Page 175 of The Warlock's Trial

I couldn’t fathom the thought of moving from where I lay. I feared if I did, I might collapse and never get back up. All I could manage to do was shake my head.

“If she can’t talk already, she’s pretty far along,” I heard Onyx tell Lucas. “How long has she been contracting?”

“I—I don’t know,” Lucas stammered. “Less than an hour.”

I heard shuffling near the medical equipment in the corner, then the snap of a glove.

Onyx appeared above me. “I’m going to check your cervix. Are you all right with that?”

I nodded.

Onyx pulled back the covers and gently moved the fabric of my bathrobe aside. She placed her fingers inside of me, which would normally be weird as fuck, but in the state I was in, I didn’t mind at all. In fact, all I could think was that I was too hot and I just wanted to get rid of this bathrobe; I didn’t care who was in the room. I stripped it off and tossed it to the floor.

“She’s already at five centimeters,” Onyx said calmly, though I was certain she was the only calm one in the whole room. “It looks like precipitous labor—meaning it’s progressing quickly. In cases like this, mothers give birth within three hours after contractions begin, but it could be sooner. Lucas, you need to portal Luana back here now.”

“It’s almost midnight!” Lucas panicked. “Luana won’t be at the clinic.”

“Then find her at home,” Onyx ordered. “I don’t care where you look for her—just get her here. Go!”

“No!” I heard myself cry. I reached for Lucas and clung so tight to his arm that he couldn’t go anywhere, even if he wanted to. I pulled him toward me, until he knelt at my side.

“Stay,” I begged as tears beaded in my eyes. “One of the twins… he’s not moving.”

Lucas’s features went stark white. It was all I could manage to tell him. I couldn’t speak the truth out loud. Deep down, my intuition told me something was very wrong.

Lucas must’ve felt it, too. “But Talia saw us holding both babies in her vision. She felt Dean there with Marcus in the future.”

“Felt him,” I emphasized. The reality hit me harder than the contractions. Talia had felt Dean fighting alongside Marcus in her vision, but that didn’t mean he was there in physical form. It could’ve been his spirit she recognized.

I knew without a shadow of a doubt that’s exactly what it was. I was naturally intuitive, but the intuition I felt as a mother was beyond comprehension. I needed no one to confirm it.

There was nothing we could do. Dean was already gone.

“I felt him,” Lucas realized, and his voice became hoarse. “In my dream. His last thoughts weren’t words, but a feeling. I hadn’t realized what I felt until now… He loved us both. So much.”

“You have to bring him back,” I begged.

“I can’t,” Lucas said hollowly.

“You brought me back,” I reminded him.

“Under extraordinary circumstances,” he said. “Even all the magic in the coven can’t bring the dead back to life. You’d have to be god-like to do that.”

I trembled as my grief began to take over. My grief was wrong to say I had a choice to let it consume me, because it already had.

“I have to get a doctor,” Lucas told me desperately.

I didn’t want Lucas to go. I reached out for him, but he was already gone. A soft hand met mine instead. My whole body shook as I squeezed Verla’s hand.

It’s too soon, I wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t speak. I trembled as my body contracted, as if I could stop the labor and reverse it.

Verla knelt at my side and pushed my hair from my face. “I know you’re scared, but I’m here for you. We all are.”

Her words were so comforting that some of the tension in my body actually eased.

“You’re about to meet your baby boys,” Verla reminded me.

I tried to focus on that, because I couldn’t think about alternative realities right now. If I lost myself in it, I didn’t know if I’d make it out of this alive.

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