Epilogue
HANNAH
“I feel like a whale.” I toy with my food as we all sit around the dining room table.
“You are beautiful and round with kit,” Abaddon reassures, moving to stand behind me and massage my sore shoulders.
I look down at my hugely distended stomach. I already look nine months pregnant. And just then, a horrible thought strikes, and I turn around to look up at Abaddon. “How long do angel-spawn babies or whatever gestate anyway? It’s still just nine months, right?”
And still, looking down at myself, I can’t imagine growing bigger in the next three months. I won’t be able to walk.
Which is when I look back just in time to catch Abaddon’s eyes flick toward Thing, who looks to Romulus, who shrugs.
My eyes shoot open wide. “What does that mean?” I shriek. “Oh my god, we need to go get an ultrasound. We need to find out what’s happening in there.” My hands fly to my stomach.
“I thought you didn’t want to—”
“Well, now I do!” I yell. “I don’t care if we have to terrify some clinicians somewhere, I have to see what’s growing inside me!” I yell.
Grabbing the chair for support with one hand and the table with the other hand, I gingerly heft myself to my feet. “What are we going to do when the baby comes? We need an action plan. How have we not made an action plan?”
Abaddon takes my hand. “Breathe. Just breathe. It will all be all right. Romulus will go get a doctor.”
I pause my pacing and look at him. “Really? But how?”
“I’ll kidnap one.” But it’s Remus’s voice I hear, and when I turn and look, it is indeed the maniacal-faced twin grinning at me.
“Dear god, don’t kidnap somebody—” But my sentence is cut off when a pain lancing through my stomach has me grabbing for Abaddon and screaming.
I’m almost knocked off my feet by the sudden, wrenching pain of it, but Abaddon catches me.
And then suddenly, a pool of water releases and gushes at my feet.
I shake my head in terrified denial. “I can’t have this baby now. It’s too early!” I think it is, anyway. I look at Abaddon and scream in his face, “Get me to a hospital. Now!”
“What will they do at a hospital,” Remus asks from behind me, “if you deliver a monster baby?”
My eyes go wide, and my nails dig into Abaddon’s arms as I imagine nurses screaming in fright and running as the head of my sweet little baby crowns… horns and all.
Plus, if we go to a hospital, I won’t be able to have Abaddon at my side. I can’t do this without him. I can’t—
Pain tears across my stomach again, and I screech, clawing for him. His strong arms are there instantly, closing around me and holding me close. “Fuuuuuuuuuck!” I holler.
“Get her to the bedroom!” Thing shouts.
Abaddon hefts me into his arms and starts to run. As soon as I have my breath again, I yell over his shoulder to Thing, “Boil some water!”
And then I screech again, this time not from a contraction, but because Abaddon leaps, with me still in his arms, out the window!
I scream directly into his ear as he flies the six stories up and back in through the window of our bedroom.
“Why didn’t you take the stairs?” I yell at him as soon as he lands and deposits me on the bed.
“Faster,” is all he says, helping to get me situated.
I would yell at him some more, except right then another contraction hits. Too soon, too fast, I think, but then I’m screaming and clutching my stomach to be thinking about anything else than combating the pain.
I can’t say I’m delighted when Thing and Remus appear in the bedroom minutes later. My dream birthing scenario certainly never included having my brothers-in-law present.
But I don’t know anything about what’s going on.
I don’t know if this labor is premature.
Or if this is the kind of birth I’ll be able to survive.
Or if—
I was supposed to have more time to figure things out. The past six months have passed so peacefully. Yes, Abaddon’s been annoyingly overly protective, and he wouldn’t even bring me back to the castle for a month after what happened at Drew’s.
And ever since we’ve been home, he and his brothers have been behaving well with one another. Thing and Abaddon do genuinely seem to have buried the hatchet, though Thing’s face still bears the scars of Abaddon’s claws.
Even Remus has been behaving… for the most part.
Now, dear god, if only my child may be born safely—
I scream and bunch the covers in my fist as pain, worse than what came before, wrenches across my stomach.
Thing sets down a pot of steaming water. “I must check for the child,” he says, and Abaddon roars at him as he moves between my legs.
“Let him!” I scream with the last of the contraction, before sagging into the mattress, tears streaming down my cheeks.
This is all happening so fast. Too fast. And it hurts too much.
Dear god, does that mean there’s something wrong with the baby?
I need to be in a hospital! I need the familiar click and beep of monitors telling me what the hell is going on!
But then Abaddon puts his knees on the bed beside me and lays one hand on my forehead, and another on my stomach. “Brother!” he barks, “keep my wife and child safe and away from the gates of Death!”
Thing nods, moving between my legs and nudging them open wider.
Oh dear god. I forget about their powers because they have become so dear to me. But I am bringing a life into the world with Pestilence and Death hovering over me. And yet… it is also one of their kind I am birthing, so maybe it is only right—
And then another contraction wipes out the possibility of any further thought.
“Push,” Thing says. “It is time.”
What? It can’t be time already!
But God help me, I do. I push.
As I do, light erupts from Abaddon’s hands, surrounding me. I push and push even as the pain lightens, and then—
The pressure between my legs pops like a cork, and then Thing is pulling—
A baby’s cry suddenly fills the room, and I begin to weep with joy.
Moments later, Thing hands the baby to Abaddon, who immediately climbs into bed with me as he puts our child to my chest.
She’s a beautiful, pink-faced little cherub who looks totally human except for her curved ears and the beautiful gossamer black wings folded neatly against her back.
I sob even harder as Abaddon helps position her against my breast so that she can begin to feed. She is eager, and as her little rosebud lips begin to pull, slowly at first and then more urgently. Her eyes blink open, and she looks at me with irises that are an almost translucent gray.
I try to slow my sobbing as I say hello to my baby girl and clutch my family close, happier than I ever knew was possible.