Then Kess's face contorts, and the mystic is moving again.
"The boy is coming. Quickly now—he's impatient."
Our son takes after his sister.
He arrives barely ten minutes later, just as loud, just as furious, just as determined to make his presence known. The mystic catches him the same way, clears his airway, and his scream harmonizes with Sera's in a duet of newborn outrage.
"Also healthy." The mystic sounds almost surprised. "No curse markers. Completely clean."
Clean.
Both of them. Clean and healthy and free.
The curse that's haunted my bloodline for four generations, that killed my mother and forty-seven omegas and poisoned every part of my existence—it ends here. Tonight. With two screaming babies who will never know what it felt like to carry divine rage in their blood.
The mystic places our son in my arms.
I've held weapons. Held dying soldiers. Held Kess while she transformed and screamed and nearly died absorbing three centuries of punishment. But I've never held anything like this.
He's heavier than Sera—larger, too, with a shock of dark hair and eyes that are currently scrunched shut against the world. His cry has already faded to small hiccupping sounds, like he's exhausted himself with the effort of being born. One tiny hand wraps around my finger, and my heart stops.
"He needs a name too," Kess says from the bed. She's holding Sera against her chest, both of them skin-to-skin, the baby already rooting for her first meal.
"Cade." The name comes without thinking. "After my mother's father. He was—" I swallow past the lump in my throat. "He was kind. Before the curse took hold in his line. He used to sneak me sweets from the kitchen when my father wasn't looking."
"Cade." Kess tests the name. Nods. "Sera and Cade. Our children."
Our children.
I carry Cade to the bed, settle carefully beside Kess, arrange us all into a tangle of limbs and babies and exhaustion. Sera is nursing now, tiny mouth working with fierce determination. Cade is falling asleep against my chest, his heartbeat a rapid flutter against my skin.
"We did it." Kess's voice is barely a whisper. "They're here. They're healthy. They're ours."
"You did it." I press my lips to her sweat-damp temple. "You saved them. You saved all of us."
"We saved each other." She turns her head, finds my mouth with hers. The kiss is soft, exhausted, tasting of salt and tears and something that might be joy. "That's what we do now. Save each other."
The twins shift against us—Sera releasing Kess's breast with a small sigh of contentment, Cade burrowing deeper into the warmth of my chest. They're so new. So fragile. So utterly dependent on us to keep them safe in a world that's done its best to destroy us.
We'll keep them safe. Whatever it takes.
The curse is broken. The battle is won. The kingdom will survive or it won't, and either way we'll face it together.
But right now, in this moment, there's just us. A family. Whole and healing and finally, finally free.
I close my eyes and let myself believe in the future for the first time in three hundred years.
41
Kess
Six months later,I still wake up reaching for him.
It's instinct now—my hand finding the warm bulk of his body before my eyes even open, claws tracing the familiar landscape of scars and scales and sleep-warmed skin. He's always there. Has been every morning since the ritual, since the battle, since everything changed.
Some promises he actually keeps.
Today he's on his stomach, face buried in the pillow, one arm thrown across my waist. The morning light catches the silver threading through his dark hair—new, since his father's death, like the stress of it aged him in ways three centuries of curse couldn't manage. I trace the strands with one careful claw and feel him stir.
