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sissytobitch10seconds · 7 months

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Like Mother, Like Son

Fandom: Grishaverse: Six of Crows Summary: Jesper's heat came and went like all the others had. He built up the nest, spent a week being sated and cared for by his partners, and then washed all their linens to put them away. Something should have come after and distinctly hadn't, yet. Warnings: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, pregnancy, childbirth, canon-typical mentions of slavery, implied breeding kink Word Count: 26,666 Ship(s): Jesper Fahey/Kaz Brekker/Nina Zenik/Wylan Van Eck/Inej Ghafa/Matthias Helvar

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A/N: It's been a very long time since I wrote a oneshot as long as this one and I'm very happy with how this turned out! I hope that you guys enjoying reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I know ABO dynamics and mpreg aren't very popular within the grishaverse but they're kind of a staple of my autism so I had to write some of them, haha. Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

He was sure that the side of his finger was going to start bleeding any second now because of how often he had been chewing on it. It was better than worrying his lip between his teeth because that was more noticeable to his partners, which he didn’t really want it to be yet. Still, it hurt more than anything had in a long time. Short persistent pain was worse than getting shot since at least adrenaline came with the hot white burst.

Jesper had gotten a lot better at telling his partners when he was worried about something than he had been when their pack first formed. It had taken a lot of work on his part to be able to bare his soul to them like they required, but he had loved them so much that it wasn’t like he was doing it for nothing. He usually came to them when he was feeling down about himself or insecure that they were going to reject him from their mating mark if not their pack entirely. They were all so kind and compassionate to him when he did that, rewarding his vulnerability with the comfort that he needed. Even Kaz was able to get into Jesper’s head and pick apart the thoughts that were threatening to consume him.

This wasn’t something that Jesper felt like he could come to them about because he was barely able to wrap his own mind around it. That should have been exactly the reason that he went to them, so that he could talk out loud and have another opinion to bounce off of, but he couldn’t. It was too personal and too scary for him to say out loud and that was a crucial part of being able to work through an issue.

It was nearing the end of spring, the heat of summer already sinking into the humid streets of Ketterdam. That meant that it was edging out of estrus season, so it wasn’t that uncommon for members of the Dregs to be locked away in their rooms when they were supposed to be working so they could outlast the natural hormonal flux all alphas and omegas went through. Betas clogged the street this time of year, all of them doing work in the place of their friends who had been incapacitated by estrus or taking advantage of the lack of alphas.

The Crows weren’t able to escape that fundamental part of their biology either. Kaz and Matthias’ ruts had both synced up with Wylan and Jesper’s heats since they were all mated to each other. It had happened the second year that they had been together as a mated pack, which made the experience so much more pleasant than it had been the first year when Matthias was gone on a mission and it left Nina and Kaz trying to keep two omegas in heat satisfied.

When the estrus had taken over the members of the mate-pack that year, their fourth year sharing their estrus with each other and their fifth being mated, they had done what had become habit. Wylan and Jesper had spent the entire day in nothing but their smalls while running after their partners to get their scents on certain fabric so that they could build up their nest. That, of course, meant that Matthias spent the day hovering outside of their group bedroom while preparing to help them however they needed and Kaz spent it brooding in his office.

They had spent the next three days boarded up in their master bedroom while fucking the brains out of each other. They used cold spells to wash themselves of the sweat and cum and spit that they were covered in, while Inej and Nina took care of all of the business down in the club that couldn’t wait. The estrus had passed and they were once again free to go back to the way that things had been before. He and Wylan taken down their nest and washed all of the sex scent out of them before returning the linens to where they belonged in the closet. It was like it had never happened by the time that the two of them had finished.

But things didn’t return back to normal for everyone in their pack. Jesper was usually so lost in his own thoughts and fantasies that he barely noticed when things had changed, especially with his own body, until it was slapping him in the face. This time was so, so different because if it was true then it brought a whole host of other issues that he was going to have to deal with.

He noticed that he had been more tired than he should have been. It had been years and years since he had stayed up night after night with shitty jurda imported from the cheap sellers in his home country, but he was still able to go with five or six hours of sleep and be fine. Now it felt like his body was constantly trying to drag him back down into sleep even when he gave it upwards of ten hours. Sometimes he wasn’t even tired in the way that sleep would cure, but exhausted down to his bones and unable to do anything about it.

He had also noticed his appetite changing. Some days all he wanted to do was eat, and he indulged himself in the snacks that Nina kept in her rooms, but other days the idea of food actually made him vomit.

The vomiting and one other thing had been his biggest clue. The first time it had happened he had called it a fluke, simply pushing it away that he had caught a bug or something, despite the fact that zowa weren’t meant to get sick. Then he realized that his nausea was coming without any cramps or pains or blood, and then he realized just how long it had been since he had last bled.

He had been mostly aware of all of the small changes in his body, but realizing that he had gone three months without his post-heat cycle or any other cycle was so terrifying that it actually made him cry.

It brought about a sense of panic that he hadn’t encountered in a very long time. There was the initial thrill of adrenaline like there always was when he was about to get into something possibly dangerous, but then it settled low in his chest and stomach. The nausea immediately increased when the anxious flutters began to shoot through his body, his mind whirling to try and figure out what it might mean.

The answer was staring him in the face the entire time that he dragged his exhausted body through the streets of the Barrel to a more respectable part of Ketterdam. He had enough Kruge in his pocket to buy himself an appointment with the heartrender apothecary worker that Kaz used for all of their business. He was someone that wouldn’t say anything about his condition if it turned out to be true, both to the general public and to his mate-pack.

No one paid him any mind as he wove through the throng of people trying to go about their business. He opened up the door to the apothecary and then slipped in without being noticed. He rang the bell on the front of the counter, trying to plaster a smirk onto his face so that he didn’t look as nervous as he felt inside.

The front of the shop was just as he remembered it. The dark wood made up the floor and the counter. The walls were plastered with beautiful green wallpaper that had multicolored flowers in stripes to bring some brightness to the space. There was a counter where the register was kept for working, glass on the top to allow people to see in to some of the snake oils that were offering their products. Behind the counter, in huge shelves stocked full, were different compounds and drugs that people could immediately buy for everyday ailments. There were also a couple of bundles of herbs, hung upside down along the door and windows so that they could dry out properly before they were used.

A few minutes later, the heartrender that Jesper had come to see walked out from the back of the shop. James was a little shorter than Jesper with salt and pepper black hair, though is face was completely shaved. He was wearing the a blue apron with the logo of his shop on the front, but his shirt underneath was a stained-yellow garment from hours working with boiling liquids. The two of them had known each other since Jesper had come to Ketterdam. He had used a good deal of the money he had been sent with for room and board to get a special medication that would help cloak his scent and dampen his heat. He had come back a couple of times since then, usually for weak birth control when he was on a mission or to get something healed that Nina was unable to. Kaz had only started to work with James when he noticed his then courting partner’s behaviors.

“You know the standard procedure,” James said as he gestured his hand over towards the door.

Jesper pushed himself off of the counter and then carefully ducked through the curtain that was separating the back space from the main work area. James had kept his Grisha abilities a relative secret so avoid being taken by slavers, but it was known that he was a person that people could go to if they needed discreet medical care.

The back space of the shop was much like the front had been. The dark wood of the floor continued, but also carried up the walls in thick beams that were hidden by plaster in the front. The walls, other than the beams, were painted a lovely blue color that immediately made Jesper relax. It was a color that he recognized from the skies back home, which was very likely something he was going to see again in person if it turned out that what he suspected as true. Before the thoughts could consume him again, he got up onto the counter that was used as an examination table. It had a thick white sheet on it, which was likely changed in between every patient that came in since James also dealt with sexually transmitted diseases. The exam table was hidden back behind the rest of the tables with a variation of ordered drugs and herbs that were being prepared.

“What are you in for today?” James asked as he walked over to the omega with those dark, boring eyes of his.

Jesper felt a little like he was on display, which wasn’t something that he minded when he was wrapped in the arms of one of his partners, but it almost made his skin crawl on the examination table. He tried to look nonchalant as he stretched his arm up behind his head to cushion his skull and then finally answered, “I needed you to check for pregnancy.”

Saying it out loud made it all the more real, but he didn’t have much time to think about it because James immediately began to move around. “It’s ging to be easiest to sense something if you lift up your shirt. Are you comfortable with that?” James asked.

A shiver of nervousness echoed through his system again. He nodded and then sat up so that he could undo his shirt. His vest was pushed back with his overcoat and then his shirt was pulled out of his pants and joined the folds of fabric. He sat back the way he had been before and stared up at the ceiling.

James’ hands pressed onto the lower part of his stomach. He felt a rush of something blow through the areas where James was holding, the same way that it felt when Nina had tried to heal him after he had been injured during a job. He whimpered slightly when he felt a shock of pain echo through his hips. “Are you alright?” James asked.

“Yes, it just hurt a bit,” Jesper replied. The examination resumed and James pressed the palm of his hand into the place over Jesper’s uterus before he let out a small hum and pulled back. Another spike of panic began to grow in his chest as he sat up. He focused mostly on doing up the buttons of his shirt and vest so that his clothes were properly back in place as he asked, “So? What’s the consensus, doc?”

“Well, based on the fact that it hurt, I felt something inside of your uterus with both my abilities and my palpitation, I would say that you are. What reasons did you think that you were pregnant?” James asked.

“I haven’t had my post-heat period but I had my heat several months ago. I’ve also been vomiting when I smell certain things and been more tired than usual,” Jesper explained. When he said all of the things out loud, it made it sound like there was no other option that it could have been.

James nodded. “You’re definitely pregnant. What is the next course of action that you want to take?”

The omega glanced up for a moment as he watched James toying with a bit of Queen Anne’s Lace, which was commonly used in abortion medications. He took in a sharp breath as his entire being was overcome with a sense of wrongness. He had never really thought about the fact that he might have wanted children, even after he was mated. The idea of aborting the baby he now knew was growing inside of him made him feel even more panicked than the idea of a baby in general. It was going to be very complicated, his next couple of steps forward, but he was willing to face that if it meant he got to bring his pup into the world.

“You don’t have any scent replacers, do you?” he asked. It was something that was very common back in Novyi Zem, a certain set of herbs that grew in their naturally warm climate could be compounded together to lessen the symptoms of scent sickness in people, but it was particularly important for expectant parents.

James shook his head. “They’re very hard to get in Ketterdam because of how necessary they are in Ravka. I take it that you don’t want an abortion tonic, then?”

The omega jumped off of the counter as he finished fussing with his clothes so that they were properly situated on his body. “No, thank you,” he shook his head. He got the bag containing the kruge out of his pocket and then handed it over to the beta. “Don’t tell anyone, even if my mates come asking about me or our visit.”

“You know that I wouldn’t,” he replied curtly. James never meant to be offensive or hurtful, but he also didn’t like wasting time on pleasantries. The omega liked that about him because it meant that whatever they were doing was over and done with as quickly as possible.

Jesper was free to walk from the clinic then, knowing that the transaction was already over. He finished righting his clothing and then took the little bottle of clove oil that he was offered at the front desk. It was standard for him to get something small that could be seen by outside eyes so that it would mask the back business that the apothecary was doing.

As soon as he stepped out onto the bustling streets of Ketterdam, the reality of the situation finally hit him. He fell into a half-dazed state as he let his legs take him where he needed to go. He knew exactly where the Silver Six was and he could find it from any point around the city or country in his sleep. He let the emotions that he had been unknowingly holding back inside of him froth up and into the forefront of his mind so that he could only focus on them.

He was pregnant.

---

He was pushing his luck, and he of all people knew that he didn’t have a lot of luck to push.

It had been a month since he had gotten the diagnosis that he was expecting. He had tried to ignore it at first, waiting for his monthly to come so that it would all seem like some kind of horrible dream that he could laugh off. He’d use it to prank Matthias and then mention to Kaz that they had to find another doctor because the one that they had been using wasn’t that reliable anymore.

And yet, another month passed since his estrus and there had yet to be even a speckle of blood in his underthings. His discharge had been dark a couple of times, but that had brought more terror to him than relief. He found that he was actually thanking his lucky stars that there hadn’t been any bleeding every time that he went to the bathroom, which had caused a bit of a crisis for him.

He had started out by realizing that he did desperately want the baby growing in his womb, more than he thought he would have. Jesper had encountered people who had abortions and had never judged them for it. The Barrel was a tough place to try and raise children, especially when they were the types of individuals that Jesper had been interacting with back then. They had described the process as being tough because it went against their natural instincts but overall freeing. The idea of having it done on him came with absolutely no feeling of freedom, only terror. It was the same with almost wishing that it had been a fluke or that he would miscarry. He didn’t want the child to disappear or to loss him.

He hadn’t ever thought about having kids before, but now that he knew there was a little potential life growing inside of him it was the only thing that clung to his mind. When Inej arrived home from her most recent voyage, it caused his mind to go through each of his mates and try to reason whether or not they would be happy that he was pregnant or if they would want to keep the pup, but every person just made him feel more and more grim about the situation as a whole.

Inej loved children but she was away from them as long as she could be without any of them getting scent sickness (Jesper had physically shuddered at the thought of what scent sickness was going to do to him now that he was pregnant if he had to wait several weeks to get the Zemini cure for it), which meant that raising children wasn’t really on the table. Wylan was good with kids for the most part, but he was still wading through all of the trauma that the disgraceful Jan Van Eck and his mother’s faked death had given him, so springing a baby onto him on top of all of that seemed almost cruel. Matthias was awkward and nervous around children the same way that he was around porcelain and Inej, things that he thought were breakable under his terrifying strength. Nina seemed to be ambivalent about children on the outside but Jesper knew that with her powers she was just as shaky around them as Matthias was. Kaz’s relationship with the idea of family and children was more complicated than Jesper even truly knew, but he was always distant about the idea of children so likely wouldn’t want to be a father.

He was also a little terrified that it would break apart their pack. Kaz’s aforementioned issues with appearing weak to the outside world had added a layer of difficulty in getting them all to coordinate together into a proper pack, let alone a mated pack. The alpha had only barely admitted he wanted to claim Inej before the rest of them ended up in his life. Jesper worried what a child being added into the mix would do to their semi-fragile pack. It was possible that it would be too much for Kaz to handle and all the progress that they had made with him would suddenly disappear. For only a moment, he wondered if he should just drink one of the teas that had been offered to him and let the Queen Anne’s Lace do its work so that he didn’t have to worry about it at all.

The rearing of emotions in the back of his throat and the tears brushing at the corners of his eyes immediately reminded him why that idea wasn’t an option for him.

By the time that he actually made up his mind about what he was going to do, his heart was heavy in his chest and his body was starting to noticeably change. It wasn’t enough that he couldn’t just brush it off on something else, like the fact that their new cook drowned everything in grease or it had been a while since they had done a job. He knew that he couldn’t push it anymore and he actually had to follow through with the plan that his overactive mind had been creating for a while.

Early one morning when the air was already beginning to get heavy with the summer humidity, Jesper snuck out so that he could buy himself passage on a ship that was going to be leaving dock later that day. He returned back to the Silver Six with a pre-mourning heart and weary eyes.

He surveyed the space in front of him when he stepped over the threshold, an old habit that he had gotten into whenever he entered a new room after becoming a Dreg. Kaz was apparently in the back office on the main floor, based on the way that the door was propped open instead of shut and locked like it would be if he had taken his work up to the attic. Nina was perched on the edge of one of the tables while showing Matthias the tricks she had learned with cards from their newest waitress. Inej had left on another one of her voyages about two weeks prior after a whole month back. It was hard for her to sail with anyone that wasn’t a beta during the spring months because of estrus season, which meant that her trips in the summer tended to be longer. Wylan was gone to a meeting with the other Merchers, which Jesper was actually glad for.

“Hello, love,” Nina purred when she noticed her partner coming through the door. They tried to be a little subtle about their relationship when they were in public, but Nina was the most affectionate out of them all so the pet names were just something that came with being together with her.

Jesper forced the panic and sadness out of his mind so that it wouldn’t bleed through into his scent. He had gotten good with that kind of thing very early in his career in Ketterdam. Back in Novyi Zem it hadn’t mattered what his gender was or if other people could tell what he was feeling from his scent. He had very quickly ended up in the darkest parts of Ketterdam when he had moved to try and go to university, which resulted in him learning the importance of why that kind of information was to be kept to himself. He was able to do it around strangers without even thinking about it, but his mates spent so much time around him that they were able to tell unless he focused on hiding it.

"Hey, ba-sweetheart," he replied. Saying his favorite nickname for her felt like it was revealing too much about the tender place that he was in, so he switched mid sentence and prayed that no one had noticed. He wanted very badly to lean down and kiss her lips, but they were in public and that would result in the both of them getting a stern talking to from Kaz. They had dealt with the Dime Lions and the merchant council years ago, but every gang and villain in Kerch was always looking for a way to take down the murder of Crows at the heart of the Dregs, so it just wasn't safe for them to even insinuate the love that they had for each other outside of the safety of their rooms.

“Where were you? You were gone for breakfast,” Nina pouted. She reached out and brushed her fingers over the side of his coat. It was the linen coat-robe hybrid that Kaz had gotten him for a courting gift all those years ago, worn only because it would help to hide the spreading of his hips while they tried to accommodate the growing baby in his womb.

“Oh, you know,” Jesper sighed forlornly. Lying to his partners the way that he was made him feel disgusting from the inside out. He didn’t like lying to anyone unless he knew that it was going to do something important like save a life, which this technically was. He knew that his partners wouldn’t force him to do anything with his body that he didn’t want to after what Inej had been forced to go through, but it would still completely wreck him to be forced from their mate-pack.

He resisted the urge to bury his nose into her hair. She smelled like spun sugar and maple syrup, heady and rich in a way that made his sour stomach rumble like he could actually manage to hold something down. He let out another sigh and tilted his head back and forth, relieved that his hair had grown back enough to keep his hat securely on his head. “I was just out and about, running errands.”

“Getting into mischief?” she asked, tilting her head to the side cutely.

“No, but I will be if you keep looking at me like that,” he replied as he darted his eyes out towards the few patrons that were occupying their space at that time of day.

She gave him a cute pout but released his jacket lapels nonetheless. She returned to her conversation with Matthias as the two of her mates exchanged a sweet smile with each other. Jesper was free to escape after that since they had been properly sated. He felt bad enough about not telling them that he was pregnant or what he had really been doing, but he felt worse when he remembered what he was about to do.

His feet moved quietly up the stairs, avoiding the couple of creaky steps with ease. Inej would have done it far better, to the point where no one would have been able to even tell that she was in the building let alone where she was inside of it, but Jesper was trying his best. They had chosen to live on the upper floors of their club when they were running it themselves because the Van Eck estate still held too many feelings for Wylan and the Slat was too crowded for any of them to feel comfortable actually being a mated pack where anyone could walk in on them. They each had their own small rooms where they could go when they wanted to be alone, which was often for a couple of them.

Wylan’s room also served as his laboratory, with a cot in the corner for extra naps and passing out when he worked late nights and didn’t want to shower off to go find his partners. Nina had a cozy little closet space that was just big enough for her mattress and all of the linens she had stolen from them. Matthias had a space out in what used to be an upper level sun patio since he loved being as close to nature as he could get in the city. Inej had a space up in the attic, carved out of the space that Kaz used as well. Kaz also had a bed down in his office for when he felt too painful to walk up the stairs to get to their shared room. Jesper’s room was more of a glorified closet and workstation, right next to Wylan’s workshop.

He was headed there now so that he could do what he needed. He had no windows, which had preserved the color and vibrancy of all of the garments he had collected from his mates over the last half a decade. Each garment was sculpted to his body in a way that highlighted a part of his form that he knew each of his partners liked best. Matthias leaned towards things that made him look even taller than he already was, pleased as punch that he had snagged an omega that was the opposite of what he had been told to get his entire life. Nina liked to get things that matched her own gowns and made him look softer around the edges. Kaz got him things that he thought Jesper would like, but they also tended to have plunging necklines. Inej got him things that would keep him warm and comfortable. Wylan got him things that highlighted his ass and more skirts that he would probably ever be able to wear.

His heart ached in his chest as he realized that it was unlikely any of those things would ever find their way back onto his body. They would stop fitting very soon and then his body would never return back to what it was before. He was also unlikely to be able to take them all with him.

Jesper sucked in a tight breath as he remembered what he had come into his room for. He turned around and closed his door before he slid the lock and deadbolt into place where they belonged. Kaz would be able to pick the lock open with little to no problem, but the deadbolt would be difficult for all of them. Each of their bedrooms had a deadbolt to keep both Kaz and other lockpicks from rival gangs from jumping any of them while they were sleeping.

“Let’s get this started, then,” he breathed. He noticed, to himself since he was alone in the heavy air of his room, that his Zemini accent was already beginning to get stronger. When he actually spoke Zemini, his mother had always teased him that he had a Kaelish accent. Both of them tended to slip away when he was speaking Kerch, unless he was upset or excited. The Zemini accent always won out when he was upset, the Kaelish more likely to come when he was excited.

Jesper lit one of the oil lanterns towards the back of the narrow room. The space was just large enough that when it was empty, he was able to stand in the center with his arms stretched out and the tips of his fingers would just barely brush against the walls. The space made up for it by being able to fit two of him lengthwise, though. He had the racks containing his clothing on one side of the room and then a long, low desk with all of the things that he had been using to try and train his zowa abilities after his talk with the Nina after they had just mated. His bed was a mattress on top of milk crates in the corner with a plethora of blankets wadded up on top of it. He rarely ever slept in his own space, which was probably why his mates hadn’t insisted that he make it nicer.

Today his room was not the sanctuary that it had been when he was having his episodes, or when he was baring his soul by using the very gift that had caused the downfall of his mother. Today his room was a cage that was sealing his fate, that was condemning him to the death of a thousand paper cuts and scent sickness.

Slowly, he reached for the go-bag that he kept tucked in the back corner of his bed. He removed the clothes that he had in it, which was three outfits that would be easy to move around in and more ammo that one human could possible use. He packed things that he knew he would need during his trip. The stash of kruge that he had managed to put away before he knew that he was really secure in his relationship went in first, tucked between a simple white linen shirt and a gaudy green and yellow striped button up. One of the looser skirts and set of trousers along with a belt to keep them up while he was still svelte. He also tucked away a small scented item from each of his partners to try and stave off the sickness for as long as he could.

They were scraps of old shirts, Matthias and Wylan, and handkerchiefs, everyone else, so they weren’t going to be the best if he really wanted to last longer than a direct trip to Novyi Zem, but it was the best that he could do. He wanted to be able to bring his actual mates with him, to have them close to his person at all times so that he didn’t have to go through the painful and scary process that he was about to embark upon entirely on his own.

The last thing that he did was get a piece of paper and his favorite fountain pen. He had probably taken it apart and put it back together, both with and without the use of his zowa abilities, a thousand times since he had taken it from Per Haskell’s office. He had been fascinated by the mechanisms in devices like that since he was tiny and it was the only indulgence that he allowed himself in his new life.

The letters glided over the page and sunk into the material as his brain came up with them. They were a little messy because tears were already beginning to blur his vision, but they were clear enough that any one of his partners could read them except for Wylan. He didn’t leave anything specific, like what his plans were or what he was planning to do since he didn’t want his pack or any one else finding it and following after him.

It was still early morning at that point, so the club was going to be relatively empty. He set the note down on his bed after folding up all of the blankets and stacking them on top of the feather down pillow he always dragged to and from whoever’s bed he was sharing that night. His bag dug into his shoulders as he situated it properly on his back, weighed down not only by the items that he had tucked inside but the guilt of what he was doing.

He knew that no one was going to be on the living floor of their home unless they were squirreled away in their actual locked room, so it was the best time for him to do what he had to do. He was checking over the information that he had collected for Kaz during his mini-mission the week before their estrus. Information like that sometimes stuck tried and true in his brain, but sometimes it slipped away and got warped. He had to hope that this was one of the times that he remembered it correctly even after so much had happened, he had a lot more riding on it than he usually did.

Jesper reached the ground floor and tried to poke his head out of the door that led up to their private quarters without looking at all suspicious. He knew that it was going to be the biggest hurdle to get past the straggling patrons they had and possibly Nina and Matthias if they were still staked out there. Luck seemed to be favoring him a little bit even if it had just been remarkably cruel to him, as they had already left.

The tables and main floor were blissfully empty of anyone that would recognize him and try to stop him, so he situated his bag onto his shoulders and then headed for the exit. No one tried to grab at him, to get his attention, or asked him what he was doing with a loaded bag and a guilty conscience.

The step that he took over the edge of the threshold felt like it had when he had walked out of his father’s house for what was going to be the last time under the facade of an education. This one felt just as final and just as much like he was running away from something that could have protected and helped him. But just as he had the time before, he knew that it wouldn’t and that this was really the only option that would save him all the hurt and anguish he would no doubt otherwise face.

His heart ached in his chest so much that he thought it might cave in on itself, forcing the emotion up through his eyes so that they were swelling with tears again. Jesper forced himself to ignore it and shoved down the emotions until that all that was left was cold, hard resolution to do what would protect him and his unborn child.

---

Kaz had been working all day and he felt like it. Despite Per Haskell being gone for a very long time, he still kept paper logs. He didn’t have the sheets upon sheets of calculations that others had to have since he could do all of that in his mind, but it was good to have something to point to when he was trying to persuade someone in one way or another. He had been sitting in his chair with his favorite pen grasped in his hand as he filled out tidy black and red lines in the ledger until the sun had begun to set. His joints creaked when he stood up, letting him know just how much they hated being all tensed up the way he had been when he was thinking.

Inej’s ship was going to be docking later that night or the next day, it wasn’t always directly on time. The thought of having his pack where they belonged, all huddled away in their group bed and maybe even in a nest, made his heart sing in his chest in a way that only revenge used to.

Kaz grasped his cane in his hand as he pushed himself up into a standing position. Putting weight on the leg that was already so upset with him almost made his vision white out, but he pushed it back with the focus on his partners. They grounded him and made him feel more whole and human, gave him the strength that he needed to keep going.

His long fingers wrapped around the head of his cane as he used it to support his bodyweight and then removed himself from his office. He had an office space upstairs in the attic, just as he had back when they lived in the Slat, but the one on the lower floor was better for actual business meetings now that he was the boss.

Kaz walked out and surveyed the crowd of people that they had managed to drag in that night. It was a good sort, lots of rich pockets and even more gems that could be snagged from drunk patrons. Anika and Dirix were working the door and the floor that night so he didn’t have to worry about anything big enough to really be noticed being stolen from their patrons. Knowing that his club was in good hands for the time being, Kaz slipped back into the door that no one ever dared even touched and up the stairs to the shared common room.

Wylan had already returned back from his daily adventure with the Merchant Council. Matthias and Nina had come back some time that afternoon, so they were stretched sleepily out on the couch together. Inej was off on her ship, which meant that the only person currently missing was Jesper.

“Hello love,” Wylan beamed when he noticed that his partner was standing in the doorway, watching them as they decompressed around each other.

“When did you get back?” he asked, clearing his throat to try and rid it of some of the rasp. He was never going to get all of it out, but it sometimes dimmed when he talked for longer than a couple of seconds. It got worse if he had been talking for too long, like when Alina had come to visit them a couple of years ago with her husband.

The omega glanced towards the clock as he placed whatever he had been working on down on the table. It seemed to be the new compound that Matthias had been talking to him about the night before when they had both woken up from nightmares. Kaz had laid on the other side of the bed with a pillow blockade between him and the rest of his partners, triggered from events earlier in the day, and listened to them until they had soothed him into a proper sleep.

“I think about an hour? I came back and then kept working so my brain is a little fried,” he laughed. He looked a little sheepish as he leaned back against the couch and refused to meet the pack leader’s eyes.

It was common for alphas to be the pack leaders in places like Fjerda, but there were differences in Kerch. While indentures were very common and owned by almost every wealthy man to ever disgrace the streets, omegas and betas were both respected much the same way that they were in Ravka and Novyi Zem. Kaz just so happened to be the most powerful out of everyone in their pack and had taken the role of pack alpha when they had reached that stage in their relationship, long before they had even considered mating each other. Inej was often considered to be his second, the one that could take over the pack if something happened to him, but Jesper assumed that role when she was off on her trips.

When his mind rotated back to the other omega in his pack, he asked, “Where is Jesper?”

“I thought that he was going to be spending the day with you,” Matthias said when he heard what they were talking about. He looked down at Nina, rubbing his hand over the crest of her hip while she purred sleepily against his shoulder.

“We saw him today around ten but he went upstairs and didn’t tell us what his plans were going to be for the day,” Nina stretched and looped her arms sleepily around Matthias’ shoulders. The two of them had been having a rather lazy day, that much Kaz knew for certain, which would explain why his beta mate was already so tired despite the early hour of the evening.

Matthias nudged her off so that she was sitting against the couch and no longer on him. When she whined and tried to tug him back down by the twin ties connecting to the neck of his shirt he just chuckled and kissed the tip of her nose. “You and I both know that neither Kaz nor Wylan have eaten anything since breakfast this morning. Inej will have my head if I do not go and make something for them.”

“I’ll come with you!” Nina chirped, suddenly far more awake than she had been a second ago. Kaz watched them tangle their hands together as they walked through the main common space into the little kitchen that they had for their meals. They didn’t have a formal table to eat at because it reminded Wylan too much of the dinners he had endured with his father and Nina too much of the Little Palace, but they did have to have somewhere to prepare their food.

The alpha limped over to the couch that Nina and Matthias had been occupying and lowered his aching body down onto it. He was still having a bad day, but the company of his partners hadn’t triggered him since before they had broken Matthias out of prison all those years ago. Wylan turned to him and gave him that soft smile that made the blue in his eyes twinkle like when the clouds broke after a snow storm. “I can go look for Jesper if you’d like,” he offered.

“That would be appreciated, thank you,” Kaz replied immediately. He found that his bad days were actually eased with the presence of his entire pack near him. That wasn’t always possible since Inej and Kuwei both had their own trips that they liked to make around the world, doing whatever it was that they did on their boats, but having as many of them in the same room as him as possible would ease the panic beating up in his throat. It had been so much easier for him to ignore it when he was doing paperwork and drowning out his thoughts with numbers. Now that those solutions were no longer able to offer him the respite he craved, he needed to know that the people he cared for were safe.

Wylan pushed himself off of the ground after tidying up whatever experiment he had been doing on the coffee table. He gave a small, chirping purr to let Kaz know that if the alpha was in a state where he could be touched that he would be receiving a kiss or other affection of some sort. It was one of Kaz’s favorite noises to hear and one that he often dragged out of the omega when they were rotating around their estrus.

He leaned his head back against the couch and let his eyes slip closed as he listened to the sound of creaking boards and banging pots. He could tell where Wylan was in their house based on the sound of his footsteps and how far away they were. Nina and Matthias were getting nowhere on dinner, but that was to be expected because they couldn’t really function around each other. Dinner was going to be coming late, but he knew where they were and that they were happy so he didn’t really care.

About ten minutes later, Wylan returned with a piece of paper clasped in his hands. “Hey Kaz, would you read this for me? I found it in Jesper’s room and I think it might explain what he was up to today,” the omega said as he handed it over. He tucked himself on the other side of the couch, his talented hands toying with the callouses that had begun to form on the tips of soft mercher fingers.

Kaz accepted the note and inhaled deeply so that he could tell what Wylan was feeling. It was impossible for even a mate-pack to be able to have the mythical feeling-sensing abilities that they detailed in the stories of Saints in Ravka, but it was common for mates to be able to tell more about their partner after they had officially mated through their scents. Wylan smelled like campfire smoke and stacked firewood, but it turned a bit sour like burning grass when he was feeling distressed.

“I’m sure that everything’s alright. He probably just got distracted with one of his friends,” Kaz soothed. It had become almost second nature to try and calm his mates down when they were in the beginning of their relationships and all still struggling with their own issues. They were doing a lot better now, but the tendency had persisted.

He looked back down at the note and then began to read, “My dear mates, I don’t want you to worry about me even though I know that you will for a while. I’ve decided that I have to leave, it’s best for the pack. No one is threatening me or forcing me to do this, I’ve done it myself. I don’t want you to come after me or even look for me at all. Please just pretend that…”

The second that he had begun to speak the words out loud, he had felt the icy water lapping at his feet. By the time that he realized what the note was implying, the tide had reached all the way up his hips and then over his head to consume him entirely. He felt like he was drowning all over again, like the life that he had worked so hard to build for himself, brick by brick, was suddenly pulled out from under his feet. Things were crumbling around him and there was nothing that he could do to stop it.

Wylan had shifted on the couch so that he was sitting forward a bit more and staring at the note in his hands. He wouldn’t be able to read it at all, even if Inej had helped him be able to recognize certain words for the meetings where he couldn’t bring one of them to help him with paperwork. Kaz knew that he was checking to make sure that it was actually Jesper’s handwriting and wasn’t written by someone else or in a different style than he normally did to try and tell them something in secret.

“Nina! Matthias!” he shouted, loud enough that they likely heard it down in the bar below. He scrambled off the couch without touching his alpha and then met them halfway to the kitchen.

“Wylan? What’s going on?” Nina immediately wrapped her arms around him in the kind of hug she knew that he needed. It was her special talent within their mate-pack, to be able to cater to each of their needs without them even having to tell her explicitly.

“Jesper’s gone!” he sobbed.

Kaz grasped the hand of his cane so tightly that the leather of his gloves creaked with the force. He shot up off of the couch and a burst of white hot pain chased away the remaining dripping cold that had been clinging to his skin. “No, he’s not. Not for long.”

He couldn’t get anything else out as he stalked down to his office to brood and plot about how he could get his omega back. He didn’t know what had come over the zowa that had made him think that it would be a good idea to leave their home and the safety of their mate-pack for whatever was lurking out there for him, but the fact that he had thought to at all was already foreboding. Kaz wasn’t going to let anything bad happen to the people that he loved ever again.

---

Inej’s boat docked in the harbor late that very same evening. She was oblivious to the turmoil that was happening in her home as she made sure that her crew and vessel was secure before making her way through the damp streets of her home city. She had once resented and hated the place that she had been sold to, but she had also met the people that she adored most in the entire world there so the resentment could only last for so long.

She didn’t bother to go in the front door since she was too tired to deal with questions from the other Dregs that Kaz would have working tonight. Instead, she went around the back of the building and scaled the slick walls up to the window that lead directly into her room. The window was still locked to an outsider that wasn’t her, but she was able to push and tug on the latch in just the right way to get in.

A small smile graced her face when she noticed that Nina had actually managed to keep up with her promise of cleaning the room for her mate. They were both betas in the group, which had led to them being closer even after they had mated their respective alphas before the mate-pack had formed. It was likely that the aforementioned alpha, Matthias, had helped her with the cleaning instead of Nina doing it on her own. Inej didn’t really care who had done it, she was just grateful to have a space that wasn’t rocking and didn’t smell of the ocean.

Stepping into her home was nothing like she had expected it to be. Instead of being met with the warm smell and arms of her mates, she was hit with a wave of bitter distress and something specifically feeling absent. She wondered if she had picked up on a little bit of the Saint’s fairytale mate-pack magic and gotten Matthias’ ability to sense when something was wrong. Kaz would tease her for being superstitious, she knew.

The beta carefully stepped down into her home after the rest of her body fit neatly through the window. She assessed her room first, remembering exactly where everything had been to tell if they had moved in the slightest. Her room was up in the attic because it was hardest to get to and in the same space as Kaz’s office. She liked to be close to him even when they both needed their own space so that if he ever had a need for her, then she would be within reaching distance of him.

She trailed her hand over the edge of her bed to examine the blankets. Nina had clearly laundered the sheets at least once in the month Inej had been gone. Her books were still tidily piled on the small shelf above her bed, along with the knife cleaning and sharpening kit that Kaz had gotten her as a mating gift years ago. She had another one that she brought with her on her trips because she loved that one enough that she didn’t want it to get damaged or lost in her constant transit. The rug underneath her bed and pressing against the door to keep out the last of the draft hadn’t even been moved.

Everything in her room was exactly as it should have been, so she stepped out into the room that Kaz used as his office. Just as it had been in her room, everything was as it should have been. There was a large stack of papers on the desk from what Kaz had been working on when he wasn’t taking meetings. It was usually plans for heists and jobs that were less than legal, keeping all of the official paperwork down in the main office on the ground floor.

Inej’s unease grew the longer that she was unable to put her finger on what was wong about her home.

She slipped up onto the banister of the stairwell that led down to the rest of the bedrooms and slipped down it with practiced ease. The ones in the Slat had been smoother, less close to the wall, but Kaz had made sure everything in their home could put up with a lot of usage so that she wouldn’t be hurt if something broke. She knew that it was an act of love of the highest order to have Kaz Brekker actually take care of her, so she had never complained about the lack of space to him.

She arrived at the bottom of the steps without a sound, as she had planned. There were barely any noises coming from that floor, which only served to make her more concerned about what was happening. The communal floor and kitchen were a floor lower, so she repeated the process while following the smell and sound of her pack.

They were all gathered in their makeshift living room despite the late hour. She would have thought that it might have been a bad night if it was storming since Matthias and Nina still got triggered at times, but the sky was for once very dry. Wylan was sitting with his legs pulled up towards his chest, his arms wrapped so tightly around them that his pelvis had to be aching with the effort. Matthias was pacing around in the background, his face wrinkled with worry unlike she had seen since the Ice Court heist that had brought him to their little pack. Nina was perched on her favorite chair but her back was rigid and she was chewing on the side of her finger, looking every bit the talented soldier in a war meeting that she had been primed to be before she had been captured. Kaz was sitting on the other side of the couch from Wylan. He had his cane grasped in his gloved hands and was staring at something on the coffee table that she couldn’t make out.

“Inej, something has happened,” he said, before anyone else had noticed that she was around. She wasn’t sure why he was the only person that was ever able to see through all of the spider tactics that she had picked up during her life, but she didn’t mind it now that they were mated.

Upon hearing the other alpha say that, Matthias immediately stopped pacing and tried to follow Kaz’s gaze but wasn’t able to make her out in the darkness of the hallway. Wylan let out a small sob and buried his face into his knees, which made Inej’s heart throb in her chest. Nina let out a low breath and half slumped against her chair, brown curls falling over her pretty eyes. The beta then stepped into the light so that the rest of her partners could see that she was there. “What happened?” she asked as she made her way over to see what was laid out in front of Kaz on the table. She picked it up and then immediately registered Jesper’s messy Kerch scrawl over the yellowed page.

Her brain was going a million miles a minute when she processed that the other omega was missing, only one of them was surrounded by the protective nest of their home, and Kaz had said that something was wrong. The note only served to make her more concerned. “When do we leave?”

---

After a little over a week at sea, Jesper finally touched down on the land that he had grown up on. He hadn’t spent a lot of time in Shriftport when he wasn’t accompanying his parents because neither of them had wanted to stay home with him. That combined with the fact that it had changed during the time that he had been gone made it a little hard for him to find his way through the busy streets. He was able to figure it out fairly quickly after remembering that Novyi Zem wasn’t Ketterdam and the people around him weren’t going to pick his pockets on principle of annoying them alone.

He got instructions about how to get to the frontier and then headed on his way. The journey was far more difficult than he had anticipated it being. He was already beginning to become scent sick for Inej since he had seen her the furthest away out of all his partners, which made him feel achy and even more lethargic. The pregnancy was continuing to make him nauseous, which he had been able to pass of as sea sickness to the people that didn’t know him on the boat. He had made sure not to bring enough money to tempt him into gambling since he couldn’t risk falling back into that habit, but it also meant that he was unable to purchase a horse.

Jesper had been feeling kind of nervous about the idea of doing that anyway because he had heard some horror stories when he was very young about omegas miscarrying after going horseback riding early in their pregnancy. He didn’t know what was true and what wasn’t, he hadn’t been around enough midwives in the village near his frontier home after his mother died to get reliable information instead of just gossip.

He did manage to make it all the way to the jurda fields that his father had been running for as long as he could remember. The bright orange plants were shining underneath the spring sun as they got ready to bloom in late summer. They were still mostly green but the edges of the leaves were beginning to yellow and the buds were bountiful enough that it decorated the entire field with the color. In the middle of the one closest to the fence that led to the road was the man that Jesper had come looking for.

He paused for a moment, pressing his hand onto one of the steady posts. He remembered when they were as tall as him, and then again when he had walked after his father while slowly leading their old plough horse as he dragged replacements after a late-winter squall that had taken down half their fence. He should have known that coming back to the place where he had lived for so long was going to bring back memories from the aforementioned growing up, but it was still surprising to him.

“Da!” he shouted to get the attention of the other man. He sat his bag down against the edge of the fence to come and get later, relishing in the relief that it brought his shoulders to no longer having it hanging off of him.

Colm stood up and turned towards the person that had called to him. His red hair was stark against the yellow, brown, and orange of the plants he was surrounded by. He was wearing a checkered black and red shirt with a pair of linen slacks so that he didn’t get overheated underneath the Zemini sun. His hands were already caked with dirt already from weeding and handling the plants, but as soon as he saw who had spoken to him he grabbed a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe them off. “Jes?” he called, his voice carrying far over the open fields.

Jesper clambered over the fence with his long legs easily helping him over. His hips ached as his pelvis was already beginning to shift so that it could accommodate his growing pup, but he was overwhelmed with the urge to get to his father for the comfort he needed. “Da!”

As soon as they were close enough to reach each other, Colm immediately wrapped his arms around his son and brought him into a tight hug. It was protective and adoring in the way that it always had been when he was little, exactly what he had been asking for. The omega wrapped his own lanky arms around his beta father and nuzzled his head into the crook of his neck like he was a toddler.

As soon as the hug broke apart, Colm looked over his son with a concerned expression. He continued to wipe his hands off just to have something to do with his hands. He asked, “Jesper, what are you doing here?”

“Da, I fucked up, I really fucked up,” he shook his head. He had managed to keep from crying the entire time that he was traveling to get back to his father’s farm. He had even managed it when his father’s arms were wrapped around him and he felt safe and grounded for the first time since he had stepped foot in that apothecary. Being asked why he had come felt like it was all finally tumbling down on him at once and he couldn’t stop the tears now that they had started.

Colm let out a small sigh, the same way that he had when he found out that Jesper had accidentally stolen the neighboring farm’s new barn cat. He took the omega’s hand and gently led him back to their home like he was every bit the lost child he felt.

Jesper let himself be moved through the door and then settled down into the living room. He sat quietly as he tried to control his sobbing while his father got a glass of water for the both of them. Finally, Colm settled down on the other side of the living room table and waited for his son to calm down enough that he could explain what was going on. “Jes, what happened?” he finally prompted when he decided that the omega had calmed enough.

“I’m pregnant, Da,” he whispered in reply. He was wringing his long fingers around the lip of his glass to try and soothe the nerves that were terrorizing their way through his stomach. He reached one of his hands up to his neck so that they were grazing over the silvering, once-red marks that his mates had left on him years ago. He knew that his Da had seen them the last time that he had visited Ketterdam, but Jesper wasn’t quite sure that he had understood what it really meant since neither of them had decided to talk about it at the time.

“Did they hurt you?” Colm asked, his eyes serious and heavy as they looked over his son for any sign of injury other than the scent sickness and pregnancy exhausting his bones.

Jesper scoffed and shook his head. “No, they could never hurt me,” he answered. It was true, none of his mates would hurt him now that they were all pushing each other to heal and better themselves. Kaz had sent those people after him to join the gang when he was still pretending to go to University, but had never hurt him since. Matthias was so delicate with all of them that it was almost annoying. Inej and Nina were the same tender hands and even softer hearts when it came to matters of their mate-pack. Wylan wasn’t capable of hurting anyone that he could see and even then he still cried about the people that his explosives had taken the life of. “On the contrary, they’re probably furious that I’m gone.”

“Then why did you leave?” Colm asked, confusion spreading over his freckled features. Wylan was more Kerch than Kaelish now, but Jesper felt homesick when he thought about the freckles that dusted his skin during the summer months when they actually got some sun.

He thought about the answer that he wanted to give for a while before he finally let it pass his lips. “I… there’s a lot going on with them already and… I didn’t want to have an abortion. I want my pup but I don’t think it’s fair for me to push that on any of them.” It was a half truth, leaving out the danger of the life that they led in the Barrel and the trauma that they all possessed surrounding children.

Colm reached out and took Jesper’s hand before the omega realized that he had accidentally warped the glass to bend slightly over. He set it down on the table and then shuffled slightly. “Da, I need somewhere to stay until the baby comes at least. I know that you might not want me here since I’m not what you expected for a son and… I’m zowa, but I can’t start a whole new life while waiting for the scent sickness to go away and the baby on the way. I only have five more months, not even half a year.”

“Jes, Jes, calm down,” he laughed. It was a robust noise that had once filled the house to the brim, but all laughter and smiles had decreased tenfold after Jesper’s mother died. He had been missing her more than he had expected, not only because he was about to become a mother himself, but because he wanted her expertise on what was going to happen to him. Everyone he had seen go through a pregnancy when he visited town and the other homesteads on the frontier had their mother or grandmother beside them to help them, and yet he had no one.

Colm sighed and stood up so that he could run one of his calloused hands over the top of his son’s head. It was a motion that had been done a lot when Jesper was still waist height and it immediately soothed the second wave of tears threatening to make their way out of his throat. “I never really wanted you to leave, Jes. I wanted you to be safe and happy, I thought that was what would happen in Ketterdam, even if you didn’t end up going to university like I thought that you would. You can come back here and stay for as long as you’d like. I’m guessing that you’re going to need some help taking care of this little one anyway.”

A small laugh was forced from the omega’s mouth. He knew that going to his father was the best option for the situation that he was in, but he had still been stressed that his streak of bad luck would continue and he’d be turned away. He nuzzled against the beta’s side so he could get more of the comfort he had when he was a child, which Colm was happy to supply. “I’m gonna need all the help I can get, Da,” Jesper said wetly.

---

Nina chewed on the inside of her lip as she looked at the quickly approaching city. She had visited Novyi Zem to assist them in the recruitment for the Second Army back when the Black General was still alive, but she hadn’t been back since. She didn’t think that they were going to recognize her since she had been closer to Weddle than Shriftport, but the nerves were still eating her alive.

She knew that part of that was from being on a boat again. She and Matthias had done a lot of work to recover from the trauma that the shipwreck and following weeks had done to them but it was never going to be gone. That combined with the scent sickness that they were already starting to get from Jesper being gone made the experience very unpleasant. She was also so worried for him that her stomach felt as though it was tied in an impossible knot. She had even lost a good deal of her appetite.

They had waited for a week to get the best, fastest boats that they could and give Inej’s crew a chance to get the rest they needed before they set off. They had also been scouring every place in the Barrel and most of Ketterdam that they could think Jesper would go to. Matthias had been hesitant to go after him in the beginning because he was so sure that when he was told he wasn’t wanted, he wholeheartedly believed it instead of knowing that something was wrong. Kaz had quickly talked sense into him, but had decided that he and Nina were going to go to Novyi Zem together so that they could keep the other out of trouble.

Even thinking about her mate made her turn her head so that she could see what he had gotten up to. Matthias had been agitated from the moment that they got on the boat, he didn’t like being confined the way that they were when his instincts were going haywire over their mate.

If it had been under different circumstances, like Inej going on a longer voyage than normal, then Nina would have felt a little differently about watching him go through the stages of scent sickness. She herself was a beta, so she felt a little bit of fatigue and some achiness on her skin and neck. She knew that Wylan always got needier when he was feeling scent sick, and once they had been separated for so long that he had actually gone into a faux heat to try and get his mates to stick around. She wondered if Jesper was going through something like that now for Inej, wherever he was.

The boat eventually docked and they were able to secure two horses with the money that Kaz had given them. Even though they had been sailing all day and the late summer sun was beginning to sink low over the clouds, they started on the journey out to the Fahey farm. They wanted to know where their mate was more than they wanted to rest, and talking with his father was going to give them a good lead.

They traveled for as long as their horses would push through and then camped out on the side of the road. The fields were full of tall, paling grass with smaller farms growing jurda and vegetables stretched out in the distance. It was warm enough even at night that they didn’t have to cuddle together for warmth underneath the woolen blankets that they had packed like they did when they first met. Nina still eagerly leaned into Matthias’ side so that she could derive the comfort that she so desperately needed from her mate. He seemed more than happy to oblige her, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in her neck. Her spun sugar scent and his deep oak soothed the other respectively.

They rose with the sun that morning and pushed the rest of the way to the frontier. Nina’s heart was thrumming up in her ears and she kept a careful eye on Matthias. He seemed to be getting twitchier the closer that they got to the Fahey farm, even growling when she suggested stopping so that they could ask another one of the farmsteads around if they were traveling in the right direction.

The jurda plants were in full bright bloom by the time that they finally got to their destination. The leaves had curled, yellowed by the sun and hidden from view by the blossoming orange flowers on top. They stood at about waist level and turned towards the sun, hiding the rich brown dirt that they were growing in. Nina could see a two story farm house in the distance with a neatly trimmed cherry blossom tree growing on a hill nearby. The thing that really got her attention was the very familiar crane-like frame of her mate standing in the field.

The man had the same paler-Zemini colored skin with short hair hidden by one of the traditional farm wrappings. He must have just been using it to keep his hair out of the way and clean while he worked because he was still dressed in the clothes that he favored in Ketterdam. It was a pair of loose linen slacks good for the hottest summer months with a baggy green and yellow shirt. His limbs were still gangly and awkward as he squatted low next to one of the jurda plants to secure a blossom hidden within the yellowed leaves.

Her breath was stolen from her lungs when the man stood and she saw the familiar curves and juts of his face. She knew that she had missed him desperately, but she hadn’t really let herself feel it until she was looking directly at him. Her eyes trailed over his form as if trying to make sure that he was real, but then they paused when she got to his stomach. It almost looked as though it were a trick of the light, a shadow cast by the basket he had propped up against one hip, something else to explain why the front of his shirt was pulled taut in a way that felt impossible for him.

Jesper Fahey had always been boney and awkward, no matter how much they forced into his body to try and get him to put a bit more weight on. He had the farmboy muscle over his bones but not much else, which left him often cold when it rained. The only reasonable explanation for why his clothing was fitting him the way that it was stuck to the forefront of her mind and made her feel like she was stuck on her horse.

Her mate, evidently, was not. Matthias jumped off of his horse and then vaulted over the fence before Nina’s mind had even calmed down enough to process that her previously missing mate was standing in front of her.

Jesper dropped the basket full of jurda blossoms and reached his arms out for the alpha despite the fact that he had been the one to leave them. Nina knew that it was because of the scent sickness or whatever had caused him to leave in the first place. She refused to believe what her mind was telling her as she dismounted from her own horse. She took both of the steeds’ reigns and tied them to once fencepost each so that they wouldn’t run away. She then hauled herself over the wire like Matthias had done so that she could meet them.

She had come to her senses and finished her work quickly enough that the duo hadn’t even separated from each other. Matthias had his nose buried against Jesper’s scent gland, growling low in his chest in a way that would warn off anyone that wasn’t in his mate-pack. When he opened his eyes to look at Nina, she saw that his pupils were swollen with the endorphins that were rushing through his system. Jesper was clinging to Matthias like his legs were threatening to give up and hiccuping slightly.

“Jes,” Nina whispered as she placed her hand on his arm. That made the omega break away from their alpha so that he could turn towards her. He reached out and brought her close to him so that their bodies were pressed against each other again. She felt the angst inside of her body finally settle out into placid comfort when his orange and lemon scent filled her nose. She was so content to have the missing omega back in her arms that she almost forgot about the hard mound of his stomach pressed against her.

They pulled out from the hug so that the three of them were standing in a field full of hip-height jurda with a basket of wilting blossoms next to them. “H-how did you guys find me?” Jesper asked.

He slowly knelt to the ground, as if scared that despite how happy they were to see him they would suddenly lash out and start attacking him now. He picked up the basket and righted it in the little space between the rows of flowers. He began to pick up the crop that he had dropped so that he could return it to where it belonged. Nina hadn’t worked on a farm before but she was knowledgeable enough about jurda that she knew it couldn’t just be left out, it had to be handled a specific way if it was going to be usable.

“We’re all looking for you,” Nina replied softly.

Matthias let out a gruff noise in the back of his throat and they both glanced to see what was wrong. He was staring at the house where a man with coppery bright curls had just come out. Jesper finished his work hurriedly and then placed his hand over Matthias’ to calm him down. “That’s just my Da, who I’ve been staying with while…”

“We should go inside and sit down,” Nina immediately said. She had lost her powers to tell if his heart had picked up, but she could read him enough to see ths tress in his shoulders.

Jesper turned from his father and Matthias to her before he looked down at his basket of half finished work. “Let me put this away and then we can really talk, okay?”

The other two shared a look before Nina nodded for them both. Regardless of why he had left or what was really going on, he had to finish his work. They also had to get their horses closer to the house so that they didn’t get stolen. It felt like her body was tearing itself apart as she stepped away from her mate again, but it was a necessary evil. They both finished up their work and met back up at the house. Colm, Jesper’s father, had been standing on the porch while looking between them and the barn where Jesper was preparing the jurda blossoms to dry out.

It felt like another lifetime had passed before the omega finally made his way back over to his mates. He glanced towards his father before he let his eyes fall back onto Nina and Matthias. She noticed that they had the same eye color, and though Jesper had living in a different country and culture for a good long while, the same mannerisms. “Da, we need to go inside and talk about… why I came here,” Jesper said to his father as he gestured towards his partners.

Nina immediately took over before Matthias could growl again, “I’m sorry that we didn’t send ahead, but we were rather worried about Jes.”

Colm glanced towards Jesper with a grim expression before he said, “I understand. You three head inside so that you can talk. You’ve got a lot to discuss.”

“Thank you, Da,” Jesper whispered when the two of them passed.

“I didn’t want you out in the fields today anyway,” Colm chided as he cupped his child’s face. Nina wondered if either of her parents would have done that had they not been killed by the war and the Fold. It was something she always wondered when they encountered other people’s parents or saw children being shepherded around by their guardian.

The thoughts were pushed from her mind as she began to wonder why Colm wouldn’t have wanted Jesper out in the fields, though she still refused to acknowledge the most likely reason. “Sedhi said that I was fine, Da. I can work and help you out while you’re feeding and clothing me,” Jesper objected. Nina knew that if there was one thing Jesper hated more than holding still, it was feeling like he was a burden.

The two separated and Jesper led them up into the house. It was a chipper place with brightly painted plaster walls and a recently redone wooden floor. All of the furniture was sun bleached and worn, but in a way that made it feel like a generational home instead of worn down the way that the Slat did. The house was filled with the smell of drying herbs, rosemary and lavender hanging in little bundles above the window looking out towards the road.

Jesper slowly lowered himself down into a sitting position on the couch, wincing slightly. He already looked a little better than he had when she had first seen him out in the field, likely the effect of them being around him. Matthias stood menacingly by the door, his face contorted with worry and his arms crossed protectively over his chest. They both knew that he was scared and upset, but not angry with either of them.

Nina lowered herself down onto the ground in front of Jesper. She took his hand in her own as she traced over the little white lines that made up the scars on his wrist and hand from a hard farm and gang life. Her bodice dug uncomfortably down into her legs and her skirts were almost unbearably hot around her legs after the long horse ride while the noon heat crept in, but she ignored them both. “What happened, Jesper?” she asked, heart thrumming in her throat.

“I left,” he answered instead of saying what he should have.

“We know, but why? Why did you no longer want us?” Matthias asked. His Kerch was roughed because he was stressed and Nina wished that she could calm him down, but she had to focus all of her attention on their omega.

“I left because you wouldn’t want me anymore, you still don’t,” he shook his head. He let out a wet little laugh as he tried not to cry, “I was being selfish and trying to save myself the pain of being rejected from the pack.”

That made her stomach drop out from under her. She knew that Kaz hadn’t even gotten rid of him when his accidentally too-loose lips had gotten Inej hurt so whatever he had done or whatever trouble he had found had to be serious. Especially since he had mentioned their pack as a whole instead of their mate-pack.

“Jesper, we’re not going to get mad or hurt you. Please just tell us what’s going on,” she pleaded. She hadn’t felt this out of control since she had been locked in that Fjerdan slaving ship and she hated it.

The omega looked up at her, showing off the tears that were shimmering on the very edges of his deep gray eyes. He then glanced towards Matthias and took a shaky breath. Nothing would have prepared her already racing mind for what he was about to say, but instead of startling her it only calmed the racing of her stressed heart. “I’m pregnant.”

Matthias’ eyes went so wide that Nina knew it was painful. The strict lines that had cut across his kind features melted away and his arms hung loosely by his sides as he tried to figure out what to do with that information. When she knew that he wasn’t going to faint or explode, she turned back to the omega.

Her own mind was freaking out at the idea of becoming a parent, but she had been suspecting it since she had seen the distended form of his stomach from the other side of the fence. She shifted so that she was up on her knees with her hand extended to brush against his belly. “Love, we wouldn’t be mad at you for this.”

“You would,” he shook his head in disbelief. “No one in the pack has the time or heart to raise a child, especially since we live in the Barrel. I’m not giving up my pup and I wasn’t going to be able to go through with an abortion. This was the only option that I had. I hate it here, I miss the city, I miss all of you, but this is a safe place for my pup to grow up.”

“A safer place would have been with all of us,” Matthias said when he finally came back to himself. He crossed the space between them and placed his hand on the back of Jesper’s neck to bring them into a kiss. The softness of the gesture melted both of the other mates, settling the anxiety that had risen in the room from the pregnant gunslinger. “I have said it every time that something has happened and I will say it a million times more, but I was made to protect our pack. I will make sure you are safe and warm and that you want for nothing. Kaz and I both will.”

The mentioned of the other alpha in their mate-pack made Jesper’s face crumble and he began to cry again. “I don’t want to talk about him, please.”

Nina and Matthias shared a glance with each other, both of them rather alarmed. They had never been around one of their mates when they were scent sick for anyone other than Inej and once Nina when she had gone back to Ravka to soothe her homesickness. Granted, they had also never been around Jesper when he was pregnant, so neither of them knew if that was a normal response.

“Okay, okay, love,” Nina purred as she brushed her hand over the side of his face. “We still need to talk but we won’t mention the rest of the pack while we do, alright?”

“Alright,” he sniffled. He forced the tears back and away so that he could be coherent again. “My period never came after my heat and I got it confirmed by that doctor that works out of the back of his apothecary, the one that Kaz really likes. I hid it for another month before I knew that I was pushing my luck and came back here. I thought that the note would have made Kaz angry enough that he wouldn’t have come after me or convinced you or Inej that I really didn’t want to come home. I… I know that it was cruel, but I had to think about what was going to help me protect my baby.”

Nina felt her heart ache in her chest as she thought about that. She knew that the topic of children had never been uttered outside of their estrus when the need to breed overwhelmed them on a instinctual level, so she understood why Jesper had been nervous. But she had often woken up in the long nights of winter to thoughts of little feet padding over the polished floors of the upstairs Silver Six apartment. “I’m so sorry that we made you feel like this, Jesper. And that you thought you had to run away from us so that you could keep the pup safe. I can’t speak for Matthias but I know that I want to continue to be your mate and raise our pup with you. I think that the others do too.”

“I know that they do,” Matthias replied. “Inej wants a family, once she is finished with her slaver-hunting business and can trust it to be passed on to someone else. Wylan wants children but is afraid he would give his condition to a pup that he carries. I… I have always wanted children, even before I lost my family.”

“Do you promise?” Jesper asked, slowly shifting so that they could settle down onto the couch around him. Matthias slung one of his big arms behind the other criminal to bring him into the safety of his hold. Nina brought the omega’s hand up to her lips, kissing the bony ridges of his knuckles.

“We promise. We swear to you that we’ll be by your side as you bring our child into the world,” she smiled. She loved the idea of getting to have a little family with her pack, she was honestly kind of surprised that they had managed to go that long without someone getting pregnant in the first place. She shifted slightly as the next big question came to mind. “When are we going back to Ketterdam? I don’t know what state you’re in when it comes to traveling.”

“I should be fine, but I don’t want to go back,” he shook his head. “Not until after the baby is born.”

“Why?” Matthias asked. Given all of the homesickness that the alpha felt for his own home country, Nina was honestly a little surprised that he had said that. Her opinion quickly changed when she remembered what Jesper had said about missing the city. It made more sense for them to return back to Kerch even if they were going to move into the Van Eck mansion so that their pregnant mate and child weren’t above a gambling hall.

“I want to give birth in the same place that my mother did. She and my father had this house finished a month before I came,” he answered, looking a little sheepish. “She… she isn’t here to help me through this and she won’t ever know that she has a grandson, so this is the only way that I can connect to her during this whole thing.”

Nina’s heart felt like an open, bleeding wound in her chest when she heard her mate say that. She knew what it was like to desperately wish for a parent to help guide her through new, terrifying experiences. She didn’t even know what gender her parents were or what they had looked like, so the pain of not being able to connect to his mother had to be even more raw for Jesper. “How about this? We’ll send word to the rest of the pack and have them come meet us here so that they can help you through the pregnancy and birth. Then we can all go home. That way we can also figure out what to do about the Silver Six apartment, alright?”

He only had to consider it for a moment before he was nodding. She knew that while he was scared of what the reaction of their mates would be, he needed them desperately. She was becoming more and more concerned for his health the longer that she looked him over.

He was pale and a little shaky. While his skin had the shine of someone that was expecting, he was a little sallow beneath the front image. She could see the places that he had gotten a little bit more gaunt as the baby began to seep away the food that he managed to keep down. He wasn’t in as bad of shape as she had expected him to be after spending two months away from his mates while pregnant, but it still wasn’t great. “Love, how have you been getting on while you’re here?”

Jesper seemed to be relieved at the switch in the conversation. He shifted so that he was leaning back against Matthias with both of his hands cupping the roundness of his stomach. When he brought the material of his clothing taut over his belly it was even more evident that he was expecting than they had first anticipated. “They have a scent replacer here that works really well for omegas during pregnancy. I couldn’t get it while I was in Ketterdam because Ravka still takes a lot of it after the issues that they had with being at war for four hundred years. I got some when I arrived here and it’s been helping a lot. I only really feel nauseous when I get too hot, too hungry, or too tired. When I miss a dose all I can do is sleep and vomit, it’s awful.”

Matthias let out a concerned noise that was soothed when Jesper let out a soft sigh that sounded very similar to a purr. “Don’t worry too much about me, big guy. The first thing that my Da did after getting me to calm down from the state I had worked myself up into was to take me into town to talk to the midwife. Sedhi remembers my ma and she’s been doing this for almost twenty years, so she can really help me.”

Nina brushed her hand over the side of his face in an adoring gesture. She wished that she could take all of his pain from him, make the pregnancy he obviously desperately wanted one of the best experiences of his life. She couldn’t, all she could do was ease his pain by staying by his side for as long as he needed.

---

Wylan and Kaz had decided that they were going to continue looking for Jesper in Ketterdam. They had been scouring the slave auctions held in the dankest part of the Barrels and keeping their ears open for tell of any Zemini omegas that had ended up in the pleasure houses. It was unlikely that Jesper would have allowed himself to be incapacitated in that way, but not impossible. They wanted to make sure that they had something to cover their bases back in their home city and country while Inej was sailing to Ravka so that she could check in with the Little Palace and Nina and Matthias went to see if Colm had any leads on where his son might be.

While their mates were out and he wasn’t out looking for the other omega, he continued working with the Mercher Council as he had been since he had inherited the business from his father. Kaz was still giving out jobs and maintaining the Dregs’ presence in the Barrel, but the others had begun to notice that some of the Crows had gone missing. No one dared to ask either mate about what had happened to the pack or Jesper, not since Kaz had taken the sharp beak of his cane directly into the leg of the Black Tip that had decided it would be a good idea to jeer at him for it.

The reluctance to bring up what had happened to the sharp shooter and why the other Crows had suddenly disappeared like dandelion fluff on the wind was why Wylan was so surprised when he heard Rotty say, “Letter for you, Van Eck! I think that it’s from those Crows of yours.”

“Thank you,” Wylan said curtly as he took the letter from the other Dreg. Sometimes it still didn’t feel real that he was actually a respected member of the inner circle of a gang, one of the five people that Kaz Brekker trusted with his deepest secrets.

He kept a steady pace through the rest of the Silver Six until he was in the stairwell, when he rushed up to Kaz’s attic room. The two of them slept in either the lab or Kaz’s attic bed, unable to sleep in the pack bedroom because they were missing one of their own. Kaz sequestered himself away in the attic at all times now, not just when he was working on something nefarious.

He slammed the letter down on the alpha’s desk, chest heaving from excitement. “Rotty said that this was something from our mates. What does it say?”

Kaz didn’t even jump at the loud noise that Wylan’s hand made when it slammed down onto the table. He simply wormed the letter away from the omega and flipped it over to look at the front. He sliced it open with a knife from the table, breaking the sealing wax. He dug the letter out from the confines of the envelope and then opened it with his nimble fingers that had been hidden behind the black leather of his specialized gloves ever since Jesper had disappeared. That was the one thing that they had been really struggling with while they were alone for the month it took them all to travel. Wylan needed to be touched to deal with his scent sickness and Kaz couldn’t stand the idea of even brushing up against his partner in the current moment.

Wylan forced back the worry and the panic that was beginning to form a pit in the depths of his stomach as he listened to his alpha read the letter. “Dear Wylan and Kaz, We’ve made it safely to our destination with only a small scuffle on the boat involving our brooding Fjerdan tripping over a rope. We managed to find the package that you asked us to locate. It was hidden in a field of jurda nearing the Southern Colonies. We’ve moved it to a safe location and are waiting for you to come and join us so that we can decide to do with what we found inside. Make a decision soon, Nina.”

Wylan knew that the letter was written half in code, but Nina had never been very good at that. It would have been better if she had written it in Shu or Zemini, a language that neither of them spoke and not even Kaz would be able to read. Kaz seemed to know enough what it meant as he set the letter down on his desk and began to speak his own words, “Matthias and Nina made it safely to Colm’s farm.”

“Yeah, that was about the only bit of the letter that I was able to decipher,” Wylan’s mouth twisted down in a frown. Maybe he and his partners should come up with some kind of math-based algorithm that would help him know what they were saying when they had to correspond through letters.

“It sounds like they found Jesper, he had gone home to Novyi Zem just as Nina suspected. As soon as Inej gets back from Ravka all of us can make the journey to meet with him,” he said it as if it was another part of the business with the Dregs instead of a great revelation that they had found their missing mate.

Hearing the confirmation of what he had been so desperately hoping made Wylan sink down into the chair on the other side of Kaz’s desk. His heart was fluttering in his chest as emotions swelled up through his stomach, threatening to push it out of him entirely. He placed one of his hands over his mouth and tried desperately not to cry as he grasped the idea that his mate was really okay. Once he had dealt with the first overwhelming onslaught, he sniffled and asked, “Why can’t they just bring him home?”

“Nina was very vague about that,” Kaz frowned. “The language that she was using implies that Jesper is unable to travel back for some reason, which is accentuated by her asking us to come and see her. I’ll have to make preparations for someone that can watch over the properties while we’re gone since I’m not sure how long it’ll take us to get back.”

The omega reached over and took the paper while making sure that his body stayed to himself as Kaz spoke. The letter smelled like her, maple syrup and spun sugar with just a hint of blueberry, but also of Matthias, dark oak and crisp snow, and Jesper. The citrus of the orange had a slightly different, milky scent that Wylan wasn’t familiar with, but he was sure that it was his mate. He thought perhaps that it was Jesper’s father, since they were presumably staying with him out on the Novyi Zem frontier. Wylan couldn’t really remember what he smelled like from their brief interactions with each other.

“You mentioned staying for Inej. If Jesper is hurt then shouldn’t we go out to soothe some scent sickness or something?” he asked. He really just wanted to be reunited with the omega that he had fallen so desperately in love with, the one that had never doubted him for his inability to read and teased him until he was red around the gills.

Kaz’s mouth tilted into a frown for the second time that night. He was so stressed about his mate’s disappearance and maintaining their status among the gangs in the Barrel so that they wouldn’t become a weak target to be ganged up on. “I have quite a few things that I need to settle, but you are free to go and see him before Inej and I make it out there. I think it would be for the best, overall.”

Wylan didn’t agree with it entirely. He wanted all of his pack to be together again, he didn’t want to have to leave two of them for another three. But he knew that Kaz was right, and having three mates with Jesper would help him more than just the two. So they made arrangements for Wylan to take the next mercher boat that was traveling to Novyi Zem while Kaz worked out the last of the jobs he had in motion and decided who was going to take charge of the Dregs’ properties while he was away. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best that they could figure out while their brains were clouded with worry.

---

The pregnancy wore on him less the further along that he got. Sedhi had been right when she said that the natural nausea and morning sickness would wear off the longer that he progressed, but he was getting more scent sick by the day. He had to take larger doses than in the beginning to make sure that his body didn’t go into early labor to try and abort the baby, as it was evident that Matthias and Nina were not the biological father.

Even if they weren’t the person who had actually gotten Jesper pregnant, having them around helped immensely. They were assisting Jesper’s da in the field every day, which meant that he was far more likely to get enough money from the crop that year to buy a new plough horse. He had to spend a good chunk of his earnings from the jurda on temporary farm hands that would come out and help him harvest the field before the blossoms had a chance to blow away in the wind or rot on their vines. With three extra sets of hands to help him that weren’t asking for any kind if pay, he wouldn’t have to do that.

Jesper was often relegated to the barn, where he could walk back and forth in the shade of the open, breezy building while shifting jurda around so that it would dry evenly. He had also taken to packing the stuff up with a special pair of gloves that Sedhi had offered to him so that none of the stimulant would get into his system since it was bad for the growing pup.

The working day had long since ended, though, and they had retired to the house. Nina was humming to herself in the kitchen as she switched out the pie tins that she was using to bake. The house already smelled of the spices that she had gotten the last time that Colm had gone into town. She was baking something that she remembered from her childhood and wanted to see if Jesper would like. He had been craving the sweet apple pies that were sold all over Ketterdam something fierce recently and they were the closest thing that she could offer.

Colm was beside the fire, smoking on a pipe where the smoke would billow out towards the window. The smell was very similar to his own natural scent and something that Jesper had grown up smelling, so it was calming the same way that the rest of the house was. He was explaining some of the stories from Jesper’s childhood to two of his mates despite the omega’s earlier protests about it. To make sure that his son didn’t die of embarrassment before his first grandbaby had the chance to arrive, he would also sprinkle in stories of his own growing up in the Wandering Isles.

Matthias was sitting in front of the fireplace, which had gone unused since the height of the summer heat had infected the land. They were already nearing the fall equinox, which meant a party that Jesper may or may not have the energy to attend when it came around, but the heat was going to be sticking around in waves until the first snowfall. The alpha had several pieces of wood and nails around him, along with the tools that he had been using. He and Nina had argued about why he was doing it in their living room until he explained what it was.

He was making their pup’s first cradle. It was a mix of all of the cultural practices that he knew of concerning that specific part of child rearing. In Fjerda, an alpha would make their home a cradle to welcome the new child and symbolize the fact that they were going to be protecting their family just as the ring he had helped forge did. In Ravka, the cradle for a new baby had to be made within the home, either in front of the hearth or the stove, so that the domovoj could come and bless the place where the child would be sleeping so that they could watch over the little one while they grew. In the Wandering Isles, cradles were made with shells and rockers so that the child could grow used to the feeling of the waves.

That was the story that Colm was currently telling, one that Jesper had loved when he was six and trying so hard not to fall asleep in his mother’s lap.

“How are you feeling, Jes?” Nina asked from the kitchen when they got to a lull in the story.

“Tired,” he replied, trying to stifle a yawn. He was wearing some of his mother’s old wraps, the bright colors comforting but almost garish against his dark skin. His own clothes had stopped fitting a week after Nina and Matthias had gotten there, since he had apparently ‘popped’ according to the elderly woman that had come to visit them. She had also invited them to the post-harvest festival at her own farmstead, which was why Nina was baking more than a single pie.

“If you need to go to sleep then I can put this aside for now,” Matthias said as he gestured his head down to the cradle. He was trying to get the hood that would go over the baby’s head affixed perfectly before he sealed it in. If Jesper wasn’t so exhausted, he would have offered to help with his zowa abilities.

The omega shook his head. “I was enjoying Da’s story and I like watching you work. We’re okay,” he promised as he brushed a hand over his stomach. In a few short weeks he was going to have to stop taking his herbal remedy for good and deliver the little one. He was scared for it, but with every flutter and bump he felt from his growing baby he got more excited. It was the rush of a lifetime to think about the tiny hands and tiny feet that he could hold, the potential for greatness he would carry in his arms. His mother’s wraps for him and the one she had used for when she was laboring were already in Jesper’s room upstairs, discovered when they had been looking for her clothes.

The pup kicked at his hand when he shifted slightly. He was active most when the dusk was beginning to settle over the rolling hills of the frontier and near dawn when Jesper was getting uncomfortable from sleeping in one position for too long. Matthias and Nina had trouble keeping their hands off of him during those times, especially when he and Colm were cooking. The pup liked the songs that Matthias sang in his deep baritone when Jesper was crying from how uncomfortable he was or had just vomited up his breakfast. It was a wonderful sensation, to feel the pup calm underneath his mate’s hand and soothe from his voice.

Colm chuckled. “You always did like this story. You begged me to tell it to you before bed every night for a year,” he explained.

“I was barely even a child, Da,” Jesper moaned dramatically, keeping his eye on his mates so that he could see the smiles that were splitting their faces at his antics. He knew that he had worried them by suddenly disappearing and then with how sick he had been the last few months. It had gotten better now that they were there, but he did have a few dizzy spells and even fainted once since they had come to stay.

Before the story could start up again, a knock sounded on the door. Colm puffed the last of the tobacco in his pipe before he set it down in the little ceramic holder on the mantel that Jesper’s ma had given him for the last birthday she had been there for. He stood up and blew the smoke out as he walked over to the door to see who it was. “Can I help you?” he asked as he opened it.

Jesper craned his head to see who it was for only a moment before his stomach roiled with discontent. He leaned back against the arm that his pillows were propped up against and let his eyes close to rest and soothe the swirling nausea in his gut.

They flew open a second later when he heard the response that their unexpected visitor gave, “Sorry, I just wanted to ask for some more directions. I was told that you here I would find the Faheys but I’m terrible with directions.”

Matthias turned towards the door, his own face splitting into a wide smile as he recognized the voice of his mate. Nina let out an excited squeal from the kitchen but didn’t come out to greet the omega like she normally would since the task she was completing required her attention. Jesper planted both of his hands down onto the couch as he tilted into a sitting position and then pushed himself up. He ignored the way that his vision swam and the concerned noise that Matthias made in the back of his throat as his long legs took him three strides to get behind his father. “You’re only good at navigating maps, merchling,” he chuckled good-naturedly.

“Jesper!” Wylan gasped, his pale face lighting up with a kind of shining excitement that Jesper had only seen when he had made a breakthrough with a piece that he was practicing.

Colm seemed to understand what was happening would be explained to him eventually and returned to his chair in the living room. Wylan stepped into the house as Jesper reached up to close the door behind the other omega. Before he even had the chance to breathe in the scent of campfire smoke and freshly cut trees, Wylan’s arms were around his neck and their lips were pressed together. He leaned down into the touch like he was a drowning man and Wylan was his air. Jesper felt another piece of him slot into place, the aching and the nausea reducing significantly now that he was no longer scent sick for another one of his mates.

“You’re here, you’re okay!” Wylan beamed, grabbing both of Jesper’s hands as he pulled back to look at his mate. “You’re… pregnant,” his eyes widened as he tilted his head down to look at Jesper’s prominent baby bump.

“Yeah, I am,” he nodded as he broke away from Wylan and placed one hand on the underside of his bump to soothe the baby.

“Is that why you left?” Wylan asked, tearing his gaze away from his mate’s hand so that their eyes could meet.

Jesper felt more tears well up in his eyes as he gave a small nod. “I didn’t think that you would want to be a mother given everything that you’ve been through,” he shrugged weakly.

The other omega led him to the living room and sat down beside him. He shared a quick kiss with Matthias, who had stood up so that he could greet the newcomer and make sure that Jesper was okay. That was the one thing that the gunslinger could do without, the hovering from his alpha mate was getting old very quickly.

When they were comfortably sitting down on the couch, Wylan took Jesper’s hand and began to explain, “If you had asked me if I wanted to conceive I would have told you no. I know that there’s probably going to be ways to treat my affliction in the future and we would never treat our pup as I was treated, but there are so many things that I can’t do because of it. I wouldn’t want to pass that on to any child. I would like the chance to have the family that I dreamed of on those hard nights when I was a teenager. I want to help you raise this baby, Jesper, if you want me to be with you.”

“Of course I do, I just didn’t want to force any more of my stupid life decisions on you,” he laughed. He brought Wylan’s hand up to his mouth and placed a kiss onto his ring finger where the heavy iron band rested from after their mating ceremony. It was a Kerch tradition that Jesper didn’t really understand but had been willing to do if it made Kaz and Wylan feel special.

Nina had evidently finished what she had been doing in the kitchen as she was wiping her wet hands onto her apron while she walking into the living room. Her long brown hair was plated and sewn onto the back of her head, which had been done by one of the women that had come to see Jesper and give him a gift to bless his pregnancy. She was wearing a simple brown skirt with a white chemise underneath and a red embroidered apron over the top of it. Even though she was dressed down compared to how she usually looked when she was back in Ketterdam, Jesper had never seen her in a more beautiful setting.

She smiled, warm and wide as she walked over to her omega mates. She placed a gentle kiss on both of their lips as she whispered a, “Hello, love,” to Wylan. When they had finished with their greetings, she stood up and asked, “Where are Inej and Kaz?”

“Inej wasn’t going to be back from Ravka and Kaz wanted to make sure that Jesper was as healthy as possible. You were really vague in your letter and I wasn’t able to figure out what was going on. I can’t speak for Kaz though, you know how he is,” Wylan sighed.

“We certainly do,” she laughed. “I’m glad that he sent you, the pup’s going to be arriving in the next couple of weeks and Jesper needs all the strength that he can get before that happens.”

“Why didn’t Kaz come with you?” Jesper asked, feeling a little hurt. He had been suspecting that Kaz was the father of his pup for quite a while now. It was possible that Inej was the one that gotten him pregnant but their estrus season was a hard time for her, so she spent most of her time making sure they had enough food and water in their systems instead of indulging in the sex part.

“He wanted to wait for Inej. I think he’s scared of what’s going to come. And if he hadn’t stayed behind to wrap everything up then it could have resulted in some of the other Dregs getting hurt. That and it would have taken us at least two weeks longer to get to you,” Wylan explained. “He’s going to come as soon as Inej is back in town, I promise.”

---

It felt like Wylan’s promise was never going to come true.

Jesper’s pregnancy got easier with every mate that came to stay with him, but he had to continue to take the same amount of the scent replacer that he had before because the father of his pup was still absent. He grew more weary and tired every day, to the point where he spent the morning napping before rousing for the afternoon and dozing in the evening. He tried to work as much as he could, but Wylan had mostly taken the place that Jesper had been filling to give the other omega the time and space he needed to rest.

The summer months crept into the middle of autumn, where the grass turned a dry white-yellow as it prepared to be layered with snow for the rest of the year. Things around the house were progressing as well. The baby’s cradle had been finished and put into the room that Jesper and his mates were sleeping in while they stayed with Colm. They had gathered up gifts from the neighboring farmsteads and some of the elderly crones in the town that they went to for supplies, which meant that they had plenty of clothes for the newborn when he decided to arrive.

Sedhi came and visited Jesper every other day when they finally passed the fall equinox. She would lay her hands on his belly and tell him that his baby was strong and a fighter before she gave him his scent replacers and warned him not to stop taking it. Once his labor started, they would be unable to stop it at that point in his pregnancy. The whole process had started to get painful and annoying enough that he nearly cried when she told him that the time had come where the baby would be strong enough to be born.

He had gone off of the scent replacers on a brisk fall morning when Colm was traveling into town so that he could get the jurda to the mercher company that had purchased it. He had specifically chosen that day so that he didn’t have to deal with his da hovering about when he was in the early stages of his labor.

Nina was downstairs while making them breakfast. Matthias was fussing with the newest thing he was making for the pup, something he picked up just so that he had something to do with his hands that wasn’t suffocating to his pregnant mate. Wylan was upstairs with his arm lazily slung over his mate’s bump, whispering Kerch bedtime stories to the active little one. Jesper himself was trying to pay attention to how he felt since his midwife had warned him that his labor would either take days or hours, so when he decided to go off the scent replacers he needed to call for her quickly after his first couple contractions.

He didn’t notice anything different in the beginning. He felt a little sluggish and his back hurt, but nothing other than that had changed. Eventually, he got a burst of energy around noon and spent the afternoon cleaning the house with his mates. It felt good to have it restored to the state that his ma had always kept it, even if that wouldn’t last for very long.

By the time that the sun was beginning to set low over the horizon, Jesper felt the contractions begin. They felt a bit like the practice ones had, but it didn’t scare him that time as it had when he got his first ones. He continued his slow pacing around the house while breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth to ebb the pain and the pressure away.

Wylan and Matthias stared at the clock hanging in the living room like it was going to run away from them if they didn’t, to keep track of the pace of Jesper’s contractions. “Do you want us to go find Sedhi?” Nina asked when she noticed the second pain he had, about twenty minutes after the first one.

“I have a feeling that my labor is going to be the long kind. We should let her sleep so that at least one of us can be at our best tomorrow,” he chuckled. He knew that after his disappearance at the beginning of his pregnancy none of his mates were going to be able to sleep now that their pup was actually coming. Nina was nervous surrounding medical procedures because of her Grisha abilities. Matthias was overly protective and wanted to ease any pain or discomfort that any of them felt. Wylan was horrible when it came to dealing with adrenaline and would be shaky and weak in a few hours time.

They settled in for the long haul. Nina fluttered in and out of the kitchen with hot chocolate, tea, and jam on bread to help Jesper keep his strength up. Matthias started a fire up in the hearth to keep away the bad spirits, muttering prayers and Fjerdan that he would explain to them after he said them. Wylan sat on the couch and wrote down the times of Jesper’s contractions and around how long they had lasted.

Jesper tried to sit and doze in between the pains, but he was uncomfortable the entire time. He moved from pacing the length of the house to kneeling beside the couch with his head pillowed in a variety of mate’s laps. Nina had even drawn him a bath for the early stages of his labor when his waters had no chance of breaking to see if it would help him feel better at all.

He became nauseous when the morning finally rolled around and the sun began to peak through the drawn blinds of the house. His skin felt tender with the need for two pairs of hands that weren’t there for him. The pain was almost unbearable and only a few minutes closer together than it had been when they began the night before. He couldn’t find a position in which he could get comfortable and didn’t want to make the trek upstairs so that he wouldn’t be trapped there yet.

Nina finally persuaded him to give the squatting from his mother’s Zemini silks a try, laboring as she had. He agreed to do it because she knew all the buttons to push even though his mind felt like a jumble of indecipherable noises and sounds. He found that leaning against the bedposts with his legs spread apart helped, as did being supported by the swing part of the silks.

He heard the horses and the cart sometime around noon and knew that his da must have been worried. It took from morning to early evening to get from Shriftport all the way to their home on the frontier, so to get home at the time he did, he would have either had to push their team to the near breaking point or left very early.

Jesper was sipping at soups when he heard new voices downstairs and assumed that Wylan had finally come back with Sedhi. They decided that his labor was progressing enough that they wanted to have an experienced pair of hands to help out after the other mates had eaten and Jesper had moved upstairs.

“I feel as though I’m dying,” Jesper moaned weakly as he sunk down into the same squatting position he always did when he got a contraction. Nina had to help him up to standing so that he could pace whenever they passed, but if she was annoyed she certainly didn’t show a single trace of it. The pain and the pressure around his gravid belly were the only things in his mind for a long while before he finally came back to himself. His throat was beginning to get sore from the noises that escaped him whenever he got a contraction.

“Jesper?” Kaz asked, sounding just as hoarse as Jesper felt.

The omega’s head whipped a little too quickly towards the sound of his alpha’s voice and he promptly burst into tears. “Please don’t be upset with me, I had to hide it from you and come here, I wasn’t trying to betray you and I promise that the pup is yours,” he blabbered.

“He’s been very worried,” Nina explained as she unwove the silks from around Jesper’s hands to help him stand up again. He had changed into a birthing gown after his bath, so the pink fabric hung off of him in billowing beauty, but hugged at his swollen stomach.

“This… this is why you left?” Kaz asked, swallowing hard enough that they all noticed.

Inej shoved her way past the alpha so that she was standing in front of her omega. She had no doubt already greeted Matthias to cure their scent sickness for her. She placed both of her deadly hands on either side of Jesper’s face and then leaned in so that she could place a tender kiss on his nose. “You didn’t have to run from us or hide from us, Jes, this is a blessing. You’re giving me a second chance at having the life my parents had wanted for me,” she murmured against his lips.

When they broke apart, she brushed their necks together and let out a contented sigh as the smell of open aired fields and wild flowers coated the skin of his mating gland. He felt better than he had in months, but still uncomfortable and sickly because of the labor and lack of attention from Kaz.

The beta stepped back so that she and Nina could greet each other again. The two of them had a relationship that was different and unique to the ones that the other members of the pack had with them, so it was special for them to get to reunite and talk in the tongue that Inej remembered from her childhood. The second that the beta was gone, Jesper knew that there was nothing standing between him and his alpha. He half assumed that Kaz would react to him the same way that Matthias had done, borderline animalistic and overwhelmed by his instinct.

He realized almost as soon as the thought crossed his mind that it was a stupid assumption. Kaz was the one to have the most control when they were in estrus and the only times that he ever let his instincts get the better of him was when they called out to him when they were hurt. Jesper wasn’t going to stoop low enough to do that manipulation tactic, not when he knew that he was safe in the house with the rest of his pack and he had dug himself into the hole he was in now.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, feeling tears pooling in the corners of his eyes. His body ached and he was exhausted. He felt more nauseous than he had since the scent sickness kicked in around the beginning of his pregnancy. He wanted to sleep, he wanted the pain to be gone, and he wanted Kaz most of all. He highly doubted that he was going to get any of those things.

Kaz leaned heavily on his cane as he stepped forward so that he was properly in front of his mate. He reached one of his gloved hands up and cupped Jesper’s cheek, which the omega eagerly leaned into despite the fact that it could (and had, when they were young, dumb teenagers trying to make their way in the world) lead to pain.

He drew his hand back almost like he had been burned when there was a shifting on the floor below them. Tears began to drip down the omega’s face as he desperately wished for the touch of his alpha, the scent of the baby’s father, anything to ease the ever-present sensitivity on his skin.

The alpha in question shifted so that he was holding his cane a little tighter, both hands resting over the metal head Jesper himself had helped make. It felt like they were in their own little bubble, hiding away from the rest of the world, like nothing had changed since after their trip over the fold, before the Ice Court, before the fight with Van Eck or Pekka Rollins. Of course, he was reminded of when and where he was when the strong fall breeze brushed through his window, carrying the smell of drying hay from the next farmstead over.

“Jesper, you must promise me something,” Kaz whispered.

“Anything, alpha, please just don’t be mad at me,” Jesper sobbed. The noise emerged from him before he even realized that it was building in the back of his throat. He felt broken and raw now that the thing he had wanted so badly was in front of him and yet still out of reach.

Kaz startled at the noise, like he had missed out on what was happening as well. He reached out and took the lanky omega into his arms so that they were pressed as close as their height difference and the bump would allow. He turned his head to the side and pressed his seasalt chapped lips to the curve of Jesper’s cheek and then whispered into the shell of his ear, “You have to promise that you will never, ever do something like this again.”

“The baby?” the omega asked, his voice small and scared in the back of his throat.

“No, leaving me. You didn’t tell me what was really going on and I knew that you hadn’t just decided to up and leave us because I’m not stupid. I thought that you were in danger. And you were. When you’re not within my reach there’s nothing that I can do to protect you, and that’s my job one of your alphas and your pack leader. You’re vulnerable now,” he paused when he felt the muscles underneath his hand shift.

Jesper grit his teeth together and tried to stay in the moment so that he could hear the words that he had been dreaming of for at least two seasons, but the pain was overwhelming. It traveled up his spine until it reached his waist and then wrapped around his abdomen like a vice. “Sorry,” he mumbled as he released the fabric of Kaz’s coat and placed his hands down on the bedpost.

Immediately, Nina recognized what was happening and rushed over to help him. While Matthias and Wylan had also been helping him labor, she was the one that refused to leave his side since she knew the most about childbirth out of the three of them. She was rubbing small, soothing circles on his back and coaxing him to remember to breathe.

“What’s going on?” Kaz asked, looking between his mates with wide eyes. He looked younger than they had seen him look in a long time, human instead of the monster that he had created for himself after his trauma.

Inej walked up beside him and pushed his hand back down when he tried to reach out for Jesper. She only allowed him to do so when the omega haphazardly reached out towards them. “He’s in labor, love,” she explained softly, compassionately.

“Labor?” Kaz gawked between the two coherent Crows like Inej had something completely unfounded and untrue.

The pain had finally passed and Jesper was able to right himself. He kept his eyes closed, scrubbing his face with the hand that wasn’t holding onto Kaz. He shifted back and forth to try and soothe what was left as he said, “Yeah, the baby is coming soon.”

Inej reached out so that she had taken her alpha’s other hand. “I think that you’re going to have to change out of that suit and anything else you don’t want getting messy,” she chuckled. She and Nina were having some kind of silent conversation with each other that Jesper couldn’t be bothered to try and read into.

“Why?” Kaz asked, sounding almost like a toddler.

“I know that you aren’t very familiar with processes like this Kaz, but the baby isn’t just going to magically appear in Jesper’s arms. There’s going to be quite a bit of blood and other things that will definitely stain clothing,” Nina laughed. She jerked her head over to the silks, which were stained from the other births that had happened over the top of them.

“Right,” he nodded as he turned and walked towards the bathrooms without saying goodbye. It still ached when he pulled away, but Jesper knew that he was going to be herded back into the room as soon as Inej had gotten him to snap out of the panic that he was in.

Jesper slowly lowered himself down onto the edge of the bed. His labor was creeping on dreadfully slowly and it was still wearing him out so badly. He felt another piece of him finally settle into place when Wylan and Matthias came back up into the room, following by Sedhi.

“I’ve heard that our baby is going to be coming soon!” she beamed, speaking in Zemini. He was glad that he was having his baby in the home that he had been born in, with the language that his mother had spoken surrounding him.

He gave the older omega a nod as he reached out for his other mates. Kaz may have been back, but his body was wracked with nerves about what was going to be happening. He wanted his mother to be there to hold his hand and reassure him that he was doing well, not that Nina hadn’t been doing a wonderful job of it. Matthias walked over first, leaning down and kissing the top of his head. “Do you want to take a nap in the nest after Sedhi has finished checking you?”

“Yes, please,” he nearly started crying as the reality that he could rest at least a little bit during the process washed over him.

The omega in question had walked over to the basin so that she could scrub her hands clean. Once they were, she knelt down in front of Jesper while Nina helped him tip back so that she could get in between his legs. Sedhi carefully inserted two of her fingers into his vagina so that she could tell how far he had progressed. She had done that a couple of times before he had gone off of the scent replacers just to make sure that everything was still okay.

“How long have you been having the pains, sweetheart?” she asked.

“Almost a full day,” he replied in Kerch before he repeated it in the language that she understood. He looked up, mostly to turn his head towards Nina so he could distract himself from the uncomfortableness of the examination but then saw that Kaz was there.

He was wearing his slacks still, along with his belt, but his feet were bare and he had one of Colm’s shirts on. Behind him, Inej had striped out of her knife-laden belt and into one of the work dresses that Nina had been using, sinched down into a usable size by one of the beaded belts Jesper’s mother had used to wear. The alpha’s face was pale and he looked a little shaky. He stepped into the room and walked over to the side that Nina was on, taking her side. Jesper only noticed that his hands were also bare when their fingers wove together. “You’ve been in this much pain for that long, treasure?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, letting his eyes fall shut. He set his head down on Kaz’s shoulder and pressed his nose into the alpha’s neck so that he was overwhelmed with the smell of poppies and ink. “I was on scent replacers my entire pregnancy which can fuck up the labor. First babies always come pretty slow too.”

Sedhi finished examining him and then stood up so that the mate-pack could be close to each other without a newcomer to worry about. “You’re making good progress, Jesper, but it is going to be slow,” she said in Zemini. Nina translated for the others so that they could understand what was happening too. “I think that we’re going to meet baby sometime tomorrow morning.”

He felt like he was going to unravel at that news, but he was quickly put back together by a reassuring squeeze to his hand from Wylan next to him. Sedhi noticed the look and smiled comfortingly at him, looking every bit like Jesper hoped his mother would. He missed her so much. She then asked, “Who do you want to be with you when the pup is coming?”

“All of them, please. My da can come into the room after but I don’t want him to be in here, worrying about me, while the baby is coming,” he explained.

She nodded in understanding. “I remember my grandmother teasing him about how he had been when you came. I promise that we’ll keep him busy with tasks downstairs. Send one of your mates if you need me, alright?”

They were finally, blissfully alone in the upper room that Jesper had spent most of his childhood in. He let out a low breath as some of the tension began to dissolve from his body. He slowly rose into a standing position and let go of Kaz and Wylan as he made the needed modifications to his nest so that they would fit. Inej and Kaz immediately took the offered fabric items from Nina and scented them to add to the mess of blankets already on the mattress.

Eventually, everything felt like it was the perfect place so Jesper settled down so that he could sleep in between his contractions. Inej tucked herself into his front, their foreheads pressed together. His hand was underneath her so that he could hold onto Matthias to reassure the alpha that he was okay. Wylan and Nina curled up at the end of the bed with the tea that Colm had made them to help keep them warm since Jesper was hot enough that he had to have the window open. Kaz settled in directly behind the pregnant omega, up against the wall, with his arms looped underneath the swollen lump of his belly. He felt tired, worn down, and he was still in a good deal of pain, but there was no longer the stinging wrongness that he always got when he was scent sick.

---

Kaz couldn’t believe what was actually happening to them. He knew that something big had to have happened for Jesper to leave them at all, but he still hadn’t quite been expecting a baby when he stepped into the little farmhouse. He supposed that they still had quite a few more hours before the baby actually arrived.

He and Inej had gotten off of the boat and met up with Colm in Shriftport early that morning before they raced back to the farmhouse so that they could get to their omega mate as quickly as possible. He had refused to show it to his other mates, knowing that Inej was the one that held his heart physically in her hands and was thus able to withdraw all previously hidden vulnerabilities from him, but he had been more worried about Jesper than he thought capable. Guilt had wracked his mind until Inej had talked him down from his panic attack, the image of his omega mate moaning in pain with each contraction seared into the front of his mind.

The labor was progressing slowly but with every groan and shift from the laboring gunslinger, they knew that it was really happening and there was no avoiding it. They napped for the rest of the afternoon and then took dinner up in their small room, locked away from the outside world. It was only when the autumn sun was singing red and yellow over the harvested fields that Sedhi came to bother them more than she had before. Jesper’s contractions had been about ten minutes apart when Kaz arrived, but now that he was there things were beginning to progress quicker. They reached almost five minutes an hour after the sun had gone down.

Jesper was currently standing with his head against the cool white painted wood that lined the sil of the window, letting the autumn breeze roll onto him. Wylan was next to him with a cup of water, encouraging their pregnant mate to sip from it. He also had a damp cloth in his hands that he would use to wipe the beads of sweat off of Jesper’s forehead. Nina was puttering around the room as she and Matthias argued about baby names, both of them giving more and more ridiculous ones as time went on. Inej was perched on the edge of the bed, praying for a safe delivery for the first pup from their pack and a healthy life for her omega. Kaz was staring at the crib that was tucked into the corner of the room, decorated in shells and dual rockers on the bottom.

He removed the good luck coin that he had tucked into his pocket, desperate for any chance to improve his ability to see his mate while leaving Ketterdam. He tucked the item underneath the layers of blankets that had been used to cushion the wooden structure. It was something that he remembered his father telling him that his mother had done when Kaz was born. It was supposed to bless the child and give them prosperity in the future. He didn’t believe in anything like that, prosperity was something that he would give to his child, but he wanted to feel close to the mother he had never gotten to know.

“Kaz,” Jesper groaned as another one of his pains washed over him.

The alpha turned and was behind him in a second. He placed both of his hands on Jesper’s back and began to rub with just enough pressure that the muscles released when the contraction had finally ended. “Saints, how do people do this more than once?”

“Well, when you don’t have birth control you don’t have any other choice,” Nina chuckled. “And I’ve heard that the reward is rather nice, too.”

Kaz’s hands dipped just a little bit so that he was touching the swollen mound on his mate’s front. Jesper had just enough muscle to not be considered waifish, so it was strange to see the way that his body had changed in the few short seasons that they had been separated. “You’ll never have to do it again if you don’t want to,” he said softly. It was more tenderness and caution than he had ever spoken in his entire life, but he knew that his mate deserved it with everything that he was enduring because of him.

“Maybe Nina will be right and the baby will make me want to do it again,” he mumbled. He shifted a little bit so that he was standing again. His pretty gray eyes were closed, which prevented Kaz from being able to see them the way that he wanted to. “With at least three other people being able to carry pups I’m not sure I’d volunteer myself that quickly, though.”

That got a ripple of laughter from the mate-pack. They didn’t know if they were going to take to parenting well, Kaz was terrified of it, but there was nothing that they could do to stop the imminent arrival of their first pup.

“Ugh,” Jesper groaned as he began to get another contraction. He leaned heavily against Kaz and took Matthias’ hand when the other alpha walked over to where they were. Kaz hadn’t been there for the duration of his pregnancy or the early stages of the omega’s labor, but he could already see how Jesper was relaxing by having his mates surrounding him. He helped his omega rock back and forth to soothe some of the ache while he worked through it, startling a little bit when he heard the sound of water hitting the floor.

“What was that?” Wylan asked, removing himself from the inside of the nest so that he could rush over to examine the noise.

Jesper’s eyes were wide and his body had gone a little bit rigid. “I think my water just broke,” he mumbled as he turned his head down to see the growing puddle of fluid on the ground.

Inej gave a little nod and then darted out of the room so that she could go and get the midwife. Sedhi returned with the beta a moment later and leaped into motion. She got a towel from the stack that they had in the corner of the room so clean up the floor and Jesper’s legs. They moved him over to the silks hanging from the ceiling while she scrubbed her hands so that she could check his progress again. “I have good news, the baby should be coming faster than we originally thought,” she told him once she had finished the examination.

“Thank the Saints,” he breathed. Kaz knew how he was feeling to an extent. While the idea of becoming parents so soon was terrifying, he also hated to see his mate in pain and wanted the process to be over sooner rather than later.

The older omega hovered around the room more than she had before. She still let them be for the most part so that Jesper could feel calm and safe without the presence of someone outside of his mate-pack. She came and checked what was happening more often than she had before, though. The contractions seemed to increase in intensity and frequency exponentially after his waters had broken, which left him ready to push sometime around midnight instead of the next morning when they had been anticipating.

He had gotten a lot quieter than he had been in the beginning of his labor. Back when Kaz had first arrived, he had managed a couple of quick jokes in between the pains. The quietest that he had been was when he was actively having a contraction or when they had all taken their afternoon nap. Now the only sounds that he was letting out were quiet groans into his arms wherever he was leaning or squatting during the pains. He whimpered whenever Kaz got more of a foot away from him, so the alpha stayed directly by his side.

Kaz and Wylan went back and forth while mopping his face with a cool cloth to keep the sweat from his dark skin. Nina made sure that he was still sipping at some water and as comfortable as he could. Inej did everything that she could to help but she was desperately out of her comfort zone since she had never encountered that kind of situation.

When the time finally came to push. Jesper wrapped his arms around the silks hanging from the ceiling and squatted down. The short birthing gown that he had been wearing was hiked up around his knees so that Sedhi could see the progress that he was making. Kaz was behind him, rubbing at his hips and kissing the juncture of his neck and shoulder to remind him that he was there. Wylan was on the other side of him, moping off his face and wetting his lips with the cloth. Matthias was on the other side to help support him if he got wobbly after being in the position for too long. Nina and Inej were standing beside Sedhi with towels and the other tools that they would need for after the baby was born.

“I know that your body is telling you to push, Jesper, so do it when you feel it’s right. Remember to breathe when you can. No shouting either, focus all of that attention on bringing your little pup into the world,” Sedhi instructed after he had gotten down into his position.

“Okay,” he whimpered weakly. He let his eyes fall shut as another one of the contractions rushed over him. He was clinging to the silks like he would be ripped out into an ocean if he even let up a little bit. A small grunt left his lips as he pushed with all of his might, his head coming forward so that it was pressing onto his chest. When the pain left and he finished, he leaned back into Kaz. The alpha in question murmured the few words he knew in Zemini, all pet names and affectionate phrases, into the shell of his ear. The omega seemed to preen at that, so he made sure to do it every time.

They fell into an easy pattern like that. It took about twenty minutes before the head of the baby finally began to crown. “There we are, you’re doing wonderfully, I can see the head,” Sedhi beamed in Zemini. Nina had been translating for her the entire time, though she paraphrased the most recent sentence with her own excitement.

“Can I feel?” Jesper asked, chest heaving for breath. When the older omega nodded, he unwove one of his hands from the silks, which caused Matthias to grasp his elbow to keep him steady. Jesper reached his hand down between his legs and let his hand brush against the coils of hair on the top of their pups head where it was peaking out of him.

Jesper was calling out more than he had been when he was pushing before, his face contorted in pain. “Saints!” he gasped as the final push birthed the head into Sedhi’s waiting hand.

“Well done, Jesper,” Kaz breathed. He blinked up from where he had been staring at his omega and the midwife cleaning off their baby’s head and helping him turn. The other mates were all staring at Jesper like he was making the constellations, like his skilled hands had crafted the stars that hung bright in the sky. He knew the feeling, what was happening was bloody and primal but Jesper looked so elegant and beautiful while he was doing it.

Once Sedhi had finished helping the baby turn around and had checked to make sure that the umbilical cord wasn’t around his neck, Jesper was instructed to push again. This time it only took two pushes before the baby slipped entirely out of him and into the midwife’s waiting hands. “You’ve got a little omega!” Sedhi said before the room erupted in excited noises in honor of the new arrival.

Kaz had been instructed on what to do when the baby was born, so helped Jesper lean back so that he was propped up against the alpha with his legs extended out in front of him. The newborn was tilted so that he was resting on his mother’s chest while Wylan helped the other omega move his birthing gown to reveal his skin.

“Hi there, Saints, you’re really finally here,” Jesper whispered as he released the hand that Kaz had taken so that he could hold their pup. He had happy tears rushing down his face while his long fingers began to trail over the coily hair on their pup’s forehead, not caring a single bit about the blood and fluids that were caked on the dark skin. Their pup was a little bit lighter than Jesper currently, but still had all of the Zemini hallmarks that they had gotten so attached to. Kaz could see his own nose and jaw shape already forming on the pudgy face of the newborn, which made his heart flutter.

Inej was staring, transfixed on the tiny being that Jesper had just brought into the world. Kaz looked up to her for guidance as he felt his entire heart burst in his chest. She gave him a watery smile as she knelt down beside them, almost on top of Wylan, so that she could get a good look at their pup.

“You did so well, Jes,” Matthias praised. He turned to the newborn and brushed his own hand over the messy back of their newborn. Over the crying that began to emit from their baby’s little mouth, he said, “Velkommen til verden, lille skat. Jeg sværger at passe på dig og beskytte dig så længe jeg kan.”

Nina was crying as she helped Sedhi tie off the cord with part of one of Jesper’s mother’s dress in two places. They cut in the middle and then the pup was moved to the beta’s hands so that she could take him over to the little tub where he would get his first bath. Jesper turned his head to follow his baby, instincts already raging inside of him since the newborn hadn’t stopped wailing yet. Kaz knew what he was experiencing, it felt as though if the baby was not within grabbing distance then he was too far away.

They still had business to attend to before they could really get to settle in with their pup, however. Jesper delivered the afterbirth and Sedhi set it aside after making sure that it was whole so that she could dispose of it in the traditional Zemini way. She checked to make sure that he was also whole, and after that let his mates tend to him while checking over the baby to make sure every finger, toe, and hair was properly in place.

Wylan and Inej helped Jesper get cleaned off so that he didn’t feel as sticky as he had before. They changed him into the special garments that would help them track his bleeding and let him be comfortable enough to nurse their newborn before he settled back into the nest. Kaz changed his own clothes since he had gotten a little bit messy from his place in the delivery. Soon they were all burrowed into the nest, Nina having returned their pup to Jesper’s chest where he belonged. Sedhi had left with the remnants of the delivery other than the silks hanging from the ceiling so that they could focus only on their new pup and a promise of Colm coming to visit them soon.

Jesper had shifted enough to let the pup latch onto his breast and get his first meal. Kaz was leaning onto his side so that he could brush his fingers over the soft spirals of hair on the newborn’s head. Several years ago he wouldn’t have even dreams of that being a reality he could live in. Back then he hadn’t even been able to hug his mates without them and him being entirely clothed. Now he had taken his gloves off and was willfully reaching out to touch his eldest child like it was going to give him a panic attack if it didn’t.

Wylan and Matthias were on the other side of Jesper, marveling at the baby with soft expressions. Nina was sitting at the end of the bed with her arms wrapped around Inej, watching the scene with the softest look she had worn in a very long time.

After the baby had finished feeding, Jesper and the pup both stifled a yawn. The omega finally said, “I know that you were all talking about Kerch names but… I was hoping that we could name him after my mother. I at least want a Zemini name, I feel like I have to pass that part of me down to him.”

None of them were going to object to that. “I think that Aditi is a wonderful name for him,” Kaz replied softly. “Do you want him to have my surname or yours?”

“Yours,” Jesper whispered like it was the most closely-guarded secret in the world.

“Aditi Reitveld,” the alpha murmured as he brushed his nose to the temple of his omega’s head, his bare fingers still trailing over their baby’s head.

Jesper turned his face up towards Kaz, moving away from staring at his newborn for the first time since he had been handed the little omega back. “Are you sure that you want him to have your birth surname? I thought that Kaz Reitveld died on the Reaper’s Barge,” he whispered.

Kaz closed his eyes and took in a low breath. It was overwhelming to be reminded of the trauma that he had faced while circled by the people that he loved, but it had been a long time since he had started his healing journey so he was able to handle it. The steady pressure of Inej’s foot against his leg reminded him that the people he was surrounded by were blissfully alive. “He can’t go around with the name Brekker, it would mark him as a target immediately. And Kaz Reitveld never died, he just had to appear to die so that Brekker could take his place. The coin never really leaves the hands of the magician.”

The omega laughed a little before he was unable to stifle his second yawn. They all cuddled into the bed to sleep for a few hours. After that they would introduce the baby to Colm and their life would go on, whatever form that was going to take from that moment forward.

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