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.”

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 the

cheeks are wet, as if her words flipped on a switch in my brain and opened the dam. “I’m

it. “You wouldn’t be here if I’d

to hug her but not trusting my ability to get out of my chair

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 crosses 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 in threat, and his sons would have

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 when we first fell in love… all the sacrifices he made for me… they became naught but resentments. He blamed me for everything that went wrong

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 rise again they’re wet with tears. “He

did the only thing I could,” Reina shrugs, “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 lifts her eyes heavenward, to the open ceiling and the stars above us.

hurt to look at her, as if I knew

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

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

when she explained that 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

and cross to her side. The idea of anyone asking a woman who cannot have children of her own to carry theirs is a cruelty beyond imagining. I can’t find any words to express the depth of my horror and sorrow for her, so I simply wrap my arms around reina

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