Althander knelt beside her immediately, his massive frame folding with surprising grace as he took her hand in both of his. His golden eyes were wide with concern and confusion. "What do you mean? Jasmine, what are you feeling?"
"Inside my head. That ocean of spiritual energy—she's not just pulling from it anymore. She's not just absorbing it passively like I thought." Jasmine's eyes were wide, unfocused, turned inward to something only she could perceive. "She's... swimming in it. Moving through it deliberately, with purpose and intention. Like she knows it's there. Like she's exploring it the way a child might explore a new room, touching everything, learning the shapes and textures of this world she'll soon enter."
She grabbed Althander's hand with sudden urgency and placed it over the ritual marks, pressing his palm firmly against her belly. "Be still. Reach out with your wolf senses. That connection you have to the natural world, to the spiritual currents that run through all living things—use it. Feel what I'm feeling."
He closed his eyes, his breathing slowing as he reached for that deeper awareness that all shifters possessed. Sophia watched his expression shift from concentration to wonder, saw the exact moment when he made contact with whatever consciousness dwelt within Jasmine's womb. His breath caught, held, then released in a sound that was half laugh, half sob.
"I feel her," he whispered, and his voice carried a reverence that Sophia had never heard before, not even when he'd spoken of the moon or the ancient spirits of the forest. "She's... curious. Alert. She knows we're here. She knows we're touching her, reaching for her. By all the gods, Jasmine, she knows."
Jasmine laughed, the sound caught between joy and tears, between wonder and fear. "She's been aware for weeks, I think. Maybe longer. I just didn't understand what I was feeling. Sometimes when I touch the earth, when I call the roots up from the deep places, when I ask the trees to share their ancient wisdom, I feel her watching me. Studying what I do. Learning the patterns of power, the ways that energy flows and transforms. She's learning magic before she's even born."
She closed her eyes again, letting herself sink deeper into that internal space where mother and daughter met. Her breathing became slow and rhythmic, matching some internal tide. "Wait. There's something else. She's not just aware. She's not just conscious and observing. She's... organizing the energy. Taking that chaotic ocean I can feel swirling inside me and creating patterns. Structures. Frameworks of power. It's like watching someone build architecture out of pure power, constructing something magnificent and terrible from raw potential."
Her expression shifted abruptly to alarm, her eyes flying open. "No, baby, don't—"
A pulse of energy rippled outward from Jasmine's body, visible even to Sophia's ghostly eyes as a wave of shimmering silver-green light. It expanded in a perfect circle, passing through walls and trees and earth. Every plant within thirty feet suddenly bloomed—flowers that shouldn't have been in season burst into impossible colors, fruits appearing on branches that had been bare moments before, vines climbing walls with supernatural speed. The air filled with the scent of jasmine, roses, honeysuckle, and something wild and unnamed, something that smelled like magic itself. Birds that had been silent burst into song. The very ground seemed to hum with life.
Then, just as suddenly, it stopped. Pulled back. Retracted. The energy flowed in reverse, drawn back into Jasmine's body like a tide returning to the sea, though the blooms and fruits remained as evidence of what had just occurred.
"She listened." Jasmine's voice was filled with equal parts awe and terror, with wonder and dread mixing into something that made her whole body shake. "I told her to stop and she listened. She understood me. She comprehended my words, my intention, my fear. Althander, she's not even born yet and she can already control spiritual energy better than I ever could. Better than most masters I've studied with. She did in seconds what takes minutes of careful ritual and concentration."
Althander's face was grave, the wonder draining away to be replaced by cold calculation and worry. His jaw tightened. "Then they definitely know. Anyone sensitive enough to feel spiritual currents would have felt that pulse. It probably reached for miles. Every witch, every shaman, every sensitive supernatural being in the region just felt our daughter announce herself to the world."