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“Oh, excellent work, Steve!” Harrison beamed with pride. “I knew you’d find a way to calm Sebastian down. Now, Perry, are you ready?”
Perry nodded and began to undress as daintily as he could, given the situation, while trying very hard not to think of what was going on in the atrium, or why it was that Everard was taking so long to arrive.
* * *
Harrison pronounced Perry fully dilated not even half an hour after their arrival in the hoard room, and not long after it came time to push. Perry thought himself prepared for what was to come, having laid two respectably sized clutches, but he was wrong. Eggs were ovular, smooth, and pliant, but babies? They weren’t uniformly shaped, and their bony shoulders posed far more of a challenge to pass than any clutch he’d laid before.
“Push!” Harrison insisted.
Which was ridiculous, since it was all Perry had been doing.
He clenched his teeth and strained, bearing down until it felt like he’d birth all of his insides and not just his child. The pain, while stemmed by Harrison’s emerging magic, was dulled, but as he pushed it worked itself into a fevered frenzy that escaped Perry as a scream. Sebastian, who’d gone back to cradling Steve, took his hand, which Perry squeezed so tightly, he thought his fingers might break.
“Push!” Harrison repeated, a little more enthusiastically this time.
In a moment of pain-fueled weakness, Perry thought the only way he’d be able to push more was if he pushed everyone in the room out a window.
“You’re so close,” Harrison said. “I can see the baby’s head. Just a little more, Perry. You’re doing great. Just—oh.”
Perry gasped. The pain and pressure eased all at once, and a moment later a small, shrill cry filled the hoard room. A baby’s cry. The second he heard it, he silently began to cry, too.
The baby was alive.
It seemed impossible, yet his ears did not deceive him. There was no treachery here, no deceit, no sugar-coated lies. The truth was, behind his hope, trauma centuries in the making had prickled at the back of his mind this entire time and whispered terrible things—that this pregnancy would end like the others and his heart would break again for another baby he so desperately wanted, but couldn’t have. After all, he’d suffered close to a hundred losses. The probability that this time it would be different was so small, it might as well have not existed.
But here she was.
Her cry filled the space where there had once been silence and stitched together the broken pieces of his heart.
Their daughter.
Their baby.
Their miracle.
Harrison cooed and fussed over her while Perry wept. Sebastian, meanwhile, set Steve down, ripped off his shirt, and strode to where Harrison was tying their daughter’s umbilical cord. He presented the tatters to Harrison, who took them, quickly wiped the baby off, wrapped her up, and gathered her in his arms.
Perry blinked away his tears. For the first time, he was able to see his daughter’s face.
It was small and pink and wrinkled. Her eyes were closed and her tiny mouth was open as she continued to cry. There was a swirl of black hair atop her head and a very Drake-like countenance to her face. She’d grow up to look like her father, Perry was sure. He could only hope that she turned out every bit as fierce and brave.
“Is she well?” he asked breathlessly, urgently, as tears streamed down his cheeks. “Tell me she’s well. I cannot lose her. I can’t.”
Sebastian, who’d been zeroed in on the baby until that very moment, stepped away from Harrison and came quickly to the bedside, where he sat and wrapped Perry up in his arms. Perry cuddled up to him and laid his head on the side of Sebastian’s bare chest, safe in his dragon’s embrace.
“Oh,” Harrison said. He looked at the babe in his arms and smiled. “I wouldn’t worry. She’s as healthy as can be, just a little small from having been born prematurely. We’ll have Everard look her over when he gets here, but as far as I can tell, she’s perfect. Congratulations, Perry and Sebastian. You’re fathers. Again. How exciting!”
Perry sucked in a breath that turned into a laugh, then dissolved into an overjoyed sob.
The baby was healthy.
She would live.
Upon hearing the news, a sound rumbled in Sebastian’s chest somewhat like a purr. With utmost care, he dragged Perry onto his lap and kissed the top of his head, then again, and again, until Perry had well and truly melted from his affections.
“You’ve done it,” Sebastian whispered against the shell of his ear. “My brave, strong, resilient mate. Look what you have given us. Look at the life you’ve made.”
Harrison brought the baby to them and laid her in Perry’s arms. She quieted, then stopped crying altogether. Perry was quick to take her place. He held her close and sobbed loudly while Sebastian kissed each of his curls, one after the other, until there wasn’t a part of Perry within his reach he hadn’t loved on.
