POV: Ashina
Morning came softer than the day before, thin winter sunlight filtering through frost-edged windows, the kind of pale gold that felt tentative, like the world itself was still deciding whether to be gentle.
Ashina woke before Kendrick, lying still in the quiet dark, one hand resting on her stomach. Not showing yet. Too early for that. But she'd become hyperaware of that space, that small secret warmth that had changed everything.
Hello, little one, she thought. Today we tell the world about you.
She felt the flutter of something not movement, it was too soon for that but a presence. A faint warmth through the bond she was only beginning to understand. Seraphina had explained that Moon Priestess mothers sometimes felt their children earlier than most, the magic creating connection where biology hadn't yet.
She chose to believe it.
