Rejected Luna's Secret Twins

Chapter 6 — Two Heartbeats

Aria woke with Darian's voice still burning on her mouth.

You're starting to look like mine.

She pressed her fingers to her lips in the grey pre-dawn light and told herself, firmly, that the flutter in her chest was fury. Or fear. Anything but what it felt like.

It didn't work. It hadn't worked all night.

"Up," she told herself, and swung her legs out of the vast cold bed. "Lunas don't swoon in corridors."

Mira arrived with breakfast and took one look at her face. "You look like something the rogues dragged in, child."

"I feel worse." Aria tied her hair back with sharp, angry movements. "What's on the Luna's plate today?"

"The petitioners' court. Small hall, midmorning." Mira set down the tray. "Rowan's already making that face he makes."

"What face?"

"The one that says he'd rather fight rogues than farmers." Mira's eyes twinkled, then sobered. "You were grey as ash in the council hall yesterday, Aria. If you feel that wave again—"

"I'll sit down before I fall down," Aria said. "Promise."

It was almost true.

***

The small hall smelled of beeswax and old stone, and it was fuller than she'd expected — a dozen petitioners, Rowan looming by the door with his arms crossed, a scribe in the corner with ink-stained fingers.

Aria took the Luna's chair and lifted her chin. Walk in like a queen.

The first petitioner was a farmer with a dispute over a well — his neighbor's new ditch was stealing his water. The second, a widow asking for winter grain for her three grandchildren. Aria listened the way her father had taught her at the war table: the facts first, the feelings underneath.

She ruled the well dispute with a compromise that left both farmers nodding — shared hours, measured by the sundial, written down and witnessed. She granted the widow grain from the keep's stores and watched the woman's eyes fill with tears.

"Thank you, my Lady," the widow whispered, clutching Aria's hand. "The last Luna — gods rest her — never came down from the high hall."

Something tightened in Aria's chest. She squeezed the woman's hand. "Then the high hall will have to get used to missing me."

It was working. She could feel it — the room's hostility thawing by degrees, petitioners leaning forward instead of back. Even Rowan's scarred face kept doing that complicated thing it did when he was impressed against his will.

The third petitioner was a miller with a grievance against the toll keeper. Aria was halfway through his account when the grey came.

It started at the edges of her vision, soft as moth wings. She gripped the arms of the chair and breathed through it the way she had in the council hall. Lack of sleep. Grief. Nothing more.

"My Lady?" Rowan had straightened from the wall. "My Lady, are you—"

"I'm fine." Her voice sounded far away. "Continue."

The miller droned on. The grey thickened. Aria fixed her eyes on the far door — and saw Darian standing in it.

He wasn't supposed to be here. The King didn't attend petitioners' courts. But there he was, half in shadow, frost-pale eyes fixed on her with an intensity that made her breath catch. He'd come to watch. Her. The realization sent something hot and traitorous through her veins—

— and the floor tilted.

Aria heard her own chair scrape stone. Heard Rowan's boots hit the floor. Heard the widow cry out — and then Darian's voice, raw in a way she had never heard it, no longer distant at all:

"ARIA!"

He was across the hall before Rowan had taken three steps. Strong arms caught her as her knees gave way, and the last thing she saw before the dark took her was his face above hers — stripped of every defense, furious and terrified in equal measure.

The dark closed over her gently, like water.

She surfaced once, briefly, to the sound of arguing.

"—not leaving her." Darian's voice, low and dangerous.

"You're the King, not her husband in any way that matters to a healer, and you are in my light." Mira, utterly unimpressed by royalty. "She's not dying, she's swooning, and you'll be the death of my patience. OUT."

"I'll break—"

"You'll break nothing. Out. Now."

A door closed. The dark took her again, kinder this time.

***

She woke to the smell of herbs and Mira's hands on her wrist.

"—a fool girl," Mira was muttering, "fainting in front of half the court, what will they say, Luna's got the vapors—"

"I'm awake," Aria croaked.

Mira's head snapped up. The relief on the healer's broad face lasted exactly one second before it was replaced by something Aria had never seen there before.

Fear.

"Mira?" Aria tried to sit up. The room swam — her own chambers, she realized, afternoon light through the high windows. "What—"

"Lie still." Mira's voice was wrong — too careful. She pressed two fingers to Aria's wrist again, frowning, then moved them to the hollow of her throat. Listened. Her face went the color of old linen.

"What is it?" Aria whispered. "Mira, you're scaring me."

The healer didn't answer. She fetched her listening horn from her bag with hands that weren't quite steady, warmed the bell between her palms, and pressed it low on Aria's belly.

Silence stretched. A log shifted in the brazier.

Mira moved the horn. Listened again. Lowered it slowly.

She looked at Aria for a long moment — and Aria watched the blood drain out of the woman's face.

"Two heartbeats," Mira said quietly.

Aria laughed — a short, bewildered sound. "That's — yours is the second one, obviously, you're right there—"

"No, child." Mira took her hand, and her grip was too tight. "Yours. And two more besides. Quick as rabbit feet."

The words didn't make sense. Aria stared at her. "I don't—"

"Twins." Mira's voice was barely a whisper now. "And by the quickness of them — five weeks, maybe six. I'd stake my license on it."

Five weeks. Six.

Aria's mind went blank, then raced backward — the wedding, the corridor, Darian's thumb on her lip, not until you ask. He had never touched her. Never. The contract, the restraint, the promise —

And before that. The week before the claiming ceremony. Kael's arms. Kael's mouth. The last night they'd stolen together, laughing into each other's skin, the moonstone pendant warm between them, both of them certain of the future.

"Oh," Aria whispered. "Oh, Goddess. No."

Mira's face said everything.

Panic rose in Aria's throat like bile. A Luna carrying another Alpha's pups — Corvin would call it treason against the throne itself. The contract — gods, the contract said nothing about this, because no one had imagined it. And Darian — his face in the small hall, stripped of every defense — what would that face look like when he learned?

He'll annul it. He'll send me back. Or worse — pack law gives a King rights over—

She cut the thought off before it could finish. Her hands had gone cold.

"Child," the healer said gently, "when did you last lie with a man?"