Chapter 24: Tarrant

She came on a January night, in a hard rain, three weeks before she was due.

I woke at two with a pain that wrapped all the way around my back.

Dashiell was awake before I had finished the thought.

"Now?" he said.

"Not yet."

"Wynne."

"I'll tell you when it's now."

I walked the long corridor of the fifty-ninth floor with one hand on the wall, in his shirt.

He walked beside me and did not touch me.

He had learned that much.

By five we were in a hospital room in Seattle with a grey window.

The nurse did not know who he was.

I liked her immediately.

It was long, and it was ugly, and I said things to him that I will never repeat.

He held my hand through all of it, and it shook, and I saw him see me notice.

"You're shaking," I said, between two waves.

"I'm aware."

"You're an Alpha."

"I'm a man who's about to meet his daughter," said Dashiell hoarsely. "Be quiet and push."

I pushed.

She came out at ten in the morning, furious and wet, with a full head of dark hair.

They put her on my chest, and she stopped crying and looked up.

Her eyes were grey.

I had nothing to say, and for the first time in my life I did not feel the need to say anything.

Dashiell put one finger into her fist.

She held on.

He bent his head over us, and his shoulders shook, and I put my free hand on the back of his neck.

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