30. Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Twenty-nine

Amelia was sitting on the bench that she thought of as hers and Rome’s. She was rocking her child and making funny faces at them. Surrounding her were flashes of what life with Rome would have been like.

“It’s not the easiest of lives.” Luna sat next to her.

“It isn’t, but it’s beautiful. As time goes on, it gets easier.”

“The marching of time. What once wasn’t accepted now is, What was thought of as right, is now wrong. Time is not patient, she never was.”

Amelia shook her head. She didn’t want to think of time as another goddess out to screw her over.

“Why am I here?” She reached out to Rome and Mal, who were hovering over her beside where she hung between life and death, to touch them one more time.

“Time is running out.” In the air before her, a large clock with golden hands was moving steadily, ticking downward. Next to the clock was a beautiful goddess who bowed at her before disappearing, not taking the clock with her.

“O. P. has been generous enough to grant you options.” A large scale appeared. Amelia knew that she could walk one of two paths. A beautiful goddess appeared next to the scale, she bowed and faded away.

“Not everyone gets this chance,” Luna told her.

“I’m the beginning of the end that has no end.” It was a paraphrase, but it suited the situation.

“If I choose to move on? Your request will be granted.

Could she do that? Leave Rome and MAL behind, knowing that she was taking something precious from Rome with her. Did she want a future that promised hardship, love, and acceptance?

Was she the coward she always imagined herself to be? If so, why hadn’t she died on her naming day? Within her mind and heart, there was a bubble of confusion. It might take a century for her to understand what she was feeling and thinking. One thing rose above the noise that threatened to take her under. She clutched onto it like it was a lifeline.

“I’m ready.” She closed her eyes and waited for the end.

“Why won’t she wake up?” Rome had been pacing their bedroom for seven days, waiting, pleading with the goddess Luna that his mate would open her eyes. That their child would hang on to life and live.

There had been no response, Luna was quiet. How would he live without his mate and child? He had no desire to go back to what he once was, a lonely, bitter alpha. If she left him, he would find a way to follow her. He swore that to the goddess. Make no mistake, when he mated Amelia, he did it for life.

Rome wanted to yell at Mal, his son, but he couldn’t. Yes, he knew what his mate had started calling their son, and he approved.

Mal was just as destroyed as he was. The look on his face of absolute terror broke Rome’s heart. There was nothing they could do except watch as Amelia fought the battle of her life.

He went over and engulfed Mal in a large hug, just holding him tight, communicating to him without words that whatever happened, it was going to be okay. At this point, it was Amelia's choice, and they would have to live with whatever she decided. He laid next to his mate one more time, taking her in his arms and holding her tight, communicating his love, whether she could feel it, he didn't know.

He loved her. In all the centuries that he had waited for her, he never expected someone as beautiful and as complicated as Amelia. Her joy and love filled his heart. Her fierce protectiveness of not only him, but the people of his pack, made him a stronger Alpha, male, and mate. He pulled his mate even closer and then looked at his son, then eyed the other side of the bed. Mal gave a nod of his head, then slipped into the bed beside his mother, wrapping his arms around her.

Together they held her close, wanting her, almost demanding her to fight for life with them. It might be easy, it might be hard, Mal didn't know. He just knew that without her, the sun wouldn't shine, and the light of the moon wouldn't caress him the way it always did.

Mal held his mother fiercely in his arms. Family, it was something he never thought to have, at least not since his stepfather came into the picture. His mother had spent so much time trying to appease the beast that she had brought into the house that she didn't have time for her son.

He knew that she regretted it, but the time was over when his stepfather pulled a gun on him. He always thought he was going to be able to save her, a child’s dream. In the end, he was barely able to save himself.

Life demanded another sacrifice from him, another mother, and he wasn't willing to pay it, not this time. Why would Luna bless him with unknown abilities and then take the one person from him that he needed? Why couldn't he save her? Was this the price he'd be called upon to pay to have Luna's presence in his life? He looked at his father, and the mark that was set just below his wrist, the same mark that was on his own wrist, and how he wished his mother wore one too, he wanted to be as much a part of her bloodline as he was of his father's. He didn't want to lose her.

His eyes closed as silent tears tracked down his cheeks.

“Why is it so quiet in here? I feel like I’m at a funeral.” Amelia’s throat was raw and scratchy.

She'd do a lot for a glass of water. The silence in the room was all-encompassing as both Rome and Mal slowly turned their heads to look at her, afraid to believe that they had heard her speak.

“Seriously,” she tried to chuckle.

“That is some Friday the 13th horror night stuff the two of you just did.” Her eyes were only half open, but she caught twin smiles on their faces, before her eyes closed once again. It felt like she was trying to sink into sleep.

“Amelia.”

“Mom.”

Both voices called out at the same time.

She fought sleep and managed to open her eyelids. "I'm here, I'm here. I haven't gone anywhere."

“Don’t leave us, Mom. Please don’t leave us.”

“Baby, stay with me. I need you and our child, and our firstborn. Please.”

"I'm not leaving. I'm here." She was so tired. She'd been fighting for so long.

It took all the strength she had to move her hands, one to clutch Rome and the other to clutch Mal. “I’m not going anywhere, but I need to sleep.” Her eyes closed, and she tumbled into a world of sleep where she could dream.

The life she had seen stretched out over untold years began to fray at the sides in the dim hazy awareness of a dream. And once again, she was sitting on her bench and Luna was beside her.

“Humans say they want to know the future, but I disagree. Knowing the future does not bring you comfort. Even if for a moment it is beautiful, there is always a trial or a tribulation waiting to come up and challenge you.

When you wake, all that you’ve seen and experienced will be nothing but a shady image that may or may not come true. Because one of the things that we have in life is that we all have a choice. So, whatever you’ve seen was born of one choice, but that is not a guarantee that it is the choice you will make when you’re in that situation.”

Luna, she wanted to bow her head to somehow show her appreciation, to state that she was her goddess, but she couldn’t even in her sleep. That’s how tired she was, exhausted.

“I know your heart, child.”

“How did my child and I survive?” Once the joy of seeing her mate and son passed, she had wondered about that question.

“You passed your test. Yours was two-pronged. The first prong was, were you willing to take your human life and put it on the line for someone else’s life? And when you saved the young boy, you answered that question quite brazenly.

“Yes, his life was just as important to you as your own.” Luna stood, preparing to leave Amelia by herself.

“Wait, you said the test was two-pronged. What was the second prong of the test?”

“You chose to embrace your immortality when you decided to live. Rome didn’t have a choice and neither did his brothers, but you weren’t cursed, and you had a choice whether to live with your mate until the end of time or to leave him and wait patiently for him to appear one day.”

“It was all about acceptance,” Amelia said.

Luna was gone, but Amelia could hear her voice reflected in the moonlight.

“The best lives lived are all about acceptance.”

Amelia looked back over her life. She had accepted that she needed to run to live, that she would have to fight in order to meet her mate, although she didn't know what she was fighting for at the time. She fought for her son and the child that she was now carrying. Yes, the best lives are those that accept the challenges in front of them and went on to conquer them.

She slipped into a deep sleep with a smile on her face. She couldn’t wait until she saw Rome again and Mal, her males, her life, and she loved them.

A loud scream of pain woke Amelia.

It took her a minute to realize that it was coming from her. The pup, she said, feeling her stomach undulate as it moved like a wave.

“Get Pierre,” Rome told Mal, trying not to lose his shit, as his mate hollered again in pain. Mal didn’t need to be told twice. He was running out of the room barefooted, not even thinking about his shoes.

“Stop,” Amelia said between contractions. “Just call him. You don’t have to physically retrieve him.”

Her laugh and shout of pain were twisted, and she thought that was even funnier, so she laughed even harder. “Males!” It was said with a note of fond exasperation. “I love you, but what happens to you when a female is about to give birth?” She shook her head and held tight to Rome’s hands. Amelia could almost feel the bones in his fingers mashing together.

She tried to loosen her grip, but he’d have none of that. She took several fast, deep breaths, but she wasn’t sure that it was right. It was too late to caution herself to pay better attention to the Lamaze class she took online. And then Pierre came.

“Take slower breaths. You’re breathing too fast,” he told her. The sound of his voice washing over her was comforting.

The same wolf that had scared her in the beginning now brought her peace, because she understood he would do anything in his power to not only save her life, but to save the life of her child. Her mind and her spirit traveled between childbirth. She was with her child, then with her male and her son, back and forth as she waited for Pierre to prep himself for the birth.

Rome's growl is what brought her back to the here and now. She literally had to lift her hand and smack his arm when he acted like he was going to tear Pierre to shreds for taking the cover off her lower half and opening her legs to look between them.

Rome leaned down and kissed her cheek, and he murmured into her ear, “Sorry, mate.”

“It’s a fatal flaw of all male wolves, and alphas are the worst.” Pierre allowed whatever Rome was saying to roll off his back as he got down and started coaching Amelia on childbirth. They worked for hours, feeding her little pieces of ice as she grunted and groaned.

“What happened to me being a wolf and being able to have children without any problem?” she demanded between contractions.

“You’re not a wolf,” Pierre told her. “You’re a shifter, which means that you are part wolf, part human, and there’s never any telling which part will be doing the childbearing at any time. This time could be hard, the next time could be harder, and the time after that could be easy again. It is just luck of the draw.”

Amelia blanched at the thought of having another child. "I've got two, thank you. I'm pretty sure I'm good."

“The head is crowning,” Pierre said. “Now the hard part starts.”

If I could move my feet, Amelia thought to herself, I'd kick him in his gut and show him what the hard part really was.

Instead, she grimaced and pushed when he told her to.

“All right, I see the shoulders. One more push, and the baby will be here.”

Amelia gave it all the strength she had left, her head leaving the bed, her shoulders rolling inwards to help her push, her breath coming slow, deep, and then fast, fast, and faster, until finally the doctor said, her pup was here, and still Pierre hadn't confirmed the sex of their daughter. She just needed to hear it.

She needed to know that they were having a girl, and then from all the names that she and Rome talked about, they could pick one.

“Alpha,” Pierre said, he had cleaned the nose and the mouth of their pup, made sure that he took care of the cord, wrapped the pup in a towel, and placed it in Rome’s arms while he dealt with the afterbirth. Once Amelia was safe and cuddled in the bed, Pierre took the child, did the measurements, made sure the child was clean, and then came over and looked at three sets of expectant eyes.

“May I present to you your son.”