Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
brIGID
“Imight not have recommended guests at this time, but at least the visiting alphas got your man out of your hair for a bit," Catherine Eames muttered to me.
I answered with a half smile but didn't glance at the older woman, keeping my careful, steady pace over the stone floor of the large room claimed for the purpose of giving birth.
My bottom lip was sore, and I winced even as I continued to gnaw at it ruthlessly.
Widow Eames was right—Torion had been hovering for weeks as I approached my lying in.
I couldn't so much as blink without him checking on me, seeing if I was experiencing cramps or contractions.
He sent daily notes to Widow Eames herself, asking questions as if it were him who was going to be delivering the baby.
He was driving me mad, and if I could've run in my state—a waddle, only—I would've taken off into the hills. And yet part of me wanted to go out the door and call for him. He'd always borne so many burdens for me, and I had no doubt that if he could, he might do the same now.
To both our consternation, what came next would be strictly the responsibility of my body and my will.
A gentle hand soothed over my arm, and I glanced at the woman escorting me in my slow pace, back and forth in the hollow room. "They'll be back soon," Mairwen said, as if reading my mind. She smiled, and for some reason her softness reminded me to breathe.
I'd thought the labor would take place in our bedroom, but Widow Eames had smirked at the suggestion.
She'd gone along with me there, with her two daughters and Mairwen in procession.
We'd barely taken a foot over the threshold before the scents of other omegas near my nest had me releasing an unfamiliar growl.
A guest room was quickly prepared. It felt wrong somehow not to be in my nest, but the idea of anyone but Torion following me there was impossible.
Widow Eames said it was a normal instinct, but that women had been managing in doctor's beds and guest rooms for centuries and I would as well.
My reverie was interrupted by a sudden shock of lightning low in my groin that stole my breath and weakened my knees.
I made a garbled cry and Mairwen shored me up, holding me above the floor with surprising strength as the other women in the room held still and watched, waiting.
The pain was sharp and sizzling, but it passed quickly.
I shuddered and leaned into Mairwen for a moment before straightening and letting her guide me back to the bench waiting at the end of the bed.
"You said we could be at this for hours before labor starts," I said, trying not to whine as I looked to Catherine.
She'd brought two of her daughters with her, but I'd already forgotten their names.
Hopefully, someone would say one again to remind me.
Or perhaps none of that would matter in the upcoming efforts.
"Hours. A day, even." Catherine's smile was wry as I groaned, my arms barely fitting around my massive belly as I rocked a little. "It's not likely that long, dear."
"Your belly's dropped, and you've got the shocks. The lad is getting ready to arrive," one of the daughters assured me.
I tried to smile, but it was sure to be more of a grimace. The babe was having a restless hour, but not long ago it had been so still I'd grown terrified. Nothing would feel right until they had arrived, until I'd seen them with my own eyes, held them in my arms.
My belly had indeed dropped early in the week, and I'd been a groaning, waddling, aimless, and impatient monster ever since. Mairwen and Ronson had been summoned days ago, and Catherine Eames had finally come with her daughters, and there was a doctor…somewhere, ready and waiting.
Waiting. So much waiting.
And when I grew sick and scared and bored of waiting, all I could do was—
"Walk," I growled out, and Mairwen helped heave me up to pace once more around the room.
The moment of arrival was in a quiet spell, Eames and her daughters napping in armchairs as Mairwen read by candlelight.
I braced my hands against the cold stone of the windowsill, watching the sun lower toward the horizon.
Ronson and Torion had returned, only to drive us all mad and be sent to the kitchens to brew tea.
There was a strange, gentle shift inside of me, and then a not so gentle trickle of fluid down my thighs.
Mairwen looked up at my gasp or the sound of the water dripping to the stone floor, and we shared the shock and understanding of two women who had never given birth before but were somehow made for the experience, designed in nature but novices all the same.
Her book snapped shut, waking one of the Eames daughters, who took one look at our pale faces and stood up.
"Very well. Let's see if we're ready to start."
But I'm not ready, I thought, even as fiery hope bubbled up alongside the fear and eager excitement.
You are, a bright voice answered my thought, foreign and familiar at the same time. We are ready.
"I've got you. I'm here, my love. Deep breath."
"We'll bind the wings now, my lady."
"Do it."
My mind was on fire. The rest of me was possessed by pulsing thorns, digging in and tearing me apart.
I was exposed and everything was wrong. It was too bright and too open and there were too many scents, and I might be sick or faint, except that there was too much pain.
Words rumbled through my back, and the contact of another body against me was madness and horrible, but familiar too, safe.
My hands gripped tightly around broad fingers and callouses and the steady, reassuring presence of…
Mate.
Torion was here with me. In spite of the older woman's claims that I wouldn't be able to stand the sight of him, I was grateful for his presence.
I grabbed onto him and focused on the scent of cinnamon and ash, on his warmth.
He was right. He was meant to be here with me. It should've been just us but—
"May I watch?"
I snarled at the question, at the reminder of the others who were close—other omegas.
"Don't ask her, lovey, she can't be spared to answer. Come and see if you must, but don't faint. You'll be too underfoot on the floor."
I was both insensible and too aware of what went on in the room, and I shut my eyes against the view of bustling bodies and the sunset colors washing the room and bright candlelight and heavy shadows and three feminine faces peering down between my spread legs, like a gathering of the fates. One maiden, one mother, one crone.
I giggled, but it came out like a sob.
"I have you, and you have the child. Deep breath, my love," my mate murmured, and then he purred for me, and the sound filled my body and my ears, softening the edges of the world.
I breathed as deeply as my body would let me while in the throes of nature's most insane plan.
"Done. Now step back. Do we mean to get her in the water?"
"Just do it," I found myself howling, my body gathering strange strength to bear down on itself, to shrink and condense into a blinding point of effort.
"Here, then," someone said.
Here, indeed. I was here, and my child was coming. My child was coming.
I wept and tried to break the fingers that held mine.
The world was too quiet, strange and wrong after so much blaze and bellowing screams. An uncanny, terrifying, peaceful moment of silence, like the whole of Grave Hills was holding its breath.
A crackling, glorious, gusty cry sounded, and my lips found the strength to curve.
"Dragon's breath," Catherine Eames murmured, staring into her own arms, eyes fixed onto the delicate, powerful, reddened little being she held.
"Is that—"
"Widow Eames?" Torion rasped, still holding me.
"It's—it's—"
Alarm was dull in my body, but what could possibly be wrong when another sweet scream was released, a small fist raised in defiance?
"She's perfect."
It was Mairwen who spoke, peering over the widow's shoulder, rousing the woman from her stupor. The young, winged omega smiled at me, canny and sweet and a bit dazed too.
"She's perfect," Mairwen repeated.
Catherine Eames looked to Mairwen, blinked, and then nodded. "Healthy. Healthy little…girl you have. H-here you are."
It wasn't until she was in my arms, laid down on the softest linen, wings still gently bound at blunt tips and hooks, that all the pieces fit back together. A baby girl, my daughter.
With wings.
"Perfect."
The word stroked over my shoulder before terror or shock could rise up in me. Torion's hand—which looked a little bruised from my grip—reached down, one finger extended to hover near her foot until she kicked and nudged at him. Her cry hiccuped, gentler now.
My eyes watered, and it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that anything, any emotion, no matter how beautiful, how strong, might interrupt this moment, my sight of her. My daughter. My child. We'd made it into the world together after all. She'd made it into my arms.
And she was perfect. And suddenly, that was all I'd ever truly known in my life.
I have a daughter. And she is perfect.
"So soon?" Torion asked, and I blinked, but I didn't look away from the little bundle nestled against my chest. She had black hair, and the red of her skin had settled to a softer, pale sandy brown.
"Mm?"
"You're frowning already. I thought it would take longer," Torion said.
I ran my tongue around the inside of my mouth and grimaced at the stale flavor, then let out a sigh and tried to ease the muscles of my face. "Is there tea?"
I was trying not to pay too much attention to how my body felt in the aftermath of the birth.
The little baby girl in my arms was a strong distraction, but my throat did hurt from shouting.
Tea would be welcome. They'd moved me and the babe at some point when weariness hit too hard for me to keep my eyes open, and now Torion and I were alone in the nest, in our chambers, with our daughter.
Torion ran his hand down my arm and then brushed a fingertip against the back of our daughter's head, through the fine, dark hair, before rising from the bed.
With his back turned, I finally lifted my gaze and watched him.
He moved smoothly, relaxed, not edged with the tense energy he sometimes got when he was worried for me.
"We don't have a name for her," I said.
We'd had a small collection of boys' names—Torion's father's, my own father's, and then our preferred choice of Lachlan. Torion's head turned, and he smiled. "We don't. Our little surprise."
"Will you hold her?" I asked, forcing the words out. He'd been so patient, settling for little touches, briefly bowing over me to kiss the back of her head.
He grinned now and almost tripped over the rug in his haste to return to the bed, but he didn't spill a drop of the tea and he moved oh so gently back onto the mattress at my side.
"You know why I was frowning," I said in a whisper, my hands fisting into the sheets as Torion lifted our baby from my chest and then eased himself down into the same reclined position I'd been in.
"You're worrying," Torion said, his voice equally hushed, barely audible under her fussing. I clenched my hands tighter to keep from stealing her back until they both settled together. "But that's okay."
I snorted and buried my groans as I attempted to get myself into something resembling sitting up so I could drink. "It's okay?" I repeated.
Torion nodded. "Because when you worry, you always plan."
I sipped the tea. It was still warm and minty, and it soothed my hoarse throat and was fresh on my tongue. "We should make the announcement as soon as possible. Word might be traveling already if the servants talk. But if we have any chance of dragonkin not rejecting the idea of a…a girl with…"
Torion frowned at me as I stumbled over the words. "It disturbs you?"
I shook my head quickly and then hesitated. "The idea of there being some sort of communal rejection of her disturbs me. At the moment, I am only… Is she an omega? A beta because she has wings? If we don't understand, how can we make others?"
"I'm not sure this is something that needs understood. More is possible than we'd known before, that's all," Torion said, smiling down at a whip curl of black hair.
I stared at him and wondered what it might feel like to be so assured, so self-confident. It wasn't naivety. Torion was simply open minded, flexible, able to embrace change in a way I'd never managed.
"They'll want something, some kind of reason that gives an explanation for how she exists. And that's…the best of what will come," I said.
"The mating," Torion said, smiling. "Rumors about Bleake Isle, about Mairwen, have spread far enough now. Mating allows for women with wings, even daughters. She's an omega or a beta. Who knows now? She's just a baby. She's a perfect little baby with wings."
He was grinning now, and I didn't know if it was his joy or my own or the picture of Torion laid back on the bed with our daughter bundled against his bare chest, smacking her lips in sleepy mouthings, but I was smiling too.
"She needs a name," I whispered, taking another sip of the tea before falling back into the pillows, giving up on effort and worry, probably because my body simply lacked the strength to bore on with them any longer.
"Mmm, I suppose we'd better keep it traditional. The best we can do for her against the stodgy old dragons, hm?"
I smiled. He was mumbling now, eyelids heavy, speaking to her rather than me.
"Name her after your mother? Name her after you?" he continued, one huge palm almost entirely covering her.
"Give her her own name," I protested, rolling toward them as much as my exhausted body would allow me. Someone would be in soon to check on us all, to put her in the little bassinet next to me.
"She's a dragon," Torion whispered, turning to beam at me. "Let's give her a name they can't refute. One we were raised to respect."
"What are you suggesting?" I asked, brow furrowed.
Torion's sleepy eyes lit up. "Name her after one of the old dragons. Tylane of Dagger Hill."
I chewed on my lip as a stared at my daughter.
She was so small, so beautiful. There was a sense of foreboding in giving her a name that had belonged to a warrior dragon.
But if it gave her strength for the fight ahead, one that might last longer than I could wage it for her, then that was for the best.
"Tylane," I whispered, stroking her soft cheek.