This is where I’d usually shut down, keep everything locked inside. But instead, I take a breath and steady myself. Aurora deserves to know the truth of how I feel.
“I’m scared,” I say softly.
“Of what?”
The summer breeze sends a strand of hair dancing across her face, and I reach up to snag it and tuck it behind her ear.
“Of not having a place here anymore.”
Her face falls. “Alden...” Her voice is breathy, and she takes my hand in hers. “You willalwayshave a place here, a place with me. I’m in love with you, Mr. Stonewood. I’m not letting you go anywhere.”
Hearing those words makes me want to lift her feet from the ground and spin her around, to shower her face with kisses, but there are still so many unanswered questions.
“But what of the baby? The three of you will be a family.”
“A baby doesn’t make you a family,” she says, her gaze flicking away. “My father taught me that.”
She has never spoken of her father, only of her beloved aunt, her sister, and her mother. I’d assumed he’d either passed or was no longer in the picture, and given the look on Aurora’s face, it seems he left plenty of pain in his wake.
“He left you?”
She meets my gaze again and lets out a humorless laugh. “You have to be with someone in order to leave them, so no. I wouldn’t even know his face were he standing right in front of me.” Her eyes—bright green and sparkling in the dappled sunlight sneaking through the leaves overhead—seem to search mine for a moment, then track across my face. She uses her free hand to trace my cheekbone with her fingertips, then my jawline.
“What makes a family, then?” I whisper, holding still as she explores my face with her touch. Every brush of her hand across my face softens me to her further.
This time, her smile is so warm I imagine it could chase the cold away on a midwinter day. “Love, Alden.” Once again, she lifts onto her toes, this time to press a kiss to my bearded cheek.“Lovemakes a family. And you’re mine. Nothing is going to change that.”
Chapter 27
Rowan
EARLIER, I SPOTTED ALDEN AND Aurora kissing under the tree when I glanced out the parlor window, and I opted to stay clear of them so that they could have their space and talk. Now, though, Aurora is working on the vine whisper elixir in the kitchen, and Alden is sitting in the parlor reading a book. Night is descending slowly, the way it does in the summer, and I’m at the kitchen table, Lucy in my lap and Harrison beside me.
I can’t stop thinking of the tiny baby just starting to develop in Aurora’s belly. My eyes track her as she moves around the kitchen, following her every movement, and she finally plants a hand on her hip and arches a brow at me.
“Are you waiting to see a bump?” she asks.
A bit of heat warms my cheeks, and she laughs at my expense. Turning, she goes back to her elixir brewing. The kitchen smells of lavender, sage, and honey. Aurora’s long hair is woven into a braid, which swings across her back as she crushes lavender in her mortar.
“Have you ever thought of having children?” I ask her. “Before, I mean...”
She looks out the little kitchen window and takes a moment to answer. “I have. And I already knew that if I were to have a child anywhere, I’d want it to be here.” Though she’s still not looking at me, I can see the hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “I spent much time here as a child, and those are my happiest young memories. It’ll be nice to pass those down to another.” She works quietly for a time after that, the only sound in the kitchen Lucy’s gentle rumble as she sleeps in my lap and the pestle grinding against the quartz mortar. “What about you? Did you ever expect you’d be a father?”
Truthfully? No.
When Lucy passed, she took most of my heart with her. After that, the only thing that meant anything to me was becoming a knight. I threw my entire life into it, trained until my hands bled from gripping my sword and my body ached from hours spent on horseback. Women came and went from my life—a town here, a bed there. My focus was on my own endeavors and service to the kingdom.
That’s notcompletelychanged—my honor and passion still lie in serving my king—but being with Aurora has revived something in me that I thought had died long ago: hope.
Hope for a full life. For love. Perhaps even for a family of my own.
I shake my head while stroking a hand across Lucy’s soft feathers. “I never expected it, no.”
“Why not?” Aurora turns to look at me over her shoulder, braid swinging with the movement.
“Just didn’t think that was the way life would play out for me...” I take a sip from my teacup and then sigh softly, averting my gaze from Aurora’s.
“Well, for what it’s worth,” Aurora says softly, drawing my eyes back to hers, “I think you’re going to make a wonderful father.” Her cheeks flush pink before she goes back to grinding the herbs in the mortar.