An entire hour of beeps and waiting and Maeve lying still while strangers assured us everything looked good.
I aged by about twelve years in the plastic hospital chair. Artem never let go of her hand. Gregor remained by the door because I was sure he still thought she was capable of running again.
When the doctor came back smiling, I nearly kissed her on the mouth.
“Everything looks good. The contractions have stopped. The baby's happy. You’re free to go.”
Maeve let out a breath that turned into a faint laugh. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. But rest. No heavy lifting, no stress, and if it starts again, come straight back. Other than that hopefully the baby will settle until he is due.”
Maeve nodded fast enough to suggest she intended to obey exactly one half of that advice and no one would be stopping her.
“Thank you,” she said, voice wobbly now that the danger had passed and she could afford to feel it.
Artem helped her sit up, one hand at her back. “We’ll take care of her.”
The doctor looked between the four of us with professional neutrality and personal curiosity. “And who’s the father?”
Maeve opened her mouth.
Artem spoke first. “All of us.”
The doctor blinked once. Credit to her, that was the only reaction she had.
“And the husband?”
Maeve made a tired noise. “There isn’t a husband.”
“Not yet,” Artem said smoothly.
Maeve turned her head and looked at him with the exhausted disbelief of a woman too tired to fight but fully intending to remember that comment for future use.
“The NHS forms are going to need more boxes,” she muttered.
I leaned in. “We can provide supplementary documentation. And you’ll be having the baby at a private hospital. We need to decide which.”
The doctor coughed into her hand.
Maeve shut her eyes. “Of course you will. God forbid the Russian mafia would allow their child to be born in the public system.”
Our child.
That was when I knew she was ours and not just because of some fairytale nonsense where our matched scents bonded our souls after one night in Prague.
Though even then all three of us were already hers in the only way that mattered to omegas and alphas.
The ride home was quiet.
Maeve leaned into Artem with her eyes closed, looking wrung out and small in a way I did not like at all. Gregor sat in the front beside me, one elbow near the window, gaze scanning the street as if Edinburgh might suddenly launch an ambush on the route home. I drove like the car was made of crystal and Maeve would murder me personally if I hit a pothole.
Rain had washed the city clean. Streetlights turned the wet morning roads gold.
After a while, Maeve spoke.
“I’m sorry.”
Artem’s arm tightened around her. “For what?”
