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Although my companion and I can communicate through the roots, Sylvan offers no signals. She just leans into my touch, then backs up and clomps past me, exiting the glade as though aware of the conflict. Animals can sense tension between fauna mates, so maybe she’s getting the same vibes.

The moment Sylvan’s gone, I cross the grass. Except I only make it halfway before Juniper cuts me off, her voice fired up like kindling. “How did this happen?”

My hooves stop ten paces from her. I scratch the back of my head. “Well, luv. When a satyr and a huntress love each other very much—”

She whips around. “This isn’t funny.”

“Am I laughing?” I deadpan.

Those spruce eyes are forests, prickly and capable of burning. Her index finger stabs in my direction while her free palm remains on her stomach. “You said this wouldn’t happen. When we first had sex, you told me it wasn’t possible. You said we were safe.”

“Because I fucking thought we were!” I grind out, wounded pride now whittling to something more familiar, more wieldable.

And shit. Unlike Juniper, I hate when I’m right. This is for sure why she’s pissed.

I speak slowly to calm myself, to keep myself from grabbing and kissing her, to keep the mishmash of emotions in check. “You heard Elixir. Compared to Faeries, it isn’t rare for humans to hatch a few eggs in their short lifetime. Your people have that privilege, not us.”

“Not every human does,” Juniper concedes. “Some try forever, but it doesn’t work for them.”

“My point is your humanity made the probability higher.”

Her mouth trembles. I take another step forward and then—fuck it—consume every bit of space separating us. My body halts inches from hers, our shadows merging across the grass.

I duck my head, fasten my gaze to hers, and refuse to muffle the awe in my voice. “This is real.”

Juniper stares at me, my words slipping through the cracks. After that, it happens in one fell swoop. Her features crumble, and she turns away while cupping a hand over her mouth.

Gone is that habitual composure. Gone is that indomitable resilience.

I don’t know another being who’s withstood what she has. This woman thought she lost her sisters forever, only to be glamoured, humiliated, and thrown into a cage in The Redwoods of Exile, then trussed up like a hunk of game, all by my orders.

She was hunted at night, tracked through this wilderness like prey by a legion of howling Faeries.

She sat through a feast where my kin secretly tried to drug her with food and drink.

She bargained with us, braved the forest Faeries’ scrutiny.

She got glamoured again, then was trapped with me in a Fae ring, then traded blows with a bitchy nymph who tried to suffocate my woman into the dirt.

She battled my kin in The Gang of Elks, saved Sylvan from death, and won her game.

She survived a near-drowning at Elixir’s hands, back when he didn’t know who she was.

In the end, Juniper found it in herself not only to forgive me, but to love me—from my troublemaker smirk, to my non-existent morals, to my black-sheep soul.

Through all that, this huntress never wavered. But she does now.

Everything compiles on her face. The carefully erected scaffolding tips like an uprooted tree. I feel it like I feel the overdue sensation of my ribs cracking.

If she suffers, I suffer. That’s how it is.

Juniper’s gutted over losing that crucial page from the Book of Fables. She’s fuming that we’d both neglected the obvious about breeding.

But mostly she’s mad at herself for not having anticipated this, for not connecting the dots between Fae infertility and human conception, for not drawing the logical conclusion after how awful she’s been feeling. Even now, stress churns under the surface of her flesh, the sound audible to my ears.

But none of these problems are what’s really breaking her. None of them explain why her eyes glisten with unshed tears.

No, something else is tormenting her. For the immortal life of me, I can’t tell anymore if she’s clutching her womb purely because she’s ill or shocked—or if it’s because she’s plagued.