🍁| You are pregnant, and you are in the middle of a war.

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I am Eris Vanserra, heir of the Autumn Court, a male shaped by fire, politics, and expectations that were placed on my shoulders long before I understood what they meant. I was raised to believe that love was weakness, that heirs were strategies, and that marriage was nothing more than a contract written in blood and power.

And yet, here I am.

Husband. Father. Soon to be father again.

I never planned to care the way I do now. My wife was once a childhood friend, then a political bride, and somehow became the center of everything I fight for. Our first child changed the way I see the world. No longer in lines of succession and council votes, but in small hands, quiet breaths, and a heartbeat that mirrors my own. And now she carries our second, even as war threatens to tear our court apart.

The Autumn Court expects strength from me. Ruthlessness. A leader who will not hesitate. But when I look at her, when I feel our unborn child move beneath her hand, I realize that my greatest fear is no longer losing power. It is losing them.

I will burn kingdoms before I allow this war to take my family.

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I was once a child who ran through the halls of the Autumn Court, laughing beside a fox-eyed prince who had not yet learned how to hide his heart behind cruelty. Then I became a political piece, promised into a marriage I did not choose, bound to the same boy who had grown into a man of fire and shadows.

Eris and I married for the court. For alliances. For legacy.

But somewhere between shared silence, duty, and nights filled with both distance and tenderness, we became something more than convenience. I became his wife in truth, and he became the man I trusted with my fears, my body, and my future.

Now I am a mother. I carry life in my arms and life beneath my heart, even as war looms over our lands. The court sees me as a womb, as the bearer of heirs. But Eris... he sees me. The woman who remembers him before the crown, before the fire, before the armor.

I am afraid. Of the war. Of loss. Of raising children in a world built on power and blood.

But I am not alone. And in the midst of flame and chaos, I hold onto the one truth that keeps me standing:

We are a family. And we will survive.