99 Moons with Alpha Rhaegar

WHAT THE JOURNAL SAYS

ELYSIA’S POV

I lasted two days.

Two days of knowing it was under the floorboard. Two days of reaching for it in the dark, fingers touching the edge of the leather, then pulling back.

On the third night I stopped arguing with myself.

I lit the candle stub I’d saved from the kitchens, sat on the floor with it between my knees, and opened the journal.

The early pages surprised me.

My mother’s handwriting was neat here. Unhurried. She wrote about small things, the sound of rain on the healer’s hut roof, a song she hummed while grinding herbs. One entry about crying alone in the forest, not from sadness but because the afternoon light through the trees was too beautiful and she had no one to show it to.

I sat with that one longer than the others.

I had never once seen her cry. Not when the pack whispered. Not when food ran short. Not ever.

She’d held an entire interior life somewhere I couldn’t reach.

I turned more pages.

The handwriting shifted somewhere in the middle. Quicker. Some words pressed harder into the paper, the letters uneven in a way the earlier entries weren’t.

*I am not going to write his name. I won’t. Not here, not ever. Some names are doors, and I won’t open this one.*

I frowned and read it again.

Whose name? What door?

*He doesn’t know. Nobody does. I have to keep it that way. The herbs must continue.*

I turned the page slowly.

*The old women in the east called it mercy. I call it survival. The suppression holds. That is all that matters for now.*

I read that paragraph three times and understood none of it.

Suppression. What was she suppressing? Some kind of illness? Some condition she’d been treating herself for without my knowledge? I thought back through every cup of tea she’d drank and made me drink as a child, every poultice she’d pressed to my skin after I’d scraped myself, every bitter herb remedy she’d handed me without explanation.

There had been so many.

I had always assumed she was just thorough. She was a healer. That was what healers did.

*She’ll be safer not knowing. That is the only thing I am certain of anymore.*

Some words in the next line had been scratched out. Pressed over so many times the paper had thinned. Whatever she’d written there, she’d changed her mind about leaving it.

The candle guttered.

I closed the journal.

Sat in the dark with my palm flat against the cover.

She’d been managing something. For years. Something she’d circled and tended and refused to name even on a private page. Something she’d probably expected would shift once she was gone. Was it the reason she died?

I didn’t know what any of it meant.

My chest was tight in a way that had nothing to do with my ribs.

I pressed the floorboard back down, both hands flat, and left it there.

*Later*, I told my wolf.

She didn’t argue. Just went quiet in the way she did when she was waiting for something.

…

The great hall was loud that evening.

I moved through it the way I always did. Head down. Hands working. Exist without existing.

I was refilling a water pitcher near the far end when the feeling landed.

Not a glance. Not someone’s gaze drifting past.

Something steadier.

I went still, then slowly looked up.

Rhaegar sat at the head table, turned slightly in his chair, one arm braced against the wood.

Looking at me.

The pitcher tipped. I caught it. Water lapped against the rim.

His gaze held. One second. Two.

The noise of the hall didn’t change. Nothing moved. But something in the air did, a subtle pressure shift, like the moment before weather breaks.

Then he looked away.

I set the pitcher down and finished filling the cup. My hand was only slightly unsteady.

*He sees us*, my wolf said.

“Stop,” I muttered.

I moved to the next table.

But at the edge of my vision, I caught him leaning toward Cain. Something said low, swallowed by the noise.

Cain’s eyes moved across the room. Directly to me.Then he gave a short nod.

My stomach dropped.

I set the pitcher down carefully, my pulse was loud in my ears, which was inconvenient, and the hall suddenly felt about half the size it had a moment ago.

What did he say? What did he just tell him?