The door to the breeding room opened without a sound, and Amber stepped across the threshold into a world softened by candlelight and the scent of night blooming jasmine. She knew this room. She had knelt on its silk cushions, had lain across its wide altar bed, had spoken her deepest fears and her most secret hopes within these walls. But tonight was different. Tonight, her body hummed with a secret rhythm, a tide that had been building for days until she could feel it in the slight tenderness of her breasts, the faint ache low in her belly, the slick heat that greeted her thighs whenever she walked. She was ovulating. She had known it when she woke, had confirmed it with the tiny monitor on her nightstand, and she had carried that knowledge all day like a hidden flame beneath her skin. And there was more. The daily herbs she had taken for weeks, bitter on her tongue but taken with devotion had worked their quiet magic. Her breasts, already fuller than before, held a new secret: the first faint promise of milk, ready to be drawn forth.