Chapter 25 Kess #2
Then she goes very still.
"What?" The word comes out sharp. "What is it? Is something wrong?"
She doesn't answer immediately. Just presses her palm flat against my lower belly, holding it there, her head tilted like she's listening to something I can't hear.
"Not wrong," she says finally. "Just more than I expected."
My heart stutters. "What does that mean?"
She sits back, studying me. "You're carrying twins."
The word doesn't make sense at first.
Twins. Two. More than one.
"That's not—" I stop. Try again. "How can you tell?"
"I've been doing this for sixty years, child. I know what one baby feels like. And I know what two feels like." She places her weathered hand over mine. "There are two lives in there. I'm certain of it."
Twins.
I'm carrying twins.
The room tilts. I grip the edge of the table to keep from sliding off the chair. Yaern is at my side instantly, her hand warm on my shoulder.
"Breathe," she says. "Kess, breathe."
I breathe. In. Out. In again.
"Twins," I repeat, and my voice sounds strange to my own ears. "I'm having twins."
"It explains some things," the healer says, practical as ever. "Why the bleeding worried me more than it might have with a single pregnancy. Why your body is working so hard. Growing two at once takes more from you."
Two. Two children. Two lives that somehow held on through all the stress and violence and bleeding.
Two pieces of him growing inside me.
"Are they—" I have to stop, clear my throat. "Are they both okay?"
"As far as I can tell." The healer's voice softens slightly. "They're fighters, these two. Like their mother. The fact that you didn't lose them after everything you went through—that tells me they're strong. Determined to be born."
Strong. Determined.
Two of them.
Gods.
"Does this change anything?" I ask. "About what I need to do? About the risks?"
"It changes everything and nothing." She begins packing her supplies.
"Twin pregnancies are harder. More dangerous, especially for someone already dealing with complications.
" A delicate way of saying contamination and transformation and cursed dragon father.
"You'll need more rest. More food. More care.
And if anything goes wrong—" She pauses.
"It can go wrong faster. With worse consequences. "
The weight of that settles over me like stone.
"But they're alive," I say. "Right now. They're both alive."
"Right now, yes." She meets my eyes, and for a moment I see something almost like warmth. "You're past the worst of the danger from the bleeding. Your body has decided to keep them. That's no small thing."
She finishes packing and leaves her instructions: more rest, more food, absolutely no strain. If any bleeding returns, send for her immediately—with twins, there's no room for waiting.
After she's gone, I sit at the table for a long time, hands pressed to my stomach.
Two babies. Two heartbeats I can't feel yet but that are there, somewhere beneath my palms, growing in the dark warm space of my womb.
"Twins," Yaern says softly, settling into the chair across from me. "That's a lot."
A laugh escapes me—broken, slightly hysterical. "That's one way to put it."
"Do twins run in your family?"
"No. Not that I know of. But I don't know anything about his family. About dragon bloodlines. About any of it."
His family. The words catch in my throat. These are his children too—his twins, his legacy, two lives that carry his cursed blood mixed with my warrior omega heritage.
He should know.
The thought rises unbidden, and I push it down immediately. He lost the right to know things when he decided I didn't have the right to know about my own pregnancy.
But still. Twins.
"Two of them," I whisper, more to myself than to Yaern. "You hear that? There are two of you in there. Both of you held on. Both of you survived."
No answer comes. Won't for months yet, when they grow large enough to kick against my hands.
But somehow, knowing there are two of them makes the silence feel less empty.
The nightmare starts that night.
I'm standing in a room I don't recognize—stone walls with no windows, torchlight throwing jagged shadows, the smell of blood thick enough to taste.
My hands are covered in it, red and dripping, and when I look down my stomach is swollen with pregnancy—but wrong somehow.
The shape distorted. The skin stretched tight over something that moves in ways babies shouldn't move.
Then I hear the screaming.
A child's voice, high and desperate—a girl, I know somehow, the way you know things in dreams. My daughter. Screaming from inside me, screaming in terror, and when I look down I see why.
Golden claws pressing against my skin from within. Small claws, but sharp, tearing at the walls of my womb. My son—my other child, the other half of this impossible pair—trying to destroy his sister before she can be born.
I try to stop it. Press my hands against the bulge, try to calm whatever is happening inside me. But the claws keep tearing, and the screaming keeps rising, and blood is pouring down my thighs—
I wake gasping, hands flying to my stomach, heart slamming against my ribs.
"Just a dream," I manage, but my voice shakes. "Just a dream."
Yaern is already beside me, roused by my thrashing. She lights a candle, and the small flame pushes back the darkness enough that I can see her worried face.
"Tell me," she says.
So I do. The stone room. The blood. My swollen stomach and the two lives inside it—one screaming, one tearing, brother destroying sister in the womb before either of them can draw their first breath.
When I finish, my hands are still pressed flat against my belly, searching for any sign of wrongness.
"It felt real," I whisper. "Too real. Like prophecy."
Yaern is quiet for a long moment, her face unreadable in the candlelight.
"Omegas sometimes have prophetic dreams during pregnancy," she says carefully. "Especially when carrying unusual children. But dreams aren't always prophecy, Kess. Sometimes they're just fear given a shape. You learned about the twins today—your mind is processing what that means."
"And if it's not just processing? If it's showing me something real?" The words scrape out. "What if one of them is dangerous? What if the cursed blood—what if he—"
"Then we'll deal with that if it comes." She squeezes my hand. "But right now, in this moment, both babies are alive. Both held on through everything. That's what's real. That's what matters."
I want to believe her. Want to let go of the nightmare and trust the physical evidence of my healing body.
But the image of golden talons pressing against my skin from inside won't leave me. The sound of my daughter's screaming echoes in my skull even now.
"I need to know more," I say. "About what happens when contaminated omegas carry cursed children. About whether twins born to a cursed alpha are—" I can't finish. Can't say dangerous to each other.
"The village library," Yaern says. "It's small, but there might be something. We can look tomorrow, when you're stronger."
Tomorrow. One more day of rest. One more day of building strength. One more day before I start searching for answers that might terrify me more than the questions.
One more day of pretending I can do this without him—without his castle full of forbidden texts, his centuries of accumulated knowledge, his mystic who probably knows everything about cursed bloodlines and what happens when they're doubled.
Twins. Both carrying his blood. Both marked by his curse.
What if the nightmare is showing me exactly what that means?
I close my eyes and try to sleep.
The nightmare waits in the darkness behind my eyelids, patient as any predator.
But so do I.
And I've survived worse things than bad dreams.