Chapter 17
I WISH I COULD RECALL the play-by-play, every minute detail. But there was pain. So much pain. Witches cannot stop our own pain, natural gluttons for punishment. There was a burning, a sawing, a ripping. There was screaming until there were no screams left in me.
I woke up in a pool of liquid, the sensation I was told would happen if my water broke.
I shook Chantal’s hip, yelling because it’s rare for your water to break before any contractions.
It scared me. I stayed scared until the moment he came.
I yelled to her, “Mom isn’t here yet. He’s three weeks early!
” And she looked at me, her doe eyes full of a fear I had never seen on her face before.
But instead of fainting, as her expression told me she wanted to do, she sat up and said, “We need to get to the birth center.”
“He’s too early!” I had yelled as Chantal shooed me into the car. Since reading Cassius’s book, I’d vowed to use what little time I had left to finally pull myself together and prepare for the baby that was coming.
And just my luck, I wouldn’t be past due like ninety-nine percent of pregnancies—no, mine would be three weeks early. And with nothing ready. I hadn’t built the bassinet. The little changing table Cassius had sent sat in a box in the corner of Bastian’s room with not one diaper or wipe on it.
Babies need to take baths, and I didn’t even have one. God, I thought. I’m already the worst mother in the world. I was so lost in my depression, I didn’t prepare for the child that was inevitable.
There was a frantic phone call to my mother, telling her to come, please come. There was Chantal yelling to Cassius that it was happening, and he swiftly hung up in order to prepare his doctor for me.
Hours, it was supposed to be hours of labor, wasn’t it? I was supposed to be waiting and waiting until the doctor said, “Now Aster, I really need you to push.”
But none of that happened. It wasn’t hours and hours of pushing.
Instead, it was rushing and pain and more rushing and the doctor smiling and saying, “The good news is that your labor will be fast, the bad news is that you’ll get no epidural.
” My blood pressure was dangerously high, then low, then high again.
I couldn’t keep up with what was happening.
Words like, “emergency C-section” were thrown around and the possible need to transfer to a hospital, then Chantal looked at me and said, “You need to get this baby out of you right now.”
Something switched in my brain—through the pain, through the ripping of flesh with no epidural, I screamed and I pushed. My mind in and out of reality, my body at war with itself, until suddenly, in a matter of seconds, the pain was gone, and Chantal grabbed my hand and cried, “He’s here!”
And he was placed on my chest, covered in blood and muck, and I looked up to Chantal, my jaw tightening, my chest expanding. The little sound of a life anew, breathing, crying, living.
Together we sobbed and surveyed him, the fear that he wasn’t human taking over, but everything looked perfect.
I wet my mouth to speak, my lips cracked and broken, my throat so dry I could hardly swallow. “He’s okay?”
“He’s perfect,” Chantal said, nodding, reassuring me.
“Does he have teeth?” I said through the delirium, and the midwife laughed and shook her head as she took him from my arms. “No teeth.”
Chantal blubbered as she cut the cord, something I had envisioned my mother doing, but now, it felt right.
My eyes closed just for a moment as I heard his cries, and my heart collapsed into a million folds. My child, my son. Bastian’s son. The son he always longed for, he was here.
“Here, Mama,” the nurse Teresa said, placing my swaddled baby in my arms, and Chantal took one picture after another, the tears on our faces shimmering in the dark room, and when he was on my skin, a bolt of electricity ran through my veins, a zap hitting my heart, taking the breath right out of me.
“Those are some eyes,” Teresa said, and I looked down to my baby, and what I saw looking back at me were two of the deepest green eyes I had ever seen.
“Is that normal?” I asked, panic ensuing as my eyes darted to Chantal’s.
“I’ve never seen any that green before, but it’s normal. They will most likely change.”
Two mirrors of Bastian’s eyes, but almost darker, and the realization of the life that we created humbled me in the most choking of ways. The miracle that he was consumed me, and I had never felt the ferocity of protection like I felt in that moment. I would kill for this child. I was a mother.
All those nights ago, when Bastian had joked about having a daughter and naming her Aventurine simply because it was what I called the color of his eyes.
I had contemplated naming her that when I thought she was a girl.
But in that moment, it all came to me so clearly, the boy I held in my arms with the deepest green eyes. His name was Aven. Aven Luc Wildes.
My eyes flit open after what feels like a short nap.
Chantal is holding Aven, and my eyes adjust to Cassius sitting in the corner of the room, legs stretched out in front of him, his head back on the chair as if he’s sleeping.
But once he hears the slightest change in my breathing, he stands and approaches me.
“Seems you did it,” he whispers, and my mouth splits into a grin, his hand filled with rings pressed against his chin.
“Seems I did,” I say, exhaustion hovering over my bones like a blanket. “Do you see anything worrisome? Vampiric?”
Crossing his arms over his wide chest, he tilts his head in contemplation, a tight grin on his face. “Nothing. I don’t feel him longing for blood. He looks so much like Bastian. How is that possible? A baby that looks like every other baby, looks just like his father?”
“You think so?” I bite my lip, my heart racing with all the realities blooming in my life. I had Bastian’s son. We meet each other’s gaze and both say, “The eyes.”
Chantal rocks between us, holding Aven up to Cassius. “You ready yet?”
A look of longing overcomes Cassius, and he shakes his head, clearing his throat. “Maybe when he’s not so fragile. I’ve never held an infant in my entire life.” He reaches up to wipe a red tear from his cheek, one I didn’t notice had sprung loose.
“You are being transferred home tomorrow evening,” he says to change the subject. “It will be dark enough for him to be transported, and then we’ll take it each day at a time…figuring out if he can withstand the sun.”
Fear emerges like a spike to my chest, but the baby fusses, and my eyes go to Chantal.
“He hears mommy,” she says, walking toward me like a professional baby handler.
“Cassius. I’m going to need some of Aven’s blood. Just a drop. I know they do blood tests here. Is there any way—”
His eyes look around the room, and he raises a hand to stop me. “Say no more. I’ll handle it.”
“Thanks.”
“We will figure this all out together.” Cassius nods and turns toward the door. “I’ll meet you at the house.”
And just before he walks out, he turns and says, “Oh, and Aster.” I look up to him, Aven’s body fitting perfectly in my arms. “Great name.”