Four weeks after Allina’s arrival, Schwester Ziegler finds her sitting on a bathroom floor laughing hysterically: Her menstrual period has begun, confirming she is not pregnant. When Schwester Ziegler mentions that Gud called the previous day, Allina is immediately frightened.

Arriving at the office, Allina appears strikingly changed—composed, clear-eyed, and poised. Schwester Ziegler explains that Hochland Home is the first of six Lebensborn facilities, its mission to provide unwed “Aryan” mothers a stable residence during pregnancy and place the resulting children with privileged Reich families. Most residents are not pregnant on arrival but conceive with visiting SS officers. Allina correctly identifies the home as both a maternity clinic and an orphanage.

Schwester Ziegler tells Allina that Gud’s gravely ill wife will keep him away until spring, but makes clear that Allina must receive Gud on future visits and that her place at the home depends on her usefulness. With nowhere else to go, Allina agrees to work for room and board. Schwester Ziegler offers her a coveted position as a fill-in nursery nurse.

Shifting to Allina’s perspective, the chapter opens with her flooded with relief at the confirmed non-pregnancy. As her physical injuries healed over the past month, violent fragments of memory from the night that brought her to Hochland Home began surfacing, which she suppresses through deliberate discipline. Understanding that she is a “Mischling”—a person of mixed ancestry—trapped inside a Nazi breeding program, her overriding goal becomes devising an escape.

Schwester Ziegler leads her through the administrative wing, where intake protocols center on recording each resident’s racial characteristics, and shows her Central Filing, a large room housing all Lebensborn records, restricted to senior nurses only. The opulent North Wing contains parlors where residents meet privately with officers and a recreation lounge for SS men on leave. When Allina steps into the lounge and encounters five uniformed officers, she panics and backs into Schwester Ziegler before being briskly introduced and moved on.

In the nursery, Allina meets Marta, a veteran nurse. The room is unnervingly silent; the babies lie still with unfocused eyes. Schwester Ziegler explains the home follows schedules developed by Director Ebner and Himmler: nurses must not pick up crying babies, and touch or play are forbidden as overstimulating. Back in the office, Schwester Ziegler warns against emotional attachment to the children.

Allina settles into the nursery, finding the physical demands a useful distraction. Mandatory evening character training classes put her to sleep quickly, though she frequently wakes from nightmares. When she tries to recall people she loves, including Albert, the memories dissolve before she can hold them.

During a morning feeding session, Berta Schneider ignores her nursing infant in favor of a magazine while Rilla, Sabine Hindz, and a distressed 17-year-old named Lotte Menke are also present. Berta proudly announces she plans to bear five children for the Führer and is indifferent to paternity. Rilla confides she intends to keep her baby and marry the father, Steffen. Allina’s gentle skepticism stings her, and Rilla warns that Allina cannot avoid the mixers (social events with the SS officers) forever, and that her face gives away everything she thinks.

Ordered by Schwester Ziegler to attend, Allina anxiously arrives at a mixer. The sight of SS uniforms triggers a traumatic memory of her assault. Rilla’s friend Loritz Kortig greets them, and on learning Allina is under Gud’s protection, his demeanor cools. When a waltz she and Albert once loved begins, she flees.

That night, Rilla wakes Allina from a nightmare in which she was crying Albert’s name. Allina confirms she was hurt, but not by Albert. She breaks down, and Rilla holds her until she is still.

On a snowy December night, Allina works the late shift in the nursery, overwhelmed by anxiety and a desperate urge to run. She forces thoughts of Albert out of her mind, knowing any attempt to contact him would endanger him.

Defying the home’s rules, she picks up Berta’s son, Neils, and carries him around the room until he calms, singing him a Christmas carol—religious songs are forbidden at the home. After returning him to his crib, her composure gives way entirely, and she buries her face in a pillow and weeps.

When she lifts her head, a tall, blond SS Gruppenführer stands in the doorway. He apologizes for intruding and compliments her voice. Allina delivers a glacially formal apology and retorts that God is absent from Hochland Home. He replies with quiet gravity that God is present and that faith must not be abandoned, then wishes her a happy Christmas and withdraws. Left alone, Allina is unsettled by her own recklessness and wonders what the officer will do if their paths cross again.

The following morning, the officer from the nursery—Gruppenführer Karl von Strassberg—eats breakfast while his men make crude boasts about the women at Hochland Home. Karl quietly rebukes them, reminding them the women serve the Führer and deserve respect.

At 30, Karl is already older than the Reich’s recommended marriage age and faces mounting pressure to father a child. After his men leave, he recalls the previous night: He had turned down two women who propositioned him before wandering the halls and coming across the nursery nurse. He watched her sing to an infant and then collapse in private grief. He thinks of her now—beautiful with arresting green eyes and a sharp, defiant manner. Her open mockery of the Führer struck him as both intelligent and dangerously impulsive. Karl finds her compelling but resolves to keep his distance. He reminds himself that he will soon be in Berlin and cannot afford a distraction. Furthermore, a woman who cannot control her tongue, he concludes, is bound to bring trouble on herself.