Not them, not anyone.”
The kicks settled gradually. But the word abomination and the sight of claws aimed at my belly lived in a different category than political maneuvering.
Those were physical threats aimed at my children.
My knee ached where the dirt had ground into the broken skin. The cramp in my belly had eased but the ghost of it lingered as a reminder that my body was carrying more weight than muscle and bone.
I didn’t let it reflect through the bond.
They couldn’t fight this for me. The women who hated me for existing, the ones who smiled at my mates and cornered me when nobody watched, that was mine to handle.
Even if handling it meant sitting alone at a stream with dirt on my knees, pretending I was fine.
Suddenly, I missed my shop. The quiet hours between customers when the only drama was whether to shelve enemies-to-lovers next to second-chance romance.
A life where the worst threat was a late shipment and the biggest villain was rent.
But now, the danger had just changed shape. And I’d have to face it again.