Chapter 26 The Empty Nursery
One hundred eighty-three days.
Four thousand three hundred ninety-two hours.
Two hundred sixty-three thousand five hundred twenty seconds.
I counted every single one.
The first week was the worst. I would wake in the middle of the night, reaching for a child who was not there. My breasts ached with milk meant for an infant stolen by gods. The bond that had connected us was severed so cleanly I kept forgetting it was gone, reaching through space for a consciousness that no longer answered.
Kael found me in the nursery on the eighth day, sitting in the rocking chair we had commissioned, holding a blanket that still smelled faintly of her.
“You need to eat,” he said gently, setting down a tray I would not touch. “Mora says you have not had anything since yesterday.”
“I am not hungry.” My voice came out hollow, distant. “How can I eat when I do not know if she is eating? Is she in pain? If she even remembers food?”
Through the bond, I felt his own grief. His wolf paced constantly beneath his skin, searching for a pup that no longer existed in our world.
“She is strong,” he said for the hundredth time. “She will survive.”
“You do not know that.” I clutched the blanket tighter. “She was four days old, Kael. Four days. Babies that young need their mothers. Need warmth, comfort and love. What if the gods do not understand that? What if they treat her like a tool and she… fades?”
“Then we will bring her back at the winter solstice.” He knelt beside the chair, taking my hand. “We will hold her. Feed her. Pour so much love into her that it sustains her for another six months.”
“And if it is not enough?” The question had haunted me for eight days. “What if our love cannot compete with divine control? What if she forgets us completely?”
Kael had no answer.
Because we both knew it was possible.
By the second week, the Northern Kingdom had settled back into routine. Warriors trained. Merchants traded. Life continued as if a child had not been sacrificed to save them all.
Only those closest to us understood.
Maya brought meals three times a day and sat quietly while I did not eat them. Lyra stationed herself outside the nursery, standing guard over an empty room. Mora checked on me constantly, her healing magic useless against grief.
“You should leave this room,” she said on day fourteen. “Seal it. Let yourself mourn properly instead of torturing yourself with what is gone.”
“She is not gone,” I said sharply. “She is coming back. In one hundred sixty-nine days. And this room will be exactly as she left it.”
Mora’s expression was pitiful. “Luna Sera, I understand your pain, but”
“Do you?” I stood, the blanket falling from my lap. “Do you understand what it feels like to carry a child, birth her, love her for four days, and then watch gods steal her? Do you understand waking up every morning reaching for a daughter who is not there?”
“No,” Mora admitted quietly. “I do not. But I understand grief. And I know that what you are doing, sitting in this room counting days, is not mourning. It is purgatory.”
“Good.” I sat back down, picking up the blanket. “Because that is where she is too. Somewhere between life and death, enslaved and suffering. The least I can do is suffer alongside her.”
Mora left without another word.
By the third week, Kael stopped trying to coax me out. Instead, he brought his work to the nursery, sitting on the floor reviewing reports and signing documents while I rocked in the chair and counted seconds.
“The Eastern Territories have requested an alliance meeting,” he said on day nineteen. “They want to discuss the terms we negotiated before… before everything.”
Before our daughter saved the world by enslaving herself.
“Tell them no,” I said.
“Sera, I am the Alpha King. I have responsibilities”
“Then handle them.” I did not look at him. “Go do your duty. Rule your kingdom. But do not ask me to care about politics while my daughter suffers in divine chains.”
Through the bond, I felt his hurt. But also his understanding.
“What if I told you,” he said slowly, “that strengthening our alliances now will help us when she returns? That building a safer kingdom means she has something worth coming back to?”
The words found their mark.
I had been so focused on my own pain that I had forgotten. She was not gone forever. She was coming back.
And when she did, I wanted her to have a home. A kingdom. A family that had not fallen apart in her absence.
“Fine,” I said, my voice still hollow. “Schedule your meetings. Form your alliances. But I will not attend. I cannot smile and negotiate while she is gone.”
“I understand.” He stood, kissing the top of my head before leaving. “I will handle the kingdom. You handle the counting.”
One hundred sixty-four days.
By the fourth week, something shifted.
I woke one morning and the grief was still there, sharp and overwhelming, but beneath it I felt something else.
Anger.
Rage at gods who would enslave a child. Fury at a system that required sacrifice from the innocent. Hatred toward every force that had shaped my daughter’s impossible choice.
I stood from the rocking chair for the first time in twenty-eight days.
“Lyra,” I called through the door.
She entered immediately, as if she had been waiting. “Luna?”
“I need you to train me.” I met her amber eyes with new determination. “Hand-to-hand combat. Weapons. Everything you know about fighting.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Why?”
“Because in one hundred fifty-five days, I will see my daughter again. And I need to be strong enough to protect her if the gods try to keep her.” I clenched my fists. “I need to be ready to fight anyone who tries to hurt her. Even if that means fighting gods themselves.”
Lyra studied me for a long moment.
Then she smiled, fierce and approving. “Training begins at dawn tomorrow. Do not be late.”
That night, I ate my first full meal in four weeks.
Not because I was hungry.
But because I needed strength.
The fifth week brought unexpected visitors.
Marcus’s Beta arrived at the gates, carrying a sealed letter. When Garrett brought it to me, I stared at my dead father’s handwriting with complicated emotions.
“How?” I asked. “He died. He sacrificed himself for the barrier.”
“He did,” Garrett confirmed. “But he wrote this before the ritual. Asked his Beta to deliver it four weeks after his death if… if things went wrong.”
My hands shook as I opened the letter.
Sera,
If you are reading this, I am dead. Good. I do not deserve to live after what I did to you for eighteen years. But before I died, I want you to know something.
I was wrong.
About you. About omegas. About strength. I thought power came from dominance, from breaking others until they submitted. But watching you survive, watching you grow despite everything I did to destroy you, taught me the truth.
Real strength is surviving what should have killed you.
Real power is loving when you were taught only hate.
Real courage is choosing mercy when you have every right to choose revenge.
You were always stronger than me, daughter. I was just too much of a coward to admit it.
I cannot undo the past. Cannot take back the pain I caused. But I can give you this: permission to hate me. Permission to be angry. Permission to grieve not just the father you lost, but the father you should have had.
And when you are done grieving, I hope you remember one thing.
You survived me.
You can survive anything.
Your father,
Marcus Blackwood
I read the letter three times before the tears came.
Not tears of forgiveness. I would never forgive what he did to me.
But tears of release.
Permission to feel everything I had been holding back. The rage. The grief. The complicated love for a man who had destroyed me and then died to save my daughter.
Kael found me in the nursery, the letter crumpled in my fist, sobbing into the blanket that smelled like our stolen child.
He did not speak.
Just held me while I cried for everything we had lost.
By the sixth week, I had established a routine.
Dawn is training with Lyra, learning to fight with teeth and claws and weapons.
Morning hours in the library with Elder Thaddeus, researching divine law and looking for loopholes in the bargain.
Afternoons with Mora, learning to strengthen the severed connection between my daughter and me, hoping she could feel my love even across divine barriers.
Evenings with Kael, planning for the winter solstice, preparing for every possibility.
“What if she does not recognise us?” he asked one night as we lay in bed, neither of us sleeping.
“Then we remind her.” I stared at the ceiling. “Show her the nursery we kept exactly as she left it. Tell her stories about her birth. About how she saved us. About why we love her.”
“And if the gods only allow us minutes with her? Not hours?”
“Then we make every second count.” I turned to face him. “We pour six months of love into whatever time they give us. We make sure she knows we never stopped fighting for her.”
Through the bond, his love wrapped around me like armour.
“One hundred forty-one days,” he whispered.
“One hundred forty-one days,” I agreed.
The seventh week brought news that made my blood run cold.
A pack from the Southern Territories reported seeing something impossible. A young girl, perhaps five years old, wielding divine fire. Commanding wolves to kneel. Speaking with authority that made alphas submit.
She matched my daughter’s description.
Except she was not four days old anymore.
“The gods are accelerating her ageing,” Elder Thaddeus explained when I brought him the report. “Using their power to speed her development. By the winter solstice, she may be ten years old. Or twenty. Or ancient.”
“No.” I crumpled the report. “She is supposed to be a baby. She is supposed to need her mother. She is supposed to”
“She is supposed to be their instrument,” he interrupted gently. “And instruments are more useful when fully developed.”
I wanted to scream. To rage. To tear down the heavens themselves.
Instead, I went to the training yard and fought Lyra until we were both bleeding.
Because rage without purpose was just pain.
And pain would not bring my daughter back.
The eighth week marked sixty days since she was taken.
Halfway to the winter solstice.
I stood in the nursery, looking at the crib she had barely used, the toys she had never played with, the life she had never lived.
And I made a promise.
“I am coming for you,” I whispered to the empty room. “In one hundred twenty-three days, I am coming. And I will know you. No matter how much they have changed you. No matter how old they have made you. No matter what they have done to your mind.”
I pressed my hand against my heart where the bond used to be.
“You are my daughter. And I will never stop fighting to bring you home.”
Outside my window, the first snow of the season began to fall.
A reminder that winter was coming.
That the solstice approached.
That in one hundred twenty-three days, I would see my daughter again.
Or die trying.
I left the nursery for the first time in eight weeks.
Not to give up.
But to prepare.
Because when the winter solstice arrived, I would be ready.
For whatever version of my daughter the gods returned to me.
For whatever fight awaited us.
For whatever price freedom truly demanded.
The mark on my palm had changed again.
No longer a countdown.
Now it showed a single word, burning with silver fire.
Soon.