“Ooh,” Laken purrs. “Was that the stuff you gave me? That was amazing, viper’s venom.”
Ezrina lifts a brow, and Laken gives her a brief thumbs-up.
I look to Logan. “Why can’t I have the damn viper’s venom? Laken had it, and little Wesley Cooper has practically rewritten the theory of relativity.”
Laken laughs. “It’s true.”
“No.” Logan is staunch in his cruelty. “We’ve got this, Skyla.” Logan gives my hand a squeeze with his eyes bearing hard over mine.
I glare at Nev until he slips something into my mouth and I take it with vigor.
“Under your tongue,” Ezrina instructs, but I say to hell with that and swallow. I need this poison in me now.
Another contraction comes on and I let out a hair-raising scream, but Logan’s lips warm my ear and curb me for a moment.
“Skyla, remember this?” A visual of that first day Logan and I met at the bowling alley comes to mind. I can see him there, the very first moment my eyes set over his and it was magic. And for some reason, I feel that magic, here, right now.
“And this.” Logan shows me that first kiss we shared in Ellis Harrison’s pool house. That heated feeling that ricocheted off my bones hits me again and evicts the sting from my body, replacing it with better things. “This one?” It’s Logan holding me on the field at West—Logan and me in the butterfly room, the two of us getting married down at the Falls of Virtue. Our honeymoon comes in jags, his searing rock-hard body over mine, bringing me to ecstasy again and again. It was perfect bliss, still is.
Logan talks me through three more contractions just like that one, and soon Ezrina instructs me to push. I try my hardest to bear down, but it feels as if my limbs, my every muscle has turned to jelly.
“I can’t.” It comes out weak.
“Buck up, Messenger,” Chloe snips. “We don’t have all night.”
Ezrina shakes her head. “You swallowed the venom. It’s too powerful to refute it.”
“What the hell?” Logan growls it out, pissed, and I’m not entirely sure if it’s Ezrina or me he’s ticked at. And who the heck cares.
“Marshall, give her a knife,” I howl. “You’ll have to cut it out.”
“No.” Just about every voice in the room bellows it out.
Marshall’s cheek flickers. “We’re not equipped, my love. The child has already lodged itself in the canal. There’s no turning back.”
“Geez. Who invited you to the party?” I mutter.
“And”—Ezrina lifts her chin—“push.”
And push I do, one time after another, and just as I’m about to give up, Giselle lets out a yelp.
“Oh, Skyla, this is my favorite part! Your bottom is blowing up like a water balloon. Oh, I see hair! Pretty, pretty bloody hair. Logan, come see!”
I can’t breathe.
So much pain.
This is it. Emily’s vision is about to come to fruition. I’m done. I’m dying. And sadly, death is the most merciful option for me now.
Logan is quick to abandon his post by my side as he flies down to the edge of the bed. Marshall’s ridiculous mattress is so big Logan might as well be in another zip code.
Laken takes his place and picks up my hand. “You got this. Next push and this is all in the rearview mirror.”
“Push!” Ezrina shouts just as Chloe pinches my foot so hard I’m certain she’s trying to amputate it, but for whatever reason, it spurs me on just so and I let out a roar as I squeeze every muscle in my jelly-like body.
Marshall lifts a hand. “And we see its beautiful face.”
Ezrina quickly does something down there, suctioning, I’m guessing, before grunting to Logan to be prepared.
