The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins (Mia and Kyle) novel Chapter 509

Mia's POV

The kind of morning that doesn't care about sleepless nights or kitchen floors covered in towels or the way your knees have gone numb from kneeling.

The sun just comes up anyway.

Gas is still lying in the whelping box. Her breathing has slowed. Six puppies are clustered against her belly. Six small bodies, each one no bigger than my palm, their eyes sealed shut, their ears folded flat against their heads. They move in that particular way newborn things move—not quite coordinated, not quite intentional, just small twitches and squirms as they search for warmth, for milk, for the heartbeat that has been their whole world until twenty minutes ago.

The first one—the one that almost wasn't—is in the middle.

I can see it from here. Smaller than the others. Its fur still damp, not quite dried despite all the towels, all the rubbing. But its chest is rising. Falling. Rising again.

"Mama."

Alexander's voice is a rasp. Sandpaper wrapped in cotton. He's been talking for hours—to Kyle, to the puppies, to anyone who would listen and some who couldn't. His throat must be raw.

"Yeah, baby?"

"I'm really tired."

"I know."

"But I don't want to sleep."

"I know."

He's sitting on the floor next to Kyle. Not in Kyle's lap—that would require energy neither of them has—but close enough that their shoulders touch. His dinosaur pajamas are streaked with something I don't want to identify. There's a smear of what might be blood on his cheek, or might be something else, and his hair is sticking up in seventeen different directions.

He looks like a child who has just witnessed a miracle. Or a war. Maybe both.

"The puppies might need me," he says. "What if they need me and I'm asleep?"

"They have Gas."

"But Gas is tired too. Look at her. She can barely keep her eyes open."

He's right. Gas's eyes are half-closed, the third eyelid showing at the corners, that milky film that means she's on the edge of sleep but fighting it. Fighting to stay alert. Fighting to watch over these small things she's made.

"She'll rest when she knows they're safe," I say. "That's what moms do."

Alexander considers this. His head tilts—that gesture he has, the one that makes him look like a small professor examining a particularly interesting specimen.

"Is that what you do? Fight sleep to watch us?"

"Sometimes."

"That's dumb."

"Probably."

"But also kind of nice."

Kyle shifts beside him. The movement is small—just a slight adjustment of weight, a repositioning of legs.

He stops. His mouth closes. Something in his face shifts—softens—and for a moment he looks less like a five-year-old who has been awake for too many hours and more like something smaller. Something that needs to be held.

"You did so good," I say. "You did so, so good."

His lower lip trembles.

"Don't," he says. His voice cracks. "Don't be nice to me right now. I'll cry."

"That's okay."

"No it's NOT. I'm not a baby. I'm not—I didn't cry when the puppy wasn't breathing. I was BRAVE."

"You were."

"I was so brave, Mama. I counted and I pressed and I didn't—I didn't—"

He's crying now. The tears come fast, cutting tracks through whatever that substance is on his cheek, dripping off his chin onto his ruined pajamas. His whole body shakes with it—sobs that seem too big for such a small frame.

Kyle's arm goes around him.

"I know," Kyle murmurs. "I know. You were so brave."

"I was SO scared, Daddy."

"I know." Kyle's eyes close. His chin rests on top of Alexander's head.