EPILOGUE #2
“YES,” Roarg confirms, and makes a delighted sound before he attacks her neck playfully with kisses and nuzzling, making her squirm and giggle.
Snabazkur starts to fuss for me, and I call to him, my heart filling with pride when he settles down at just the sound of my voice. “I’ll be there soon,” I assure him.
Ulda passes the water bag without complication.
“Here, while you’re busy with that, I’ll make introductions,” Joktepitha says, trading back Stephanie’s Grunka and bringing Crushosh and Snabazkur over to meet their new brother.
Stephanie rises too, and Roarg moves to help her, taking Grunka and giving both her and her mother a kiss.
Then, with a daughter in each arm, he surveys them with a smile and asks, “What will I do with only two of you? How can a father expect to become wealthy enough to retire on only a mere two daughters’ bride prices? ”
I expect Stephanie to sputter loudly. Being an other-realmer, she often protests the strangest things. But she surprises me. Kneeling down with Yrso to introduce him to Ulda’s son, she grins and suggests, “You’ll have to set both their bride prices for a year of horse shoes.”
Ulda smiles at her, and tiredly flicks a stray hair behind Stephanie’s too-round ear. “Now that is a fine suggestion.” A twinge passes over her expression; a contraction.
“It really is,” Roarg agrees, his eyes fond and warm on his radiantly blissful Ulda.
He rests Grunka on Ulda’s chest next to her settled newborn, and then he tips Opkug in his arms, making her grip him for dear life and squeal as he kisses her temple.
“The Eternal knows your mother was worth every shoe,” he assures his daughter.
He swings her upside down until she shrieks with laughter.
Dropping her to the bed, hands out to make sure she doesn’t bounce so hard she falls off, he smiles at her. And then he looks at Ulda again. He swallows. “Bromnia?”
But Ulda can’t respond.
I might have mistaken the signs for a simple passing of leftover membranes—but with a flash of insight that hits me like a slap, I know this isn’t that. After all, Stephanie’s brats are barely dry—I have seen this second flux of activity before, and recently. “She has another.”
Locked in the contraction, Ulda’s eyes clench shut and she bares her teeth, and I can scarcely breathe as I race to wash my hands in the pail at my side before I position myself under her again.
I’ve got my cupped hands in place just in time.
Ulda’s second brat slides onto my palms and screams in my face like I’m killing her. I grin. “It’s a girl!”
Joktepitha laughs. “Would you look at that! Roarg, you get to ask for horseshoes for all three of your daughters!”
His jaw is hanging open. He’s so shocked, his tusks are all but sweeping the floor.
His shock is nothing compared to Ulda’s, though—her eyes swim with tears, and she’s biting her lips, tusks pressing on her cheeks so hard her skin’s turning white.
Roarg is still poleaxed, turning a perplexed look from Ulda to Stephanie, before his eyes swing back to his latest girl brat. “What in the hellfire is in our water?” he asks, awed.
“I don’t believe it’s water you’re squirting,” Joktepitha tells him, patting his arm.
“Ulda?” Roarg asks, kneeling beside her, smoothing back her sweat-soaked braids.
Trembling, tears streaking down her face, Ulda can only shake her head. “Both… alive?”
“Blessedly alive,” I confirm, eyeing her with concern. Her brat is screaming the crucks down; no one in the entire peninsula of Ogemaw can miss that she’s as hale as her roaring brother. “Here, Ulda—take her. Hold her.”
Roarg gathers their brat up and transfers her carefully to Ulda, nudging their newborn son over a smidge so both of them share their mother’s chest. Opkug is gripping Ulda’s perspiration-stained sleeve, biting her lip, looking seconds from tears as she watches Ulda’s pained face.
Ulda buries her nose into her second infant’s tiny neck and laughs.
The whole room relaxes.
Roarg wipes a hand over his still-disbelieving face, staring wide-eyed between Ulda’s new brood and Stephanie’s.
Stephanie’s smile is broad and bright. “You’re not going to get this reference, but ‘we’re going to need a bigger boat.’”
Roarg tilts his head, eyebrows colliding. “We don’t own a boat. We may need to consider building a bigger house, though.” He looks around, stunned, like he’s not sure how all these brats got here. “Sooner rather than later too.”
“Nah,” claims Stephanie, smile turning mischievous—and she aims it at Ulda. “I know someone who grew up with four parents and five siblings, all crammed in two beds in a one room house—and she turned out just fine.”
Ulda makes a chuffing noise, falling back against her pillows.
She regains enough strength to raise her head, stretching her neck to see around Roarg, who’s returned to her side to trace a loving touch along her cheek before sweeping it dry with his thumb.
“Someone,” huffs Ulda, “grant this weary mother a favor and hit her.”
As the words weary mother leave her mouth, Ulda’s eyes flash—then fill with bliss.
Stephanie snickers and buries her face against her brats. “I love you too, Ulda.”
Ulda smiles. “Good. Since I’ve decided I’m fond of you.”
Roarg looks around the room, at us and all his offspring.
He could not look prouder. He leans down and drops a kiss on Ulda and her twins before stretching across her to reach Stephanie, and Yrso, and then me.
Joktepitha and Crushosh are next, and finally Snabazkur.
And when Stephanie’s long-haired orange tabby slinks by his leg, he picks her up and kisses the cat too, a blissfully happy Orc grateful to have every one of his children and wives.