So many tears, so much sweat — and still they kept coming, flooding my eyes until the room dissolved into nothing but blurred shapes and light. My lips trembled around his name. "Ca — Carl."

I had never seen Lewis like this. He crossed the room in an instant, dropping to his knees beside me, cupping my face in both hands as though he needed to hold it still, needed to confirm I was real. "Elena, I’m sorry." His voice broke on the words, splitting cleanly down the middle. His dark eyes were glassy, and I felt the heat of his tears land on my cheek — that undid something in me that I had been keeping together through sheer will. I looked up at him and managed to whisper, "Carl — the baby. There’s still one more that hasn’t come yet."

That snapped him back. He turned and saw the infant lying in a pool of blood, umbilical cord still uncut, wailing at the top of her lungs with a fury that seemed impossible for something so small and newly arrived in the world. He turned back to me, steadied. "Elena, don’t be afraid. The doctor is here. You’re almost done — the position is right, she’s crowning. Just a little more."

Riley burst through the door behind him, cursing under her breath, a trembling obstetrician stumbling in after her with her kit clutched to her chest. Lewis had prepared for every possible outcome — that careful, relentless part of him, the Alpha who planned three steps ahead even in the middle of chaos, had just saved us. Even Yael was there, hovering near the doorway with an uncertain expression, someone I hadn’t seen in a long time. "Elena — do you really not remember me?"

Riley immediately slapped her hand over his eyes. "No peeking. Turn around right now."

"But I—"

Lewis shot him a single look. Bloodshot eyes, quiet and absolutely lethal. "What exactly did you see?"

Yael swallowed whatever he’d been about to say and turned around without another word. Lewis had lost weight — I could see it in his jaw, his shoulders — but his presence felt heavier rather than lighter, more dangerous, like something compressed rather than diminished. His clothes were streaked with blood from somewhere I didn’t want to think about too carefully, and everything about him radiated the cold authority of someone who had been running on fury and grief for months and hadn’t yet had permission to stop.

Riley threw herself down beside me, eyes red and swollen. "My poor Elena."

I gave her the best smile I could manage under the circumstances. "I’m not dead yet. Save the mourning."

Just seeing their faces — all of them here, real and breathing and present — gave me something solid to hold onto when everything else was slipping.

The doctor worked quickly and without ceremony. She cut the cord and cleaned the first baby with practiced efficiency while Riley, without being asked, shrugged off her outer jacket and wrapped the infant carefully. "It’s a girl! She looks just like you, Elena — she’s so fierce. We should call her Rocky."

Yael glanced over his shoulder despite himself. "Rocky? She’s beautiful. She looks like Elena — she deserves something like Susie."

Riley stared at him. "Are you serious right now?"

Lewis didn’t look at the baby once. His eyes never left my face, not for a single moment. He pressed his lips to my sweat-soaked forehead, his voice low and even and certain. "Almost over. She’s coming. Just a little more, Elena."

I clenched my teeth and nodded. "Yes. Soon — our family will all be together."

He rolled up his sleeve and held out his hand, palm up, without explanation. "If the pain gets too much — bite down. Let me carry some of it."

I looked at him and saw everything at once — the guilt, the months of carrying this alone, the weight of every decision that had led us to this room, this moment. He couldn’t actually feel what I was feeling. But he meant it without reservation. He would have taken every bit of it if there were any way to do so. To ease something in both of us, I pressed my teeth slowly into the back of his hand and bit down. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t look away. He just kept whispering my name, over and over, like it was the only word he trusted himself with. "Elena. My Elena."

In that moment I understood — not our pups, not the pack, not the island or the blood or any of it. Just me. That was all he saw.

Then a second cry filled the room, sharp and strong and indignant.

The doctor exhaled with a laugh that was almost a sob. "The baby’s out. Both children are safe. You can rest now."

The relief that moved through me was total and immediate, washing through every exhausted corner of me at once.

And then the darkness came.

I slipped somewhere deep, somewhere without sound or light or edges. A place that had no temperature, no weight, no sense of time passing.

In the dream, I was a spirit again — weightless, floating in nothing. I looked down at my stomach. Flat. No blood. No crying. Silence so complete it pressed against me from every direction.

Was this not a dream? Was this the afterlife?

Where was Lewis? Where were my children? Panic seized me without warning and I ran — nowhere, everywhere, through darkness that had no walls and no end — screaming into it. "Carl! Carl, don’t leave me behind!"

Nothing answered. No voice. No warmth from the bond, nothing of that familiar current between us. It was like being sealed inside a box with only my own echo for company, growing fainter each time it returned.

I had begged for this, hadn’t I? Somewhere in the worst of the pain, in the moments when I couldn’t see or think or hold onto anything, I had made a silent bargain — take me, just let them live. I hadn’t expected it to be answered so quickly. I hadn’t said goodbye. I hadn’t held them. I had seen their faces only once, blurry and indistinct on an ultrasound screen months ago, and I had stared at that image until I had memorized every unclear pixel.

I hadn’t named them yet. Hadn’t told them their mother loved them more than she could ever put into words. Hadn’t asked Lewis — hadn’t begged Lewis — not to blame them for what happened. To love them without reservation, without the shadow of what they had cost. Because I knew him. I knew the grief in him could curdle into something else if left alone in the dark, and that thought terrified me more than death itself ever could.

I ran until my legs gave out beneath me. I called until my throat was raw and empty. And then the darkness shifted.

A hospital room. Clean and bright and utterly still. Two tiny babies lay side by side in a crib near the window, their chests rising and falling with the reliable rhythm of the newly living. And Riley sat beside them, her face carrying something I had never once seen on her before — worry, quiet and deep and unperformed.

I ran to her. "Riley! I’m back!"

She didn’t laugh. She didn’t look up. The smile that had lived permanently on her face for as long as I had known her was simply gone.