Chapter 496

Olivia

The room was silent; no voices, no cries, not even the beeping of the machines could be heard through the rushing of blood in my ears.

My baby was silent. He should have been crying, he should have been thrashing at the sudden onset of the cold and noisy world, but he wasn’t. There was just… nothing.

“Nathan?” I whispered, craning my neck to look up at my husband. “Nathan, where is he?”

Nathan didn’t answer; or rather, it seemed as though he couldn’t answer, as he stood frozen to his spot. His grip was like iron around my hand, and the rest of his body was as still as a statue.

He didn’t even blink as he stared up ahead. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that he was really frozen in time.

Slowly, I turned my head toward the curtain that was raised. I couldn’t see anything behind it, but now that I focused hard enough, I could hear the sounds of murmuring somewhere in the unseen part of the room.

“D-Doctor?” I called out. “Where… Where is my baby?”

The murmuring intensified, then stopped. I felt my heart sink into the pits of my stomach, then somehow sink even further beyond that when I saw the doctor circle around the sheet. He stared at me for a moment, his eyes glazed over in shock, and that was when I knew.

“My boy,” I whispered.

The doctor took a step forward. “I’m so sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Ford,” he said gently. “Your baby… Your baby didn’t make it. The lack of oxygen was just too much.”

All at once, I felt my world shatter. Maybe a cry erupted from my lips, maybe it didn’t, but I couldn’t tell; I was somewhere far, far away from here, somewhere I couldn’t see or hear or think or feel. I was floating in a void somewhere beyond our universe.

My baby was dead. After everything, he was gone.

And Alvin had died twice. Once in my arms, and once in the arms of doctors and nurses. For what felt like an eternity, I felt as if I was in that grimy basement again, holding the body of my dear friend as the light left his eyes.

Only now, I was holding a little baby, still slick and wet from the womb. No cries escaped his lips.

“Why did you let this happen?” I whispered.

I looked up to see a form sitting on its haunches in front of me; gold fur, sky blue eyes that seemed to hold a light of their own in this dark basement. My wolf. Her presence wasn’t a comfort in this moment; I hated her.

“I did everything I could to keep him alive, Olivia.”

“You didn’t. You’re the Ancient Wolf, you could have—”

My wolf stood fully, her golden fur rippling in a breeze that didn’t exist. “I contain the blood of the Ancient Wolf. I cannot wield its powers at the drop of a hat, without the proper training.”

“So you just let my baby die?” I growled, standing now as well with the all-too-tiny bundle in my arms. “You couldn’t have done more?”

“I’m sorry, Olivia,” she said softly. “But we have not trained. We’re not ready for such… concentrated magic.”

“We’re not ready, or you’re not ready?” I hissed.

My wolf sighed. “You are not ready, Olivia.”

Her words made me fall back to the ground with a dull thud. The bundle slipped out of my arms, but as it rolled across the floor, I realized that it was just a blanket now. It spread out on the dirt in front of my wolf’s feet, the fabric splaying out to reveal nothing inside.

“I have to do something,” I said. “I have to save my baby.”

My wolf was silent for several moments. During those moments, a more hopeful part of me thought that she might offer some solutions. Some sort of ritual, the name of a witch, another trio of artifacts.

But the realistic part of me knew I had learned already that there was no coming back from the dead. I had learned that that day in the cavern, when the witch—or rather, Jenifer—had taken the form of my father’s body.

And I had learned that, even if it may seem as though death has been cheated, the visage that will return from the grave is nothing but a bastardized farce.

A strained, choked cry escaped my lips. My wolf finally stepped forward then and lowered herself down around me, her golden fur coiling around me.

“I am so sorry, Olivia. I am so sorry…”

“Mrs. Ford? Mrs. Ford?” I heard a distant voice say, pulling me back to the present.

I blinked, realizing where I was; still in the operating room with a kind-faced nurse in pink scrubs standing over me. Nathan was still standing next to me, but he was no longer holding my hand.

He was just standing there, staring blankly out the window as though somehow he would find our son out there.

“Mrs. Ford, would you like to hold your little one?” the nurse asked. I looked down to see that she was holding a tiny bundle wrapped up in a blue blanket in her arms. I think I nodded, but I wasn’t entirely sure. Everything still felt so far away.

The nurse gently handed me the tiny bundle, and I drew in a shuddering breath as I forced myself to look down.

There he was: my son, my little Alvin. His little face was blue, slack, lifeless. But his eyes were gently closed as though he had just gone to sleep.

“I want to see his eyes,” I whispered. “I want to see…”

“Pardon?” the nurse said.

I swallowed. “I-I want to see his eyes. I want to see if he has his father’s eyes.”

The nurse exchanged looks with the doctor, both of them too stunned to speak or move. “I have to see,” I muttered lifelessly, reaching out for little Alvin’s gently closed eyelids. “I have to see…”

In that moment, just before I could reach for little Alvin’s eyelids to lift them and get a better look, an iron hand reached out and stopped me. I looked up to see Nathan now standing over me once again.

He said nothing—just shook his head. Slowly, deliberately. His eyes, red-rimmed and full of more pain than the universe could ever hold, brooked no argument.

Nathan and I stared at each other for a long time, never once breaking eye contact. I felt as if the pain in our souls seemed to intertwine with one another, wrapping around our hearts and limbs and eyes and throats until it completely consumed both of us.

Everything else fell away, and so did we.

And then, I felt something snap. Not something physical, not something tangible, but I felt it as if it were so nonetheless.

It felt as if a pair of invisible scissors came down and cut the single, lone cord of pain that connected us, leaving us as two adrift souls with nothing to hold onto anymore.

And then he released my hand, and I felt it limply fall back down.