Page 88 of Marrying the Pakhan

“You scared me more.” He laughs, shaky, real, dragging a hand down his face like he’s trying to physically wipe away the last few minutes. “I’ve fought armed men in a burning hangar, and nothing came close to how afraid I just was. I’d take that fight again over these last five minutes.”

“Well, don’t get too comfortable. I’m told the actual hardest part is still coming.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Not for any part of it. I’ve sat through worse than pushing, Harper. I promise you that.”

“That’s not actually comforting.”

“I’m aware. I’m still saying it.”

The doctor confirms it a few minutes later, checking the monitor one more time, satisfied with what she’s seeing. “Everything looks good now. And Harper, you’re fully dilated. It’s time to start pushing.”

I look at Viktor, exhausted and terrified and more ready than I’ve ever been for anything in my entire life, and he squeezes my hand once, steady, certain, exactly the anchor he’s been through every single moment of tonight.

“Ready?” he asks.

“Ready,” I say, and mean it completely.

44

HARPER

Pushing is nothing like anyone actually prepares you for: effort that empties everything else in the world until there’s only this- Viktor’s hand locked in mine, the doctor’s steady count, my own body doing something I didn’t know it was capable of doing.

“You’re doing so well,” Viktor murmurs against my temple, voice rough with his own exhaustion after hours of matching mine. “Almost there. I can see him.”

“Him?”

“Her. Whichever. I don’t actually know; I just needed you to hear something encouraging.”

I laugh, half sob, half genuine amusement even through the pain, and push again, and again, every ounce of strength I have left funneled into this single, overwhelming effort, the world narrowing down to nothing but Viktor’s voice and my own heartbeat and the doctor’s steady count guiding me through it.

Then, all at once, a sound fills the room that I’ll remember for the rest of my life, a thin, furious wail, indignant at having been asked to exist in the world at all, and something in my chest breaks open completely.

“He’s here,” the doctor says, lifting him, and I catch a glimpse of him before they even finish, small and red and completely perfect. “A healthy baby boy.”

“A boy.” Viktor’s voice cracks entirely, all composure gone. “Harper, we have a son.”

I start crying the moment the words actually land, relief and joy tangled together after months of fear I’d almost forgotten how to set down. After the scare tonight, after everything leading up to it, hearing the word healthy attached to my son feels like the single greatest sentence anyone’s ever said to me.

They place him on my chest a moment later, warm and impossibly small, and I look down at him and feel something settle into place that I don’t think I ever fully knew was missing until exactly this moment.

“Hi,” I whisper, voice shaking. “Hi, baby. We’ve been waiting for you.”

Viktor leans over both of us, one hand resting against the baby’s back, the other still holding mine, and I watch him take in his son for the first time, tears he doesn’t bother hiding at all.

“He’s perfect,” Viktor says. “Absolutely perfect.”

“He’s got your nose.”

“Poor child.”

I laugh again, exhausted and overwhelmed and happier than I’ve felt in longer than I can remember, and we stay like that a while, just the three of us, before the nurses gently take him to be checked and cleaned, promising to bring him right back.

By the time Viktor lets Ginger and Dimitri into the room, I’m sitting up, exhausted but steady, our son back in my arms, wrapped in a soft blue blanket that somehow already looks like it belongs to him.

Ginger bursts through the door fully awake at three in the morning, can manage, Mrs. Bennett having apparently driven her over the second Viktor’s call came through, still in her pajamas, one shoe missing entirely.

“Is it here? Is it a boy or a girl?”