Chapter 40 Rhystan
Rhystan
The contractions start at midnight.
I'm half-asleep when Kess goes rigid beside me, her clawed hand suddenly crushing mine hard enough to grind bone. The sound she makes isn't quite a scream—more like a growl that builds from somewhere deep in her chest and escapes through clenched teeth.
"Kess?"
"It's time." She breathes the words through another wave of pain. "Get the mystic. Now."
I'm out of bed before she finishes speaking, yanking on pants with hands that won't stop shaking. Three hundred years old and I'm trembling like a boy at his first battle. But this is different. This is everything.
The mystic is already awake when I reach her chambers—probably felt the shift in the castle's energy, the way she feels everything. She takes one look at my face and starts gathering supplies.
"How far apart?"
"I don't know. Minutes. She just—it started suddenly."
"First births are rarely sudden." She hands me a stack of clean linens. "More likely she's been having small contractions for hours and didn't want to worry you."
That sounds exactly like Kess.
We make it back to find her on her feet, one hand braced against the bedpost, breathing in controlled bursts that fog the cool night air. Her scales are visible even in the dim candlelight—black and gold rippling across her shoulders as her body works through another contraction.
"Lie down," the mystic orders.
"I can't." Kess's voice is strained. "Lying down makes it worse. I need to move."
"Then move. But let me check how far along you are."
What follows is the longest night of my very long life.
Kess labors for hours.
She paces the room, pausing every few minutes to grip whatever's nearest—the bedpost, the windowsill, my hand—while contractions roll through her.
The sounds she makes are barely human, growls and snarls mixed with something more vulnerable underneath.
Her gold eyes are wild, pupils blown, the curse inside her responding to the stress with surges of rage she has to fight to control.
"You're doing well," the mystic says during a brief lull. "The girl is positioned correctly. She'll come first."
"And the boy?"
"We'll see." The mystic's expression gives nothing away. "One at a time."
I feel useless. Worse than useless—every instinct I have is screaming to fix this, to take the pain away, to do something other than stand here holding her hand while she suffers.
But there's nothing to fight. Nothing to kill.
Just my mate, bringing our children into the world the only way they can be brought.
"Talk to me." Kess gasps it between contractions. "Distract me. Tell me something."
"What do you want to hear?"
"Anything. Everything." Another contraction hits and she crushes my hand, a sound tearing from her throat that makes my dragon want to emerge and destroy whatever's hurting her. "Tell me about—fuck—tell me about our children. What you want for them."
So I talk.
I tell her about the nursery Corvith has been preparing, the walls painted with dragons and mountains and the night sky. About the names I've been considering—traditional ones from my bloodline, wild ones I think she'd like, combinations of both that honor where we each came from.
I tell her about teaching them to fly, once they're old enough.
About showing them the mountain passes where I used to escape when the castle felt like a prison.
About the hidden valleys and secret lakes and all the beautiful places I've discovered in three centuries of lonely wandering that I want to share with someone.
I tell her about watching them grow. About being there for first words and first steps and first shifts, if they inherit enough dragon blood to shift at all. About raising them without the curse, without the violence, without the weight of divine punishment that shaped every generation before them.
"I want them to be happy," I say as another contraction builds. "That's all. I want them to grow up knowing they're loved. Knowing they're safe. Knowing their parents chose each other—chose them—over everything else."
Kess screams.
Not a contraction scream—something different. Something urgent.
"She's coming," the mystic says sharply. "Now. Push."
Our daughter enters the world furious.
She comes out screaming, tiny fists clenched, face red with outrage at being evicted from the warm dark of her mother's body. The mystic catches her, clears her airway, and the scream that follows is the most beautiful sound I've ever heard.
"Healthy," the mystic announces, already wrapping the baby in clean linen. "Strong lungs. Ten fingers, ten toes. No visible curse markers."
No curse markers.
The words hit me like a physical blow. I've been bracing for it—some sign that the transfer didn't work completely, some remnant of divine punishment still clinging to her tiny body. But there's nothing. Just a baby. Just our daughter.
"Let me see her." Kess's voice is wrecked, barely audible, but her arms are already reaching.
The mystic places the baby on Kess's chest, and something inside me cracks open.
She's so small. So fragile. Dark hair plastered to her skull, eyes squeezed shut against the candlelight, one tiny hand escaping the swaddling to grip her mother's finger with surprising strength. Kess is crying—tears streaming down her scaled cheeks, mixing with sweat and exhaustion.
"She's perfect," Kess whispers. "Rhystan, look at her. She's perfect."
I can't speak. Can barely breathe. Three hundred years of believing I'd never have this—a mate who survived, children who lived, a future that held anything other than death and guilt and endless lonely centuries.
And now here she is. Our daughter. Alive and screaming and absolutely fucking perfect.
"What's her name?" the mystic asks.
Kess looks at me. I look at her. We haven't decided—couldn't agree, kept arguing about traditions and meanings and whose family to honor.
"Sera," Kess says softly. "After my grandmother. The one who told me stories about wild omegas but died before she could explain what I was."
Sera. It fits. It's perfect.
"Sera," I repeat, and the baby's eyes flutter open at the sound. Gold, like mine. Like her mother's now. "Welcome to the world, little one."
Then Kess's face contorts, and the mystic is moving again.
"The boy is coming. Quickly now—he's impatient."
Our son takes after his sister.
He arrives barely ten minutes later, just as loud, just as furious, just as determined to make his presence known. The mystic catches him the same way, clears his airway, and his scream harmonizes with Sera's in a duet of newborn outrage.
"Also healthy." The mystic sounds almost surprised. "No curse markers. Completely clean."
Clean.
Both of them. Clean and healthy and free.
The curse that's haunted my bloodline for four generations, that killed my mother and forty-seven omegas and poisoned every part of my existence—it ends here. Tonight. With two screaming babies who will never know what it felt like to carry divine rage in their blood.
The mystic places our son in my arms.
I've held weapons. Held dying soldiers. Held Kess while she transformed and screamed and nearly died absorbing three centuries of punishment. But I've never held anything like this.
He's heavier than Sera—larger, too, with a shock of dark hair and eyes that are currently scrunched shut against the world. His cry has already faded to small hiccupping sounds, like he's exhausted himself with the effort of being born. One tiny hand wraps around my finger, and my heart stops.
"He needs a name too," Kess says from the bed. She's holding Sera against her chest, both of them skin-to-skin, the baby already rooting for her first meal.
"Cade." The name comes without thinking. "After my mother's father. He was—" I swallow past the lump in my throat. "He was kind. Before the curse took hold in his line. He used to sneak me sweets from the kitchen when my father wasn't looking."
"Cade." Kess tests the name. Nods. "Sera and Cade. Our children."
Our children.
I carry Cade to the bed, settle carefully beside Kess, arrange us all into a tangle of limbs and babies and exhaustion. Sera is nursing now, tiny mouth working with fierce determination. Cade is falling asleep against my chest, his heartbeat a rapid flutter against my skin.
"We did it." Kess's voice is barely a whisper. "They're here. They're healthy. They're ours."
"You did it." I press my lips to her sweat-damp temple. "You saved them. You saved all of us."
"We saved each other." She turns her head, finds my mouth with hers. The kiss is soft, exhausted, tasting of salt and tears and something that might be joy. "That's what we do now. Save each other."
The twins shift against us—Sera releasing Kess's breast with a small sigh of contentment, Cade burrowing deeper into the warmth of my chest. They're so new. So fragile. So utterly dependent on us to keep them safe in a world that's done its best to destroy us.
We'll keep them safe. Whatever it takes.
The curse is broken. The battle is won. The kingdom will survive or it won't, and either way we'll face it together.
But right now, in this moment, there's just us. A family. Whole and healing and finally, finally free.
I close my eyes and let myself believe in the future for the first time in three hundred years.