Chapter 103. Meeting the Old Matron

The hug lingered for a while, but eventually Aria knew she had to pull away.

Rose, with a huge smile on her face, gave a small nod, her eyes glinting with both relief and urgency. “How have you been?” she asked, a note of worry in her tone as she shifted the basket of herbs on her hips and prepared to walk Aria deep into the human quarters.

Aria smiled and nodded, “As well as I can possibly be.”

Rose frowned at that statement but eventually shrugged and gestured for Aria to follow her. They slipped through the tiny cracks between huts in the courtyard. Human children peered out of doorways, their parents dragging them back wherever they passed.

Women froze mid speak, men stopped whatever they were doing. For a while, it seemed like the entirety of the human quarters had frozen in place. Then, the whispers began, some of them loud, others low.

All of them open words about what Rose was doing with the new luna.

Aria ignored their looks and words, he