Little Wrath, she thought.

Guessed she’d just named their son.

As she arrived in the clinic, she just kept thinking she was not supposed to be here. Especially as she looked up at that massive operating chandelier in the main OR.

For some reason, she thought of all the times she had been down here, supporting a Brother injured in the field, or going to a checkup with Layla, or—

Doc Jane put her face in the way. Her lips moved slowly.

“…eth? Can you hear me, Beth?”

Ah, good, someone had cranked up the volume on the world.

But her response didn’t register. She couldn’t hear her own voice.

“Okay, good.” Doc Jane enunciated everything clearly. “I want to do an ultrasound to rule out placenta previa—which is a complication where the placenta ends up in the lower part of the uterus. But I’m worried you have an abruption.”

“What … that?” Beth mumbled.

“Are you having pain?”

“Lower back.”

Doc Jane nodded and put her hands on Beth’s belly. “If I press—”

Beth moaned. “Just make sure Wrath is okay.”

They wheeled the ultrasound machine over and her nightgown was cut away. As that gel was squirted onto her stomach and the lights dimmed, she didn’t look at the monitor. She stared at her husband’s face.

That wonderful, masculine face was utterly terrified.

He wasn’t wearing his son glasses—sunglasses, rather. And his pale green, unfocused eyes were roaming around the room as if he were desperate to see something, anything.

“How did you know?” she whispered. “That I was in trouble…”

His eyes snapped in her direction. “My mother told me. In a dream.”

For some reason, that made her cry, that image of her husband growing wavy as the out-of-control nature of life came home to roost in the worst possible way: She cared about nothing except the baby, but there was not a single thing she could do to affect any outcome. Her body and the young were rolling those dice.

Her mind, her will, her soul? All her dreams and desires, hopes and follies?

Not even at the table.

Doc Jane’s face came back. “…eth? Beth? Are you with me?”

As she lifted her hand to get some hair out of her face, she realized they’d put a blood pressure cuff on her and run an IV. And that was not hair in the way; it was tears.

“Beth, the ultrasound is not showing me what I was hoping to see. The baby’s heart rate is slowing and you’re still bleeding heavily. We need to get him out, okay? I’m very sure you have an abruption and you’re in danger as well as him. Okay?”

All she could do was look at Wrath. “What do we do?”

In a voice that was so cracked it was barely understandable, he said, “Let her operate with Manny, okay?”

“All right.”

Doc Jane came back in view. “We’re going to have to put you asleep—I don’t want to do an epidural because we don’t have the time.”

“All right.”

“I love you,” she said to Wrath. “Oh, God … the baby…”

All Wrath had to go on was the smells in the room. Antiseptic in the air. Blood—that terrified him. Fear—from his Beth and the others all around him. Calm, cold reasoning on the parts of Doc Jane, Manny, and Ehlena.

Hopefully, that last one was going to be a lifesaver.

Abruptly, a new fragrance entered the mix. Astringent.

Then there was a squeak beside him, as if someone had pulled up a chair. After which a broad hand shoved him down so he was sitting, and took his own in a grip so hard the bones nearly crushed.

John Matthew.

“Hey, man,” he said, aware that time had ground to a halt. “Hey … man.”

In the end, all Wrath could do was squeeze her brother’s palm back—and so the two of them stayed side by side together, frozen as medical terms were traded back and forth and there were metal clanging sounds and hisses and suction noises.

Doc Jane’s voice was so even. Manny’s replies were the same.

They were like the inverse of the situation: As things got scarier, they became more focused and in control.

“Okay, I’ve got him—”

“Wait, is it happening already?” Wrath demanded.

The ascending whistle next to him was the only reply he got.

And then … the sound of a young’s first wail.

“Is he alive?” Wrath asked like a dumb-ass.

Another whistle.

And then he forgot about his son entirely. “Beth? What about Beth?”

No one answered.

“Beth?” he barked. “John, what the fuck is going on?”

The scent of blood was thick in the air. So thick. Too thick.

He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t think. He wasn’t even alive.

“Beth…” he whispered into the darkness.

It was forever until Doc Jane came over to him. And by the closeness and direction of her voice, he knew she had knelt in front of him.

“Wrath, we’ve got a problem. The baby’s fine, Ehlena’s checking him out. But Beth is continuing to bleed even after I closed her uterus from the C-section. She’s hemorrhaging very badly and there’s no sign that she’s clotting. The safest thing to do is a hysterectomy. Do you know what that is?”

She was talking to him like he was stupid—good thing, too.

“No.” Even though he’d heard the word before. Hell, at this point, she would have had to define even the most common of terms.

“I need to take her uterus out. She’s going to die, Wrath, if I don’t. It means she won’t be able to have any more children—”

“I don’t give a fuck about anything but her. Whatever you need to do. Do it—now.”

“Okay, let’s move, Manny.”

“Where’s my son!” he called out abruptly. “Give me my son!”

Not even a moment later, a small bundle was placed into his arms. So light. Too light to be alive—and yet his son was warm and breathing. Vital.

He wanted to hold him because his shellan was in this child. In every molecule of his living body, she was with him—and that meant, as he kept the young up against his heart … he was holding his Beth.

“What’s happening?” he whispered, not expecting a response.

He let the tears fall as they might. Probably on his son’s face.

Who the fuck cared.

Beth came out of the fuzzy neverland like a cork surfacing on still water. Bobbing along, things came and went out of focus.

But the second her brain flipped back on, she yelled, “Wrath—!”

“Right here, we’re right here.”

Recoiling, she wrenched around in the hospital bed and felt an instant oh, hell, no from her belly.

And then nothing mattered. Sitting beside her bed, in a chair that wasn’t big enough, her husband and her son were like two peas in a pod.

The weeping that came out of her was utterly uncontrollable, welling up so fast it all but exploded from her soul. And, man, her belly hurt like a bitch.

As she reached over the side of the bed, her IV pulled, but she didn’t care. And her menfolk came to her, Wrath standing up with that newborn and easing down right beside her on the hospital bed.

“Oh, my God, that’s my baby,” she heard herself say.

Little Wrath—yup, she really had named him already—was the spitting image of his father. Even the dusting of hair formed a widow’s peak in the center of his forehead. And like he recognized her somehow, he opened his eyes as his father let her take the precious bundle.

“Hey, there, big man.”

Because even though he weighed how much? Seven pounds or something? The way that little one stared up at her, it was like he was already taller than his father.

“You are beautiful,” she said to him.

And then she saw his eyes. The pupils were normal, the irises dark blue, not light green.

She looked over at her husband. “He’s perfect.”

“I know. They told me he looks like me.”

“He does.”

“Except for the eyes. But I would have loved him anyway.”