This Mask of Mine Volume Two

6

Yoonji fell asleep not long after she earned her name, soft breaths barely brushing over Jimin's chest that amazed him.

"How are your cries so loud and your breaths so small?" He whispered, not wanting to wake the sleeping baby.

A beta came to check on him a short while after with a small crib to place next to the bed. They swaddled the baby and gently put her in the crib layered with Jimin's scented furs.

"I can bring a heater in at night," the beta whispered. "You will feel colder the next few days while you recover. We will have staff to upkeep the heater through the night."

"When can I go home?"

"We need to monitor you and the baby for a while to make sure there are no issues. At least, a month."

Jimin sighed and nodded, leaning back against his pillows.

"Would you like to eat something or rest? I can bring a meal later."

Jimin nodded. "How long was I in labor?"

"About six hours. You were blessed with a short one."

So his vision-hallucination sped time. The first three had crawled slowly and then the rest had disappeared in a blink with the pain medication.

"Do you need any more medicine?"

"I'm okay for now. I'd like to rest."

The beta nodded. "I will prepare the heater."

"Could I have something to drink too?"

The beta nodded again. "I will bring water and tea."

"Thank you."

The beta left and Jimin pulled up the blankets and furs to his chin. He was feeling colder like she had said. She came back a bit later with a cup of water and another with tea.

"If you drink this every day, the herbs will help you heal."

Jimin nodded and took the cup of tea as she placed the water on the bedside table.

"Would you like the heater?"

"That would be nice, thank you."

Jimin sighed and warmed his hands around the tea cup and looked again at his daughter borne from his body just hours before.

How perfect she was. With the shocking wails of a beast and the barely audible breaths of a mouse, Jimin knew he'd have trouble in his home. It was only a matter of time.

He smiled again and fluffed up a tuft of soft hair on her head.

How would Yoongi have handled the birth? What would his role be? Would he be holding Jimin still, holding his hands, or waiting to pull their baby the rest of the way out? Would he be the one who bathed her first while Jimin was passed out? How would he have held her? He would've practiced since the day he would've found out—maybe with bushels of wheat, with dolls given to Jimin as pregnancy gifts, with Jimin when all he wanted was physical contact.

But instead of Yoongi holding him, Jimin had to press into his pregnancy pillow with the too faint smell of him stitched in.

Jimin wiped at his eyes and sniffed. He couldn't cry now, not when a new life was so dependent on him.

The beta returned with the heater and slid one under Jimin's mattress and another near the crib. She took Jimin's tea cup and bid him a good night with a gentle smile.

And with that, Jimin sunk down into the bed and closed his eyes.
—————————————

"What the fuck was that?!" The head elder snapped at the healer.

"I—I don't know," the beta stammered, forehead pressed to the snow-covered ground in a deep bow. "We got him stabilized and he's resting now, but—"

"Find out what happened and find a way to prevent it from happening again. That bitch's son is tied to a fucking bed and you had to fucking sedate him. If it happens again, I can promise you it will not end that easily."

"I'm sorry—I'm sorry—"

"Get up," the old omega snarled. The beta shakily stood up in front of him. "You are going to go inside and find out what made him lash out like that. He talks when he sleeps, maybe try to figure it out from there. If you remind him while he's awake, he might get upset again and we don't want that, now do we? If you can't do your job, I wonder how easy it is to just..." he brushed off a speck of dirt off the beta's shoulder "...remove you?"

The beta paled. "I—I will."

"Hmm?"

"I—I'll do my job."

"Good. That's what I like to hear. Now, git."

The beta whimpered and all but scrambled back inside the small healer's tent.

The elder lifted the flap just a bit with his cane to look over the unconscious alpha tied down to the bed. His chest still heaved from whatever stress had made him so upset earlier and his face twitched ever so often.

He had suddenly collapsed after telling someone he was feeling some abdominal pain a bit before only to get back up, desperate and frenzied. He had wanted to run out into a snowstorm to get somewhere, but he never would say—like there was a wall he wouldn't let others approach.

The healers, automatically thinking his wound had somehow reopened despite it scarring over a month ago, had tried to check on his stomach, but he lashed out and almost bit one of their faces off. A few other alphas were just barely able to hold him down while another healer forced a sedative down his throat.

His stomach had been fine, and nothing else physical seemed to lead to an answer. The healers had suggested that it might have had something to do with his mate. He had come with a mark on his throat that faded about two months after he was found.

The elder huffed out a exasperated breath and dropped the tent flap.

"Fucking Mins."