Accidental Surrogate

Ella

“You’re not my mother?” I whisper, my voice positively tiny.

Looking at Reina, it makes sense. She’s tall and willowy, with black hair, olive skin and dark eyes – just about my polar opposite. I’m recalling Henry telling me that I don’t resemble her or Xavier, so I must take after the Goddess, but I didn’t truly understand how great the dissimilarity was until this moment. It seems a silly question now; of course she’s not my mother. How could she be?

The weight of my crushed hopes batter me from every direction, as if they aren’t simply falling from above, but closing in around me, suffocating and strangulating. They’re all watching me with the same sympathetic expression: Reina, the priests and Roger. Only Cora refuses to pity me, choosing instead to offer our hosts a death stare for upsetting me.

“Ella, please sit down.” Reina pleads, pulling me back over to the fire. “If you’ll listen, we’ll explain everything.”

“Okay. I manage to utter weakly, reclaiming my seat. “Explain.”

Reina clasps 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 pups, maybe work a little. All in all I expected to spend the first years of my union 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 22.”

her tea, and though the flavor is sweet her lips form a grimace. “Xavier and I chose one another. He’d rejected his fated mate and all his parents‘ plans for an arranged marriage, and 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 weren’t changing.” Her eyes drop to my pregnant belly, and the muscle in her cheek twitches. “I had half a dozen miscarriages before

and opened the dam. “I’m so

and I wonder if she truly means it. “You wouldn’t be here if I’d been able to conceive, and we would all be the worse

repeat, wanting to hug her but not trusting my ability

I was crowned queen and not after he’d made such a fuss about choosing me in the first place,

Silas chimes in, using a gentle tone that indicates they’ve discussed this many times indeed. “The God of Darkness has been at work for centuries.” Reina inhales a steadying breath as she meets Silas’s gaze, nodding in appreciation. “Well, however it came about, that was the beginning of the end for me and Xavier. All the things that had seemed so romantic

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

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

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 turns back to me, and I’m surprised to see she’s smiling. “You look so much like her, Ella. All of the beauty but none of the pain.

to a vast moon dial in the center of the room, checking the time. “So I told her that 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

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 recalls, “I didn’t

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 go very thin as she nods slowly, with the bearing of one who does not wish to remember this at all, “And that’s when she explained that Xavier took me to bed that night, it would be her child in my womb, rather than my own.

seated a moment longer. I manage to hoist myself out of my chair and cross to her side. The idea of anyone asking a woman who cannot have children of her own to carry theirs is a

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