Roxy didn’t wait for Kaelen, Zarek, or Torian to answer. She violently threw the thick dire-wolf pelts aside, swinging her bare legs over the edge of the mattress to rush out of the bed.

But the absolute second her feet touched the wooden floorboards, the room violently tilted.

A massive, overwhelming wave of dizziness slammed into her skull. The world spun in a sickening, chaotic blur of dark mahogany and winter sunlight. A sharp, acidic surge of nausea rose in her throat, her weakened body violently protesting the sudden movement. Her knees buckled beneath her.

Before she could hit the floor, a pair of small, glowing hands pressed firmly against her shoulders, pushing her gently but insistently back onto the mattress.

"Mother, stop. You cannot stand," a soft, urgent voice commanded.

Roxy blinked, her vision slowly swimming back into focus. Iris was standing right beside the bed. The young illusionist’s violet eyes were filled with a fierce, protective worry.

"Iris..." Roxy gasped, clutching her stomach as the nausea slowly receded. "Tanith... where is she? Is she hurt?"

"Tan Tan will be fine," Iris said softly, keeping her hands on Roxy’s arms to ensure she didn’t try to bolt again. "She exhausted her magical core bringing you back. Papa Syris and Papa Caspian are with her. They are giving her tonics. You just need to rest more."

From the shadows near the doorway, a heavy, deliberate set of footsteps echoed on the floorboards.

Drax stepped into the pale light. The teenage drake’s face was drawn, his jaw clenched tight, but his posture was as unyielding as iron.

"Tan Tan is a strong child," Drax assured her, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that lacked its usual adolescent warmth. "She will be fine. She did what she had to do."

Roxy looked at her eldest son, and then at Iris. She saw Axel and Onyx standing quietly near the wall, and the toddlers—Zale, Tyara, and Fedor—gathered near the foot of the bed. Despite the freezing, distant reception of her Warlord husbands, seeing her children completely whole and safe sent a profound, shattering wave of love through her chest.

Roxy’s eyes pooled with thick, warm tears. She reached a trembling hand out toward them.

"I miss you guys..." Roxy whispered, her voice breaking with absolute, unadulterated maternal devotion.

The emotional admission hung in the air, a fragile offering of love.

Drax did not step forward to take her hand.

The teenage dragon’s dark green eyes narrowed into sharp, hostile slits. The protective Warlord composure he had maintained during the crisis violently fractured, giving way to the raw, festering agony of a son who had watched his mother willingly walk to the slaughter.

"You should have thought about that," Drax grumbled, his voice dripping with a bitter, venomous anger that sent a chill down Roxy’s spine, "when you did everything on your own selfishly."

The word selfishly hit Roxy like a physical blow to the chest. She physically recoiled, her breath catching in her throat.

"Drax! Don’t!" Iris barked, whipping her head around to glare at her older brother.

But Drax, who was always so calm, so measured, and so forgiving of his family’s chaotic dynamics, was completely beyond reasoning. He had held the pack together while the Kings fell apart. He had earned the right to his fury.

He glared back at his younger sister, his dark green eyes violently clashing with her glowing violet ones.

"You should be angry at her too!" Drax shouted, his voice cracking with the agonizing strain of his adolescent grief. He gestured wildly toward Roxy, his chest heaving. "We are a family! We are her children! Why didn’t she think of us when she was making that decision? She is pregnant with another youngling! And what about our fathers? What were they going to do?!"

Drax took a heavy, threatening step toward the bed, entirely ignoring the three towering Warlords standing silently beside it.

"If Tan Tan and Fedor couldn’t bring her back," Drax’s voice broke into a jagged, devastating sob, "were we going to forever lose her?!"

Iris stepped directly into Drax’s path, pressing her lips into a fierce, thin line. She crossed her arms over her chest, refusing to be intimidated by the towering, enraged drake.

"She is our mother," Iris countered, her voice ringing with absolute, unshakable conviction. "Everything she does, she always does it for us. If mother didn’t make that sacrifice, she would be just as devastated as us if she lost us to the big bad enemy. She chose to suffer so we wouldn’t have to!"

Drax sneered, his draconic pride flaring. He completely rejected the narrative of necessary martyrdom.

"We could have defeated the Demon King either way!" Drax argued vehemently, his hands curling into tight fists. "Our fathers are strong! Tanith is a basilisk, much stronger than a normal snake-shifter! Fedor is ten times stronger than Papa Ren, and Zale is a hybrid of both sea and earth! We are the Vanguard!"

Iris frowned, her own temper violently rising to match her brother’s. "They are children!!!!!!" she shrieked, pointing at the toddlers. "They can’t fight a god!"

Drax countered immediately, his voice dropping into a devastating, roaring crescendo that shook the room.

"Just like we are!"

The admission hung in the sudden, deafening silence of the master bedroom. It was the ultimate, undeniable truth. They were children. They shouldn’t have had to fight a war, and they shouldn’t have had to watch their mother execute herself to save them.

Roxy felt a massive, suffocating knot of agony tighten around her windpipe. The argument was tearing her soul apart.

"That’s enough!" Roxy shouted, her voice trembling violently as she looked past the arguing siblings to the three massive Vanguard Kings. Zarek, Kaelen, and Torian were standing like statues, watching the children fight with cold, shadowed eyes.

"Are you going to just let them fight with each other?" Roxy pleaded, looking directly at the colossal White Tiger. "Torian, please."

Torian slowly shifted his bright blue eyes to meet hers. The absolute, unyielding adoration that usually radiated from him was completely gone, replaced by a wall of impenetrable ice.

"He is not wrong, is he?" Torian replied, his voice a low, flat rumble that carried no comfort whatsoever.

"Father!" Iris shouted, whirling around, completely appalled that the White Tiger Alpha was validating the disrespect toward their Matriarch.

Kaelen instantly shifted his gaze to the young illusionist. The King of the North tossed Iris a single, devastatingly sharp, authoritative look—a silent, absolute Alpha command that brooked zero rebellion.

Iris violently flinched. The young girl immediately lowered her head, her shoulders slumping in defeat.

Roxy felt entirely choked. All the emotions—the terror of the hospital, the joy of returning, the agonizing guilt of her lies, and the crushing realization of how deeply she had wounded her family—were hitting her all at once. Her whole family was furious with her. She understood their anger, she truly did, but how could she make them understand that stepping into the abyss was the only mathematical way to guarantee they survived? If she had told them, they would have locked her in a vault and died fighting Abaddon.

She had broken their hearts to save their lives, and now she had to live with the terrifying consequence that they might never forgive her for it.

"I am sorry..." Roxy whimpered, her voice a soft, broken, and agonizingly fragile sound in the tense room. Tears spilled over her cheeks, dripping onto the furs.

Drax did not soften. The teenage dragon turned his back on the bed, his spine rigid.

"Let’s go," Drax commanded roughly.

Without looking back, Drax walked out of the master bedroom, his heavy boots echoing down the hall.

He left Iris, Axel, Onyx, Zale, Tyara, and Fedor standing in the tense, freezing room. Fedor, seeing that his mother was awake and the immediate danger had passed, let out a soft sigh and curled back into a tight ball on the furs, immediately going back to sleep, entirely exhausted by his magical exertion.

Tyara, in her toddler shifter form, and young Zale crept closer to the edge of the mattress. They looked up at Roxy, their large eyes giving her a soft, profoundly sympathetic look. But the shame was too heavy. Roxy couldn’t bring herself to meet their innocent gazes. She lowered her head, her dark curls falling to obscure her tear-streaked face.

Axel stepped forward, the young wolf pup breaking the unbearable tension.

"No matter, mother," Axel said softly, his voice carrying a gentle, mature cadence. "We are so glad you are awake. That’s all that matters."

Iris sniffled, wiping her eyes. "I am going to get some food," she announced quietly.

Iris walked over and picked up Tyara, who immediately let out a loud, unhappy whine, squirming and protesting being carried like a baby, but Iris held firm. Axel reached out and gently took Zale’s hand. The young merman-shifter allowed himself to be led toward the door, but he kept turning his head, looking back at Roxy over his shoulder with worried, luminescent eyes.

Onyx lingered for just a fraction of a second longer. The twin wolf pup looked at the weeping, broken Matriarch.

"I love you, mum," Onyx whispered.

The quiet, unconditional declaration completely shattered the last of her composure. Roxy coughed out a harsh, jagged cry, violently bringing her trembling hands up to completely cover her face as she broke down into agonizing, shuddering sobs.

The children filed out into the hallway, leaving the three silent, imposing Warlords standing over the weeping Matriarch.

But just as Iris stood at the threshold of the heavy mahogany doors, balancing the squirming Tyara on her hip, the young illusionist suddenly stopped. She remembered something. The fierce, protective Warlord instinct that had guided her to defend her mother flared back to life.

Iris turned around, looking past the weeping woman on the bed, her violet eyes locking directly onto the three towering Alpha Kings.

"Papas," Iris said, her voice dropping the childish cadence, addressing them with a chilling, solemn formality. "Can you step out with little Iris?"