The bedroom smells of beeswax and wolf-musk and something older - something neither human nor vampire has a name for. Candles burn low on every surface. Samuel's cool fingers are laced through yours, his thumb tracing slow circles across your knuckles as the next contraction builds at the edges of your body like a tide you cannot stop. Marta kneels at the foot of the bed, her gray braid over one shoulder, her jaw set. Vincent stands near the doorway with a medical bag and the careful stillness of someone pretending not to be afraid. No birth like this has ever survived. Samuel spent years making sure this one would. Now the room holds its breath - and so does he.