I brought the dark-haired baby to him without protesting.
“It usually works to revive a baby, but perhaps it can work the other way around as well,” Enya said.
Together we lowered the babies onto Wren’s chest, their tiny faces brushing against her skin. For a moment nothing happened. Ronan gently pushed their heads closer to hernose. Wren inhaled sharply. Her nostrils flared as she caught the scent of her children. Her eyes fluttered open.
“She smells them,” I whispered.
“Now!” Enya barked at us. “Feed her!”
I pressed my wrist to Wren’s lips again. This time she swallowed. Slowly at first, but then a second time. She kept drinking and color crept back into her scales. I didn’t realize I was crying until tears fell onto the bedding.
“Good girl,” Yazmine murmured.
I offered my wrist next, my voice shaking as I leaned close to Wren. Her hands reflexively clutched her babies to her chest.
“Come back,” I whispered. “Please come back.”
Her breathing steadied. The bleeding slowed. Her wings twitched faintly.
She lived.
Stars above, she lived.
Kieran opened his own arm and let her drink as well. I wasn’t sure how long we fed her, but the exhaustion hit us all at once.
I collapsed backward against a neighboring tree, pale with blood loss. I sagged to the side, catching myself with trembling hands.
Mara clapped sharply. “That’s enough. All of you, lie down.”
None of us argued, collapsing into the moss around Wren.
The female drakens moved around us with quiet efficiency, ordering Nasi and Canavar around like their personal servants. Bedding and sheets and pillows appeared out of nowhere, wrapping around our legs and under our heads. Water was forced into our hands, and someone checked our pulses. They placed the babies against Wren’s chest and guided them to nurse.
I tried to keep my eyes open. I wanted to be certain she was truly alive and well, along with the draklings, but exhaustion relentlessly dragged at me.
The last thing I saw before sleep claimed me was Wren stirring faintly, turning her head toward our daughters as they suckled beside her.
She was alive.
Our daughters were alive.
And for the first time since the vampyre attack?—
I allowed myself to truly rest.
Chapter Thirty-Three
WREN
I woke to silence. Not the tense, waiting silence of danger. Not the groaning, trembling silence of the volcano. A soft, home-warm silence.
We were back in the treehouse, which had somehow managed to withstand everything, and I was curled up in my nest with my mates around me.
My daughters were cuddled against my ribs, tiny wings twitching in dreams, little claws tangled in the fabric of my tunic.
Daughters?
As in more than one?
