"I'm not going back to that ward until I've eaten something that doesn't seem like it's been pre-digested," Serena says pointedly, gesturing toward the cafeteria. She knows it's important to keep up her strength for her son, but that's easier said than done.

And were she to be perfectly honest with this perfect stranger, she'd tell him that she doesn't want to go back to a place filled with the sound of children crying when she needs special permission just to visit her own. It's unnatural. This whole place is.

She has family again for the first time in her life – her blood, her heir – and once more she's had to trek through hell to get there.