Chapter 40
BILLY
They wheel her past me.
She’s pale, too pale, her ivory skin the colour of something that’s been drained, wrung out, emptied. Her hair is damp and tangled, her lips parted, breath shallow. If I didn’t see the faint rise of her chest, I would think-
I can’t even let the thought form.
My body moves before my mind catches up. I clutch my son tighter, following the rolling cot as though held by a leash made of sheer panic.
A medic tries to stop me, “Sir, you need to rest, you’re bleeding-”
“I’m not leaving her.” My voice comes out low, razor-sharp.
And the look she gives me says she’s not brave enough to argue.
Gore stays at my side, his presence sturdy and strong, unwavering, everything I needed in the frantic hour we barely survived. Watching with me, tracking where they’re heading with my Pair.
Tolly places a steadying hand on my back, instantly wincing when it brushes a lash wound, “Billy,” he murmurs, “you’re going to pass out.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“You’re not. You're-”
“She matters. I don’t.”
The words rip themselves out of me before I can stop them. My brother swallows hard, looking to Gore to back him up, his jaw working like he wants to fight me on it.
But when Gore doesn’t look at him, doesn’t agree, saying nothing, Tolly doesn’t fight.
He knows better.
He knows me.
We follow the cot all the way to her recovery room.
They get her onto a bed. Hook her to bags and lines. Wipe the blood from her arms. Tuck blankets around her.
All the while my son sleeps in the crook of my elbow, utterly unaware of the destruction we crawled through to bring him into this world.
His soft weight anchors me. His quiet breaths torture me.
Because this, this fragile, perfect, impossible little life, could have ended tonight.
Both of them could have left me tonight.
And I would have gone with them.
I stand beside Nellie’s bed, one hand gripping the rail so tightly my knuckles go white.
The medic approaches Gore, voice gentle but firm, “She’s stable for now. We're monitoring her blood levels, but the transfusion took well. She’ll sleep for several hours.”
Several hours.
It feels like a lifetime too long.
Gore edges in front of me with that expression he gets when he’s about to be irritatingly bossy. “Sit,” he orders.
“No.”
“You’re going to sit, Billy, or I’m going to put you in a bed next to her.”
“No.”
“You’re holding a newborn who weighs less than the guilt in your chest. If you fall, you’ll crush him. So, sit.”
I freeze.
Then slowly, grudgingly, lower myself into the chair Bram places beside her bed.
Rune looks infuriatingly pleased with watching me take orders, “See? Logic.”
“Shut the fuck up, Rune.”
He smirks, but his dark eyes flick to my back, tightening in concern.
“You need to be stitched,” Gore informs me clinically after cutting open the sodden shirt sticking to my flesh.
“No.”
“Billy-”
“Later.” My voice is steel. “When she wakes up and looks at me. Not before.”
He sighs in defeat and drags a stool beside me. The rest of them doing the same, all five of us sitting in wait, supporting me without asking, just being here.
For the first time since she collapsed, the room quiets. The storm calms and the frantic movement ceases.
It hits me, the stillness, the horrifying silence after panic. Now there is nothing but breathing to listen for.
Penelope’s.
The baby’s.
And mine in between, ragged and uneven.
I stare at her face, look over every inch of her, every wire, every smear of dried blood.
My throat tightens, the lump forming larger and larger the more I try to swallow around it.
I should’ve protected her better. Should’ve prepared her better. Kept her away from here. Should’ve fought harder.
Should’ve killed-
No.
Not that.
Not tonight.
My son shifts against my chest, his warmth searing through me.
And I look down at him, little patchy-pink fingers just peeking out the top of the blanket swaddled around him, curled over the white fabric beneath his chin.
He is… unreal. Thick lashes an inky curl against his cheeks, springy coils of dark hair damp on his head, little chest rising and falling with a rhythm I never want to live without.
“I didn’t think…” I whisper. “I didn’t think I’d get to hold you.”
My older brother’s hand lands on my shoulder, light this time.
Comforting instead of restraining.
“You did good,” Gore says quietly.
I shake my head, “She almost died.”
“But she didn’t.” His certainty cuts through my panic like a blade. “She didn’t,” he repeats, as though he knows how much I need to hear it. “She fought. You fought. And look-” He gestures to the small bundle sleeping on me. “Your family made it.”
Family.
The word is a cleave through my chest, axe blade to the heart.
I look at her again, asleep and pale and alive, and my vision blurs.
“I love her,” I murmur, voice cracking, not caring that my words are heard by all of my brothers. “I love her so much it makes me fucking sick.”
Gore huffs a breath that’s not quite a laugh, too much pain in him to be that, “That’s Pairing for you.”
I press my cheek against the soft hair of the tiny boy who shares our blood.
Hours pass.
My brothers doze.
The medics rotate quietly.
The lights dim.
And then, as dawn creeps faintly into the room, a nurse comes forward with another blanket. “Would you like me to take the baby so you can rest?”
“No,” I answer instantly, clutching him tighter, I’ll never let him out of my sight as long as I live.
She smiles like she expected that, nodding as she turns to leave.
I adjust him in my arms, he sighs in his sleep, wrinkling his little nose, and I look at Penelope again.
The blood.
The monitors.
The tubes.
But also, the soft shape of her lips, the faint colour returning to her cheeks. The life flickering beneath her eyelids. And something shifts inside me, slow and seismic. I survived the lashings. She survived the labour.
Our son survived both.
This family, my family, is a miracle carved from brutality.
I lean forward, forehead brushing her hand, and whisper, “I’m here. I’m not leaving. Ever.”
My son stirs softly, like he heard me. A tiny, fragile confirmation. And suddenly the terror, the rage, the grief, it all thins, dissolves, breaking apart under the weight of something larger.
Hope.
A dangerous, violent hope.
I kiss her knuckles, gripping her hand, thumb stroking over the IV. “Nells,” I breathe, “you come back to me. Do you hear me? You come back.”
The door clicks.
I don’t look up. I just rock my tiny son in my arms.
When she opens her eyes, those beautiful ash brown eyes ringed in inky black, I want her to see us, both of us, waiting.