Chapter 43: Mine

I thought I was prepared. I was wrong. I thought I would handle the pain. I was wrong about that, too. Because giving birth was nothing like I thought it would be. It was horrible, and it never ended.

Mom and Dad were there the whole time, supporting me and encouraging me all the way through, and I loved them for that, but I never thought I would survive long enough to get fully dilated.

Still, I somehow found energy enough for both that and to start pushing.

“Almost there now, Skylar.”

“You’ve been saying that for thirteen hours, Dad! Shut up!”

Mom came with a moistened washcloth and dabbed my forehead and neck while I was on my knees on the mattress and clung to the headboard for dear life.

My body tensed up in another smothering contraction and made it impossible to do anything else but scream.

“That’s good. Five more seconds,” the midwife ordered, and I honestly tried. It was just too painful. I lay back down to see if that was better. It wasn’t.

“I CAN’T DO THIS!” I yelled, and sobbed loudly, but Mom was quick to stroke my back.

“Of course, you can, honey. Just try to relax and save your energy for the next contraction.”

“Relax? Do you have ~any~ idea how horrible this is?!”

She tried not to giggle, and it pissed me off. How could women do this voluntarily? Why couldn’t men do it instead?

“Yes, I do. When you were born, I was in labor for seventeen hours.”

“SEVENTEEN?! WHY THE HELL DIDN’T YOU TELL ME BEFOOOOOOREEEE…NNNGH!”

Another contraction ripped through my body so hard that it felt like someone was trying to split me in two.

“I didn’t want to scare you, sweetie. It’s just something us women have to go through. That’s how we’ve survived for generations, and…”

“SHUT! UUUUUUUP!!!!”

I heard Dad come over to us, and I say heard because my eyes were clenched shut from pain. He’d been sitting in a chair by the window but got up to help with whatever he could whenever it was needed.

But for the most part, he was just waiting, like the others in the room. It was only lucky me who had to do all the hard work.

“Are you tired?” he asked Mom with a low voice, probably to keep me from hearing. “You can go and rest for a while, while I can…”

“IS ~SHE~ TIRED?! WHAT ABOUT ME?” I shouted, but then the midwife yelled at me.

“Less talking and more pushing, Skylar! Seven, six, five, four…Thaaat’s right.”

I felt a sudden ripping pain and screamed out.

“The baby’s head is out! Do you want to touch it?”

“TOUCH IT?! NOOO! GET IT OUT OF ME! IT HUUUUURTS!”

Both Mom and Dad did their best to make me focus on the last few pushes, but I was too lost in pain to listen to anything. I just screamed and cried.

Just as another contraction overpowered me, I heard a strange sound. It made me stop screaming and I felt an otherworldly kind of peace spread in my body right in the middle of the most horrible pain so far.

The sound felt familiar somehow, but awfully misplaced in a situation like this. Nevertheless, it helped me through the last few seconds of my contraction and made me able to push a little bit more.

Suddenly the pain disappeared and was replaced by a weird emptiness. Right after, the midwife brought something warm from between my legs and lifted it up to place it on my stomach.

“Open your arms, Skylar. Your baby is…uhm.”

The midwife sounded shocked and stopped mid-sentence, and the room became awfully silent.

Only the baby’s cute whimpers and my heavy panting filled the room, and I lifted my head and found that everybody was staring at us.

“What? Is there something wrong?” I exclaimed, and instinctively reached down to pull the little bundle up to my chest so I could see it better.

In the exact same second, a wonderful, thin voice filled my ears. It was my baby crying. But then I heard the other sound again and looked around in the room, confused.

“What’s that?”

“What’s what?” Mom asked. She kept staring, just like the four other people in the room: the midwife, her assistant, the doctor, and Dad.

“That sound!”

Mom and Dad looked at each other in confusion.

“Uhm…It’s your baby crying, Skylar.”

“No, not that!” I scoffed. “The other one. It sounds like…”

I suddenly realized what it was. It was Jared. My baby’s father was howling from somewhere deep in the wilderness, over three thousand miles away, and the baby and I were probably the only ones who heard him.

That made me start crying, but only silently, and I didn’t care if they thought it was happy tears because of the baby.

Because it definitely was that too. But to feel Jared close in a moment like this made my heart swell with such love that I couldn’t have expressed it even if I tried.

“Never mind,” I sniffled, and smiled through my tears. But then I realized why everybody was so startled.

My baby was covered with hair. Lots and lots of tiny, dark hair like soft fur all over his skin. Even his face. Then he opened his eyes, and he was so unbelievably beautiful and looked so much like his father that I giggled.

“It’s a boy,” I whispered, with a voice that cracked and broke.

“Keesha was wrong. It’s a boy,” I said a little louder and cradled him in my arms.

My body was shaking from exhaustion, and tears kept streaming down my face, while my little son slowly calmed down to the sound of my heartbeat and voice.

“I love you,” I cooed and kissed the top of his head.

Then I had to wipe my lips because it didn’t taste very good, and I laughed while relief and happiness took over my body and made me forget about the previous excruciating pain.

“Thank you, Jared,” I whispered and searched for the moon in the darkness outside the window. I didn’t see it. I didn’t have to. I knew it was full, and somehow, I knew my baby would look like a normal baby when it started to wane.

I was right.

***

I had just come home from the hospital when Dad went to pick Jared up at the airport. He still struggled to fully understand that Jared was a werewolf, but he accepted it and believed me.

But I think it was the baby that really convinced him, because he looked like he’d fallen from the moon the day after, when the fur-like hair was gone, and my son looked like a normal baby.

He didn’t say anything, though, and the midwife, who was even more startled than him, didn’t say much either.

It seemed like Dad and Jared had talked about things on their way home, because the conversation between them was light and humorous when they came through the main door.

I immediately locked eyes with Jared, who came rushing to my side, and sat down next to me on the couch while I was breastfeeding our baby.

“How are you, my Louve?”

He kissed me and wrapped his arm around my shoulders, and he had the softest and most loving gaze when he saw his son for the first time. Needless to say, I teared up.

“I’m good,” I said with a choked-up voice. Then I giggled at how silly I was, and Jared gave me another kiss on my temple.

“I’m hormonal, sore, and tired, but I feel great.”

I turned to him and got lost in his beautiful brown eyes. Eyes that looked just like our son’s.

“I heard you,” I whispered and made sure my parents didn’t hear, and Jared smiled.

“I heard you too.”

He leaned in to smell my hair and let out his usual low growl, and I blushed because of the way I responded to his proximity.

My heart was full again now that he was here, but the most important thing was that he’d kind of been there when our son was born too.

“He’s like you,” I whispered and studied Jared, who nodded knowingly. He seemed proud. But me?

I started to feel sad. I knew what that meant. Our baby was a werewolf like his Dad, which meant that he would have to live in the depth of the woods too. I would be left here all alone.

“What’s wrong, Louve?”

Concerned eyes scanned me, and I think he already knew what I was thinking. It wouldn’t change the reality, though. Unless…

Suddenly the answer was as bright as a day. There couldn’t be any other solution, even if it meant that I would have to distance myself from my parents.

We’d solve the practical issues as they came, anyway. I turned to Jared, more determined than ever and beamed toward him.

“Make me yours.”

He knew what I meant, but he still seemed unsure.

“Like…marry you? Because…”

“No,” I interrupted. “Although, I wouldn’t mind that.”

I giggled until Jared silenced me by placing his finger on my lips. Then he slowly got up from the couch, and I felt confused.

Normally, I could read his emotions pretty easily, but not now. He just smiled and reached for something in his pocket.

Then he got down on one knee.

“I’m glad you said that, because I’ve been waiting for the right opportunity for a very long time.”

He emphasized the word “very,” and I knew exactly what he meant. We’d been together for hundreds of years, only parted now and then until we came back together again.

Now that he’d found me, he wasn’t letting me go for anything, and I didn’t want him to, either.

“He’s doing it!” I heard Mom squeal quietly from the kitchen. “Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God!”

I giggled when Dad shushed her, and I blinked away a tear when Jared continued. However, it wasn’t as much what he said verbally that made my chest ache with love.

It was everything he showed me through his mind. The love we shared was from another dimension, and it was time to let it blossom.

“Yes!” I exclaimed.

Jared chuckled. “I haven’t asked the question yet.”

“Well, do it then,” I whined and looked at our son, who had fallen asleep in my arms, safe, loved, and protected from the world.

When Jared took my hand and looked at me with a huge smile, I was close to sobbing with happiness.

“I was wondering if you would be my wife?”

“Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!” I laughed and felt ecstatic when he placed a beautiful golden ring on my finger. There was one bigger diamond and several small ones inlaid in the gold all the way around it.

“They symbolize all the kids we’re going to have,” he smirked, and I slapped his arm playfully.

“You’d better give me enough time to recover, unless you want to carry them yourself.”

Both of us smiled like goofs until Jared leaned in for a kiss that took my breath away. He ended it by placing a finger on my chin to make sure he held my gaze, and a flicker of yellow glowed in his eyes.

“I know what you meant,” he whispered, so lowly that I almost didn’t hear him, and he had that unreadable expression again. Except, now I knew what it meant. He was finally doing it. I just didn’t know when.

“Now you’re mine,” he stated with a wink before Mom attacked us and showered us both with hugs and kisses.

Not surprisingly, our son woke up from all the commotion and things got busy, and while Mom prepared a nice dinner to celebrate, Jared changed his first diaper. Just like a normal family.

Except…we weren’t ~quite~ normal.