(Astraea's POV)

I woke to an empty bed.

Dominic's side was cold - he'd been gone for a while. His suit jacket was missing from the closet, his watch gone from the nightstand. Off to the pack office, like any other morning. Like last night had never happened.

The tuberose tea still sat where I'd left it, the ziplock bag tucked safely in my bathroom drawer. I found that phone, and the call history told me that everything last night was not a dream.

I lay there for a moment, staring at the indent his head had left on the pillow. Then I heard it - the clatter of plates drifting up from the kitchen, the sizzle of something on the stove, and Cyprian's high-pitched chatter punctuated by a woman's soft laughter.

I came downstairs to find Melina at the stove, spatula in hand, flipping pancakes like she owned the place. Cyprian sat at the breakfast bar in his pajamas, swinging his legs, telling her about some cartoon he'd watched. He was animated, bright-eyed, completely at ease - the way he never was with me.

Melina spotted me first. Her smile was instant and flawless. "Good morning, Luna. I made Cyprian's breakfast using the meal plan you posted on the fridge. Would you like some too?"

Cyprian didn't look up. "Melina's pancakes are way better than yours, Mom."

I opened the fridge to get water. That's when I saw it. My meal plan - the one I'd handwritten with careful notes about Cyprian's nutrition, his allergies, his portion sizes - had been annotated. Under my rule that read "NO junk food," someone had drawn a neat line through it and written in rounded, cheerful handwriting: "Once in a while is okay :)"

Melina's handwriting. On my rules. For my son.

I closed the fridge door quietly and drank my water standing up.

Melina's eyes were provocative, but seeing Cyprian eating so intently, I said nothing more and turned back to the master bedroom.

I lay in bed staring blankly at the ceiling when the maid came in to clean the room. She jumped in fright upon seeing me. "Luna, why didn't you go to creche ?"

The Redwood Pup Creche was having its annual Parent-Child Day. I'd almost forgotten - my mind had been consumed by the image of Dominic's fingers reeking of jasmine, waving in front of my paralyzed face. But Cyprian needed me there. Whatever was left of me that still functioned as a mother needed to show up.

At the front entrance, a young teacher I didn't recognize stopped me with a clipboard and a bright smile.

"Welcome! Are you here for Parent-Child Day? Which child?"

"Cyprian Sterling. I'm his mother."

The smile wavered. She glanced down at the sign-in sheet, and her expression shifted to something between confusion and embarrassment. "Oh - it's just that... someone has already signed in for Cyprian."

I looked at the sheet. Melina Vane. Relationship: Guardian / Mother figure.

Mother figure.The words sat on the page in Melina's neat handwriting, casual as a grocery list.

"Cyprian usually calls her Mommy," the young teacher offered helpfully, still smiling.

Before I could respond, Linda - Cyprian's regular teacher - came rushing over. The panic in her eyes told me she understood exactly how bad this looked. She shot the new teacher a sharp look and steered her away, then turned to me with a strained expression.

"Luna Astraea, I'm so sorry. Please, come in."

I signed my name below Melina's. The ink looked small next to hers.

Inside the classroom, the walls were covered with children's artwork. The theme was "My Family." Bright crayon houses with smiling stick figures and puffy clouds - dozens of them, each one a little world of love drawn by tiny hands.

I found Cyprian's.

A house. Inside it, three people holding hands: a tall man labeled "Daddy," a woman with long hair labeled "Mommy Melina," and a small boy labeled "Me." A big yellow sun sat overhead. Everyone was smiling.

Outside the house, in the bottom right corner, there was one more figure. A stick person standing alone in what looked like rain - a cloud above, blue lines falling down. No name. No label. Just a small, solitary shape getting wet while everyone else stayed warm inside.

Linda appeared beside me. Her voice was gentle, careful, like she was delivering a diagnosis.

"Luna Astraea... we asked him to redraw it. He refused. He said this is his family, and this is what his family looks like." She paused. "The one outside - we didn't ask who that was. We thought it might be better if -"

"It's fine," I said. "I know who it is."

It was me.

In my son's picture of home, I was the one standing outside in the rain. I wasn't "Mommy." I wasn't even worth a name. I was just a faceless shape that didn't belong inside the house where his real family lived.

I stared at that little figure for a long time. The crayon strokes were clumsy, the rain was just wobbly blue lines, and the cloud was a grey smudge. My five-year-old son's drawing struck my heart with thunderous force, effortlessly shattering my composure. It dawned on me that I still had no home, still stood alone, shut out from the world.

I stood there taking several deep breaths, struggling to calm myself down.

I found Cyprian by the craft table, gluing glitter onto something. I knelt down so my eyes were level with his.

"Cyprian. The person standing outside in your picture - who is that?"

He barely glanced at me. "That's you."

"Why am I outside?"

He shrugged, like I'd asked why the sky was blue. "Because you're not fun. You always make me eat vegetables and you won't let me watch TV and you have all these dumb rules." He peeled a glitter strip off his finger and flicked it away.

"Dad always says you suffered serious injuries bringing me into this world, so when you're uncomfortable, you want me to be uncomfortable too? When you're unhappy, you want me to be unhappy as well?"

"Melina says home is supposed to be a happy place. People who aren't happy don't get to come inside."