While Jenna Sommers and her unborn child were fighting for their life at the operating table the wait for the people outside of the surgery room were tense and fearful.
Alina Sommers was holding her elder daughter's hands in a white-knuckled grip and staring at the opposite wall with unseeing eyes.
This?
What was this?
She had been so sure that the curse on her, on her children, had finally broken. Miranda had Elena without any problem!
So why?
Why was Jenna fighting for her life and her child?
When Miranda had Elena and neither the pregnancy nor the birth caused the curse to be activated she had been so hopeful, so hopeful that her curse had not transferred to her daughters.
What a fool she had been.
To think she had considered that woman would have the decency to allow her curse to be just that, her curse.
How Miranda had Elena?
"You didn't have any problems while carrying Elena?"
Alina watched how the sharp questioning in the silence of the waiting room startled her eldest but there was something else as well.
It was there in the way she drew herself away a little from Alina, in the way her hands contracted minutely.
"Where did this come from Mom? You know ı didn't have any complications and is this the time to talk about such things?"
"I don't actually."
And she didn't.
Alina Sommers didn't know how either Miranda's pregnancy or the birth of her granddaughter went.
Since her marriage to Greyson Gilbert, It wasn't unusual for Miranda to keep secrets from them or not meet them for months end so when five months after their last meeting Miranda brought them a newborn and introduced her as their granddaughter they didn't doubt.
Why hadn't Miranda told them she was adopted?
Did she think they wouldn't love her?
If she knew Elena was adopted and this was the first grandchild of her blood she would try to loosen the curse a little like she did for her own pregnancies.
She couldn't break the curse. Not as she is bound and blinded. But she could have loosened it with gems, herbs and metals.
She could have…
There was no point in thinking about what could be.
The facts were, her elder daughter hadn't trusted them with Elena's true parentage.
(They needed to accept that their elder daughter had become a stranger to them.)
Jenna was fighting against a vicious curse alone at that table. (If only she knew!)
In the next hour either her daughter or granddaughter would die in there. (Maybe both)
There was only one choice left, wasn't there?
So Alina Gabrielle Sommers nee' McKinnon did something she had not for the last thirty years.
She reached for her magic.
They, her family, her ancestors, have never been the most powerful witches and warlocks in the world. The most powerful of them had been average on the power scale and most of them fell under-average category.
Their strengths had come from the impeccable control over what they had.
It didn't come from summoning lightning storms or hellfire; nor from calling tsunamis and earthquakes.
No.
Theirs was the needle that could send you to sleep until it turned eternal.
Theirs was the flower with its vividly coloured delicate petals and a fragrance so sweet it enchanted the ones that saw and smelled.
Theirs was the dagger hidden in the dark, the chalice with the poison…
She had run from that life with all her mind but it had caught her thirty years ago and had cost her dearly.
Cost her the power she was so sure she didn't want, didn't need but which is binding had left a gaping wound at her very soul.
(Oh how naive she had been then. Thinking this was to be her only punishment.)
From there the cost has risen with every pregnancy and it had taken her a miscarriage, and two stillborn babies until finally she loosened the curse enough Miranda was able to be born if not fully healthy then whole.
(One-time success and she had become cocky and thought she had broken it. Oh how wrong she had been.)
She had another child right after Miranda a boy that looked like her beloved husband, her little Hadrian. Her shy baby had only twenty-seven months to live.
It had happened in the middle of the night.
She had awakened when her magic flared after years of not feeling it. (She wished it had continued its forced slumber.)
Her magic had lashed with poison and tar dripping from its mouth and attacked the most vulnerable member of her blood. It had taken but half of a second to smother the life in its target and when she had finally reached her son's cradle, Hadrian was already gone.
Even knowing there wasn't any way to change it, she had rushed to the emergency room, her son's chest still and body cooling with every minute.
But they couldn't do anything for her sweet child.
They weren't educated or equipped for this. So they declared him dead.
The cause of death?
SIDS "Sudden infant death syndrome" even though her son wasn't under one year. However, they couldn't find another reason for Hadrian's sudden demise so SIDS it went.
But she knew the real reason.
Her magic had killed her son.
She had disconnected then, a passenger in her own body.
It was her husband who pulled her from the cliffside.
Her husband, who had made the funeral arrangement on his own while dealing with a toddler and a catatonic wife.
Her husband, who bathed her, dressed her and fed her like she was a child. Always patient and endlessly gentle with his every action.
Day after day, without complaining even once.
Her mother-in-law, Amira, came to help them but Ronan was the one who looked after her. (She was thankful for that.)
Six months and some days she still felt like she would crumble but she didn't want to leave and lie down beside her Hadrian anymore.
She had another child that needed her, Miranda.
That was when she finally noticed the strain she put on her husband.
He had lost weight, and there was tension at the line of his shoulders, and grief lining his face.
It had taken months to put themselves and each other together. To become healthy and functional, to be able to sleep through the night.
Amira had helped immensely. She had made sure Miranda was well taken care of and that they spent time with their daughter, together and induvial, and they had time with each other too.
She had made sure they didn't smother Miranda with their worry.
She had often found herself jealous of the relationship her husband had with his mother. (Her own mother had been more of a distant aunt than a mother to her.)
This time she was grateful for that close relationship. That effortless and unconditional love her husband's family had for each other and now her and Miranda too.
That love they would extend to Jenna when three years later she surprised them.
(She nearly had a mental breakdown when she learned she was pregnant. Even the thought of losing another child to her own magic makes her shudder with self-disgust.)
So when thirty years later Alina Sommers reached for her magic, and this time direct the hungry monster it became she wasn't afraid her family would be left alone.
And it went.
In front of the operation room, Alina Sommers shuddered once and fall towards her eldest daughter.