So, I walked through the contractions as best I could, which did help. It was always better to be moving, even though I was exhausted.
At some point, wandering the hallways out there, something changed. Intense, intense pressure, and I knew that it was time. I needed to push.
They checked me. I was dilated.
And then it was resting and pushing and resting and pushing and resting and pushing…
Until they could see his head!
And then… there he was.
Bald. Pink. Wrinkly. Huge eyes.
And tiny. Oh, so tiny.
When he came out, they put him up on my stomach, and he peered up at me with wide, blue, curious eyes. He had small, perfect fingers, and lovely little wiggly toes.
“Hello,” I murmured, running my finger over his skin. When I touched his hands, he instinctively wrapped his fingers around my finger.
And Lachlan was there, and he was kissing me and kissing Wyatt and grinning.
And I was grinning. And Felicity was grinning. And Connor was grinning and telling me he had told me I could do it.
In that moment, I was happier than I’d ever been in my entire life. And exhausted. Really, really exhausted.
* * *
I was also starving. They brought me some hospital food, which I wolfed down, and then I sent Felicity—who was itching to do something—out to get me food from the Flamingo.
I was trying really hard to breastfeed, which is something that looked remarkably simple, but is not, especially when your baby’s mouth is super tiny, and your nipples are all huge from being pregnant, and they literally seem too big to get into his mouth, so you spend all your time trying to cram them into his mouth, while he sucks on whatever he can get his mouth on, even if it’s not actually your nipple at all.
In between bouts of failing to feed my child, I would hand him off to Lachlan, who would then sit there with him, staring down at the little guy, with a radiant expression on his face. I’d never seen Lachlan quite so happy, and it made me feel all tingly and warm inside.
“You should sleep,” Lachlan said to me.
“No, I need to feed him,” I said.
“You did feed him,” said Lachlan.
“I don’t think I did,” I said. “I don’t think it’s working. I don’t think he’s getting anything.”
Lachlan chuckled, looking back at Wyatt. “Would you tell your mommy to stop worrying? Tell her that you’re fine.”
In response, Wyatt began wailing.
“See?” I said. “He’s hungry.” I held out my arms for him.
Lachlan put the baby back into them.
I undid my hospital gown and looked at Wyatt’s tiny mouth and my enormous nipple and felt helpless again.
At that moment, a nurse came in and bustled over. “How’s it going?” she said with a smile.
I gave her a confused look. “I don’t…”
“Here,” she said, reaching down for me. “Is it okay if I…?”
I nodded. “Please. Help.”
“If you sort of pinch it, make it flat like this.” She demonstrated. “And then point it at his nose.” She pressed Wyatt’s head against me.
He opened his mouth wide and latched on.
I furrowed my brow. That felt different. “Oh,” I said. “Like that?”
“Yep,” said the nurse, smiling at me. “If you need more help, ask.” The nurse left.
I looked up at Lachlan, who was watching Wyatt and me with a bemused expression on his face. “Is this weird?” I asked him. “It’s weird, right?”
“It’s amazing,” he said. “You are amazing.”
I smiled a little. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“You dazzle me, Penny Caspian. Always have. Always will.”
* * *
When Felicity showed back up with food, she also brought Ophelia, who oohed and ahhed over the baby, pronouncing him the most adorable little guy she had ever seen, and Vivica, who made a big show of introducing Wyatt to her baby bump and telling him that the two of them were going to be great friends.
Wyatt responded to this information by kicking his legs and waving his arms.
Everyone passed the baby around while I ate.
And then he cried again, so I fed him again, and that time it seemed to go better, thanks to the help of the nurse, but the whole experience was strangely foreign territory to me, when I had thought it would sort of feel natural, something instinctual.
Afterward, he fell asleep.
So, I fell asleep. And Lachlan did too.
We slept for something like three blissful hours. And then Wyatt woke up again.
I yawned as I tried to get him latched on again. “So, this is my life, then? Nurse, sleep, nurse, sleep?”
“This is our life,” said Lachlan. “I’m here too, you know.”
“Right,” I said. “Our life.” I gazed down at Wyatt in disbelief. “We have a baby.”
Lachlan laughed. “Yes. Yes, we do.”
I looked from Wyatt to Lachlan and then back to Wyatt again.
“You okay?” said Lachlan in a soft voice.
“I…” I was abruptly overcome with a wave of emotion. This had happened. This was it. I’d spent so much of my life convinced that I could never have a child, and now this beautiful little person was in my arms, thriving and wonderful and sweet.
I had Wyatt, I had Lachlan, I had my friends and my hotel, and I spent my days solving crimes and helping people and—
Happiness burst through me, singing through my body, down my limbs, out my nerve endings. This was my life. And it was perfect. I reached out a hand for Lachlan, tears in my eyes.
“Hey,” he said, settling down next to me on the bed, wrapping his fingers around mine. “What is it?”
“I just feel so grateful is all,” I said.
He reached out and ran his thumb over my cheek, wiping away the tear that had escaped from my eye. His voice was husky. “I know what you mean. Everything right now is…”
“Perfect,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
We smiled at each other.
And at that moment, there was a crash and a sound of shattering glass.
“What the hell?” I said.
The red-scaled snout of a dragon was poking in through the curtains of the window in my room.
“Damn it,” I said. “We forgot the talisman. I’m still wearing it.” I needed to put the talisman onto Wyatt so that he wouldn’t attract the rogue dragons. But right now, if I did that, it would mean that the dragon would go back to being wild.
But of course, it was still wild, because Wyatt would need to—
“Wyatt has to touch it to tame it,” said Lachlan, echoing my thoughts.
“How can he do that?” I said, clutching the baby.
Wyatt had let go of my breast and was turning a wobbling head toward the dragon. His arms flailed every which way, which was kind of what they did, but he seemed to be doing it more vigorously now.
Lachlan took Wyatt out of my arms and brought him over to the dragon. He placed our son’s tiny hand against the dragon’s scales.
The dragon eased inside the window, and sat there staring at Wyatt with its dead, black eyes.
There was a banging on the door.
“Hello?” I called.
“Coming through!” The door opened, and Clarke pushed inside, an arrow notched into her bow. She surveyed us, saw the dragon, and then lowered the bow. “Should have figured it was you guys.”
Wyatt was gurgling at the dragon, eyes wide.
“Cute kid,” said Clarke. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Thanks,” said Lachlan. “You, uh, you think you could do something about this?” He gestured to the dragon.
“Well, I guess I could shove it out of the window and shoot it,” said Clarke. “It wouldn’t damage anything below if it fell. There’s nothing there but grass. Might be messy, I guess, but that’d be
my problem, not yours.”
“Do it,” I said.
She did.
And the minute the dragon was dead, I got the talisman onto Wyatt, wrapping the leather strap around his little wrist. “There won’t be any more dragons coming to call,” I said to Lachlan.
Clarke set down her bow and came over to peer down at Wyatt, who was still in Lachlan’s arms. “He’s so tiny,” she said in a breathless voice.
I laughed. “He’s wonderful.”
“Yeah,” Clarke said, and she smiled down at him. The smile lit up her face, softened her, made her seem younger and more vulnerable than I ever thought she could be.
But then she backed up. “I, uh, I should go.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
She shook her head. “Got that body to deal with.” She gestured at the window.
“Right,” I said.
“Thank you, Clarke,” said Lachlan. “Thank you for dealing with that rogue.”
She shrugged. “That’s my job.” She headed for the door. “Uh, you guys take care of the baby, okay?”
“We will,” I said.
“Of course we will,” said Lachlan.
Clarke slipped through the door.
We were alone.
I climbed back into the hospital bed.
Lachlan handed me Wyatt, who was wide-eyed and flailing.
I kissed the top of the baby’s head. “Shh, little one. It’s okay now. It’s all okay.”
“Listen, Penny,” said Lachlan, sitting down on the edge of my bed. “About where I was last night…”
I narrowed my eyes. “Where were you? What the heck happened?”
He sighed. “Last night, I went to seek out an ancient vampire, the oldest vampire alive so far as anyone knows. I was looking for information on the stuff about Wyatt. What I truly wanted was for that vampire to tell me that the Green King and the blood dragon weren’t even real. That he’d never heard anything so outlandish.”
I swallowed. “That isn’t what he told you, is it?”
Slowly, Lachlan shook his head.
I turned back to Wyatt, so tiny and perfect in my arms. “So, it’s all true?”
“I think so,” he said quietly. “But that doesn’t mean that it’s all going to happen.”
“Lachlan, if there are monsters in the water waking up after thousands of years—”
“I’m going to find a way to stop all of it. To protect him.” He reached out and stroked Wyatt’s hand. Wyatt immediately grabbed tightly onto Lachlan’s finger. “I won’t let this happen to our little son, Penny. I won’t.”
I kissed Wyatt’s forehead. “We do have to protect him.”
“There is nothing more important to me in the entire universe,” said Lachlan.
And then I felt that same burst of pink love that I’d felt when Lachlan bit me. I felt it radiating from Wyatt out to both Lachlan and me, wrapping us in trusting, hopeful adoration.
There was nothing more important to me either.
* * *
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Fire Born (City of Dragons Book 5) Page 24