Page 186 of Vow to Claim You

“We need to name him.” The words come out sleepy. The exhaustion of labor and surgery is catching up with me. My body aches, the incision throbs, and I can barely keep my eyes open. But I don’t want to sleep. Don’t want to miss a single moment of this—our son in my arms, my husband beside me, the three of us existing together in a bubble of perfect, impossible happiness.

“Do you have ideas?” Aric asks.

“One.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“Alaric.”

A flicker of surprise crosses his face.

“Alaric,” he repeats slowly. “That’s…almost like Aric.”

“Yes. That’s the point.”

He’s quiet for a moment, and I reach for his hand, and trace my finger across the small tattoo on his thumb. The letter A, elegant and simple, inked into his skin three months ago as a tribute to the daughter we lost.

“The letter A is significant for our family,” I say softly. “Ayanna. Aric. Anabella.” I look down at our son. At his sleeping face. At the future stretching out before him. All the possibilities, all the years, all the moments we’ll share. “And Alaric.”

Aric is quiet for a long moment. When I look up, his eyes are bright. Wet.

“Alaric,” he says again, and then he smiles. The kind I’ve only seen a handful of times—unguarded, genuine, full of a joy he used to keep locked away from the world.

“It’s perfect.” He reaches down, brushes his finger across our son’s cheek again. “Alaric Vold. Our son.”

I thought I knew happiness. I thought I understood what it meant to be content, to be at peace, to feel joy so deep it seems to radiate from your very bones. But I was wrong. I didn’t know. Not until now. Not until this moment—exhausted, sore, stitched together and holding a newborn who doesn’t even know his own name yet, sitting beside a man who has seen me at my worst and loved me anyway.

This is happiness.

Not the absence of pain because the pain is still there, woven into the fabric of who I am. The grief for Anabella. The scars of what my father did. The memories of all those dark days when I couldn’t find a reason to keep breathing.

But happiness anyway. Happiness because of the pain, not in spite of it. Because I survived. Because we survived. Because we chose each other, again and again, through every impossible moment.

And this—this small, perfect, miraculous person in my arms—is the proof that it was worth it.

All of it.

Every tear. Every scar. Every terrifying moment of this pregnancy. Every prayer whispered in the dark. Every moment of choosing to live when dying would have been easier.

Worth it.

“I love you,” I say. The words come out easy. Natural. As essential as breathing.

Aric looks at me. Those pale-blue eyes—the same eyes that are closed in sleep on our son’s face—holding mine with an intensity that still makes my heart skip after all this time.

“I love you too.”

A new beginning.

And somewhere—in the light beyond the horizon—I like to think someone is watching. Someone is smiling. Someone is proud of the family we’ve become.

Ayanna. Aric. Anabella. Alaric.

Four A’s.

Bound together forever.

By blood. By love. By the choice we make every day to keep living, keep fighting, keep choosing each other.

I close my eyes. Press my cheek against my son’s soft hair. And for the first time in longer than I can remember… I am whole.