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But what little joy I had stored up, the dreams my mate would read my letter and rush to my side, faded when my water broke.
“The babe is the wrong way round,” someone said.
“Push, Beatrice.”
“You are doing so well…”
A final push.
“It’s a boy! Quick. We need… Call the doctor. Run!”
Silence.
No sound of a baby’s cry. My son’s cry.
Silence.
“The babe… I want to hold my son,” I reached out my weak arms. Ready to meet the child I brought into this world.
“I’m sorry, Bea.”
“What?” I tried to sit up. “Where? Where is the midwife? Where is my son?”
“I’m so sorry, darling…” Mrs Markham’s face came into focus. “He… I don’t know what…”
“No. Healthy and… Healthy,” I insisted. “You promised.”
“Bea…” my Papa appeared at my other side. His eyes and cheeks wet with tears.
“Where is he? Tell the midwife to bring him back. I want my son.”
“I’m so sorry,” he kissed my hands over and over and over. “This is all my fault. I am so sorry…”
The sobbing gasp that broke through the uncomfortable silence was mine. I squeezed my eyes closed, hoping to hold at bay the sickness that threatened to overwhelm me.
“But my son…” I would love him. I would shower him with the affection my parents showed me. No matter the difficulties. The child, he deserved everything. “I want to hold my son.”
“Better this way. Better to mourn the loss of everything,” my Papa purred. “Nothing can hold you back now. Better to… The child is gone. I am sorry Bea, but it is better this way. You will understand when you are older. You will understand.”
I mourned, but a part of me felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. If the boy had grown up looking like his father, my mate, the man and alpha who’d abandoned me, could I have lived with that?
My soul died the moment I realised the life I’d imagine with my best friend and lover would never manifest in this lifetime.
Present
My breath shuddered through a body that did not feel like my own. As if my soul shared this prison of flesh and bone, unable to break free from shackles I’d grown so used to wearing I no longer felt their weight.
And years of grief, buried in the ground, scratched at my heart. But the wounds there had long since scarred over, and the pain I’d never thought I could escape remained a phantom of the past. I willed the tears to flow, but my eyes stayed dry. Had I become callous, unable to mourn the loss of the babe? I could not be so heartless.
The weight of his arm wrapping around my shoulders reminded me I was not alone.
“What is it? Omega?” Strong arms picked me up and I curled, involuntarily into his naked chest. It could not have been easy carrying me, but he made it seem more than easy. I found myself on the shore and my mate helping me into my clothes with a brisk efficiency. He dressed himself before once again scooping me up into his arms as if I were a featherweight, instead of a woman with full, soft curves.
The tears came then because he was here. The one person I’d needed then was here now. And to my omega, to me– the here, the now was a million times more important than the past.
Jack
My mate was cryingthe soft, silent tears of a grief so deep and scarring she didn’t have the strength to wail and scream.
