Chapter Twenty-Two #3
He barely had time to breathe before another contraction clenched his insides. “Can Marquis please hold my fucking hand?”
Trenton ceased his exploratory touches and withdrew, shaking bathwater from his glove before removing it and sliding away. “By all means.”
The sarcastic tone that floated in his words might have made Mads apologize at one point in time, but with the pressure mounting into his pelvis and bulging against his pouch line, he couldn’t muster the effort to be polite.
Marquis had come rushing in the front door almost a week ago, panicking at Helena’s suggestion he’d be birthing soon, and Mads had agreed with her, but the practice contractions never pulled his line apart, merely wept a gentle drop or two against his waistband at the small raw spot that had parted in the most mundane of ways.
But, in mere moments sitting with his would-be stepfather having some polite banter and breathing exercises, and he’d passed whatever peaceful hurdle his body had demanded. “F-fuck!”
Mads remembered swearing when Rexford was born, the burn and stretch, but in water, holding the charm things had a muted quality that left him wrung out, hollow, and pushing against an invisible force.
It didn’t feel right, though. He pushed the charm into Marquis’s hand and drew back experimentally, waiting for another contraction to begin.
It ached, the pain a dull burn that grew in intensity with every throbbing beat of his heart.
As the muscles drew in, his belly hardening and pressure diverting, the pain came back, and he cried out in breathless shock that somehow gave him the courage to push against the force.
In the midst of a contraction, his body aiding the motion, things shifted, his line spread over something and, caught off guard, he nearly shrieked, biting his lip to stifle the wail of pain.
Marquis fumbled, offering the charm back as Mads snatched it in a heartbeat, relishing the pain as it seemed to draw back from his belly and line like waves on a shore. Low tide rolled in, things sucking back into the ocean of power from which all things came and went.
“Let me scoot in here a moment, please.” Trenton dipped around Marquis and his iron grip on Mads’s hand, arm plunging into the bloodied water.
The pink tinge darkened slightly as Trenton reached in, stirring the gentle seep of birthing fluids and the light leak of blood from a stretching pouchline.
None of it worried Mads, because with the magic in that talisman, an overwhelming peace and calm sank into his belly and words muddied in his mind.
Marquis pulled away, taking Mads’s hand with him.
His soothing words brushed his ear as Trenton plunged both arms in.
Dr. Vans said something and approached, towel in his arms. He couldn’t possibly be willing to hold a newborn baby…
Mads couldn’t think of any single more body-fluid-coated thing in the world.
But there he was, arms open as Mads pushed and pushed again. Water splashed, Trenton worked, and Marquis whispered sweet nothings. He promised a lifetime of happiness, his unfaltering devotion, that he would chase Mads to the ends of the earth.
Marquis had promised so much of that all those years ago and hadn’t come. But Marquis meant it. He did then, too. And only then did Mads realize something—there was no way that Marquis wasn’t under some similar spell as him.
Mads brought Marquis closer, shared a fleeting kiss and a soft whimper before he spoke. “There’s no way on earth you didn’t come after me of your own free will. I believe in my heart more than anything else that Doris spelled you somehow.”
And silence broke only with his own soft sobs and the flurry of motion that saw their little one being drawn from the water, cord still attached with the quietest little cry he’d ever heard.
Some babies were loud when born. But it took time for those lungs to figure it out.
But that soft whimper? That single cry into the world? It rang louder than church bells.
“Morgana Penumbra,” Dr. Vans said as he accepted the babe into his outstretched arms. “Welcome to the world.”
He gestured Marquis over to hold the child, clamping and singing the cord with his wand.
Those soft cries escalated as some sort of cleaning commenced, a towel gently patting at her skin.
When Marquis turned to place the child in Mads’s arms, the water gurgled, draining away so it didn’t wet the child’s blanket.
“I hate this part the most,” Mads laughed as Trenton worked to remove the placenta, the end contractions the worst of it all. “F-fuck.”
He groaned and closed his eyes, cradling his child in arms that rapidly prickled with gooseflesh from the cool air.
As the cleaning proceeded, sharp pressure ached at his chest, and the instinct to feed took over.
Mads cradled the little girl, fingers brushing through wiry newborn hair, the weft of it a silvery pale and clear color.
A few shades paler than Mads’s own. Perhaps in time, it would darken, and a pang of sadness settled in his stomach. Lowborn.
Marquis must have noticed because he brushed his fingers through Mads’s hair and whispered, “She has your beautiful starlight hair.”
Mads cried, fat ugly tears pouring over his cheeks as they took his babe and helped him up.
A bandage tugged against the skin of his lower belly, the swollen sag of it aching in the best sort of way, a reminder it had all gone well.
In time, it would heal. In time, his child wouldn’t look like the larval form of a mage, too, but more pressing questions came to mind.
“What happened to Vans being icked by bodily fluids?”
Dr. Vans, who had turned to speak to Trenton, halted his conversation and glanced over, brow furrowed. “Babies don’t count.”
“Babies. Don’t. Count.” Trenton muttered under his breath and shook his head. “Why?”
Dr. Vans shrugged and held his hands out. “I dunno. Babies are clean. They’re minty fresh and new, like a fresh glove from the box.”
In a way it made sense. About as much as anything to do with mages, but hang-ups didn’t have to have reasons.
Mads shuffled, his body aching as he held his babe and leaned into Marquis for balance.
As they left the bathroom and approached the living quarters, Victor and Sikko glanced up, eyes wide and hopeful.
It wasn’t the excitement over a babe, necessarily.
Nor was it the joy of a parent. It was hope for a future.
Two alphas that couldn’t bear a child together finding that one had progeny. “Morgana Penumbra.”
The two polar bears grinned wide and kept their distance, both surprised when Mads wanted them to hold the little one. She calmed in their arms, head turning toward their warmth as they leaned in to one another. Sikko stroked the pad of his finger over the child’s forehead. “And a middle name?”
Mads frowned. “Never thought of one…”
“Would you take a suggestion?” Victor glanced up, lips spreading in a wide smile.
“I wouldn’t say no.” Marquis rubbed Mads’s shoulders in a gentle way.
“Aurora. It fits well with Penumbra, the northern lights, and eclipse.” Sikko smiled.
“I like that.” Mads smiled as he took their child to a comfortable armchair and settled in, letting a blanket be thrown over his legs. He wanted to rest, but tradition remained so.
“The rest of the coven is coming in with their wishes.” Marquis gestured toward the two polar bears. “It’ll be quite the procession, I’m afraid. Would you like first offering?”
Victor and Sikko approached, Mads’s father first, resting a hand over the little girl’s forehead.
He shifted his hand, talons and fur sprouting to a warm, soft paw—the nails trimmed back to something far less murderous.
“Mages give parts of themselves. I have no magic to give you anything but my own desires for you to take from me. My desire to have close family ties, a strong heart to love infinitely. As I love easily, so I hope you will too.”
“But more wisely.” Sikko laughed.
“Unwise love gave me this.” Victor pulled his paw away, shifting it to a hand once more.
Sikko approached next, offering his paw with a gentle shift, white fur brushing her cheek before resting atop silvery hair. “I offer you my own shifter magic. May you know comfort with it and bridge communities.”
Vans approached, eyes a glazed and adoring thing to behold. The soppy look didn’t fit the eccentric fellow. “As I am determined and focused on what I want, I offer you my patience. Maybe if I have a little less of it, I’ll make some rash decisions.”
Vans pulled out his wand and offered a gentle tap of it to the child who stirred with a coo of infantile frustration. He drifted his gaze back toward the scowling omega, lips twisted.
Marquis’s phone rang as Dr. Vans pulled away, Bradley from Rexford’s coven, Mads saw at a glance. He held the phone to his ear and smiled, happily announcing the birth, if he’d not gotten the texts already. Rexford should have been on his way.
Marquis’s expression dropped as Mads listened.
Bradley spoke on the other end. “That’s wonderful to hear!
I knew you were expecting. I suppose it’s a horrible time to ask this of you but I don’t think I can wait…
Warring came to stay with me because he—never mind.
I keep getting weak and losing my magic around him then it bounces back harder.
I swear I get glimpses of his mind and something’s weird.
I don’t really feel… I have reservations…
Is it an omega thing, a familiar thing or… ”
Mads snickered.
Marquis groaned.
“What?” Bradley’s voice shook. “Is this wish poisoning? Did I ingest some by accident? Is he okay? Am I okay?”
“Bradley. When a mage and a familiar love one another very much—” Marquis enunciated the words carefully.
“Is this a heat thing? I think he’s close to one. Is that what it is? We’ve not had sex! I swear. We share a bed sometimes but it… It stops above the belt. I swear.”
“Oh, gods…” Marquis swore under his breath and took a deep breath. “Put him on the phone, please.”
Bradley muttered an apology, and soft whispers preceded the phone changing hands.
“Warring. Please tell me you know what’s going on?” Marquis rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Not a clue. I think his magic is freaking out because of my heat or the sheer frustration. I’ve been trying to lure him into my sack for months. I’m close to a heat and I was hoping it’d give him the ol’ motivator.” Warring huffed, ever a confident and sexually liberated omega.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Mads sighed, calling out loud enough to be heard.
“Bradley accidentally bound you as his familiar.” Morgana nuzzled back against his chest, her frail little body finding sustenance despite the drama.
He muttered under his breath as she did so.
“I wasn’t even born a familiar, and I know that much. ”
“I did what?” Bradley’s high-pitched squeak cracked through the phone. “When? How?”
“Who cares? Does this mean we can fuck now?” The line went quiet as Marquis sighed and wished them well, hanging up in time for Bradley to shriek something about not doing that on his uncle’s couch.
Mads very much looked forward to seeing yet another of Baron’s experiments find their happily ever after.