Nolan POV
I stood there long after she was gone.
The silence hit me harder than I expected. The air still carried her scent — soft, familiar, maddening — and the faint warmth of the boys lingered on my hands where their tiny fingers had held mine. It felt unreal.
They were real. Alive. Breathing. Laughing.
My sons.
And she’d kept them from me.
I turned away before anyone could see what was happening on my face. My chest burned, and I couldn’t tell if it was from anger or relief or grief — probably all of it tangled together until I couldn’t tell one from the other.
“Hell of a thing, isn’t it?”
Kieran’s voice came from behind me, low and amused. I stiffened. He was leaning against a tree, arms folded like he was watching a play.
“You should go,” I muttered.
He smirked. “You know,
