He looked back to Juliet, his voice stunned. “It’s a girl.”
“What? Are you sure?” She sat up slightly, trying to see the midwife’s hands past the sheet bunched up about her bent legs. “But, but—”
“I know.” A laugh exploded out of Evan. “By all the saints—a girl. A girl. Grandfather will be beside himself. The first girl in fifty years.”
Juliet exhaled a breathless chuckle, then quickly gasped a seething breath. “But I was sure—” Her words cut off with a brutal scream that sent her face into torture as she lifted her shoulders off the bed, trying to ease the pain.
“What is wrong?” Panic instant, Evan looked to the midwife who was handing his daughter off to her apprentice. “What is wrong?” he screamed before his look flew back to Juliet’s contorted face, the torment in it slicing his heart in two.
No.
Not Juliet.
Not his world.
She wasn’t leaving him like this.
Peeling his fingers away from hers, his hands wrapped onto either side of her face as her scream faded. “Stay with me, Juliet. Stay with me. What’s wrong? We’ll fix it. I swear we’ll fix it. Stay with me.”
She sucked in a hysterical breath. “It—it hasn’t stopped. Why hasn’t it stopped? Evan—why hasn’t it stopped?” Her eyes went wild, searching past Evan for the midwife, terror leaching into her words. “Where is my babe? I want to see my babe. Please let me see her. Please.”
The midwife, a stout older woman with hands that could crack walnuts, turned back to Juliet, her hands clamping onto Juliet’s ankles, her voice even. “You’re not done yet, child.”
“Not done?” Juliet’s voice pitched into a scream. “I’m done. The babe is out.”
“Ye have another one cresting.”
Evan froze, staring at the top of the white cap on the midwife’s head as she bent over. “Another one?” His voice thundered into the room.
“Another one. Ripe for making an appearance.” The midwife didn’t look up, her hands busy. “Push now. Push, m’lady.”
Evan grabbed Juliet’s hand again just as a growling roar rumbled from her chest and her whole body curled up, shaking with the first push.
“Don’t stop. Don’t stop,” the midwife barked.
Juliet fell back against the bed.
Excruciating, the whole of it. The pain that Evan saw rolling through Juliet’s body.
He couldn’t lose her like this.
He couldn’t.
“Try again, m’lady. Buck up. This is the one.” There was no room for refusal against the midwife’s order.
With a gasp, Juliet lifted herself, screeching as her body contorted one last time, pushing, her hand crushing Evan’s palm.
And just like that, another life, another soul into the world.
New breath.
Not one new light. Two.
But Evan couldn’t look away from his wife. She’d collapsed back onto the bed, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow.
The air in his lungs frozen, Evan reached out a trembling hand and smoothed back the hair from her forehead. “Ye cannot leave me, lass. Ye cannot.”
For long seconds his stare stayed locked onto her, willing her to stay. To not leave him.
She couldn’t. Not now. Not now. This was everything. Everything she wanted. Everything he lived for.
Not now.
Her eyelashes fluttered and her head rolled toward him, an exhausted whisper making it past her lips. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Evan collapsed downward, his head landing on her shoulder as he heaved breaths into his lungs. Breath after breath, each one a prayer of thanks that she wasn’t about to die on him.
A knuckle nudged into his arm and he looked up. The apprentice was nudging the first babe, bundled tight in a white blanket, into the expanse of his hands.
His fingers still trembling, he took the tiny creature from her, cradling his daughter like a bird’s egg in his hands. His head bent and he set a kiss onto her wee forehead, just below the reddish fuzz of hair atop her head.
He nuzzled her into the crevice between Juliet’s arm and body, his voice breaking. “Our girl.”
She looked down at the babe, tears in her eyes. “Our girl.”
It wasn’t but a minute later when the midwife set into his hands a screaming babe, lungs mighty. “And here is your boy.”
Evan’s knees nearly buckled, and he sank to the side of the bed as he took his son into his hands.
A daughter. A son.
The many months waiting. Preparing. Hoping.
The hours of suffering his wife’s tortured screams, helpless to do anything but hold her hand.
All of that, and it came down to minutes. Minutes where the world shifted around them.
Life back into Whetland castle where there had been none.
Life, unspoiled and sparkling and angry and hungry, ripe with the possibilities of the entire world.
Life anew, becoming the very air around them.
Life as it always should have been.
His life.
~ From K.J. Jackson ~
Thank you so much for reading! My next full book is about Ness (I wouldn’t leave you hanging with that poor soul!). Dangerous Exile, An Exile Novel is available now for preorder, but be sure to check out the teaser below.
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I found you and you found me—let’s not lose each other! Be sure to sign up for my VIP List for news of my next releases, sales and freebies. You’ll get my FREE starter library when you sign up!
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If you liked reading Wicked Exile, An Exile Novel, please consider leaving a brief review. You are awesome if you do, and the good karma will come back your way! I thank you so much!
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Don’t miss my other books
Historical Romance
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out my other historical romances—each is a stand-alone story and they can be read in any order (here they are in order of publication and series):
Hold Your Breath
Stone Devil Duke, currently free!
Unmasking the Marquess
My Captain, My Earl
Lords of Fate
Worth of a Duke
Earl of Destiny
Marquess of Fortune
Lords of Action
Vow
Promise
Oath
Revelry’s Tempest
Of Valor & Vice
Of Sin & Sanctuary
Of Risk & Redemption
To Capture a Rogue, A Logan’s Legends Novella
To Capture a Warrior, A Logan’s Legends Novella
The Devil in the Duke
Valor of Vinehill
The Iron Earl
The Wolf Duke
The Steel Rogue
Box of Draupnir
The Heart of an Earl
The Blood of a Baron
The Soul of a Rogue
Exile
Exiled Duke
Wicked Exile
Dangerous Exile
Paranormal Romance
Flame Moon #1, currently free!
Triple Infinity, Flame Moon #2
Flux Flame, Flame Moon #3
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The teaser of the next in the Exile series, available on preorder now: Dangerous Exile, An Exile Novel…
A titan of the underworld with a forgotten past. A damaged lady that needs to disappear. Can a chance reunion unlock long hidden secrets in this steamy historical?
On the run from the man that nearly killed her.
Bruised and battered, Nessia Docherty is in desperate need of a safe haven and she finds one in one of London’s most notorious gaming hells. Somewhere safe to heal, to recover, if only she can convince the owner of the club, Talen Blackstone, to let her stay—a man she is astounded to find she knows from her childhood.
He rules his area of the underworld with wits and fists.
Talen Blackstone earned his reputation
the hard way, with grit and determination and bloodied fists. Feared in his area of the rookeries, he keeps his powerful empire in tight order and the unwelcome arrival of a beaten young chit in his office cannot be tolerated. But favors must be repaid, and taking in Ness satisfies one favor he’d like to erase from the books.
A lost past exposes long hidden secrets.
Ness is positive she remembers Talen from long ago, but he insists he isn’t the boy she remembers. Not that he actually remembers his past. But he cannot deny the heated sparks between the two of them, and when a vicious threat from Ness’s past appears, he’ll do anything—including facing the past—to gain the future he’d never imagined. A future with Ness.
Now available on preorder: Dangerous Exile, An Exile Novel.
~
Lastly…
As always, I love to connect with my readers, you can reach me at:
Email: mailto:[email protected]
Website: www.KJJackson.com
Facebook (your choice!):
Like me at: https://www.facebook.com/kjjacksonauthor
Friend me at: https://www.facebook.com/kj.jackson.330
Thank you for allowing my stories into your life and time—it is always an honor!
~ K.J. Jackson
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