Ice Blue [ Book One ]

16 // Empty

You know I want you
It's not a secret I try to hide
But I can't have you
We're bound to break and
My hands are tied

• • •

I was oh so tired — especially since they'd insisted I not go to the hospital, seeing as I couldn't shift throughout this process. She was so soft in my arms, and she looked up at me like I was something she did not expect to first see once those fierce wails had quieted down into gentle whimpers.

"Hi Juliet Rosemary," I whispered, brushing my fingers across her cheeks with pride filling my gaze. I blinked away tears and felt my heart leap into my throat with such passion and relief. Perhaps everything had just been my delirious dreaming due to the drugs they inserted to help Feline ease pain. The newborn blinked her lazy blue gaze at me and whined again.

Her nose — she had his nose. His beautiful nose. My daughter was here, she was so perfectly safe and nothing was wrong. A dream. A very bad dream. This little girl, this wriggling creature in my arms, she was the reality.

She had to be.

"She's beautiful." I turned my head and saw Andy staring down at me and his new cub with heavy tears and overwhelming love in his eyes. "I'm so proud of you."

My heart swelled even more if it were ever possible. "She gave me a hard time," I murmured in exhausted playfulness, watching the newborn tuck herself deeper into my warm embrace. "She apparently decided she changed her mind about coming out today."

Andy chuckled as he sat down next to me and watched her. "How inconsiderate." He glanced at my arms, knowing well how protective a new mother is the first few weeks of her cub's birth. He could easily find himself at the fate of my teeth. "May I?"

But luckily for him, Feline was mellow. I nodded and shifted my incredibly sore body so that I could transfer Juliet Rosemary into his arms, where his warmth seemed to attract her to snuggle into his chest.

He held the newborn like he was holding delicate glass, ready to shatter at any sudden bump. "Hi, little one," he whispered, starting to quietly murmur to her. His chest rumbled in a way that felines did when they were pleased. It was our equivalent to a domestic cat's purr. "I am your papa, yes. Next time, don't tire your mama out so much you hear?"

He got a small whine in response, to which he responded with a muzzle to her forehead. "You're going to be a Queen someday, princess. I will pave the way to your kingdom, even if I have to bring the whole damn world to its knees. Just for you."

• • •

Thunder struck and my heat-induced dream shattered away, bringing me back into reality. The tears that had been spilling in my sleep now burned my cheeks like water falling atop a hot sidewalk.

All dreams must end, and mine was cut off too soon.

Heats were cruel that way. They brought on your inner most desires in the form of a blissful dream or your pain-staking fears into a nightmare. I wasn't quite sure whether that was a dream or a nightmare. I sat up in bed, earning myself a throb of pain in my abdomen. Hot flashes flared through my skin, alerting me and awakening me from my daze.

Another strike of thunder rattled the house that enclosed me and many others, perhaps waking them up, causing children to cry and run for their parents.

Perhaps I would never have children coming into my bedroom at all hours, wailing in fear over thunder, or nightmares, or the need for a glass of water.