Chapter 164 When the Vision Ends the Future Begins

Chapter 164 When the Vision Ends the Future Begins
EYSA -

Eysa woke with salt in her lungs and her daughter's cry in her ears. Her body jerked against the pillows, and pain answered from everywhere at once. Rain still struck the windows, but it was only rain, and not stray sea mist.
The scent of herbs, blood, warm milk, and smoke rushed back so quickly that her stomach clenched.
Dax stood beside the bed with Vanessa held against his chest.
He had one hand beneath the baby’s head and the other cupped along her back, careful in a way that looked almost unnatural on a male who could break bone without effort. His face changed the moment Eysa moved. Whatever softness had touched him while he held the child only shone brighter.
"There you are."
She tried to sit up too quickly, and the room tipped. She wound up back against the pillow and watched her mate hold their child in his arms as she fussed.
"The baby," she rasped.
"Here." Dax lowered the child closer at once. "She's right here."
She squirmed in his arms, red-faced and furious, wrapped in her blanket. One tiny fist opened against Dax's bare chest, then closed again.
Eysa's throat filled with pressure from tears that she wanted to cry.
The same hand rose in her mind, only it was grown and bound. The same daughter, crying now because she's hungry and alive, while another version of her in the future had stood across the sea with a blade meant for her throat.
Dax saw the change in her face, and he shifted the baby carefully into one arm and sat on the edge of the bed. "What's wrong?" Dax leaned closer. "Tell me."
Eysa reached for their daughter, and her arms shook before the baby even touched them, but Dax placed her carefully against Eysa's chest and kept his hands there until she had the child secure. The baby rooted against the blanket, making small angry sounds that scraped Eysa raw.
She looked down at the tiny face and tried to place the grown woman over it. The dark hair and lifted chin. The eyes that had looked through the vision and whispered, "Mother."
"They take her," Eysa said, and Dax went still.
His voice lowered until it barely moved the air. "Who?"
"Landis has a son." Her fingers curled into the blanket. "Across the sea. His name is Dominik. They teach him to hate us."
Dax's hand closed around the bedpost hard enough for the wood to groan before he released it. Vanessa startled, and Eysa tucked her closer until her tiny body settled.
Dax forced his shoulders down. "Tell me." The fact that he didn't question her, calmed her fears more than anything else would have.
So, with less tremor in her voice, she told him, and when she was finished, Dax stood from the bed and opened the door to the room, speaking to a guard who stood there. Eysa looked to the window and watched as the first rays of the morning peeked through the dark sky.
When Dax came back, he sat beside her once more. "I won't let him take her," Dax said.
"Dax." Eysa swallowed. "He's not the only danger, and he stops a blade meant for her. He bleeds for her." Dax's eyes cut to hers. "I saw it in her face," Eysa whispered, looking down at Vanessa. "Hurt. Anger." She shook her head. "But love too." She met Dax's eyes. "She loves him, Dax."
His jaw clenched, and his lips pressed together.
But Eysa continued. "And he loves her enough to betray the ones who fed him hate." Eysa looked down when Vanessa latched poorly against her shift and began to fuss. She adjusted the shift with clumsy hands, and Dax reached to help, steadying the baby without taking her. "The vision came with fear, but it didn't end with it."
Eysa adjusted Vanessa against her chest and tried to help guide her to food.
"I held her for less than a night, and the future is already trying to take her?" Dax whispered.
"I know." Eysa lifted her eyes to him. "But we can't become the thing that keeps her from being ready." Dax turned to her. "I saw what fear does to daughters," she said, thinking of Savonnuh and Visca. "I saw what duty does when parents call it protection, and I refuse to put her in a cage." Her voice broke on the last word.
Dax bent his head until his mouth brushed Eysa's hair as a knock hit the door.
Dax's head lifted, and the Alpha returned so quickly that the room seemed to fill instantly with weight.
"Yes?"
"Rontell, Alpha."
Eysa shifted the baby higher against her chest when she saw Dax hesitate. "Let him in," she said.
Dax crossed the room and opened the door only wide enough for Rontell to step inside. The male's eyes moved once to the baby, softened, then dropped respectfully.
"My Luna," Rontell said. "Forgive me." He turned to Dax. "You asked for me?"
Dax closed the door behind him and crossed back to the bed, but he didn't sit.
"I see." Eysa said.
"I'm finding the enemy before he learns the path to my daughter," he said.
Rontell's posture changed at once. "Enemy, Dax?"
"I want every port watched and every ship's record searched. Every captain needs to be questioned without knowing he's being questioned." Dax moved to the table and took a blank sheet from the writing box. "Landis left a son across the sea."
Rontell went stiff.
Dax dipped the pen in ink. "A son. The name is most likely Dominik."
He began writing, his voice steady as he continued. "Find every rumor tied to Landis's voyage. A woman or a child. A hidden house, foreign allies. Old shrines and monks." He looked down and wrote more before finally rolling it up. "Any vessel that crossed from that coast before or after his death."
"Yes, Alpha." Rontell took the order and pressed it to his chest. "Consider it done."
When the door closed behind him, the room felt different.
"She'll need to learn how to fight," Eysa said, looking down at her daughter.
"Then she'll learn from the best," Dax said.
"Not only with a blade." She lifted her eyes to him. "We'll teach her to fight with her mind, her body, and eventually... her wolf. She'll know how to read a room before it turns against her. When to strike, wait, and when to walk away."
Vanessa pulled milk into her mouth with a soft, greedy sound. Her little fingers curled against Eysa's skin and something warm moved through Eysa's chest.
Her daughter's future held pain, danger, blood, and a sea that would one day try to take her far from home. But it held love, too. Passion. Choices that were hers to make. She needed time to build the fire that wouldn't go out, even bound and bleeding.
That was enough to get Eysa through this day. And then tomorrow.
For now, Vanessa was here, and Eysa held the whole of her world against her heart. For the first time in her life, she felt complete.