Epilogue #2
The house I bought this time around in Venice is located in the Castello region, overlooking the public gardens.
It’s a big and beautiful house, with a lot of history and just a touch of darkness from the shadows of the trees and the gothic architecture.
Because we can’t have a birth in a hospital—it would be fairly obvious that the baby being born wasn’t entirely human—we have to have it in the house.
Van Helsing assures me that one day he’d love to open a hospital for vampires, but it’s kind of a moot point since vampires have been doing just fine for centuries.
On the second level, Maria waves me over with a smile and I follow her into the bathroom where I can already hear Rose whimpering in pain. They say that vampire births are nowhere near as painful as human births, but even so it’s apparent she’s feeling discomfort.
I peer around the doorframe to our sprawling bathroom and see Rose in the claw-foot tub, naked and grimacing, with Van Helsing at her feet, coaching her.
“Just a little more,” he says, eyes grave with determination. “Just a little more Rose.’
Holy shit this is happening fast.
“I can’t,” she whimpers.
“You can,” I tell her, coming right over to her. I drop to my knees beside her and hang onto her hand. “I’m here.”
“Valtu,” she says softly, looking at me with dazed eyes, a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead. “You’re here.”
“I’ve been here the whole time, my dove,” I reassure her, kissing her hand. “Just downstairs with your parents, not wanting to get in the way.”
She tries to smile, then scrunches up her nose, smelling me. “Are you drinking already?”
“Hey, this is hard on me too.”
“Valtu,” the doctor warns me. “Stop distracting her. We need her to do one last push.”
I give her hand a squeeze. “Can you give one last push, Rose? One last big push and then baby Constantine is here.” I look at the doctor. “Then the baby is here, right? That’s it?”
“Yes,” he says, his voice clipped. “That’s it. Now come on, Rose.”
Rose groans and then her face contorts and she lets out a howl as she pushes.
I watch, absolutely fascinated. This is life being born, everlasting life, and it’s a product of us, of Valtu and Rose and Dahlia and Lucy and Mina.
It’s our love mixed together, our destiny coming to fruition.
It’s all the hell we’ve had to go through to find each other and all the times we thought we’d never find each other again.
This baby is love eternal.
And the love is ours.
“There it is,” Van Helsing says, quickly reaching into the tub as the baby emerges from Rose and is brought to the surface. “It’s a boy.”
“A boy!” I exclaim. “A boy, Rose!”
She’s laughing and crying and reaching forward, waiting for the Doctor to properly clean and dry him off. “Constantine. My baby boy.”
It’s pure fucking joy. Absolutely. I don’t even know what to do with myself, I don’t even know if I’m breathing. I’m so damn happy, and so fucking proud, if I do say so myself. Not just of Rose but the fact that we produced baby boy Constantine.
And he’s beautiful. Chubby, wrinkled, red and so beautiful.
“You did it,” I whisper to Rose, kissing her forehead, her cheek, her jaw. “You did it, my dove.”
“We did it,” she says, giving me a joyous smile that lights her up from the inside.
“You did it,” I tell her. “I merely contributed in a highly enjoyable way.”
Van Helsing also looks proud as hell. He should be. I know it weighed on him a lot to have lost Lucy and the baby. He grins at us, finding his own redemption.
Then he hands the baby to Rose and she holds him in her arms, rocking him slightly. The baby isn’t crying at all, just a few soft whimpers, and I’m struck by what a natural Rose is at this. She was born to do this.
And she was born to be with me.
She coos at Constantine and then glances at me with the softest eyes. “I honestly didn’t think this would ever happen,” she whispers. “I didn’t think life would be so kind.”
“But it’s happened. And it’s kind. And he’s perfect, Rose. He found us.”
“My heart found yours, Val,” she whispers to me before beaming down at Constantine. “And now both our hearts have found him.”
I wipe the tear from my eye and lean over, kissing the top of her head.
Then I lean further and kiss the top of Constantine’s, breathing in my baby’s smell until my eyelids flutter. Love floods my veins, until I’m completely enveloped by this feeling of being so perfectly complete that it feels like I’m levitating.
It may have taken nearly five hundred years, but I finally have my family.
Finally together.
Finally whole.
THE END
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to Valtu and Rose’s much earned HEA!