Chapter 1257: A Woman Who Deserves it All!

She immediately shook her head because there was something unbearable about the gratitude in his face, too much tenderness directed at her all at once. "Phei, don’t do this. You’ll make me..."

"I mean every word."

His gaze rose again and caught hers, leaving her still. His thumbs moved slowly across the backs of her hands while he tried to breathe around the emotions strangling his chest: "I don’t know how to repay you for something like this."

"You don’t owe me anything."

"I know." He squeezed her hands carefully. "But I need you to understand what you’ve given me."

For a few seconds he could not continue. He breathed in, steadied himself, failed to steady himself properly, then laughed under his breath when his voice still trembled anyway. "Yesterday I held treasures people would slaughter entire families for, awakened powers that shouldn’t belong to someone my age and I haven’t even checked them yet. I saw things I couldn’t even have imagined when I was a kid, and somehow kept stumbling into things that would probably make a normal seventeen-year-old decide life was already too complicated and go hide under a blanket."

His eyes lowered toward her stomach again. "None of it feels like this."

Her shoulders began trembling harder.

Phei laughed softly through his tears, looking almost helpless before the realization all over again. "We made a fucking person."

A broken laugh escaped her together with another sob.

"A little person," Phei continued, still staring toward the place where their child rested as though he might somehow see through flesh, time and everything separating him from that tiny life. "Part you." His expression softened completely. "Part me."

Then his brow creased. "Hopefully more you where common sense is concerned."

She laughed harder, which seemed to satisfy him enormously.

Phei lowered his forehead against their joined hands and remained there for several breaths, shoulders rising and falling as he tried to gather himself. When he finally looked up again, there was a steadiness beneath the tears that had not been there before.

"I promise you something."

She quieted immediately.

"I won’t promise I’ll be perfect because I’d be lying before the baby is even born, and that feels like a terrible opening performance for fatherhood." Her expression softened, and Phei gave the smallest smile before continuing. "I’ll probably be too protective. I’ll worry about things that don’t deserve worrying about. I’ll buy our baby far too much."

"You absolutely will."

"I’ll probably spoil them."

"Probably?"

Phei looked faintly offended by the accusation hidden inside that one word before conceding, "Fine. Catastrophically."

Her hand slipped free from his and moved into his hair... Phei leaned into the touch without thinking, his eyes closing for just a heartbeat before he looked at her again.

"But I’ll be there." The softness left his voice without taking the warmth with it. "No matter what happens between now and the day our child is born, and no matter what happens after that. That child will never have to wonder whether I wanted them and will never have to wonder whether I love him/her." He swallowed when her face crumpled again, then added more quietly, "And neither will you."

She leaned down, caught him beneath the arms and pulled him up from his knees. Phei barely had time to rise before both of her arms went around his neck and her mouth found his.

The kiss tasted of tears.

Her hands trembled against his face while Phei wrapped his arms carefully around her waist, the caution coming so naturally now that he did not even notice it until later. He held her close without pressing too hard, kissed her until neither of them seemed capable of deciding who was comforting whom, and when they finally separated, their foreheads remained together while both of them breathed through the wreckage.

She laughed softly first. "Are you happy?"

Phei stared at her as though the question itself had committed some offense.

"Happy?" His gaze dropped toward her stomach before returning to her face. "I don’t think happy is big enough."

Her eyes softened.

"I’m terrified, confused, stupidly happy and somehow already worried about things that haven’t even happened yet. I want to tell everyone, and at the same time I want to tell absolutely nobody because this feels like ours and I don’t want the entire world sticking its nose into it yet." He exhaled, then gave her a guilty look. "I’ve already imagined fifteen things that could go wrong."

"Phei."

"And fifty ways to stop them."

"Phei."

His eyes dropped toward her stomach, lingered there suspiciously, then climbed back to hers with far too much innocence.

"So do you think our baby already knows I’m handsome?"

She stared at him.

Phei somehow maintained a solemn expression for almost three full seconds before losing the battle completely. His laughter broke across the hanging bed, warm and helpless and still wet around the edges from everything that had come before.

She grabbed the nearest pillow and hit him with it.

"You ruined it!"

"I was becoming emotionally unstable!"

"You were being sweet!"

"I panicked!"

She hit him again.

Phei caught the pillow on the next attempt, still laughing, and used that tiny victory to pull her back into his chest. She resisted for roughly half a second before giving up and melting against him.

He wrapped the blanket around them again and settled back into the hanging bed, drawing her close until her head rested beneath his chin. His hand returned to her stomach almost immediately.

Neither of them said anything about that.

The laughter gradually faded while the sea whispered beneath the cliff and the lanterns burned softly around them. Curtains stirred in the night breeze, stars stretched endlessly overhead, and Phei’s attention slowly fell toward the hand resting over the place where his child grew.

A life.

His child.

Their child.

The future inside his mind changed again, only this time it did not arrive through cultivation, bloodlines, revenge, enemies, the System or whatever impossible summit waited beyond his present strength. For months, tomorrow had meant becoming stronger. Surviving. Finding answers. Protecting the people around him. Killing those who threatened them. Reaching higher because standing still meant eventually being crushed beneath something ancient enough to consider him an insect.

Now tomorrow had tiny feet.

He imagined them stumbling across a room toward him, unsteady and determined, while he crouched nearby with both hands ready despite pretending he was not worried. He imagined a hand so small it could barely close around one of his fingers, the first word, the first ridiculous laugh, the first time somebody looked up at him and called him Dad.

That one almost broke him again.

Birthday mornings appeared next, followed by scraped knees brought to him with enough tears to suggest the world was ending because apparently even Cosmic Dragon might someday lose a battle against an aggressively positioned table.

He imagined teaching his child to swim.

Teaching them how to use power without becoming arrogant.

Then failing magnificently at teaching them not to become arrogant because their father was Phei Ryujin Tiamat and therefore perhaps not the strongest available authority on humility.

He imagined stories at night, arguments about bedtime, little questions that somehow became impossible to answer, watching tiny clothes become too small and realizing with growing horror that children apparently refused to remain the same size simply because their fathers preferred it.

Then he saw something farther away.

His child older, taller, strong enough to walk into the world without holding his hand.

That image hurt far more than expected.

Phei’s arm tightened around her.

She noticed immediately. "What now?"

He kissed her hair. "Nothing."

She waited.

Phei lasted several seconds before surrendering. "I just realized that someday our baby is going to grow up."

A smile moved against his chest. "That tends to happen."

"I don’t approve."

Her shoulders shook.

"I want our tiny again."

She laughed harder. "You already think the baby is going to steal your food?"

"It’s my child."

"Fair."

Phei smiled into her hair, but the smile eventually softened away.

Beneath the humor, the fear remained.

He suspected it always would.

And somewhere inside that realization, Phei finally understood something he had never properly understood before.

Perhaps fatherhood began like this:

Love taking on another shape so quickly that the heart barely had time to recognize what happened, and fear following right behind it because suddenly there was one more thing in the world precious enough to destroy you if it disappeared.

He had never been more frightened of losing something he had not even held yet.

And somehow he had never been more grateful to possess something worth being afraid for.

Phei kissed her temple and lifted his eyes toward the heavens again.

Perhaps somewhere beyond those stars, his father knew. ℯℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Perhaps Seiryū understood exactly why his son now sat beneath a tree with wet eyes, one arm around the woman he loved and one trembling hand resting above a child smaller than his palm.

Perhaps seveneteen years ago, another Dragon had sat somewhere with the same terror inside his chest and pretended he understood what he was doing.

That thought stayed with Phei longest.

And if there was any fragment of his father left somewhere beyond death capable of hearing him, he hoped only one thing reached him tonight.

’I understand now, Dad.’ His hand moved slowly across her stomach while the stars continued burning above them.

’I really understand.’