Page 81 of Omega’s Fealty

“Look at you,” he says, when it is over.

“I look terrible.”

“You look like a king having a baby.” He wipes my face with the corner of the sheet. “There’s not a lot of competition.”

I laugh and it turns into a groan and he laughs too.

Sometime after midnight it changes.

I know it has changed before anyone tells me. The pain has been in my back and now it is not. It has moved down and forward and it is not pain in the same way. It is pressure.

“Dr. Pesch.”

She is already there. She already knows. She looks and nods and says, “Yes. Good. With the next one, you can push,” as if she is telling me the time.

Roan gets behind me. He gets my back against his chest and his arms under mine and his hands over my hands on my knees. His mouth is against the side of my head. I can smell him and feel his heart going through his shirt into my spine, and the baby is coming.

“Again,” says Dr. Pesch. “Rest. Breathe. Now.”

Roan is talking. I don’t know how long he has been talking. It is low and steady and right in my ear and it is nothing, it is “that’s it, that’s it, sweetheart, I’ve got you, I’ve got you, there you go,” over and over. He is shaking. I can feel it in his arms. His voice is not shaking at all.

“I can’t,” I say, at one point. I have never said that in my life either. “Roan, I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” His mouth against my hair. “You can do anything.”

I do it.

It burns. Dr. Pesch says, “Slowly now. Slowly. Small pushes. The head is here,” and her hands are on me.

“I can see him,” he says. “Aurelio. I can see him. Our baby has a lot of hair.”

“One more,” says Dr. Pesch. “When you’re ready. One more.”

I am not ready. I take a breath and I hold it and I push anyway, with Roan’s arms around me and his heart going against my back, and there is a sliding rush and a release and Dr. Pesch says, “There,” quite softly, and then there is a thin, furious, astonished cry in the room.

“A boy,” she says. “A boy, Your Majesty. He is perfect.”

She lifts him up. He is red and slick and outraged and very small and his fists are going and his mouth is wide open, and she puts him on my chest, on my skin, still attached to me. He is warm and heavier than he looks and he is screaming into my collarbone.

I put my hands on him. Roan puts his hands over mine.

He is ours.

24. Roan: Epilogue

I haven’t been back on American soil for over three years.

The tarmac at Andrews is wet and gray and there is a line of people in dark coats waiting at the bottom of the steps.

Behind them, flags are snapping in the wind, theirs and ours, and behind those there are cameras. There are always cameras. I used to think I’d get used to them but I still haven’t.

Matteo has his face pressed against the window. He is two and a half and he is fascinated by the planes and the flags.

“Papa. Papa. Look.”

I look with him, enjoying the expression of pure joy on his little face.

Behind me, Aurelio is doing up the last button on Elise’s coat with one hand and holding a folder shut with the other. She is six months old and she does not want the coat, and she is making that clear. He gets the button done anyway. He has never once lost an argument with either of them and I don’t think he ever will.