(Rhydian)
I don’t sleep again after she tells .
Elena does — eventually, after a long ti of lying there in the dark with my arm around her and both our hands over where our hands were. Her breathing slows and evens and the tension in her shoulders releases by degrees, and I stay awake and I stare at the ceiling and I think.
Not bad thinking. Not the spiral kind, not the cave kind where thoughts ate each other in the dark and you woke up worse than you went under. Just — processing. The particular work of a mind trying to build a structure around sothing it has no blueprint for.
A child.
Our child.
I turn it over. I look at it from every angle. I try to find the place where it becos real rather than sothing I’m holding at a careful distance because real things can be taken and at-a-distance things can’t.
I don’t find that place tonight. But I keep looking.
---
Morning cos the way mornings do — indifferent, light through the window, the settlent sounds starting up below. Elena wakes before for once, which ans she slept harder than usual, and I watch her co back into herself — that particular sequence, eyes opening, the brief unguarded mont before she’s fully present, then the assembly of everything she carries sitting back on her shoulders.
She looks at .
I look at her.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi."
She searches my face. Looking for — I don’t know. Retreat, maybe. Regret. The way people wait for the thing they were afraid of to show up on the morning face of a person they told sothing to in the dark.
She won’t find that.
"I’m okay," I say, before she can ask.
"I know." She sits up. Pushes her hair back. "You were awake all night."
"Most of it."
"Rhydian—"
"I’m okay," I say again. "I just needed to—" I sit up too. Look at my hands for a mont. "Think."
She nods. She knows about needing to think. She gives that without pushing.
I look at her.
She’s sitting in the grey morning light with her hair down and her nightclothes and the composed face she wears even before she’s fully awake, and underneath the composure is sothing I’ve been learning to read for weeks — the small vulnerability she carries, the specific loneliness of a woman who has been strong for so long she’s not entirely sure who she is when she isn’t.
She’s been carrying this for a week.
Alone.
"A week," I say.
She looks at . "I know. I’m sorry—"
"Don’t." I shake my head. "I understand why you waited. I do." I pause. "I just — you didn’t have to. That’s all."
She’s quiet for a mont. Then, very quietly: "I know."
"You can tell things," I say. "Before you’ve worked them out completely. You can tell things while they’re still—" I don’t have the word. I move my hand. "Unfinished."
She looks at with that expression. The one that goes deep. "Okay," she says.
And then she looks down.
Not at her hands. At herself. At the space below where her hands have kept finding themselves for days, the place where sothing small and specific and absolutely real is already doing whatever impossible thing it’s doing in there.
I look too.
It’s not visible. I know that. It won’t be visible for a while. But now that I know, now that the information has had a night to settle into my chest, I can feel the knowing changing how I see her. Like a light source moved — sa room, different shadows.
"Can I—" I stop.
She looks up.
"Can I—" I try again. My throat is doing sothing. I push past it. "I want to—" I gesture, helplessly, at the space between us.
She understands. She always understands the things I can’t finish.
She lies back.
I move slowly. I get out from under the blanket and I sit beside her on the mattress and I look at her for a mont — her face, her eyes watching , that quality of contained warmth she’s been carrying all week that I couldn’t na before and can na now.
I reach out.
My hands hover for a second. Then I put them down — flat, careful, the way she taught to touch things without pressure, just presence. Just warmth. Just *I’m here* rather than *I’m taking*.
My hands on her stomach.
Through the fabric. Nothing to feel, nothing perceptible, just the ordinary warmth of her.
Except it’s not ordinary. Nothing about this is ordinary. It’s the least ordinary thing I’ve ever touched.
"I’m going to be a father," I say.
Not a question exactly. Not the sa as last night — that was shock, that was processing. This is different. This is saying the words out loud in the morning light to make them real, to make them mine, to claim the thing before I can talk myself out of deserving it.
"Yes," Elena says.
One word. Steady. Certain.
I look at my hands.
I think about my father.
I do this sotis — I can’t stop myself, the comparison is automatic, the particular question of *what does a father look like* routed inevitably through the only model I had. A man who valued things in terms of what they could do for him. Who touched with the back of his hand more often than the palm. Who stood on a platform and didn’t make a sound while they put the rope on because he’d decided it was fine, decided the ga was over, and didn’t look for in the crowd.
Didn’t look for in the crowd.
I breathe out.
I move.
I lean down slowly. My hands stay where they are. And I press my lips to her stomach — just that, just the warmth of her through the fabric, just my mouth against the place where sothing is alive that is half her and half , half everything she is and half whatever I managed to build out of four years alone.
Half the thing she healed in .
Elena’s hand cos to my hair.
I close my eyes.
The thing that happens in my chest is not like the crying in the study. That was years of accumulated grief finding a door. This is different — this is sothing opening that wasn’t there before, a room that didn’t exist until this mont, and it’s so large and so completely unexpected that my body does the only thing it can with sothing that size.
I feel the wet on my face before I decide anything about it.
I don’t move. I stay with my lips against her and my hands on either side and Elena’s fingers in my hair and I let it happen without trying to control it, which is new for , which is sothing she taught without calling it a lesson.
*Let it in. Don’t pull away from it. Stay.*
I stay.
"Hey," she says. Soft. Her hand moves through my hair.
I breathe.
"I’ll die for this child," I say. It cos out uneven but it cos out certain. Against her stomach, into the fabric, the truest sentence I’ve ever said. "I need you to know that." I lift my head. My face is a ss and I don’t care. I look at her. "Whatever cos. Whatever Shadowpine or Marcus or anything else— this is—" I stop.
I don’t have the word for what this is.
She looks at .
And her face, for once, is completely unguarded. Not the Alpha face, not the composed face, not the contained-warmth face. Just Elena. Wet-eyed and present and looking at like I am the specific thing she needed and didn’t let herself look for.
"I know," she says.
My hands on her stomach.
Her hand in my hair.
The morning light.
I lay my head back down and I close my eyes and I stay.
Reviews
All reviews (0)