Chapter 39
SELENE
The first contraction feels like a lie.
Not because it doesn’t hurt. Because it arrives in the middle of something so stupidly ordinary that my body has the nerve to pretend this is just another passing indignity.
I’m standing at the kitchen counter in the house outside the capital ring, arguing with a kettle that has decided boiling water should sound like a political warning, when the pain pulls low through my abdomen and wraps hard around my spine.
I grip the counter.
The world narrows.
Then it lets go.
I stare at the chipped ceramic mug in front of me like it personally betrayed me.
From the next room, Rhyx calls, “You’ve gone quiet.”
I draw in a breath carefully, feeling the cool morning air from the cracked kitchen vent brush damply against the back of my neck.
Outside, the day is pale and bright after a night of rain.
Water still drips from the eaves in slow irregular ticks.
Somewhere across the lane, a child is laughing at something shrill and delighted.
The whole district smells like wet dirt, clean wood, and the sharp green scent of plants trying their best after weather.
“I’m thinking murderous thoughts at the kettle,” I call back.
He appears in the doorway a second later anyway.
Of course he does.
He takes one look at my face and stops moving.
Not frozen. Focused.
There’s a difference.
“What happened?”
I rest both hands flat on the counter because the surface is cool and real and I suddenly need real things in excessive quantity. “I had a contraction.”
The words sit in the room for one beat.
Then another.
Rhyx does not panic.
This is, frankly, irritating and deeply useful.
“How far apart from the last.”
I blink at him. “That was the first one.”
He nods once, already shifting into motion. “All right.”
That’s it.
No dramatic swearing. No useless horror. No “are you sure?” like I would misidentify my own abdomen trying to fold me in half.
Just: all right.
He crosses to the wall comm panel with the kind of precise speed that usually means somebody’s life is hanging on his ability not to fumble.
His fingers move over the civilian medical response interface he pre-arranged weeks ago because apparently some people process impending parenthood by building shelves and emergency redundancies until the universe gives up arguing.
“Activating home response protocol,” he says.
I love him a little violently for how steady his voice is.
The panel chirps, then opens to a medical dispatcher in soft blue projection. Human woman. Mid-thirties. Hair clipped back. Eyes alert in that particular professional way that says she can tell the difference between fear and useful information.
“Neutral district civilian medical, priority maternal channel. State patient.”
Rhyx answers immediately. “Selene Ardent. Term pregnancy. Labor onset suspected. Home response protocol under residency file Varos-Ardent-seven-eight-nine.”
The dispatcher’s fingers flick through invisible fields. “Protocol confirmed. Is patient conscious and breathing normally.”
I turn and look at him. “Really? Ask her if I’m haunting the kitchen.”
He glances at me once. “Conscious,” he says to the dispatcher. “Breathing. Irritated.”
The dispatcher almost smiles. “Good sign. Contraction timing.”
“One contraction so far,” he says.
I push away from the counter slowly, because another wave is building and I can feel it like weather pressure. “I hate that you sound so calm.”
“I’m not calm.”
“Lies.”
“I’m disciplined.”
“Ugh. Worse.”
The second contraction hits before I can take another step.
It is not a lie.
It is a full-body act of betrayal.
Pain cinches tight around my middle and down through my hips with stunning, vulgar force, and suddenly all the prenatal briefings and breathing diagrams and “early labor may feel manageable” pamphlet language can go straight to hell.
I grab the back of the nearest chair so hard the wood creaks.
Rhyx is there instantly, not touching me yet, just close—big body, warm presence, eyes on my face, not asking stupid questions.
The dispatcher’s voice comes through the panel, crisp and even. “Selene, I need you to breathe with me.”
I manage, through clenched teeth, “If she says ‘relax’ I’m suing the whole district.”
The dispatcher says, “I’m not going to say relax.”
“Great. We’re in love.”
Rhyx’s hand settles at the center of my back, broad and steady. Not trying to control the pain. Just there. Heat through fabric. An anchor my body recognizes before my mind catches up.
“In through the nose,” he says quietly.
I glare at him through the contraction. “I know how air works.”
“Yes,” he says. “Do it anyway.”
I do.
Because the bastard is right.
By the time the pain eases, I’m sweaty, shaking, and offended on a spiritual level.
The dispatcher has already escalated us. “Mobile maternal unit is en route. Estimated arrival seven minutes. Keep patient upright or in any position she finds tolerable. Rhyx, I’m sending the physician live consult to your handheld.”
His slate vibrates on the counter. He picks it up, checks the incoming, and says, “Received.”
Then he looks back at me.
“Can you walk?”
I straighten slowly. My knees feel weirdly hollow. “Offensive question.”
“Selene.”
“Yes,” I say. “I can walk.”
“Good.”
He helps me to the living room without turning it into a rescue scene, which I appreciate more than I currently have language for.
One hand at my elbow. The other carrying the medical slate.
The house seems suddenly too bright, every surface outlined with impossible clarity—the soft throw folded over the arm of the sofa, the low storage bench under the window, the relay light glowing green by the wall, the child-safe latches on the kitchen cabinets that now feel less hypothetical than they did yesterday.
The next contraction comes while I’m lowering myself onto the sofa.
“Ah, no,” I say to no one and everyone. “No, absolutely not.”
Rhyx kneels in front of me, one hand on my knee, the other holding the live medical feed open. A physician appears in projection above the slate—Pi’Rell, older, severe braid, the kind of face that has seen everything and does not need theatrics from me about it.
“Selene,” she says, “I’m Dr. Vei. The unit is three minutes out.”
“Fantastic,” I say. “Please tell them to arrive with an exorcist.”
“No exorcist required. Rhyx, contraction interval.”
He checks the timer he started without my noticing. “Four minutes and twelve seconds between first and second.”
Of course he started a timer.
Of course.
The doctor gives instructions. Position changes. Hydration. Monitoring for bleeding. Keep her talking if she wants to talk, quiet if she wants quiet. Rhyx follows every word like it’s a flight path through a meteor field.
I, meanwhile, am rapidly developing new opinions about the entire reproductive process.
By the time the med team arrives, the house no longer feels like our pleasant half-finished domestic project with the scrappy little herb patch out back. It feels like a threshold. Like something in the walls has started listening.
The door opens to two medics and a maternal physician assistant carrying cases and scanning the room in one practiced sweep—entry points, space, lighting, patient orientation, all of it logged in under a second.
One of the medics, a stocky Vakutan woman with iridescent scales and a voice like sanded wood, smiles at me and says, “Good morning.”
I stare at her. “Debatable.”
“Fair.”
They move fast but not chaotically. Monitor leads.
Portable scanner. Sterile packs opened with that dry, crisp paper-plastic hiss that instantly changes the smell of the room—antiseptic, polymer, cool metal, and under it all the human heat of labor and fear and determination.
The physician assistant clips a biometric monitor to my wrist. Another to my abdomen.
Soft tones begin sounding from the portable unit—pulse, uterine rhythm, fetal tracing.
There.
The baby’s heartbeat.
Fast. Strong. Real.
The sound hits me so hard I have to close my eyes for a second.
Rhyx hears it too. I know he does because his whole body stills—not with fear, with reverence so intense it almost burns through the room.
The assistant glances at the monitor and nods. “Fetal vitals stable.”
Rhyx exhales for the first time in maybe ten minutes.
The Vakutan medic catches it and says, “You can keep breathing too, father.”
He looks at her. “I am breathing.”
She raises one brow-ridge. “Barely.”
I would laugh if I weren’t busy being broken in half by biology again.
Hours do strange things in labor.
They do not pass normally.
They stretch and fold and lose their names.
Light changes on the walls. The bright silver morning fades toward afternoon gold without asking permission.
Voices become more intimate and more functional at once.
Pain stops feeling like spikes and starts feeling like weather systems rolling through my entire body.
At some point they decide it’s safer to stay home than move me. The district maternal unit is fully equipped. My vitals are good. The baby’s vitals are good. The physician arrives in person and confirms it with one calm scan and a hand on my shoulder.
“We stay here,” she says.
I nod because speech is suddenly for people with hobbies.
Rhyx stays beside me through all of it.
Not hovering. Not crowding. Not trying to fix what cannot be fixed because it isn’t broken, just brutal.
He relays contraction timing. Reads monitor numbers back when asked.
Supports my shoulders when the physician wants me shifted.
Brings water to my mouth between contractions and somehow never spills any despite the fact that I’m pretty sure he’s one bad fetal deceleration away from punching a wall through another wall.
At one point the doctor says, “We need her on her side now.”