Page 85 of Hawk's Cry

I spin around, my arm already open in invitation. “How you doing, babe?”

Her eyes sharpen. “You’re wearing your cut! Oh my God, Eli! You’re back in the club?” Liv’s hand covers her mouth as though she can’t believe what she’s seeing.

“He certainly is,” Wraith’s voice barks from behind me.

“Are you happy?” I ask, suddenly anxious, worried in case she thinks it might set me back again.

“Happy?” Her eyes go wide. “I’m fucking ecstatic. Us, back where we belong. You back with the club? Life couldn’t be better. Mom, Sam… Did you know?” She turns to the two women who’ve walked in behind her.

Sophie does an exaggerated eye roll. “Of course we didn’t. It’s bloody club business.”

Liv copies her mother’s gesture, but the shine in her eyes shows me exactly how pleased she is with my acceptance back into the life where we both belong.

“The baby’s okay?” Wizard asks, stepping up and motioning Butcher to pass him a bottle. “What did the doctor say?”

“He’s fine,” I tell them, hugging my wife to me. “The doctor’s happy with how he’s coming along.” He’d patiently answered all my questions, ones I would probably have known all the answers to had I previously bothered to attend the appointments with Liv.

“She’s doing great,” Liv says at the same time.

“Babe,” I tell her, staring down and smirking. “That was a dick we saw on the scan.” I’d been in awe watching that screen, and felt like such an asshole that I hadn’t taken an interest before.

“That was the cord,” she replies. “No dick in sight.”

Drummer chuckles. “Think you’ve just got to accept it Liv, history is going to repeat itself. My boy will be having a son.”

Wraith looks up to the ceiling then back down. “You’re never going to let that drop, are you, Drum?”

I snigger. The story goes that Dad had boys, but Wraith never got his son. I believe Sophie put her foot down after Hilda, their fourth daughter was born, and Wraith had the snip and lost his chance. The rumour is Dad only had Zane and me as he didn’t want to take the risk of having a daughter and giving Wraith the opportunity to throw shit back at him that he’d been quite happy to dole out.

“What can I say?” Drummer tells him. “The Felis swimmers produce males.”

“What’s so wrong about daughters?” Liv asks.

Wraith opens his mouth, then shuts it again, while Drummer guffaws loudly.

Sam puts her arm around her daughter-in-law. “Absolutely nothing at all,” she tells her, with a stern look toward mine and Liv’s dad.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Eli…

I’ve got a daughter.

Fucking hell. What on earth am I supposed to do now? I stare at my exhausted wife, and the scrunched up bundle she’s holding in her arms.

The last twenty-four hours have been a mixture of terror and exhilaration. Liv had woken me in the middle of the night having contractions. I, in turn, had woken Amy, who’d come right away, and suggested I get her to the hospital immediately.

Seeing Liv suffer as she laboured to bring my son into the world had torn me apart. I was part full of admiration for the way she was coping, and part afraid that her body couldn’t cope. As the hours had passed, I’d been more and more convinced it had to be a son she was having, an obstinate child who wanted to delay his entry into the world.

I’d been holding her hand when at last his head appeared, then his body. Then came the words, Congratulations, Eli and Olivia. You have a daughter.

A big girl too, she weighed in at eight and a half pounds. I’d told the doctor he was mistaken, he had assured me, he was not.

“You look like someone’s slapped you around the face.” Liv chuckles softly.

I rake both hands through my hair. “I feel like it. A daughter? Hell, Liv.”

She’s openly laughing now. “Don’t worry. It will be awhile before you need to think about borrowing Dad’s shotgun.”

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