Marked By His Brother: A Luna's Revenge

Astrid's POV "Push, Luna. Push." "I am pushing!" I snarled through my teeth. The contraction seized me like a fist closing around my spine and I grabbed the bedrail so hard the metal creaked. Doctor Hale stood between my knees her face unreadable behind her mask. "Again." She said. "Breathe through it." "Where is he?" I managed to ask between gasps. "Someone tell me where Kaiden is.' No one replied. It had been nine hours and Kaiden still hadn't come. He wasn't here when my water broke, when they wheeled me down the corridor, not when I'd screamed his name through the bond do loud my own skull rang. "Alpha Kaiden has been notified," Hale said for the third time. "That's the third time you're saying that." My voice rose. Another contraction hit and I bit down on a scream and pressed the back of my into the pillow. Underneath the pain, I reached for it as I was did, through the bond, through the warm, golden thread that had lived in my chest for three years. Kaiden. I reached for him but the connection stuttered, then nothing. "Astrid, focus..." "Don't touch me!" I shoved her hand off my knee. "He should be here." I felt it then, distance, not physical distance. I knew what that felt like, the bond stretched thin when he traveled but it always hummed, but this felt different, this was him pulling back. What are you doing? I got no answer. "Astrid." Hale's sharpened. "I need you to focus, you're almost there." I gasped as the next wave hit, my body was splitting open, my vision went white at the edges and I reached out again, harder and desperate and I felt him, but it was wrong. He was there but turned a way, like a man with his back to a door. I could feel the outline of him through the bond but there was something else too, a heat that wasn't mine, then I felt her, just her, a presence slipping into the space I thought had always been mine, soft and foreign, spelling of something I didn't recognize, pressing into the bond. "No," I whispered. "Astrid..." "No," My voice came out rough. The contraction reached it's peak, dragging the push from my body whether I wanted it or not, because the baby demanded it, because everything was happening all at once and I couldn't stop any of it, couldn't the stop the pain or what I was feeling through a bond that was breaking while I lay on my back and pushed his heir into the world. "Good Astrid, you're doing well." Hale said. I felt the snap. It was the quietest thing that had ever destroyed me, one moment the bond was there, thin, damaged and barely breathing and then it redirected. I felt the golden thread, the one I'd carried in my chest since the night he pressed his teeth to my throat, retreat like a living thing and then like a compass needle, it swung toward her. "Kaiden..." The sound that came out of me wasn't a word, I didn't know what it was. "Astrid? Astrid stay with me." Hale looked up sharply. "He claimed someone." My voice sounded strained. "He just... right now, he..." I couldn't finish the sentence, because I could feel both at once. The ghost of what used to be mine and the bright, burning flare of what he'd just given to someone else. They overlapped for three seconds and it was the most painful thing I had ever felt even though I had been in labor for nine hours. "Astrid." Hale grabbed my face with both hands. "Whatever is happening, you deal with it later. Right now your baby needs you." My baby. I looked at her and nodded because she was right, I had nothing left but this. "One more push," she said. "Can you give me one more?" I gave her one more push. The sounds blurred, the lights went strange, someone said something behind me, I heard the door opened and felt a second pair of hands. Th bond sat in my chest like something that died, worse than that, it was like coming home to find someone else's furniture in your house. He did it. No had told me, no needed to. He chosen tonight while I was here, pushing out his heir. "There he is." Hale said and for one suspended second, the world stopped. Everywhere was silent and then a cry, short, sharp and real. Something in me, something beyond the bond, beyond Kaiden, beyond everything, cracked open. My hands were already reaching out before I knew I was moving. "Let me," my voice cracked. "Please, let me..." But someone moved fast and I caught a glimpse, a flash of bloodied skin, tiny with dark hair and then the nurse turned, stepping sideways, taking my baby out of my sight. "Give him to me." My voice broke. "Give me my baby." "Astrid you need to calm down..." Doctor Hale said. The cry cut off and silence pressed into the room, the edges of my vision were already going dark from the blood loss, the exhaustion, the nine hours of labour, the bond, all of it and I was trying to stay awake, fighting to stay awake but the black was rising and the room was shrinking. The last thing I heard was doctor Hale saying something to someone on couldn't see Then nothing.