59. The Pull Beneath the Pines
Raven
I woke up with a start.
The kind of waking that leaves your heart racing before you even remember why. Like drowning in your own skin. Like being yanked from sleep by something with no hands. Like I had been drowning and then I was saved and taken on land.
There was no sound in the room. There was only the soft crackle of dying firelight in the hearth and the wind whispering outside the window. But something was… off. I could feel it.
I sat up, pressing my palm to my belly. The babies were still. Too still.
And then I felt it.
Not them, not fear… something else.
A pull. So strong that it wanted me.
It wasn’t physical, not like a hand grabbing mine, but it tugged all the same. From deep inside my chest, like a thread tied to something far away,
