Baby System: I'm the Beast World's Only Hope!-Chapter 353: Episode 351: Giving Birth to a Mythic King at a Cost
DISCLAIMER: This is a very emotional Chapter, prepare to cry, just like I am crying right now.
Thunder clapped with every step the fox king took. Every excruciating breath he took, lightning struck.
To the beastworld, it felt like a blanket of darkness had fallen upon them with no single sunlight in sight. The sky roared and striked with life.
While to Ren, he was giving it his all.
He was a king, this much he could handle. His small claws scraped desperately against the polished wood. He stumbled, his chin striking the edge of a step, leaving a faint smear of crimson blood behind. He couldn’t breathe.
His vision was tunneling into a suffocating, fuzzy blackness, but the agonized, muffled screams of his Queen echoing from the second floor acted as a magnetic, undeniable pull on his fading soul.
Drax had been dismissed by his father to keep the children in check so they wouldn’t see their mother in pain.
He wished he could go with them, so he wouldn’t have to die before her.
But he wanted to be with her.
He was the trickster. He had lied to her. He had deceived her to protect her heart. But he absolutely refused to let her cross the terrifying threshold of motherhood without him holding her hand.
They were having a child together...
I thought I could never have that.
By the time the small fox pushed his bloody snout through the doors of the birthing suite, the room was filled with chaos.
White mist clouded the room, and at the same time there were waves of gold twirling above Roxy’s form.
As if to announce to the world that a mythical being was about to be born.
The air was suffocatingly thick, heavy with the metallic tang of blood, the sharp scent of sterile herbs, and the overwhelming crackle of pure, untamed Kitsune magic.
Roxy was entirely consumed by the agony. The painkiller had blocked the worst of the bone-shattering pelvic pressure, but the force of the child trying to tear its way into the world was completely inescapable.
She lay in the center of the massive, fur-covered bed, her spine arching like a violently drawn bowstring. Her fingers dug so fiercely into the white linen sheets that her knuckles were entirely white, her nails tearing through the fabric.
I can do this, I can do this!
She had chanted those words, she had gritted her teeth, drawn blood because she knew that she had to go with it. She had to have this child.
For them, for her and Ren.
Zarek was sitting behind her, the towering Dragon Alpha acting as a physical backrest, his massive arms wrapping around her trembling shoulders to steady her.
Syris was positioned at the foot of the bed acting as a midwife, the Snake King’s green eyes narrowed in concentration, his hands wrapped with something green.
But Roxy was thrashing. Her head rolled wildly against Zarek’s chest, her sweat-soaked dark curls clinging to her pale face. Her brilliant green eyes were blown wide, completely glazed over with a desperate panic as she searched the room.
Where was her man? Where was the father of her child?
"Ren..." Roxy breathed while panting. She wanted no one else but the father of her child. "Where is he... I need him... please..."
At the edge of the doorway, the small red fox heard her plea.
It was the final push for Ren. This was what he had to do, this was his own little sacrifice.
Ren closed his dull green eyes. Deep within the absolute, barren wasteland of his chest, he found the very last, microscopic drop of his immortal essence. It was the spark meant to sustain his final hours.
Hours he wanted to give to his beloved.
Slowly, a pale emerald light enveloped his fox form and when the light faded again, the small fox was gone, and in its place, stood the fox king.
The sky grew angrier.
But it was a grotesque, beautiful, and utterly devastating mockery of his former glory. Ren was entirely stripped of his illusions. He wore only the torn trousers from his collapse weeks ago.
His skin was very pale, almost translucent. The dark, bruising purple circles beneath his eyes looked like sunken caverns. Using the last of his strength to walk properly, his chest heaving as if he were breathing through a collapsed lung.
His hair was neither tied or in disarray, just falling around his face like a curtain.
He looked exactly like a beautiful, walking corpse.
Zarek looked up. The Dragon King’s golden eyes widened in sheer horror as he saw Ren. Zarek instantly understood. Without a single word, Zarek gently, carefully shifted his massive weight, sliding out from behind Roxy to surrender his place.
Every other mate refused to look, for the first time ever, their heart felt pain for one of their own.
And they didn’t want to imagine how much pain Roxy would have to go through after this. Could they bear it?
Ren stumbled forward. His legs nearly gave out twice, but he was able to crawl over the bloodied linens until he was positioned directly behind her. He pulled Roxy flush against his bare, freezing chest.
"I am here," Ren rasped. His gravelly voice was a broken, devastated ruin, barely more than a whisper of air against her ear. "I’m right here, my beautiful Roxann. I will always be here..."
The moment Roxy felt his long, elegant fingers wrap around hers, she stopped thinking. She let out a loud, agonizing wail, completely burying her face into the crook of his cold neck as tears poured out of her eyes.
She didn’t know why she was crying but it was as if a dam broke right behind her eyes, and her heart kept aching and the tears kept pouring out.
Words entirely failed them. The room was silent, save for Roxy screaming, the storm that was raging outside, and Syris silently urging her with Dena.
Kaelen slammed his hand against the door, because he felt useless. Torian, Zarek and even Caspian felt anger, sorrow, shame and everything in one standing.
As they heard and watched their mate cry and scream at the same time, Ren laid there as he continued to support her.
Syris couldn’t push back the emotions and his voice shook. He had forgone crying since the day he was banished from the swamps, but today Syris cried.
Another violent, earth-shattering contraction ripped through Roxy’s core. She screamed, her body violently convulsing as she bore down with everything she had.
SHE REFUSED TO BACK DOWN.
Ren didn’t offer grand encouragements. He didn’t have the breath for it. Instead, he poured every single ounce of his existence into physically supporting her. He locked his arms around her waist. As she screamed, he pressed his face into her damp hair, kissing her sweat-soaked temple, her cheek, her jaw.
Even grabbed her and kissed her on the lips.
His lips were freezing cold, but they moved continuously across her skin in a desperate, endless litany of silent worship. He absorbed her agony. Every time she pushed, the magical tether between father and son violently pulsed, physically siphoning the life right out of his veins.
With every millimeter the infant moved down the birth canal, Ren’s vibrant green eyes grew a fraction dimmer. His breathing grew shallower, the wet rattle in his lungs completely drowning out the ambient noise of the room for him.
Blood trickled down his lips, yet he refused to stop one bit.
He would have killed the child to save himself, but he wanted a seed born from them both.
"Push Roxann," Syris commanded, his voice tight with an uncharacteristic, profound strain. "One more. The crown is here. Give me everything you have!"
Dena couldn’t do this, she turned to the window and cried like a damn child.
Roxy threw her head back against Ren’s collarbone. She squeezed his hand with bone-crushing force, tears streaming relentlessly down her face. She pulled in a massive, shuddering breath and pushed with a loud battle cry that must have shook the sky.
The swirling golden magic above burst, sending a wave smashing into all her mates chest, Zarek and Syris spewed a mouthful of blood. The entire master bedroom physically shook as the heavy, suffocating tension suddenly, violently snapped.
And then, a sound pierced the heavy, blood-scented air.
It was a sharp, high-pitched, and incredibly furious cry.
The silence of the family shattered. Kaelen let out a ragged breath. Torian’s broad shoulders dropped in profound relief.
"You did it," Syris breathed as he wiped the blood off his lips, his hands moving with flawless, gentle precision as he expertly cleared the infant’s airways and quickly severed the cord. "It is a boy, Roxy. A beautiful, perfect little boy."
Roxy completely collapsed back into Ren’s arms, her entire body trembling with the violent, euphoric aftershocks of labor. She was weeping openly, completely exhausted, completely drained, but her heart refused to still.
Every ounce of her being didn’t feel relieved, instead fear, sorrow, anger was one.
Syris quickly wrapped the screaming, thrashing infant in one of the vibrant, emerald-green woven blankets the ’gods’ had delivered just hours ago, Dena had handed it to him. He stood up, stepping around the foot of the bed, and gently placed the bundled child directly onto Roxy’s bare, heaving chest.
He refused to look at Ren as his fingers shook.
Roxy’s trembling hands came up to cradle the tiny, fragile life.
The baby was breathtaking. He had a tiny, perfect little face, scrunched up in furious protest at the cold air. But peeking out from the top of the emerald blanket was a thick, undeniable tuft of vibrant, fiery red hair.
A smile bloomed across Roxy’s face. She had done it. They had done it.
She turned her head to the right, leaning back slightly against the chest that had supported her through the absolute worst of the agony. She wanted to share the greatest triumph of her life with the man who had given it to her.
They had both worked for it...
"Ren, baby, look," Roxy wept softly, her green eyes shining with absolute adoration as she gently traced the infant’s cheek with her thumb. "Look, it’s a boy... he has your hair, your nose, and your lips. He is so perfect."
She waited for the cocky, tearful laugh. She waited for the gravelly, devoted whisper. She waited for the gentle brush of his cold lips against her temple.
The room was completely, utterly silent.
Roxy’s smile slowly faltered. The heavy, protective arms that had been locked around her waist had gone completely, terrifyingly slack, resting limply against the bloody linens.
Zarek had clenched his fist so hard that it turned white, his eyes were filled with unshed, devastating grief. Everyone’s eyes were red, but they refused to cry, except Syris who was weeping silently, even if he was not meant to.
Roxy looked at all of them and they refused to look back.
"Why are you all looking like that..." she coughed out a laugh just at the same time, a tear slipped down her face.
Her hot trickster was fine right?
Roxy slowly, agonizingly tilted her head back to look at her husband.
Ren’s head was resting against the carved wooden headboard, tilted slightly to the side. His beautiful, translucent face was completely devoid of pain, smoothed into a mask of peace. A single, final tear had tracked a clean path through the sweat on his pale cheek.
His vibrant green eyes were completely closed.
And his chest, which had been her anchor through the entire ordeal, was entirely, permanently still.
He was no longer breathing.
