Chapter 1255: "I’m your father!"

Phei stared at the place beneath his palm as the realization continued deepening. Somewhere there, hidden inside the woman he loved, a life had begun without asking the world for permission.

A tiny body would slowly take shape... a heart would form and begin beating.

...hands would grow, impossibly small hands with fingers that would one day curl around his own and call him daddy.

...eyes would open months from now and see light for the first time.

...a voice that had never existed anywhere across all the years behind them would someday laugh, cry, complain, call for them.

Someone completely new had entered existence.

The universe had possessed no version of this person before them.

And now it did.

Because they had loved each other.

Because they had come together.

Because somehow, from something as intimate and private as the two of them had been, life itself had answered.

Phei’s throat worked.

"I made..." His voice broke visibly this time, and his eyes closed for half a heartbeat as though he were embarrassed by how little control he had left. When he opened them again, he shook his head and corrected himself with a tiny, breathless laugh of happiness Melissa had never seen anything like it on his before:

"We made a life."

Her face crumpled.

"Yes," she whispered, crying openly now. Her free hand rose to his cheek and remained there as she looked at him with equal wonder. "We did, my love."

Phei leaned into her palm without thinking before his eyes closed.

For several breaths he simply sat there, hand against their child with his cheek resting against the woman carrying it, while so many emotions moved through him that none could remain separate.

Happiness came first, enormous and almost painful, gratitude, disbelief again:

Then fear.

A brutal, immediate fear unlike anything Phei had expected, born not from danger standing before him but from suddenly possessing something so precious that the possibility of losing it became unbearable before he had even finished understanding if the feeling was his.

And beneath all of those came something older.

A memory.

Phei opened his eyes slowly and his gaze moved beyond her shoulder toward the ocean, although he did not truly see it anymore.

"Was this how he felt?"

She blinked through her tears. "Who?"

"My father..." His voice had become very quiet. "When Mom told him she was pregnant with me."

Her expression softened so completely that she almost looked hurt for him.

Phei’s eyes remained fixed somewhere far beyond the dark sea.

"I never thought about it before." His thumb moved unconsciously across her stomach while he spoke. "I knew they had me. Obviously. I knew there had to be a day when Mom told him, but I never stopped and actually imagined it."

He gave a tiny laugh, and there was grief threaded inside it: "Maybe he froze too?"

She watched his face and everything was there:

The longing, the joy... the wound of a son suddenly understanding his father through an experience he would never get to discuss with him now that seventeen years later the son was experiencing it himself... where his father would’ve looked at him and smiled knowing and pat his son’s back knowing and proud.

"Maybe Mom sat somewhere with him and got nervous exactly like you did," Phei continued. "Maybe she took his hand and put it on her stomach. Maybe Dad stared at her like an idiot for five minutes because he couldn’t understand how something so small could suddenly make the whole world feel different."

His eyes became wetter.

He did not bother hiding it now.

"Did he wonder what I’d look like? I am imagining a lot of things about our child, Melissa." Phei asked softly. "Did he wonder whether I’d have his eyes? Mom’s smile? Whether I’d be loud or quiet? Did he start worrying about things that hadn’t happened yet? Or experience this fear I am feeling right now?"

His smile trembled.

"Did he suddenly become scared of everything too?"

She squeezed his hand.

Phei finally looked back at her: "I understand him a little more now."

She reached for him, but Phei continued before she could pull him close.

"I always knew he loved me. I knew it and from everything I remembers. But this..." His gaze dropped again. "This is different. I didn’t know you could love someone before you’ve even seen their face, Melissa. Thank you so much!"

A tear slipped from his eye.

Phei laughed faintly at himself and wiped it away with the back of his wrist.

"I don’t even know if it’s a boy or girl. I don’t know what our child looks like. I don’t know anything about it."

His hand spread over her stomach.

"And I already..." He stopped because the words caught.

She waited.

Phei swallowed hard. "I already love our baby." ℴℴ𝘮

Her mouth trembled.

His eyes closed: "I wish I could ask him what he said."

She pulled him into her then.

Phei came willingly and buried his face against her shoulder as her arms wrapped around him, and for several breaths neither of them tried to speak. One of his arms circled her back while the other hand remained stubbornly against her stomach, as though removing it might somehow make the miracle less real.

She stroked his hair. "I think he would understand exactly how you feel."

Phei let out a long breath against her neck. "I hope he knows."

She tightened her arms. "Maybe he does."

Phei stayed there for another moment.

Then abruptly he pulled back.

His face changed so quickly that she knew immediately another wave of thoughts had struck him.

"How long?"

She blinked. "What?"

"How far along are you?" Phei asked, words beginning to come faster now that the first shock had cracked open several hundred practical concerns behind it. His gaze moved over her face, neck and body as though pregnancy might suddenly reveal some hidden injury he had missed.

"And how long have you known? Did you find out today? Yesterday? Have you been feeling strange? Are you okay?"

She stared at him for a second, then laughed softly despite the tears: "I haven’t known long."

Phei’s brows immediately drew together. "Sorry Melissa I paced out with the whole thing about mom and dad but I desperately want to ask you; And you feel okay? Actually okay, or the kind of okay people say because they don’t want someone worrying?"

"I am actually okay."

"No pain?" His hand moved from her stomach to her side, then back again as though he could somehow check for injuries through touch alone. "No dizziness? Nothing in you acting strange? No weakness?"

She shook her head, trying not to smile to bust laughing... new fathers were such a job and a joy and their so much worrying. "Nothing alarming."

Phei nodded once, very seriously.

Then his eyes narrowed. "Have you been examined?"

"Yes."

"By someone good?"

She gave him a look.

Phei did not retreat. "Very good?"

"Yes, Phei."

"Someone who understands us... I mean our family given the whole mysterious powerful family, you know?"

Her brows lifted: "Phei."

"I’m serious." His face was completely sincere now. "What if my bloodline changes something? That happens in novels. What if my bloodline affects pregnancy differently? What if the baby inherits Primordial Blood before its body can handle it? What if Void develops early?"

She stared at him... in his worry he was revealing his worries and powers too she didn’t know he had.

Phei’s worry only deepened.

"We should ask Grandma."

"Phei."

"No, too complicated, Chaos is difficult, maybe Sienna."

That made her expression interesting.

Phei paused, reconsidered and slowly grimaced.

"Actually... asking the Nether Goddess about pregnancy might end with her describing infant development using three dead civilizations and a fetus preserved in an underworld lake." Whatever that meant.

A laugh escaped her before she could stop it.

Phei’s expression remained grave. "So perhaps the Goddess or Dravenna first."

She shook her head, laughter warming through her tears. "You are panicking."

"I am being responsible."

"You are absolutely panicking."

Phei opened his mouth to argue, stopped and looked down at her stomach again.

"Can we hear the heartbeat yet?"

The question came with such sudden softness that her laughter disappeared. "Not yet."

Phei looked almost disappointed. "When?"

She told him.

He absorbed the answer with the solemn concentration like he was receiving the date of a heavenly tribulation.

"Okay," he murmured, nodding to himself. His eyes remained fixed upon her stomach for another second before lifting again. "What about fingers? Does our child have fingers already?"

She stared: "Phei."

"What?" His face held genuine confusion. "I have never done this before. Okay you’re right I am freaking panicking. I don’t even know how quickly babies... develop..."

She smiled.

"You were about to say build themselves."

Phei narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "I absolutely was not."

"You were."

"That would be biologically disrespectful."

Her laugh became brighter.

Phei ignored it. "So, uh, Mels, how big?"

She gave him an approximation with her hand.

His eyes widened. "That’s all?"

She nodded.

Phei looked down at her stomach with visible concern, as though his child had personally disappointed him by failing to achieve a more respectable size within the first weeks.

"That is ridiculously tiny."

"The child has only just started growing."

"Can our baby hear us?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Very."

Phei stared down at her stomach anyway.

Then leaned closer but she caught his shoulder.

"What are you doing?"

"Establishing early diplomatic relations."

Her mouth fell open before laughter took her completely.

Phei lowered himself farther with perfect seriousness until his face was near her stomach.

"Hello."

She covered her mouth. "Phei, the baby cannot hear you."

"Hey, our child is special, they will eventually."

"Not tonight."

"Then tonight is rehearsal."

Her shoulders shook with helpless laughter.

Phei gently placed both hands around her stomach and looked at it with an expression so solemn it became adorable: "I’m your father."