WRONG LOVE 3: HEIR

Chapter Ten: First Kick

The house was quiet by nightfall.

Everyone had gone eventually — Cole and Mason after making sure Elara was steady, Max reluctantly pulled away by Aaron who insisted the security conversation couldn't wait until morning, Seraphina lingering longest, guilt still sitting heavy on her shoulders for having been the one to deliver the news that dropped her sister to the sand.

"It's not your fault," Elara had told her at the door. "You had to tell me. I needed to know."

Seraphina had hugged her tightly before leaving, murmuring something about staying close, about not letting her out of sight again if she could help it.

Now it was just the two of them.

The house settled into the specific stillness that came after a day too full of everything — the fear, the fainting, the low murmured conversations about security and threats that Elara had drifted in and out of consciousness for.

She sat on the sofa, Jace beside her, his arm around her shoulders, the lamp casting soft gold light across the room.

"I'm scared," she said quietly.

He looked at her.

"Talk to me," he said.

"I keep thinking about what Seraphina said," Elara said. "That word. Curse. Like she's already something to be afraid of before she's even taken her first breath." Her hand found her stomach, resting there the way it did instinctively now. "I don't want anything to happen to her, Jace. She's this tiny impossible miracle and people I've never met have already decided she shouldn't exist."

"She's going to be fine," Jace said.

"You don't know that," she said softly.

"I know that I will make it true," he said. "Elara, look at me."

She did.

"I have spent a thousand years surviving things that should have ended me," he said. "Wars. Losses. A silver dagger that came within inches of finishing the job. And every single time, I found a way through it because there was something worth surviving for." His hand covered hers where it rested on her stomach. "I am not going to let anything happen to either of you. I will be enough protection for all of us. I promise you that."

She looked at him.

At the silver eyes, steady and certain in the lamplight, carrying the same absolute conviction they'd carried in a flower field two years ago.

"I believe you," she said quietly.

He leaned down.

Pressed his lips gently to her forehead.

"I love you," he murmured against her skin. "Both of you. More than I have ever loved anything."

That was when it happened.

A small, sudden movement beneath her hand — subtle, almost too faint to be sure of, but unmistakable once it registered.

Elara went still.

"Jace," she said.

"What," he said, pulling back slightly. "What's wrong—"

"Nothing's wrong," she said. Her voice had changed completely, wonder replacing the fear that had lived there moments before. "She moved. Jace, she just moved—"

His eyes went wide.

His hand was already covering hers, both of them pressed flat against her stomach, waiting, breath held.

It came again.

A small, definite kick — right where his lips had just touched her forehead moments before, right after he'd made his promise, as though the tiny impossible thing growing inside her had heard every word and decided to answer.

"That's—" Jace's voice broke completely. "That's her. That's actually her."

"She's kicking," Elara said, tears springing to her eyes without warning, joy overwhelming everything else so suddenly she could barely process it. "Jace, our daughter is kicking."

He laughed — a sound caught somewhere between disbelief and pure unguarded happiness — and pressed his hand more firmly against her stomach, waiting for it to happen again.

It did.

Stronger this time.

"Hi," he said softly, leaning down to speak directly to her stomach, silver eyes bright with tears he wasn't bothering to hide. "Hi, baby girl. That's me. That's your dad."

Elara laughed through her own tears, one hand in his hair as he stayed bent close, murmuring quiet things to a child who couldn't understand words yet but had apparently understood something in the gesture that came before them.

"She kicked when you kissed my head," Elara said. "Did you feel the timing? It was right after—"

"I felt it," he said, looking up at her, his own face wet now. "She felt me. She actually felt me."

"She's real," Elara said. "I mean I knew she was real, but this—" She pressed both hands over her stomach, laughing and crying at once, the fear from earlier in the day dissolving into something entirely different. "This is the first time it's felt real. Like she's already someone. Already here, in some way."

Jace pulled her into him carefully, one hand still resting protectively over her stomach, his lips finding her hair.

"She's someone," he said. "She's already someone extraordinary, and she hasn't even met us yet."

Elara cried against his chest — not from fear this time, not from grief, but from the specific overwhelming joy of a moment she would carry with her for the rest of her existence.

"I love her so much," she said. "I already love her so much it scares me."

"Me too," Jace said. "Completely."

The house held them both, quiet and warm, the lamp casting its gold light over a family that existed now in three parts instead of two — a wolf, a vampire, and the tiny impossible miracle already announcing herself with small determined kicks against her mother's hand.

Outside, somewhere in the dark, threats were gathering that neither of them could yet fully understand.

But inside, for this one perfect moment, there was only joy.