The King (Black Dagger Brotherhood #12) - J.R. Ward Page 0,238

of the situation: As things got scarier, they became more focused and in control.

“Okay, I’ve got him—”

“Wait, is it happening already?” Wrath demanded.

The ascending whistle next to him was the only reply he got.

And then … the sound of a young’s first wail.

“Is he alive?” Wrath asked like a dumb-ass.

Another whistle.

And then he forgot about his son entirely. “Beth? What about Beth?”

No one answered.

“Beth?” he barked. “John, what the fuck is going on?”

The scent of blood was thick in the air. So thick. Too thick.

He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t think. He wasn’t even alive.

“Beth…” he whispered into the darkness.

It was forever until Doc Jane came over to him. And by the closeness and direction of her voice, he knew she had knelt in front of him.

“Wrath, we’ve got a problem. The baby’s fine, Ehlena’s checking him out. But Beth is continuing to bleed even after I closed her uterus from the C-section. She’s hemorrhaging very badly and there’s no sign that she’s clotting. The safest thing to do is a hysterectomy. Do you know what that is?”

She was talking to him like he was stupid—good thing, too.

“No.” Even though he’d heard the word before. Hell, at this point, she would have had to define even the most common of terms.

“I need to take her uterus out. She’s going to die, Wrath, if I don’t. It means she won’t be able to have any more children—”

“I don’t give a fuck about anything but her. Whatever you need to do. Do it—now.”

“Okay, let’s move, Manny.”

“Where’s my son!” he called out abruptly. “Give me my son!”

Not even a moment later, a small bundle was placed into his arms. So light. Too light to be alive—and yet his son was warm and breathing. Vital.

He wanted to hold him because his shellan was in this child. In every molecule of his living body, she was with him—and that meant, as he kept the young up against his heart … he was holding his Beth.

“What’s happening?” he whispered, not expecting a response.

He let the tears fall as they might. Probably on his son’s face.

Who the fuck cared.

SEVENTY-FIVE

Beth came out of the fuzzy neverland like a cork surfacing on still water. Bobbing along, things came and went out of focus.

But the second her brain flipped back on, she yelled, “Wrath—!”

“Right here, we’re right here.”

Recoiling, she wrenched around in the hospital bed and felt an instant oh, hell, no from her belly.

And then nothing mattered. Sitting beside her bed, in a chair that wasn’t big enough, her husband and her son were like two peas in a pod.

The weeping that came out of her was utterly uncontrollable, welling up so fast it all but exploded from her soul. And, man, her belly hurt like a bitch.

As she reached over the side of the bed, her IV pulled, but she didn’t care. And her menfolk came to her, Wrath standing up with that newborn and easing down right beside her on the hospital bed.

“Oh, my God, that’s my baby,” she heard herself say.

Little Wrath—yup, she really had named him already—was the spitting image of his father. Even the dusting of hair formed a widow’s peak in the center of his forehead. And like he recognized her somehow, he opened his eyes as his father let her take the precious bundle.

“Hey, there, big man.”

Because even though he weighed how much? Seven pounds or something? The way that little one stared up at her, it was like he was already taller than his father.

“You are beautiful,” she said to him.

And then she saw his eyes. The pupils were normal, the irises dark blue, not light green.

She looked over at her husband. “He’s perfect.”

“I know. They told me he looks like me.”

“He does.”

“Except for the eyes. But I would have loved him anyway.”

“Me, too.”

She cooed and fussed with the red fabric that the foreman’s shellan had made by hand. Until she became aware that something wasn’t right.

Her husband was way too reserved for this special moment. “Wrath? What aren’t you telling me?”

When he rubbed his face, that terror she’d felt came back. “What. Is there anything wrong with him?”

“No.”

“Where’s the but?”

“They had to take your insides out. You were bleeding too heavily.”

She frowned and shook her head. “I’m sorry?”

Wrath patted around until he found her arm. “Your insides are gone.”

A cold rush hit her. “A hysterectomy?”

“Yeah. That’s what they called it.”

Beth exhaled. Another thing that hadn’t been part of the plan. And it was a shock to realize that part of what