“You’re not my mother?” I whispered, my voice barely audible.
Looking at Reina, it made sense. She’s tall and willowy, with black hair, olive skin, and dark eyes—almost my polar opposite. I recalled Henry telling me I didn’t resemble her or Xavier, that I must take after the Goddess, but I didn’t truly understand the extent of the dissimilarity until this moment. It seemed a silly question now; of course, she wasn’t my mother. How could she be?
The weight of my crushed hopes battered me from every direction, as if they weren’t simply falling from above but closing in around me, suffocating me. They were all watching me with the same sympathetic expression: Reina, the priests, and Roger. Only Cora refused to pity me, choosing instead to glare at our hosts for upsetting me.
“Ella, please sit down,” Reina pleaded, pulling me back to the fire. “If you’ll listen, we’ll explain everything.”
“Okay,” I managed to utter weakly, reclaiming my seat. “Explain.”
Reina clasped her hands in her lap, taking a deep breath. “When I married Xavier, I had my entire life planned out. I would finish school, wait a year or two before trying for children, maybe work a little. All in all, I expected to spend the first years of my marriage learning to be a queen and preparing to ascend to the throne in another decade or so. Then Xavier’s father died suddenly and unexpectedly, and all at once my plans fell apart. We were coronated when I was just twenty-two.”
She paused to sip her tea, and though the flavor was sweet, her lips formed a grimace. “Xavier and I chose each other. He’d rejected his fated mate and his parents’ plans for an arranged marriage, all for me. At the time, it was romantic; I felt like I was living a fairytale. And then things changed… or perhaps the problem is that they didn’t change.” Her eyes dropped to my pregnant belly, and the muscle in her cheek twitched. “I had half a dozen miscarriages before the doctors told me to stop trying… they said I’d kill myself if I continued.”
My cheeks were wet, as if her words had flipped a switch in my brain and opened a dam. “I’m so sorry,” I confessed. “I know what it’s like to struggle with infertility, but I never… I’m just so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Reina pursed her lips, and I wondered if she truly meant it. “You wouldn’t be here if I’d been able to conceive, and we would all be the worse for it.”
“I’m still sorry,” I repeated, wanting to hug her but unsure of my ability to get out of my chair without assistance.
“I appreciate that,” Reina replied, softening slightly as she continued her story. “Of course, Xavier was at a loss. His greatest responsibility as King was to produce heirs and carry on his bloodline. My inability… my failure made that impossible. We were stuck. Xavier couldn’t reject me—not when I was crowned queen and not after he’d made such a fuss about choosing me in the first place, though he probably should have.” An expression of torment crossed her pretty features. “More than once over the years, I’ve thought this all could have been avoided if he hadn’t rejected his fated mate. They would have produced heirs; the monarchy would never have been threatened, and his sons would have taken over when he died.”
“And we’ve reminded Reina that this was all set in motion by forces far greater than a few power-hungry shifters,” Silas chimed in, using a gentle tone that indicated they’d discussed this many times. “The God of Darkness has been at work for centuries.” Reina inhaled a steadying breath as she met Silas’s gaze, nodding in appreciation. “Well, however it came about, that was the beginning of the end for Xavier and me. All the things that had seemed so romantic when we first fell in love… all the sacrifices he made for me… they became nothing but resentments. He blamed me for everything that went wrong in his life from then on, and I could see him reframing the things he once loved about me as annoyances.”
Her eyes fell shut, and I could almost feel her pain. “A couple of times when he became very drunk, I caught him looking at me with such hatred in his eyes that I actually worried he might try to kill me just to get me out of the way. It was as if I had become this insurmountable hurdle standing between him and everything he’d ever wanted…” When her lashes rose again, they were wet with tears. “He forgot he ever wanted me.”
“So I did the only thing I could,” Reina shrugged. “I prayed. I’d prayed to the Goddess for all my babies, but I’d never felt so utterly desperate. It was no longer simply a matter of wanting to be a mother; it was a matter of my entire future happiness, my marriage, and possibly even my survival. I’d never been so low before.” She lifted her eyes heavenward, to the open ceiling and the stars above us. “I never dreamed she would respond in person.”
“She appeared to me as if she’d been there all along—one moment I was alone and weeping, the next I was awake with this glowing being before me. It physically hurt to look at her, as if I knew I was gazing upon something I was never meant to see.” Reina’s attention turned back to me, and I was surprised to see she was smiling. “You look so much like her, Ella. All the beauty, but none of the pain.”
“So what happened?” Cora asked, leaning in as if she worried Reina might stop her story there. “She asked me why I wanted a child,” Reina replied, her gaze flitting to a vast moon dial in the center of the room, checking the time. “So I told her it was my duty, but more than that, that it was my greatest wish to be a mother. Then she asked why she should grant my wish over the thousands of other mothers in the world, and I explained that my child wouldn’t merely be for myself but for all the united packs. My child would become King one day, and not having one meant risking a power vacuum.”
Reina paused, clearly caught up in her memories. “When she told me that she would give me a baby, I thought I might faint, but my joy was only temporary. Because next the Goddess shared her own story with me, the details of our world’s creation, the peril we would all be facing one day. She explained that there was no stopping this war, but that the child I bore might allow us to survive it.” Reina recalled, “I didn’t really understand or know what to think. It was all too surreal.”
“Then the Goddess told me that I wouldn’t get to keep you. I was so angry and outraged; I demanded to know why on earth I would torture myself carrying a baby I’d be forced to give up…” Reina’s lips thinned as she nodded slowly, with the bearing of one who did not wish to remember this at all. “And that’s when she explained that if Xavier took me to bed that night, it would be her child in my womb, rather than my own. I would be like a surrogate for her and the King—not that he ever knew anything about it.” She shrugged as she watched me, her eyes welling over again. “In some ways, it made it much easier to give you up, because you weren’t truly mine.”
I shook my head, unable to remain seated a moment longer. I managed to hoist myself out of my chair and cross to her side. The idea of anyone asking a woman who cannot have children to carry theirs is a cruelty beyond imagining. I couldn’t find any words to express the depth of my horror and sorrow for her, so I simply wrapped my arms around Reina and squeezed. She gasped in surprise but gradually returned my embrace, leaning into me.
“I tried not to love you, not to get attached,” Reina explained, weeping into my neck. “But I should have known better. Even humans fall in love with their babies before they’re born—and they aren’t bonded. I did have fun with you, though. I loved being a living miracle; I held onto you as long as I possibly could. Then Silas and Pollux came to take you—I never knew where you went.”
“And Xavier?” Roger interjected. “How much did he know?”
“None of it,” Reina revealed grimly. “After so many miscarriages, it came as no surprise when I told him the child didn’t survive.”
“So my father never even knew I existed?” I asked, my throat thick with emotion.
“I told him on his deathbed,” Reina shared. “We got through the next twenty-five years in a tense partnership. We were no longer lovers or even friends, but bound together by our roles as leaders. I learned to feel safe with him again, and he learned to accept reality—though it took him a few years to stop flailing in protest. He was pleased, Ella… when I told him about you, he said he wished he could have met you.”
I sniffed as I processed this information. “Did the Goddess tell you how I’m supposed to save our future?”
“No,” Reina dashed my hopes. “That, she will have to tell you herself.”
I untangled myself from her arms. “What do you mean?”
Reina gave me a wry smile. “You didn’t think she was going to miss your homecoming, did you?”
I could only blink, still not understanding. Then Pollux stood. “She’s here.”