“Please stay with me,” he’d groaned as the incision was made.

Bella hadn’t heard him. She’d drifted away from consciousness, sure as if she were on a boat that had left its mooring and floated off over calm waters.

Nalla had been born at six twenty-four a.m.

“Is it alive?” he’d asked.

Though it shamed him to admit it now, the only reason he’d wanted to know was because God forbid Bella had to come around and learn that her daughter had been stillborn.

While Doc Jane stitched up Bella, Vishous had worked fast with a suction balloon over the young’s mouth and nose, then he’d fired up a tiny IV and done something with the hands and feet. Fast. He’d been as fast as his shellan at that point.

“Is she alive?”

“Zsadist?”

His eyes popped open and he came back to the present.

“Do you need more painkillers?” Bella asked. “You look as if you’re in agony.”

“I can’t believe she lived. She was so small.”

As the words came out of Zsadist’s mouth, Bella was confused, but only for a split second. The birth…he was thinking about the birth.

She stroked the fine, short hair on his head, trying to ease him in some small way. “Yes…yes, she was.”

His yellow eyes shifted to the other folks in the room and his voice got quiet. “Can I be honest?”

Oh, shit, she thought. “Yes, please.”

“The only reason I cared whether she was alive was because I didn’t want you to be told she wasn’t. She was the only thing you were worried about…and I couldn’t bear for you to lose her.”

Bella frowned. “You mean at the end?”

“Yes…you said you just wanted to make sure she was okay. Those were your last words.”

Bella reached out and put her palm on his cheek. “I thought I was dying and I didn’t want you to be left all alone. I…I saw the light of the Fade. It was all around me, bathing me. I was worried about you…about what would happen if I weren’t living.”