Chapter 148

Reona arrived just after breakfast, her white fur gleaming in the morning light, her tail swaying with barely contained excitement. Aureon must have sent word the moment the shifting was complete, because she swept into the house with the force of a summer storm, her eyes already searching for the transformed cubs.

"Where are they?" she demanded, her voice breathless with anticipation. "Where are my grandbabies?"

I laughed despite my parched throat, waving toward the main room where the children were playing. "In there, Reona. But prepare yourself; they’re a ball of energy."

She disappeared around the corner, and I heard her gasp before I could follow. When I entered, I found her frozen in the doorway, her hand pressed to her heart, her eyes wide with wonder.

"Oh," she breathed, the sound soft as a prayer. "Oh, my sweet beast gods."

Niku, Sikai, and Levy were in their human forms, dressed in simple clothes that hung loose on their toddler-sized frames. They looked up at Reona with matching expressions of curiosity, their dark hair tousled, their pink cheeks flushed with health.

Reona went first to Levy, kneeling before the little girl with reverence. "Look at you," she whispered, cupping Levy’s face in her hands. "Look at those rosy cheeks. Those beautiful eyes." She pulled Levy into a gentle embrace, inhaling deeply. "You smell like sunshine and wildflowers. My precious girl."

She turned then to Niku and Sikai, gathering them both into her arms, laughing through tears as she peppered their faces with kisses. "All three of you," she said, her voice thick with emotion. "So perfect. So impossibly perfect."

I reached for my water jug, draining half of it in one long swallow, and Reona noticed.

"Is everything okay?" she asked, her brow furrowing as she released the boys.

"I don’t know," I admitted, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. "For some reason I’ve been so dehydrated. And it’s always hot. I feel like I’m burning from the inside out."

"Are you sure you’re not sick?" Reona asked, her eyes scanning my face with a mother’s assessment.

"I don’t know," I said honestly. "I don’t feel sick. Just... hot. So unbearably hot."

The day passed in a blur of activity. The children who could shift; Atlas, Chase, Ryder, and Jasper; raced through the yard in both their forms, showing off their speed and agility, their long limbs carrying them effortlessly across the ground. Levy, Niku, and Sikai tried to join in, their toddler bodies stumbling and huffing, their short legs no match for the older boys’ grace.

"Not fair!" Niku panted, his human face flushed with exertion as he watched Jasper leap a fallen log with ease. "Your legs too long!"

"Yeah!" Sikai agreed, his small fists clenched. "We fast too! Just... small!"

Levy simply huffed, her arms crossed, her expression thunderous. "We play something else," she declared, grabbing her brothers’ hands and dragging them toward the other corner, dignity wounded but spirit unbroken.

I smiled despite my discomfort, turning my attention to Kaizen, Zarek, and Tavren. The three leopard cubs watched their siblings with longing in their eyes, not understanding why they couldn’t shift too, why their bodies wouldn’t obey the commands their minds screamed.

"Why can’t we?" Kaizen asked, his voice still rough with disuse, the words clumsy on his tongue. "Why we not six months?"

"I don’t know, my loves," I said, gathering them close, burying my face in their soft fur. "I wish I did."

Frankly, I wanted nothing more than to crawl back to my old world and sit in front of an air conditioning unit until I turned into an ice cube. The heat was maddening, oppressive, relentless.

As the sun began to set, painting the sky in bruised purples and golds, I made a decision.

"Caelion," I said, finding him by the fire pit. "That cave you showed me... would you take me there?"

He looked up, his sea-glass eyes meeting mine, and he must have seen something in my face; the exhaustion, the desperation, because he nodded immediately. "Of course. Let me get Ravin. We need a bath ourselves and the others already bathe."

The three of us walked in silence through the cooling evening, the path familiar now, winding through dense jungle until we reached the hidden entrance. The cave was sacred, private, a place Caelion had discovered and kept secret for our family alone. Here, we could strip bare and swim without fear of watchers, without the weight of protocol or propriety.

The moon was high when we arrived, full and heavy, its silver light pouring through the opening in the cave ceiling and illuminating the underground pool with ethereal beauty. The water gleamed like liquid starlight, cool and inviting, promising relief from the fire that had been consuming me for days.

I didn’t hesitate. I stripped away my wraps, every barrier between my skin and the air, and dove into the water.

The cold hit me like a blessing, like salvation, like the first breath after nearly drowning. I surfaced with a gasp, laughing despite myself, my arms spread wide, the water cradling me like a lover.

"God," I breathed, floating on my back, staring up at the moon through the cave opening. "This is heaven. Absolute heaven."

I swam laps around the pool, letting the cold seep into my bones, soothe the heat that had been building in my core for weeks. I felt weightless, free, finally comfortable for the first time in days.

Then Caelion stopped.

He stood at the water’s edge, frozen, his eyes wide, his mouth open in shock. Beside him, Ravin had gone equally still, his hand raised halfway to his chest as if clutching at his heart.

"Caelion?" I asked, treading water, my smile fading. "Ravin? What is it?"

They didn’t answer. They simply stared; their eyes fixed on the water around me.

"Krys," Ravin whispered, his voice trembling. "The water around you... blue light."

I looked down.

The pool was glowing. Where my body touched the water, luminescence spread in ripples of azure and silver, pulsing like a heartbeat, like the rhythm of the ocean itself. The light was coming from me; from my stomach, my womb, shining through the water with the brilliance of captured moonlight.

"Krys," Caelion’s voice cracked, thick with emotion, with wonder, with fear. "You’re pregnant."

I stared at him, my hands instinctively moving to cover my belly. "What? How do you know?"

He stepped closer, his movements slow, reverent, as though approaching something sacred. "Mer folk," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "During a full moon, as the mother of future sea descendants basks in the water to soothe her heated core... her womb will glow. It signifies new life, asking the water to bless the new Mer folk descendants."

He knelt at the water’s edge, his fingers trailing through the luminescence, his eyes filling with tears. "But Krys... it’s blue. The azure sovereign. Everything is like the merfolk pregnancy; except the glow is wrong. It’s never blue. It should be bright white, like moonlight on snow."

He looked up at me, his face a mask of awe and terror. "It must be because of the bind you carry. The magic that connects you to all of us."

I looked down at the blue light dancing around my body, at the life I hadn’t known I was carrying, and I laughed. I laughed and cried and pressed my hands to my stomach, feeling the heat there that was not sickness but creation, not fever but the first spark of a new soul.

"Mer babies," I whispered, looking up at Caelion through my tears. "You’re finally going to be a father, Caelion."

He moved then, crossing the space between us in three strides, entering the water fully clothed, not caring. He reached me, his hands trembling as they cupped my face, his eyes searching mine as though afraid I might disappear.

"I don’t... I can’t..." He couldn’t finish, his voice breaking. He pulled me against him instead, holding me so tightly I could feel his heart hammering against my back, feel the shudder that ran through his entire body. "Thank you," he whispered into my hair. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

Ravin waded in beside us, his hand coming to rest on Caelion’s shoulder, clasping him firmly. "Congratulations, Caelion," he said, his own voice thick. "You are a father in every sense of the word now."

I turned in Caelion’s arms, facing Ravin, my first mate, my anchor. I reached for him, pulling him into our embrace, the three of us tangled together in the glowing water, bathed in blue light and love and the promise of tomorrow.

"I love you," I said, the words bursting from my heart like the light from my womb. "I love you, Ravin. And you, Caelion. I love you all. Every one of you. Thank you for being in my life. Thank you for always finding ways to make me happy."

We held each other as the moon climbed higher, as the blue light pulsed and danced around us, as the cave sang with the magic of new life. And I knew, with a certainty that settled deep in my bones, that everything was about to change.

I couldn’t wait to tell the others.