The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 549

Chapter 549

Ellie’s POV

Sixteen hours.

That was how long it took in the end.

Sixteen hours of contractions, sixteen hours of Dominic feeding me ice chips and getting his hand crushed more times than either of us could count, sixteen hours of Hanna barking orders at nurses and telling me to push, sixteen hours of screams ripping my throat raw until all that came out were squeaks and wheezes.

Sixteen fucking hours I laid in that delivery bed, waiting for it to end.

The pregnancy went smoothly, but the labor did not. The little creature inside of me, despite apparently deciding to come out eight days early, had changed her mind at the last minute. Hanna said she got turned over at some point. But I swore she was actually trying to claw her way back in, like she’d decided after the first contraction that, nope, she was not ready for this world yet, and she actually wanted to wait the extra eight days

after all.

But eventually, hours after the sun had risen and the hospital room went hot with the heat from my body, she slipped out with a final push.

For once, the screaming wasn’t mine. A high little wail split through the sudden quiet, and then she was on my chest, damp and impossibly small and throwing her tiny limbs all over the place, and every single one of those sixteen hours suddenly felt like a lifetime ago. Or perhaps like they had never happened at all.

Dominic made a sound I’d never heard him make before, half laugh, half something else entirely. He pressed his forehead to mine, not caring that I was covered in sweat, both of us staring down at the wriggling, angry little bundle in my arms.

“Do you have a name?” Hanna asked after the umbilical cord had been cut and I was coherent enough to speak.

Dominic looked at me. We had gone back and forth on names for months, never able to settle on something that felt right. Until last month.

“Sylvia,” I said.

Hanna’s brows lifted. “Like the plant?”

I nodded. I had found an entry on Sylvia’s Grace in my Lycan herbology book last month. According to the entry, it was a little silver flower that bloomed only once in a century, with petals that glowed only when the moon was full. When steeped into a tea, it could make a wolf stronger, faster, sharper. It was once used by great Lycan warriors to aid in battle. And, according to the entry, pregnant Lycan women took it during childbirth to aid in delivery. It was quite a versatile plant.

It felt right. Strength and resilience. A name fit for a future Queen-or whatever it was that she decided to be.

The real reason, though, was that I just thought the flower was pretty.

Hanna nodded, writing the name down for the birth certificate. Shortly after, Sylvia was taken from my arms to be cleaned up and prepared for the maternity ward, and exhaustion took over me.

1/3

Chapter 449

+15 Bonus

A few hours later, Dominic and I were in the maternity ward, hands clutched tightly together, as Hanna stood in front of us with a concerned expression on her face and a clipboard in her hands.

“It’s strange,” she said, rubbing her head with one hand, her eyes on the test results in the other. “She’s perfectly healthy, but… Something is different about her. I’ve never seen anything like this in all my years of being a healer.”

“Spit it out,” Dominic blurted out. I shot him a look, and he added a little quieter, “Please tell us what’s wrong.”

“Nothing is wrong, technically,” Hanna sighed. “But wolves don’t emerge until puberty; Sylvia’s, however, has already emerged.”

“What?” I breathed. “How is that possible?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve never seen anything like this before. But that’s not all.” Hanna looked at me. Then at Dominic. “She has two wolves.”

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