Chapter Four #4
She’d told me what Priest’d done for her when they finally found Harold Danner, how he’d given her first crack at the man.
He was a self-proclaimed man without a heart, but somethin’ in him was touched by Cress, her kindness and beauty, and I could see it as he stared at her, face blank but eyes intent.
“These dolts are probably squeamish as fuck,” he muttered, movin’ forward to stand beside Harleigh Rose, already rollin’ up the sleeves of his black shirt just above his wrists. “I’ll be your assistant.”
H.R. blinked at him, then looked at me with slight horror in her eyes.
Cressida giggled.
“You want us here just in case?” Bat asked, movin’ to my side to thump me on the back and squeeze Cress’s leg through the blanket. “Amelia didn’t even let me in the delivery room with her, but you want us, I’ll hold your other hand.”
Fuck if my eyes didn’t sting hearin’ that from a man I considered an uncle. Fresh tears sprang to my wife’s eyes, one slidin’ down her cheek.
“It’ll be gross, I think,” she said, wrinklin’ her nose. “Maybe you can wait downstairs? It might take a while, though…”
“You think any’a us are goin’ anywhere, your hormones are makin’ ya crazy,” Axe-Man told her, stalkin’ over and bendin’ his huge body in half to push Cress’s hair back from her forehead.
I watched as the most stoic man I knew pressed a kiss there, tenderly, almost reverently, the way a priest bestowed his blessin’.
Cress looked up at him with awe as he pulled away to smile, just a slight tip of his lips that rarely moved into that expression.
“Glad King’s back, Cress. That boy was born into all’a our hearts. But you? You earned your way in there, and we got your back ’till the end’a time.”
Cleo, who was hangin’ over on the couch at the side’a the room with the other babes in Cressida’s posse, piped up. “Dad only speaks the truth. Not one of us is leaving you. Not until we see another Fallen prince born.”
I smiled at my wife then, a secret smile ’cause we knew, if our babe was a boy like she thought, his name would be all too fittin’.
“Can I come in?” Ares called from the door, peerin’ around Dane.
“Only for a second. Things are going to get going pretty quick here,” Harleigh Rose declared as she pulled down the blankets and arranged her medical kit on the chest at the end’a the bed.
Ares responded by running into the room and leapin’ lightly onto the bed, hands goin’ straight to Cress’s dress-covered stomach.
“Gonna see ya soon, baby,” he murmured, cheek nearly pressed to his hands.
“Gonna meet ya and make you mine. Don’t you worry about anythin’, okay?
’Cause you got the best parents, and I know ’cause they raise me too.
And you’re gonna have me. I’m gonna take care’a you like everyone takes care’a me, and you’re never gonna want for nothin’. Okay?”
He listened for a second, eyes closed as if he was communicatin’ with our unborn kid, and then he smiled slightly and nodded. Cress pushed her hand through his thick curls, and he leaned into it before crawlin’ up to kiss her on the cheek.
“Missed you most,” he confided to her. “Shadow missed ya too.”
Cress laughed wetly, kissin’ him as he had her. “You’ll both have to come stay with us when we’re settled with the baby.”
“I can help,” he offered soberly. “I’m real good with Angel and Monster even though they’re trouble.”
Loulou, Zeus, and Cressida laughed, but I couldn’t form the sound. My heart was takin’ up too much’a my chest, suffocatin’ me and makin’ it impossible to speak.
“You done, squirt?” Axe-Man asked, pickin’ him up off the bed and swingin’ him to the floor. Ares nodded, reachin’ up to take his big, four-fingered left hand in his even though his eyes didn’t leave Cress.
Axe-Man nodded at my wife, punched me in the shoulder, and moved out of the room with Ares, takin’ Bat and Dane with him.
When Curtains and Boner lingered, a little dumbstruck and clearly grossed out, Priest cleared his throat to gain their attention and then prompted them to take a hike with a single glower.
“Good luck with the, uh, bloodiness and pushin’ and stuff,” Curtains stammered as he bumped into Boner in his haste out the door.
Boner laughed after his friend before his normally arrogant expression softened. His chin tipped up in the universal biker speak of a man declarin’ he had your back.
“See ya on the other side. Can’t wait to meet any kid’a yours.”
Finally, the door closed, and we were left with Cress’s women holdin’ vigil in the corner, Zeus, Loulou, and me at Cress’s side, and Harleigh Rose quietly directin’ Priest at the foot of the bed.
Cress was cryin’ and tremblin’, clearly overcome.
And truth be fuckin’ told, so was I.
Eight months without this.
The power and magic’a family forged by more than blood but choices made every single fuckin’ day, solidified again and again by the sacrifices we’d all made for each other and would make again anytime we were called on to do so.
Rough and tumble biker men who society thought lacked morals and heart, yet here they were, standin’ vigil at the bedside of a scared, pregnant woman and a man they had every right to hate.
This was what I’d died for, and I knew, when the time came and I was forced to leave for real, I’d return if only to haunt them.
’Cause my life wasn’t just blessed with the love of a woman so great she defied describin’, no matter how many poems I tried to write.
This life was blessed by the men and women in this house.
And by the baby about to be born into it.
“You ready for this, Queen?” I asked my wife, touchin’ my fingertips to the two tears stuck to her cheeks then suckin’ them off.
Lips still wet, I leaned over to seal my mouth with hers, breathin’ my love into her. When I pulled away, my gorgeous woman took a deep, steadyin’ breathe as if I’d revived her, and then, she grinned.
“Let’s do this.”
Two hours and eighteen minutes.
That’s how long it took for our kid to enter the world, kickin’ and screamin’ like he was born with too much to say.
Cress collapsed back against my chest. I’d moved behind her when the labour started in earnest, holdin’ her up, bracin’ her back and claspin’ her hands as she pushed and groaned through the contractions.
She sucked in air, chest shaky, mouth slack, but eyes pinned to the wrigglin’, wet baby in Harleigh Rose’s competent hands.
I watched dazedly as Priest calmly clipped the umbilical cord, as Loulou helped H.R. washed the baby in the big bucket of lukewarm water and then swaddle him tight in a black blanket from Hanna’s shop that read ‘Rebel Son.’
My sister was cryin’, silent tears as big as diamonds rollin’ bright down her face. She moved around the bed to gently hand the bundle over to Cress.
“Congratulations, brother and sister,” she croaked softly. “You have a very healthy son.”
A sob burst from Loulou’s mouth and a low rumble of emotion groaned through Dad’s barrel chest.
But I barely heard them.
’Cause we had a son.
“A son,” I echoed as I looked at my kid for the first time and lost my breath, my soul to the beauty’a him.
He was red and wrinkled, eyes squeezed shut, mouth pursed.