Page 78 of Deacon

A shaky laugh escaped me, carrying everything terror had left behind.

Blue was alive, and right then, that had to be enough.

21

Lila

BThey brought Blue back through the hospital doors to a building rearranged by relief. The code purple was over, but its residue clung to the halls in clipped security movements and nurses looking up whenever footsteps came too quickly around a corner. Knowing Blue was alive should have settled me. Instead, adrenaline kept everything painfully sharp.

She arrived pale and sweating on a stretcher, already breathing through another contraction. Priest stayed beside her with one hand locked around hers, watching her with the strained focus of a man who still hadn’t accepted that he had gotten her back. Evan and I met them at the labor room, and training took over before fear could catch up with me.

“Hey.” I moved close enough for Blue to focus on my face. “You’re okay. We’ve got you.”

Her dazed, furious eyes found mine. “I am going to kill him.”

Priest kept hold of her hand. “Nah, you need me for night time changings.”

A laugh almost broke through before the contraction took her. Evan came in on her other side, brushing the hair from her damp face. “Okay. Great news. You are alive, he is alive, and I personally am prepared to fistfight anyone who acts like today has not already done enough to all of us.”

Blue answered with a sound caught somewhere between a laugh and a curse.

Once she was settled, the labor nurse handled the clinical side while Evan and I stayed where Blue wanted us. Priest remained beside the bed, and nobody had enough energy left to argue over how many hospital employees technically belonged in the room. Blue’s world had narrowed to pain and breathing, and ours narrowed with it.

Labor stripped everything down. Blue gripped Priest’s hand through the worst contractions and let me guide her breathing whenever panic started climbing ahead of her. Evan supplied exactly enough nonsense to break the tension without turning the room into a performance. Through it all, Priest barely looked away from her.

After one brutal contraction, Blue glared at him. “This,” she panted, “is your fault.”

He kissed the back of her hand. “Fair.”

Evan laughed, and even Blue managed a tired smile before the next contraction erased it.

Watching her, I understood strength differently than I had before. Blue shook, cursed, squeezed Priest’s hand until his knuckles whitened, then gathered herself for the next wave. She looked exhausted and furious, and every time her face tightened with pain, something close to horror flashed behind Priest’s eyes. Labor wasn’t what frightened him. He had almost lost her before she ever reached this room, and his body still remembered.

I understood that kind of fear more than I wanted to.

Working helped. I passed what the nurse needed and kept Blue focused, letting routine hold me steady while the hours blurred. Outside the room waited everything that had happened that day. Inside, Blue was alive, Priest was beside her, and their son was coming.

When the baby finally cried, that thin, furious wail hit me straight through the chest.

“He’s perfect,” Blue whispered.

The nurse laid him against her, and Blue stared down at him with her hand trembling against his cheek. Exhaustion gave way to wonder so completely that my throat tightened. Priest stood close beside her, staring at his son with the same stunned intensity he had carried since Blue came through the doors.

After a few quiet minutes, she looked up at him. “You want to hold your son?”

His throat worked, but he only nodded. The nurse settled the baby into his arms, and the moment that tiny weight rested there, something in Priest quieted.

Blue smiled at him. “You look terrified.”

“I am.”

Her tired laugh softened the room.

When Blue needed to get more comfortable, I asked for a turn. Priest surrendered the baby reluctantly, and the moment I settled him into my arms, memory landed harder than I expected. Jade had once been this small, warm against my chest with her entire life still waiting for her. I remembered the weight of her head in my palm and the fierce certainty that nothing in the world mattered more than keeping her safe.

Evan took him next. “Well, hello there, sir,” he said solemnly. “You seem dramatic. I respect that.”

The baby promptly peed on him.