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Sergio became unbearable about a month into the pregnancy.

Luka would later admit, very reluctantly and only when nobody else was around to hear it, that the doctors were not exactly helping his case.

There was nothing wrong with the pregnancy, which was the important part and the one Luka preferred to concentrate on. The scans looked good, the bloodwork was fine, he felt mostly normal apart from being more tired than he wanted to admit, and for all Sergio’s hovering there had been no frightening moments, no bleeding, no reason for either of them to believe anything was going badly. What there was, apparently, was Luka’s age, which everyone had suddenly become fascinated by as if he had personally forgotten how old he was and required regular reminders.
The doctor had been tactful about it, which somehow made it worse. He had explained that Luka was healthy and that there was no reason he could not remain active, but professional football was not quite the same thing as going for a walk or doing some careful exercise, and at this point in the pregnancy they needed to be sensible about fatigue, contact, recovery and the amount of strain he was putting on himself. Nobody told him that he had to stop immediately, but the recommendation was obvious enough that Sergio spent the entire appointment nodding along as though he had personally commissioned the medical opinion.

Luka waited until they were back in the corridor before looking at him. “You look far too pleased with yourself.”

“I’m not pleased. I’m relieved that someone with a medical degree has finally told you the same thing I’ve been saying for weeks.”

“You’ve been telling me not to carry laundry.”

“Because you carry everything as if someone is timing you! You’re thirty-eight and pregnant.”

Luka stopped walking. Sergio stopped too. “If you say my age one more time today, I’m going home without you.”

That should probably have ended the conversation, but Sergio was Sergio and therefore apparently incapable of preserving his own peace for more than thirty seconds at a time.

“You can’t go home without me. I drove.”

Luka stared at him until Sergio wisely decided to kiss his temple and shut up.

The problem was that, irritating as Sergio was being, Luka knew the doctor was right. For another week he tried to find some middle ground with the club, reducing training, staying away from more physical drills, letting the medical staff fuss over him more than he would normally have tolerated. He found the whole thing miserable. Training without really training made him feel more like a visitor than a player, and every time somebody told him to sit something out, every time one of his teammates instinctively pulled out of a challenge before getting anywhere near him, every time Sergio looked across the pitch and checked where Luka was before going back to whatever he was doing, the same thought became harder to avoid. He was not going to do this for months.

When the club asked him to come in and discuss what his role might look like going forward, Luka listened for perhaps ten minutes before he realised he had already made the decision.

“I think I’ll stop.”

There was a brief silence around the table, followed immediately by questions, gentle ones at first, because everyone seemed to assume he meant for the pregnancy, that perhaps he wanted to step away until the baby came and decide later what happened afterward.

Luka shook his head. “No. I mean stop.”

That changed the room. Someone asked him whether he was sure, and somebody else suggested that there was no need to decide anything permanently now, that they could simply announce a break and talk again the following year. Luka listened to them all with a small, patient smile, because he understood what they were trying to give him, and because part of him was grateful for it, but he had already spent too much of his career coming back from things to pretend he did not understand what this one meant. He was thirty-eight.

There would be months of pregnancy, then birth, then recovery, then training from the beginning again if he wanted it badly enough, and perhaps he could do that because he had done harder things, but for the first time the thought of another comeback did not feel like determination. It felt like bargaining. So he smiled, thanked them, and told them he was sure.

Sergio found out less than half an hour later and was noticeably more careful with his reaction than Luka had expected. He came into the changing room, where Luka was sitting with his phone in one hand and one boot already off, and stopped in front of him after someone had apparently told him on the way.

“You retired.”

Luka glanced up. “Yes.”

Sergio looked at him for a long moment, his expression unreadable enough that Luka knew exactly what he was doing. He was checking him, searching for the difference between the calm face Luka was showing everyone else and whatever was underneath it.

“You decided today?”

“I decided about ten minutes before I told them.”

“That sounds very much like you.”

Luka smiled at that, and Sergio did not. He crouched in front of him instead, resting a hand against Luka’s knee. “You know you didn’t have to.”

“I know.”

“And nobody would think less of you if you changed your mind tomorrow.”

“I know that too.”

Sergio seemed to want to say more, but whatever he saw in Luka’s face stopped him. He squeezed his knee once and stood again, and when Luka reached for his other boot, Sergio took it from him and started undoing the laces himself. Luka let him.

That was how the following two weeks went. People congratulated him constantly, which Luka found strange at first and then learned to accept with the same polite smile. Messages came from former teammates, coaches, people he had played against years ago, people he had not spoken to in months. There were interviews to arrange and photographs to approve, plans for a farewell that grew steadily larger once Luka had finally agreed that, yes, he would allow the club to make something of it.

He had initially wanted to leave quietly. Sergio knew that. He also knew Luka well enough to understand why he eventually said yes to the last game. He deserved to hear the stadium say goodbye. That was what Sergio told him when Luka complained that everything had become ridiculous. Luka rolled his eyes but did not argue.

On the day itself, the children came with Sergio’s mother, and for the first few hours it felt almost less like a retirement than a celebration.

There were people everywhere, family mixed in with old teammates and club staff, Mia crying before anyone had even started a speech, Mateo pretending not to be emotional because he had reached an age at which being visibly moved by his father was apparently embarrassing, and Niko mostly delighted by the fact that there was food, noise and an enormous number of people willing to tell him stories about Tata.

By the time Luka changed for the match, he had already been hugged so many times that he threatened to leave if another person touched him. Sergio hugged him anyway.

“You’re very brave.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

Luka looked at him in the mirror while Sergio stood behind him, hands briefly settling at his waist before one of them drifted automatically toward Luka’s still almost-flat stomach. Nobody would have known yet by looking at him. Soon they would. Luka covered Sergio’s hand with his own for a moment before pulling away and reaching for his shirt.

“Come on. Before they send someone looking for us.”

Walking out onto the pitch was the first moment that day when the scale of it truly hit him. He had heard the crowd from inside the stadium, of course, but the sound changed when he stepped into it, thousands of voices rising at once, his name rolling around the stands so loudly that for a second he could feel it through the soles of his boots.

He smiled. There was no pretending in that one. The game itself was almost easy because football always had been. Once the ball was moving there was no room for anything else, and Luka found himself laughing more than once, especially when somebody gave him too much space and Sergio started shouting from the side as if Luka required instructions after all these years. He did not play long, because nobody was going to risk that now, but he played long enough. Long enough to touch the ball and feel the old instinct take over. Long enough to hear the crowd rise when he made a pass nobody seemed to expect. Long enough that, for a little while, he forgot this was supposed to be the end. Then his number went up.

The entire stadium stood. Luka slowed before reaching the touchline. There were banners with his name on them, shirts held above people’s heads, children on shoulders and adults wiping at their faces without trying very hard to hide it.

Sergio was standing near the bench with Mia beside him, and Mia had long since given up pretending she was not crying. Mateo was clapping with his jaw set too tightly. Niko was waving both arms as though Luka might somehow fail to spot him otherwise.

Luka turned back toward the pitch. He looked around slowly, taking it in one section at a time. For years, people had asked him when he would stop, and every year he had found some way of making the answer not yet. This time there was no next season hidden behind it. He lifted his hands toward the crowd and smiled as they called his name. Someone handed him flowers afterward, then someone else handed him more. There were photographs with the team and photographs with former players, photographs with Sergio, with the children, with trophies and without them. Somebody played a video on the stadium screens that managed to pull together years of his career in a way that made him feel strangely detached, as though he were watching somebody else grow older in fast motion.

Sergio stayed close without making it obvious. Whenever Luka looked toward him, Sergio was there, not hovering exactly, but near enough that Luka could find him if he wanted to. Luka did not. He smiled through the speeches, laughed at the embarrassing stories, accepted more embraces than he could count and allowed himself to be pulled into the celebration afterward, where the children stayed until Sergio’s mother finally took them home nearly two hours before Luka and Sergio themselves left.

They had time after that to drink something, although Luka’s was non-alcoholic, to sit with friends, to be congratulated all over again and to let the evening become lighter. By the time they finally got into the car, Luka had been smiling for so long that Sergio had almost started to believe him.

The door closed, shutting out the last of the voices from behind them. Sergio started the engine. They drove for several minutes without speaking.

Luka sat turned slightly toward the window, watching the lights pass over the glass, and Sergio did not look at him until he heard him breathe in sharply beside him.

When he did, Luka was crying.

There was no warning and no attempt to hide it now, only tears slipping down his face while he stared stubbornly outside. Sergio’s hand left the steering wheel. Luka slapped it away before he could touch him.

“No.”

Sergio looked at him, then back at the road, and a minute later he pulled over. The moment the car stopped, Luka turned toward him and hit him again, this time against the shoulder, then once more against his chest when Sergio tried to catch his wrist.

“You wanted me to stop!”

Sergio’s face tightened. “I wanted you safe.”

“I know that.” Luka hit him again anyway, the anger making his hands shake almost as much as the crying did. “That’s what makes it worse.”

Sergio did not try to argue. Luka wiped his face hard with the heel of his hand.

“I came back every time. After Mia, after Mateo and Niko, after the injury, after everything, I came back, and now I don’t even know why this feels different because nobody made me do it. I walked in there and told them myself, I know that, and I know this is my baby too, but I stood there tonight and suddenly it felt like everyone knew something I didn’t. I'm done! This is over. Just like that." His voice broke badly enough that he stopped. Sergio understood anyway.

This time, when he reached for him, Luka let him. Sergio pulled him across as far as the console allowed and held him while Luka cried into his shoulder, one hand curled in the front of Sergio’s shirt. Neither of them tried to make it better.

They barely spoke once they were home. Luka changed, got into bed and lay on his side with his back to Sergio for perhaps a minute before turning around again, crossing the small distance between them and pressing himself against Sergio’s chest.

Sergio wrapped an arm around him. Luka put Sergio’s hand over his stomach. “I’m still happy about this.”

“I know.”

Luka closed his eyes. After a moment, he kissed him against the chest again and held him a little tighter. That was enough for that night. He would be miserable about this for teh rest of his life, but for tonight it was enough.

In the end, Luka’s pregnancy went considerably better than any of them had expected, particularly Sergio, who had spent the first few months behaving as though Luka’s age had transformed pregnancy into a condition requiring twenty-four-hour observation and immediate access to a hospital.

Once Luka had stopped playing and the first difficult weeks surrounding his retirement had passed, there was very little for Sergio to worry about in any practical sense. Every appointment brought good news, the baby grew exactly as expected, Luka’s blood pressure remained good, and even the doctors who had originally encouraged him to slow down seemed increasingly pleased with how uncomplicated everything was.

Luka was tired more often than he had been with the other three, and there were days when his back hurt or his ankles swelled enough that Sergio would silently bring over a footstool before Luka had even admitted they were bothering him, but there was nothing alarming about any of it, only the ordinary discomforts of a body doing something enormous for the fourth time.

The children helped, mostly by being unexpectedly easy. Mia had reached an age where she required very little from either of them unless she wanted money, permission to go somewhere or somebody to listen to a problem she would initially insist was not a problem at all, while Mateo had developed a surprising amount of patience with Niko and could usually be persuaded to occupy him when Luka needed an hour of peace. Niko himself was fascinated by the pregnancy and still periodically climbed onto the sofa beside Luka to inspect his stomach as though something might have visibly changed since breakfast, but even he seemed to understand that Tata sometimes needed to be left alone.

On the occasions when they forgot, Sergio dealt with it. Luka noticed that more than he said. He noticed Sergio intercepting arguments before they reached him, taking three children out of the house on a Saturday afternoon when they had become loud enough to make Luka's head ache, checking homework, making dinner enthusiastically, driving somebody somewhere and returning to collect somebody else, all without expecting Luka to organize him first. Their house was never exactly peaceful with three children in it, but Sergio seemed determined that whatever chaos existed would circle around Luka rather than land on top of him.

There were also always grapefruits. Luka never asked who kept buying them and Sergio never mentioned it, but somehow the bowl on the kitchen counter was never empty. If Luka ate the last one in the evening, there would be more the following morning, and after a while even the children had accepted that the grapefruits belonged to Tata and touching one without permission was apparently a crime serious enough to earn Papa’s personal intervention.

Pregnancy itself remained less predictable. There were weeks when Luka seemed unable to get close enough to Sergio, when he followed him into rooms for no particular reason and slept practically on top of him despite having an entire side of the bed available. Sergio would wake with Luka’s face pressed into his neck, one of Luka’s legs tangled through his and the increasingly substantial weight of his stomach pushed against his side, and although it usually meant his arm had gone numb somewhere around three in the morning, he never complained.

On those days Luka wanted Sergio’s scent everywhere, stole shirts he had already worn, leaned into him whenever they stood beside one another and occasionally appeared behind him simply to press his face between Sergio’s shoulder blades for a minute before wandering away again.

Then there were days when Sergio might as well have been contagious.

One evening in particular, when Luka was somewhere in his seventh month and had spent most of the day feeling too hot, too heavy and irritated by the simple existence of his own clothes, Sergio discovered that even looking at him was apparently excessive. It had begun when Sergio came into the bedroom and found Luka sitting on the edge of the bed in his underwear, glaring down at the shirt he had just taken off as though it had personally wronged him. Sergio had intended to ask whether he wanted the windows opened further, but the moment Luka noticed him standing there, his expression made it clear that conversation would not improve anything. Sergio therefore retreated, only to make the mistake of returning twenty minutes later with cold water and sliced grapefruit. Luka accepted both while making it equally clear that this act of service did not grant Sergio permission to remain.

By the time they went to bed, Sergio had been informed that his breathing was irritating, his side of the mattress was somehow too warm, his hand was too heavy when he rested it on Luka’s hip and, eventually, that the general fact of Sergio Ramos being beside him was preventing Luka from getting comfortable.

Sergio ended up on the far edge of the bed with nearly half a metre between them, watching Luka rearrange his pillows for what had to be the tenth time.

When Luka finally looked over and found him watching, he narrowed his eyes with such genuine irritation that Sergio turned onto his back and studied the ceiling instead.

The following morning, Luka woke wrapped around him. Neither of them mentioned it.

Sergio’s own instincts became considerably less reasonable as the pregnancy advanced. He had always been protective during Luka’s pregnancies, but this time there was something almost manic about the Alpha part of him, an agitation that did not seem particularly interested in the fact that Luka and the baby were perfectly healthy.

Sergio could understand some of it. They were older now, this baby had arrived after a time in which their family had already come much closer to breaking apart than either of them liked to remember, and Sergio had spent enough months sleeping without Luka beside him that some primitive part of his brain apparently remained unconvinced that everyone he loved would still be there unless he checked repeatedly.

He scented Luka constantly. Sometimes it was subtle enough that Luka barely registered it, Sergio kissing his neck when he passed behind him or pressing his nose briefly into his hair while they sat together, but other times there was no pretending it was anything except instinct.

Sergio would come home, find Luka and immediately bury his face against the side of his neck, breathing him in until whatever nervous energy had followed him through the door finally settled. As Luka’s scent changed further with the pregnancy, becoming warmer and heavier with the unmistakable trace of their pup beneath it, Sergio seemed to become even more obsessed with covering it in his own. Luka tolerated this better than might have been expected, partly because he knew Sergio well enough to recognise anxiety when he saw it and partly because, on the days when his own Omega instincts were particularly strong, he wanted exactly the same thing. He also might have had gotten some angry calls from the club about Sergio misbehaving at training every other day, so it was really easier on everybody to let the Alpha do as he wanted.

The children were less understanding. Sergio had started scenting them more too, particularly Niko, who still spent enough time climbing over both parents that he generally smelled faintly of everyone anyway. Mia complained loudly the first time Sergio pulled her against him and rubbed his cheek over the top of her head before she left for school, informing him that she was twelve and perfectly capable of leaving the house without being marked by her father. Sergio did it again the next morning. Mateo accepted it with the long-suffering resignation of somebody who had concluded years ago that his parents were embarrassing and there was little point fighting nature, while Niko actively encouraged it and occasionally presented himself to Sergio for attention after seeing him scent Luka, apparently unwilling to risk being excluded.

Luka watched the whole thing with increasing amusement. “You know they’re not going anywhere.”

Sergio was standing behind Niko at the kitchen table at the time, one hand in his son’s hair while Niko continued eating cereal without paying him any attention. “I know.”

Luka looked at him for a moment, taking in the restless set of his shoulders and the way his attention kept drifting back toward Luka even while he was talking to Niko, and decided not to point out that knowing something and convincing his Alpha of it appeared to be two entirely separate processes.

Time moved on like that, not dramatically but steadily, measured less by weeks than by Luka’s stomach becoming increasingly impossible to ignore, the baby’s movements changing from little flutters into unmistakable kicks and the children beginning to argue over names despite being repeatedly reminded that neither parent had asked for suggestions.

By the time Luka was eight months along, the worst of the heat had not even arrived yet and he was already deeply offended by summer.

It was during one of his calls with Baka that she suggested Croatia. Luka had been sitting outside in the shade, his phone propped against a glass on the table while his mother complained that she could barely see him properly because he had positioned the camera badly. Once he finally adjusted it to her satisfaction, she spent several minutes examining him through the screen and announcing that his face looked tired. Luka told her that was because he was carrying an entire person around.

Baka was unimpressed by the excuse. She asked when the children finished school, and when Luka told her it would only be another couple of weeks, she immediately said they should come to Croatia. Not for long, she insisted, although Baka’s definition of not long had always been flexible. They could stay for a week or two, the children could swim and spend time outside, Luka could rest properly, and she could finally see him somewhere other than through a telephone screen before the baby came and made travelling impossible for a while.

Luka did not say yes immediately. He wanted to. Sergio knew that before the call had even ended. Croatia had always done something to Luka that Madrid could not, particularly when he was tired. There was a different ease to him there, something that had nothing to do with football or fame and everything to do with being somewhere that had known him before either of those things mattered. Sergio had seen it often enough over the years to recognise the longing that appeared almost immediately when Baka started talking about summer evenings, food Luka had not eaten in months and how ridiculous it was that her grandchildren were growing up while she had to watch it through a screen.

After the call, Luka remained outside for a while with one hand spread absently over the side of his stomach, where the baby had begun moving again. Sergio sat beside him and started looking at flights.

The doctors saw no reason they could not go, provided they did not leave it too late, Luka continued to feel well and they knew where they would go if anything happened. There were still weeks before the due date, and nobody had any reason to expect that the baby intended to arrive anywhere except Madrid.

By the time school finally ended, their bags had been packed for days. Mia had somehow brought enough clothes for a month, Mateo had been given responsibility for ensuring Niko did not fill his backpack entirely with toys, and Sergio had packed so much unnecessary pregnancy-related equipment that Luka removed half of it while he was not looking.

Their flight left the following morning.

Luka was eight months pregnant, tired before they had even reached the airport and already wondering whether agreeing to travel with Sergio and three children had been a terrible idea, but when they finally landed in Croatia and stepped out into the warmth of early summer, he felt something inside him loosen almost immediately. There were still three weeks before the baby was supposed to come.

Croatia turned out to be exactly what Baka had promised it would be, although Sergio maintained that this was largely because she had neglected to mention that her idea of Luka resting involved feeding him approximately every forty minutes. Luka stopped objecting after the second day.

There was something wonderfully easy about being there once the journey itself was behind them. They had arrived tired and irritable, with Niko complaining that Mateo had touched his things, Mateo insisting that he had only moved them because Niko had somehow managed to spread the contents of his backpack across three seats, and Mia walking several metres ahead of everybody at the airport in the universal manner of a twelve-year-old pretending not to belong to her family.

Luka had been hot, his back had hurt and Sergio had nearly started an argument with him over carrying his own bag, but by that evening all of it seemed to have fallen away.

Baka fed them outside because the house was too warm, and the children stayed at the table only long enough to eat before disappearing into the pool. Luka remained where he was long after everybody else had finished, barefoot beneath the table with his swollen feet resting on the empty chair Sergio had pulled over for him, listening to his mother talk while the evening slowly cooled around them. Sergio sat beside him with one hand resting on Luka’s thigh. For once, he seemed almost calm.

Luka had noticed it happening throughout the afternoon. Sergio still watched him, of course, because apparently pregnancy had permanently destroyed whatever part of Sergio’s brain had once allowed him to mind his own business, but there was less nervous energy behind it here. Perhaps it was because his mother was watching Luka even more closely than he was, or because the children had an entire collection of relatives willing to feed and entertain them, or simply because Luka himself had relaxed so visibly that Sergio’s instincts had finally received the message.

That first night, Luka slept for nearly ten hours.

He woke late enough that Sergio and the children had already eaten breakfast, and when he came into the kitchen wearing one of Sergio’s old shirts and looking mildly disoriented, Baka immediately put food in front of him while Sergio looked far too satisfied about how long he had slept.

Luka ate without complaint, which was how Sergio knew the holiday might actually be working.

The days settled into a rhythm after that. The children spent as much time outside as they possibly could, swimming whenever somebody was willing to take them, coming home damp-haired and sun-warmed and hungry enough to eat whatever Baka put in front of them. Mia occasionally disappeared with her phone for an hour and reappeared when she wanted food, Mateo had found children nearby to kick a ball around with, and Niko attached himself to whichever older child seemed least likely to notice that he was following them.

Luka did very little. At first, doing very little required conscious effort. He was accustomed to having somewhere to be, something to prepare for, a training schedule sitting at the back of his mind even on days when there was no training. Retirement had removed that structure so abruptly that he still sometimes woke with the sensation that he had forgotten something important, only to remember that there was nowhere he was expected to go.

In Croatia, that feeling began to fade. He sat outside with his mother in the mornings, walked slowly with Sergio in the evenings once the worst of the heat had passed and spent afternoons wherever he could find shade. He read more than he had in years, although he regularly fell asleep after ten pages and would wake to discover that somebody had covered him with a blanket despite the summer warmth.

His stomach seemed to grow by the day. The baby had become strong enough that nobody needed Luka to announce when it was moving anymore. Sometimes the movement was visible beneath his shirt, a foot or elbow pressing outward hard enough to distort the curve of his belly, and Niko remained fascinated by it in a way the older two had largely grown out of.

One afternoon he spent nearly twenty minutes lying beside Luka on an outdoor sofa with both hands spread over his stomach, waiting.

“Maybe the baby is asleep,” Luka eventually suggested.

Niko frowned at his stomach as though this were inconsiderate. “Can you wake it up?”

“No.”

“Papa wakes me up.”

“That’s because Papa is annoying.”

Sergio, who was sitting a few metres away, looked up from his phone. “Papa can hear you.”

Luka smiled lazily without opening his eyes. “Good.”

Niko eventually gave up and ran away when Mateo called him, leaving Luka alone again. Sergio came over not long afterward and lowered himself onto the space Niko had abandoned, carefully lifting Luka’s legs across his lap.

“You look better.”

“I’m lying down all day while people bring me food.”

“You should have listened to me years ago.”

“I would rather go back to training.”

Sergio laughed and began rubbing one of Luka’s feet, his thumbs pressing carefully into the arch. Luka had complained about them being sore the previous evening, and Sergio had apparently stored that information away along with every other minor discomfort Luka had mentioned since the positive pregnancy test. Luka watched him for a while.

“You’re calmer.”

Sergio glanced at him. “Am I?”

“A little.”

“I was always calm.”

That earned him a quiet laugh. Sergio smiled and continued working his fingers over Luka’s foot. He had been sleeping better too. Luka knew because Sergio had stopped waking every time Luka shifted beside him, and there had been several mornings now when Luka had been the first one awake. Even the constant scenting had eased somewhat, although Sergio still seemed incapable of passing Luka without touching him somewhere. Luka didn't mind. Most of the time.

There had been one afternoon when the heat had become oppressive and Luka had informed everyone within range that he wished to be left alone, after which Sergio had taken all three children away for several hours and returned with ice cream, more grapefruit and absolutely no questions about whether Luka felt better. Luka had loved him particularly much that day.

By the end of their first week, neither of them was in any hurry to leave. They still had time. The phrase came up often enough that neither thought much about it. There were weeks before the due date. The hospital bag was not properly packed because there was no reason for it to be, the last few things for the nursery were waiting in Madrid, and Sergio had a list on his phone of things they needed to do once they went home. For now, there was Baka and summer and three children who went to bed exhausted every night. Then Vedran arrived.

He did not announce himself particularly dramatically. Luka was sitting outside with Baka one afternoon when a familiar voice came from somewhere beyond the house, followed by the sound of Niko shouting somebody’s name, and Luka looked up just in time to see Vedran coming around the corner with Niko already attached to one arm.

Luka smiled immediately. “Look who finally remembered where we live.”

Vedran deposited Niko back onto the ground and came over. “I was hoping you’d be gone by the time I got here.”

“Unlucky.”

Vedran leaned down to hug Baka first, accepting a kiss and an immediate complaint that he did not visit enough, before turning to Luka. He looked at him. Then he looked down. Luka was wearing a loose shirt that did absolutely nothing to disguise the enormous curve of his stomach. Vedran stared for several seconds. Luka waited.

“My God."

“Thank you.”

“You’re enormous.”

“Go home.”

Vedran laughed and bent to hug him. It was an awkward hug because Luka’s stomach got in the way, which only made Vedran laugh harder.

“I saw photographs, but this is different.” Luka pushed him away.

“You've seen pregnant people before.”

“Yes, but usually they remain approximately human-shaped.”

Baka smacked Vedran’s arm. Luka looked delighted. It was at precisely that moment that Sergio came outside.

He had been inside helping Mateo find something, and he walked through the door to discover his heavily pregnant mate sitting beside his mother while his former husband stood directly in front of him with one hand still on Luka’s shoulder. Sergio stopped.

Vedran noticed him. The smile that spread across his face was immediate.

“Sergio.”

“Vedran.”

Luka looked between them and sighed happily. “This is going to be nice.”

Sergio came over and greeted Vedran properly because, despite what Luka occasionally claimed, he was a civilized person. They shook hands, Vedran asked how he was, Sergio asked when he had arrived, and for nearly two full minutes the interaction remained completely normal. Then Vedran sat down beside Luka.

There were several other chairs. Sergio noticed this. Luka noticed Sergio noticing this and had to hide his smile behind his glass.

Vedran had known Luka too long not to understand what was happening within minutes. He had also, unfortunately, known Sergio long enough to find it entertaining.

“How long are you staying?” Vedran asked.

“Another week, maybe a little longer.”

“You should stay. Luka always looks healthier here.”

Sergio sat opposite them. “He looks healthy in Madrid.”

“I didn't say he doesn't.”

“No, but you implied it.”

Luka glanced at Baka, who was following the conversation with growing amusement. Vedran leaned back in his chair. “You're still jealous of me.”

Sergio actually laughed. “Of you?”

“It's all right. I understand.”

“Understand what?”

Vedran nodded toward Luka. “I was his first husband.”

Luka covered his mouth. Sergio stared at Vedran. Baka began laughing. It took Luka several seconds to get himself under control enough to speak.

“You promised never to call yourself that.”

“I promised you. I never promised him.”

Sergio turned toward Luka with an expression of genuine disbelief. “You two have discussed what he is allowed to call himself?”

“Once.”

“More than once,” Vedran corrected. Luka's shoulders started shaking again. Sergio sat back in his chair and looked between the two of them.

“You know, I was having a very peaceful holiday before you arrived.”

“I've been here ten minutes.”

“Exactly.”

Vedran looked pleased with himself. Baka got up a few minutes later to bring out food, ignoring everybody who told her there was already enough on the table, and Vedran immediately moved into her empty chair because it happened to be closer to Luka. Sergio watched him do it. This time Luka did not bother hiding his smile. Vedran began asking about the baby quietly and quickly in Croatian, when Luka was due, whether they knew what they were having and whether they had finally chosen a name. Luka answered some of it and refused to answer the rest, explaining that the children had already provided enough terrible suggestions to last them through another three pregnancies.

When the baby shifted suddenly, Luka stopped speaking and pressed a hand against the side of his stomach. Vedran looked down.

“Moving?”

Luka nodded and took Vedran’s hand without thinking much about it, placing it where the movement had been. Across the table, Sergio went very still.

Vedran felt the baby kick. His face changed immediately, the teasing disappearing for a moment as he looked at Luka with genuine wonder. “There.”

“I know.”

Again, a smaller movement pressed against Vedran’s palm. He smiled. Then he remembered Sergio. The expression that appeared on Vedran's face was so terrible that Luka knew exactly what was about to happen.

Vedran spread his hand more comfortably over Luka’s stomach.

“Sergio, I think the baby likes me.”

Luka laughed so hard that the baby shifted again. Sergio looked at both of them as though reconsidering every decision that had led him to Croatia.

“You've had your moment.”

“I don't think that's for you to decide.”

“Move your hand.”

Vedran looked at Luka rather than Sergio. “Does it bother you?”

“No.”

That answer came far too quickly. Sergio looked betrayed. Luka was openly laughing now, one hand braced beneath his stomach. Vedran left his hand exactly where it was. “I think Luka has spoken.”

“You were married to him on paper for a few months and somehow came out of it with far too much confidence.”

“Quite a few months, actually.”

“Vedran.”

“I'm only correcting the historical record.”

Sergio leaned forward and removed Vedran’s hand from Luka’s stomach himself. That finally finished Luka. He bent forward laughing, which was increasingly difficult with the size of his stomach, while Vedran allowed Sergio to move his hand and then looked down at it with exaggerated surprise.

“You really are jealous.”

“I am not jealous. I simply don't see why you need to sit there touching my pregnant mate.”

“Because the baby was kicking.”

“I know. It kicks me every night.”

Vedran nodded sympathetically. “Of course. You need this more than I do.” He reached across and patted Sergio’s forearm. Sergio pulled his arm away.

Baka returned carrying another plate and found Luka wiping tears from his eyes, Vedran looking enormously pleased with himself and Sergio sitting between them with the expression of a man whose holiday had been personally ruined.

She took in the scene and put the food down.

“What did you do?”

Vedran pointed at Sergio. “He's jealous.”

“I am surrounded by children.”

Luka laughed again. Sergio looked at him, and despite himself, his irritation softened. Luka had not laughed like this in a while, not helplessly and without anything complicated sitting underneath it, and Sergio could tolerate quite a lot for the sight of him flushed and happy in the shade with one hand resting over their baby. Even Vedran.

Within reason.

Vedran stayed for dinner. Then he stayed long after dinner, and by the time darkness settled properly, the children had gathered around him for stories, Baka had fed him twice and Luka was leaning back in his chair looking tired but content. When Vedran finally stood to leave, he bent to kiss Baka goodbye and hugged Luka again. Sergio watched. Naturally, instead of simply leaving, he put both hands on Luka's shoulders and kissed him loudly on the cheek.

Luka immediately started laughing. Sergio pointed toward the gate. “Go.”

Vedran grinned at him. “I'll come back tomorrow.”

“That isn't necessary.”

“I wasn't asking.”

Luka was still smiling when Vedran disappeared around the side of the house. Sergio looked at him. Luka reached out, caught Sergio by the wrist and pulled him close enough to kiss him, still warm with laughter.

There was no uncertainty in it, no reassurance Sergio actually needed, only affection and the amusement Luka had no intention of apologizing for. When he drew back, he rubbed his nose briefly against Sergio’s cheek before settling deeper into his chair. “You're ridiculous.”

Sergio lowered himself beside him and slid an arm around his waist, his palm coming to rest possessively over the same place on Luka's stomach where Vedran's hand had been earlier. Luka felt it and smiled. He decided not to point that out. For once, he was interested in preserving the peace.

The grapefruit disappeared almost overnight. For months there had always been at least four or five of them somewhere in the house because Luka had eaten them with the kind of dedication that made everyone else wary of taking one, but sometime during their second week in Croatia he apparently decided he had eaten enough grapefruit for one pregnancy and moved on to green bell peppers instead.

Specifically green ones. Red was apparently wrong, yellow was worse, and when Sergio brought both home because the shop had only two green peppers left, Luka looked through the bag and asked why he had bought things nobody was going to eat.

The other new requirement was salt. Far too much of it, in Sergio's opinion, although he kept that opinion largely to himself. Everybody knew Luka probably should not be coating every piece of pepper in quite as much salt as he currently considered necessary, particularly this late in pregnancy when his feet were already swelling by the end of the day, but Luka had spent the better part of eight months being remarkably sensible about everything he ate. Nobody, including Baka, seemed willing to challenge him now that he had decided a green pepper covered in salt was apparently the greatest culinary invention of his life. Sergio certainly wasn't volunteering.

He had seen what happened when Baka casually suggested less salt at lunch and Luka silently added another pinch while maintaining eye contact with her.

By the end of the week, the fruit bowl that had once belonged to the grapefruits had been taken over by green peppers. One evening Sergio came out of the bathroom to find Luka sitting against the headboard in nothing but an old shirt and underwear, his stomach filling most of his lap, with a whole green pepper in one hand and a small knife in the other. He had apparently brought a dish of salt upstairs with him too.

Sergio stopped beside the bed and watched as Luka carefully cut off a piece, dipped its edge into the salt and put it into his mouth. He chewed slowly, staring vaguely toward the television without appearing particularly interested in whatever was playing, then began cutting another piece. There was something deeply strange about watching the man he had known for nearly twenty years sit enormously pregnant in their bed at almost eleven at night, methodically dismantling a bell pepper one salted piece at a time.

Luka glanced up eventually and found Sergio watching him. “I’m so tired.”

Sergio looked at the knife. “You saying that while holding a knife makes me slightly nervous.”

That got a tired smile from him. “I can still use a knife.”

“I know you can, but you've nearly fallen asleep between two pieces of pepper, so perhaps we put both the pepper and the weapon down before I wake up with one of them in my neck.”

Luka laughed quietly and looked down at what he was holding as though only now noticing the absurdity of it.

“You think I’ll stab you in my sleep?”

“I think you've been annoyed with me often enough during this pregnancy that I'm not interested in giving you the opportunity.”

This time Luka laughed properly, although it dissolved into a yawn halfway through. He gave up without an argument, put the knife and what remained of the pepper onto the plate beside him and carefully wiped the salt and moisture from his fingers on the cloth he had brought upstairs. Then he simply sank backward.

Sergio took the plate away before joining him, and when he came back Luka had already rearranged himself on his side with a pillow tucked beneath his stomach, eyes closed even though Sergio knew he was not asleep yet. The entire bedroom smelled faintly of green bell pepper. Sergio decided that there were some things a good husband kept to himself.

He settled beside Luka, switched off the television and let the room become quiet. Through the open window came the faint sounds of a Croatian summer night, and somewhere farther through the house one of the children moved around before everything settled again.

Sergio lay there for another minute. Then, into the darkness, he said conversationally, “You know, sex induces labour.”

Luka's eyes opened. For perhaps two seconds there was complete silence before he laughed so loudly that Sergio started laughing too, mostly because Luka's reaction was considerably more dramatic than the comment deserved.

“Where the fuck did that come from?”

“I was thinking.”

“That is usually when we have problems.”

Sergio rolled onto his side to face him. “I'm only sharing useful information.”

“You've spent eight months acting like I'll go into labour if I walk too quickly, and now suddenly you're trying to induce it?”

“I'm not trying anything, we're not home yet. I gave you a fact.”

“You gave me a fact while lying in bed beside me.”

“That doesn't make it less factual.”

Luka was still laughing as he shifted farther into his pillow, one hand settling heavily over his stomach. The movement disturbed the baby enough to earn him a hard kick somewhere beneath his ribs, and he winced before rubbing the spot.

“Three weeks,” he reminded Sergio. “The baby has three weeks left.”

“I know.”

“Then stop giving it ideas.”

Sergio smiled and reached over to rub the side of Luka's stomach, feeling another smaller movement beneath his palm. For a while neither of them said anything else. Luka's breathing began to slow, and Sergio assumed the conversation had ended until Luka shifted onto his back a little and looked at him. There was a distinctly different expression on his face now. Sergio knew that expression. Luka's mouth twitched.

“Wanna try?”

Sergio stared at him for half a second before laughing, and Luka reached for him, still smiling as Sergio moved closer and kissed him.

Luka woke the following morning with an ache across the bottom of his back that was irritating rather than particularly painful, and because he had reached the stage of pregnancy where almost every morning brought some new complaint from a body that no longer seemed capable of finding a comfortable position for longer than twenty minutes, he did not think much of it.

He shifted onto his other side and immediately regretted that too.

Beside him, Sergio was still asleep, one arm stretched into the space Luka had occupied and his face half buried in the pillow. Sometime during the night he had apparently kicked the sheet away completely, which Luka found deeply unfair considering he himself had spent half the night alternating between being too warm and needing something over his legs. The ache came again when he sat up. It spread low across his back and seemed to wrap faintly around his sides, accompanied by a familiar tightening across his stomach that made him stop for a moment with one hand resting over the hard curve.

Braxton Hicks. He had been having them for weeks now, sometimes enough of them in one afternoon to become annoying, and the doctors had never been particularly concerned. Drink more. Rest. Change position. Pay attention if they became regular or painful.

Luka waited. His stomach softened again. He got out of bed.

By the time he had showered, the ache had eased enough that he decided he had probably slept badly, and when he went downstairs to find Baka already awake and Sergio standing barefoot in the kitchen cutting fruit for the children, there was nothing unusual enough about the morning to justify mentioning it.

Sergio looked over when he came in and immediately pushed a plate toward him. There was toast, cheese, fruit and, sitting prominently beside all of it, a sliced green pepper. Luka smiled.

“You salted it?”

“I know how this works now.”

Luka picked up a piece and inspected it before eating it. “Not enough.”

Sergio took the salt and added more without arguing, which was one of the clearest indications of how thoroughly pregnancy had trained him. The children appeared one by one, and after that the morning became too noisy for Luka to pay much attention to his back.

Niko wanted to swim. Mateo also wanted to swim but insisted that Niko could not simply decide this for everybody. Mia had plans that apparently required her phone, headphones and absolutely no involvement from her brothers. Baka wanted everyone to eat more before doing anything, and Sergio was attempting to establish whether any of the children had put sunscreen on themselves or merely claimed they had. It was normal. Even the tightening that came while Luka was sitting at the table felt normal.

He breathed through it without interrupting the conversation, rubbed the side of his stomach once it passed and decided that he had probably done too much the previous day. They had stayed up late, there had been people around, and he had been on his feet more than usual.

By late morning the heat had settled heavily over everything. Luka usually liked summer here, but pregnancy had changed his relationship with temperatures above twenty-five degrees considerably, and after sitting outside for less than half an hour he was already sticky, uncomfortable and increasingly irritated by his own skin.

The pool looked wonderful. Sergio's reaction when Luka stood and started taking off his shirt suggested that he had announced plans to swim across the Adriatic.

“You're going in?”

Luka looked at the water and then at him. “That's generally why people take their clothes off beside a pool.”

“I'll come with you.”

“You were perfectly happy in that chair thirty seconds ago.”

“I've changed my mind.”

Luka could have argued, but doing so would only delay getting into the water, so he allowed Sergio to follow him to the edge and then suffered the indignity of having his husband hold his arm while he went down the steps.

The relief was immediate. Luka sighed as the water rose around him, and for the first time in weeks the tremendous downward weight of his stomach seemed to disappear. His back loosened almost instantly, his hips stopped aching, and when he moved away from the steps he felt light enough that he wanted to laugh.

“Oh, this is good.”

Sergio stayed close enough to catch him despite the fact that Luka was standing perfectly well on his own. Luka moved farther into the pool, letting himself float for a moment, and the expression on his face must have communicated something because Sergio finally stopped behaving as though his heavily pregnant husband might suddenly forget how water worked. The children joined them before long. Niko had to be reminded repeatedly not to jump too close to Luka, Mateo started a game at the opposite end of the pool, and even Mia eventually abandoned her phone long enough to get in.

Sergio remained near Luka for most of it, although he became less obvious about it once he realised Luka was genuinely comfortable. For nearly an hour, Luka felt better than he had all morning. The pressure was gone. His back barely hurt. The heat became pleasant rather than oppressive, and he floated on his back while Sergio supported him with one hand beneath his shoulders and another beneath the enormous curve of his stomach. Luka closed his eyes.

“I could live here.”

“In the pool?”

Luka smiled without opening his eyes. “Probably.” he started, still enjoying himself far too much. Then his stomach growled. Luka opened his eyes. “I'm hungry.”

Sergio laughed. “Of course you are.” That was the end of swimming.

They had barely dried off and dressed when Vedran arrived with his wife and children, turning what had been a quiet family afternoon into something considerably louder. A couple of minutes later one of Luka's cousins and his family came as well. He was one of Sergio's favorites, because he was the only one switching to English easily, not bothering to tease him about speaking Croatian.

And Sergio behaved beautifully. Luka made a point of noticing. There were greetings without any territorial nonsense, Sergio kissed Vedran's wife on the cheek, helped carry things they had brought and even managed an entire conversation with Vedran while Luka sat nearby without once reminding anyone that Vedran had once technically been married to him. Luka was almost proud.

The children disappeared together quickly enough. Within twenty minutes it was difficult to tell which child belonged to which family, and the garden filled with shrieking from the pool, somebody arguing over a ball and adults periodically shouting reminders not to run on wet stone.

Lunch stretched into the afternoon. Luka ate an impressive amount and then sat back beneath the shade with one hand on his stomach, listening more than talking. The ache had returned.

He noticed it first in his back again, deeper now than it had been that morning, and then came another tightening that made his stomach hard beneath his palm. He glanced at the time. He had no idea when the previous one had happened. That was reassuring. Real contractions became regular. These were irritating, uncomfortable things that appeared whenever they pleased and disappeared again.

He had been swimming, eating, walking around, sitting in the heat. His body was tired. Three weeks was still three weeks.

Another one came perhaps half an hour later and made him shift in his chair. Vedran's wife was talking to him at the time, and Luka managed to answer without losing the thread of the conversation, although he was relieved when she turned toward Baka a moment later. The tightening passed. The backache did not.

By mid-afternoon he was no longer enjoying himself.

Nobody else seemed to notice, partly because the house was full and partly because Luka had become very good over the years at being uncomfortable without making it everybody else's concern. He sat through another twenty minutes, drank water, changed chairs, stood for a while and finally accepted that whatever he had done to his back was not going to improve while he remained outside.

He told Sergio he was going upstairs to lie down. Sergio offered to come with him, but Luka said he was tired and wanted to sleep, and there were enough people around that Sergio, remarkably, accepted this.

Upstairs was cooler and quiet.

Luka went to the bathroom first, and while he was there another tightening came, strong enough this time that he put one hand against the wall and waited for it to pass. The pressure accompanying it was different. He frowned.

Once it eased, he washed his hands and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked tired. Nothing more. He had been in labour three times. He knew labour. He knew the rhythm of it, knew how contractions built and receded, knew what it felt like when his body stopped merely practising and began doing something with purpose. This wasn't that. At least he didn't think it was.

Luka went back into the bedroom and lay on his side. For a while, resting helped. Then it didn't. The ache in his back gradually became something heavier, a deep pressure that seemed to settle into his pelvis and remain there even between the tightenings.

Sometimes twenty minutes passed without much happening; then he would have two close enough together that he found himself checking the time. He stopped doing that after the third time.

If he told Sergio he was having premature contractions, even irregular ones, there would be no more holiday. Sergio would have him dressed and halfway to a hospital before Luka had finished explaining that they were probably Braxton Hicks, and even if the doctors sent them straight back, Sergio would spend the remainder of their time in Croatia staring at him instead of sleeping.

They were going home soon anyway.

Luka had been thinking tomorrow, perhaps the day after. They had already stayed longer than originally planned, and although he loved being here, he was reaching the point where his own bed and the knowledge that everything they needed for the baby was within reach sounded increasingly attractive.

He could mention the contractions tonight. They could call his doctor. They could book an earlier flight.

That seemed considerably more reasonable than causing a panic because his back hurt.

Another tightening rolled through him. Luka closed his eyes and breathed slowly until it passed.

The bedroom door opened perhaps an hour later. Sergio came in quietly, obviously expecting to find him asleep, and Luka opened his eyes when the mattress dipped beside him. “You okay?”

Luka nodded into the pillow. “Just tired.”

Sergio ran his hand gently over his hair and then down the side of his neck, lingering there for a moment as he scented him. Luka usually found that comforting.

Right then, everything touching him seemed irritating, but he welcomed his mate. He caught Sergio's hand and kissed his fingers before moving it away, which apparently communicated the message without hurting his feelings.

“They're still here,” Sergio said. “Vedran's children have taken over the pool and I don't think ours are ever coming inside again.”

“Good. They'll sleep well.”

“You want anything?”

Luka thought about asking him to stay. For one strange second, he nearly did. Then the pressure eased a little and he felt foolish for it. “Maybe water later.”

“I'll bring some.” Sergio kissed his forehead before leaving.

Luka listened to his footsteps disappear down the stairs. He remained upstairs for another half an hour. By then, he had stopped believing the contractions were entirely meaningless.

They still were not regular enough to frighten him, but they hurt now, and the pressure low in his pelvis had become difficult to ignore. Once, he had to get onto his hands and knees because lying down suddenly felt unbearable, and the position relieved his back enough that he stayed there for several minutes, breathing into the mattress and becoming increasingly annoyed with himself. He should tell Sergio. He knew that. Then ten minutes would pass with almost nothing, and Luka would decide to wait.

The house carried on below him. He could hear bursts of laughter through the open window and occasionally through the floor, children running in and out, chairs scraping, Baka's voice rising above everybody else's. Every now and then Sergio's laugh carried farther than the others.

It sounded like a lovely evening. Luka felt guilty for abandoning it.

Another contraction came while he was standing beside the bed, and this one forced him to stop completely. He gripped the edge of the dresser and breathed through his nose. The pressure pushed downward so heavily that a cold little thread of unease finally moved through him. When it passed, he looked at the clock. Then he looked toward the door.

Downstairs, people had become louder. There were voices calling to the children and the unmistakable chaos of people trying to gather shoes, towels, bags and everything else they had scattered throughout the day.

The guests were leaving. Luka sat on the edge of the bed for another minute. He felt ridiculous hiding upstairs while everybody said goodbye, particularly after Vedran and his wife had come specifically to see them. More importantly, once they were gone he would tell Sergio what had been happening.

He had already decided that. They could call the hospital, call his doctor in Madrid and work out whether they needed to be seen. He pushed himself upright.

The weight in his pelvis felt enormous. Luka took several slow steps toward the door. Halfway there, something changed.

There was no dramatic pain, only a strange internal release followed immediately by warmth. Luka stopped. For a moment his brain did not connect the sensation with anything at all. Then liquid ran down the inside of his thighs.  “Oh, fuck.”

There was no uncertainty now. No Braxton Hicks. No bad back. No waiting until tomorrow and no flight home to Madrid. Luka stood completely still in the middle of the bedroom while his heart began beating much faster, staring at the wet trail disappearing beneath the hem of his shirt. Downstairs, someone laughed. Luka opened the bedroom door.

“Sergio!”

He did not have to call twice. Footsteps hit the stairs almost immediately, fast enough that Luka heard somebody downstairs ask what was happening, and then Sergio appeared at the top of them. He took one look at Luka. His eyes dropped. The colour left his face.

“My water broke.”

For perhaps half a second Sergio did nothing at all. Then everything happened at once. He crossed the hall so quickly that Luka actually put a hand out to stop him colliding with him, and Sergio's hands went to Luka's arms, his stomach, his face, apparently unable to decide what required checking first.

“When?”

“Now.”

“Are you in pain? How long have you been in pain?”

Luka hesitated.

That was enough. Sergio stared at him. “How long?”

“My back was hurting this morning.”

“This morning?”

“It wasn't like this then.”

“You've been having contractions all day?”

“Not all day, and they weren't regular.”

Sergio said something in Spanish that Luka chose not to engage with. Another contraction began before either of them could continue. This one was different now that Luka knew what it was. He caught Sergio's forearm and lowered his head, breathing through the pressure while Sergio went silent beneath his hand. When it finally eased, Luka lifted his head. Sergio was staring at him.

“We're going to the hospital.”

“Yes.”

That answer seemed to frighten Sergio more than an argument would have. He turned toward the stairs, helping Luka doewnstairs. Vedran, who apparently had been halfway out of the house, came back inside to meet them. Within minutes the peaceful afternoon had disappeared.

Vedran's wife and cousin gathered their children and began helping with Luka's without needing to be asked. Luka's mother was already trying to find documents Luka had not even known she knew they needed.

Mia had gone pale when she understood what was happening, Mateo was asking whether the baby was coming now, and Niko seemed delighted by the possibility until he saw Sergio's expression and became quiet. Luka stood in the middle of it all with one hand beneath his stomach.

Three weeks early. The thought finally landed properly. Their hospital bag was in Madrid. Their doctor was in Madrid. The nursery was in Madrid. Everything they had planned was in Madrid.

Another contraction began. Sergio was beside him before Luka reached for him, one arm going around his waist while his other hand closed around Luka's. This time, Luka leaned into him. Vedran was already outside moving cars around so Sergio could get out quickly. Baka was telling somebody where the nearest hospital was. Sergio kissed Luka's temple and kept his mouth there for a moment. Luka could feel how fast he was breathing. Strangely, that made Luka calmer. He squeezed Sergio's hand.

“Three weeks isn't that early.”

Sergio nodded too quickly. “I know.”

“They'll be fine.”

“I know.”

Luka looked at him and knew that Sergio did not know anything of the sort. Neither did he. Ten minutes earlier, Luka had been worrying about being rude to their guests. Now Vedran was opening the passenger door, Sergio was helping Luka toward the car, and at the entrance stood three frightened children gathered.

The baby, apparently, had decided their summer in Croatia was over.

The hospital took Luka upstairs almost immediately, and somewhere between answering questions about how far along he was and when his waters had broken, somebody asked how long he had been having contractions. Luka hesitated. “Since this afternoon, I think.”

The doctor looked up from the notes in front of her. “How long this afternoon?”

Luka glanced toward Sergio before admitting that his back had started hurting that morning and that the tightenings had probably begun not long afterward, although they had been irregular enough that he had assumed they were Braxton Hicks. The look he received was not exactly accusing, but it was enough.

“And you've been at home all this time?” Luka remained silent. He felt stupid in a way he had not expected to feel after three pregnancies, sitting there while somebody explained that labour did not always announce itself in exactly the same way, particularly when much of what he had been feeling had presented as back pain and pelvic pressure rather than the contractions he remembered. He had known that in theory. He had simply been so certain that he knew his own body by now that it had never occurred to him he might spend most of a day in early labour and explain every sign away. Sergio, thankfully, said nothing about it. He was too frightened to be smug.

When they asked him to wait outside during the first examination, however, his restraint disappeared entirely. Luka could hear him through the door, first demanding to know why he had to leave when he was Luka's husband and Alpha, then apparently attempting to negotiate with a nurse who had no interest whatsoever in negotiating with him. His voice moved farther down the corridor before rising again, accompanied by enough Spanish profanity that Luka closed his eyes in embarrassment.

Hospitals in Madrid had spoiled him. Sergio was accustomed to being allowed almost everywhere with Luka, accustomed to asking questions until somebody answered and to family drifting in and out once things were settled. Here the rules were stricter, and Luka's mother and Vedran had been left in the waiting area while Sergio was granted access only once the examinations were finished.

He returned looking deeply offended by the entire Croatian healthcare system. Luka would have found that funny if the doctor had not come back with news neither of them particularly liked.

The baby was not lying well. It was not immediately catastrophic, and the heartbeat remained reassuring, but with Luka's waters already broken and labour progressing poorly, they did not want to leave things as they were indefinitely. They would try to encourage labour along and monitor the baby closely, hoping that stronger contractions and changes in Luka's position would help the baby descend and turn properly. If that worked, they could continue toward a natural delivery. If it did not, or if the baby showed signs of no longer tolerating labour, they would have to perform a Caesarean.

Sergio became very quiet during that explanation. Luka looked at him. “I'd rather they cut me open than spend another twelve hours doing this for nothing.”

Sergio did not appreciate the joke nearly as much as Luka had hoped.

Over the next several hours, the room seemed to become smaller around them. Medication was started to strengthen the contractions, monitors remained strapped around Luka's stomach, and every so often somebody came in to check him, adjust something or encourage another position that was supposed to help the baby turn. Sergio paced whenever nobody was actively stopping him. He crossed from the window to the door, returned to Luka's bed, touched his hair or kissed his forehead, checked the monitor despite having no idea what half the numbers meant, then began walking again. Every time the door opened, his entire attention snapped toward whoever came through it.

Luka was increasingly exhausted by watching him. “You're making me nervous.”

That finally stopped Sergio long enough for him to sit beside the bed. “I am nervous.”

“I noticed.”

Sergio took his hand and kissed his knuckles, keeping it against his mouth for longer than necessary. Outside somewhere, Baka and Vedran were still waiting. Inside, Luka breathed through another contraction while Sergio held his hand, and for the moment there was nothing any of them could do except give the baby time to decide whether it intended to cooperate.

For all the hours in which almost nothing seemed to happen, the end came with bewildering speed.

One moment Luka was still breathing through contractions while Sergio hovered beside him, watching the monitors as though several hours of staring at them might eventually teach him what all the numbers meant. The next, there were more people in the room, the doctor was telling Luka that the baby had moved low enough for them to try, and Sergio barely had time to understand what that meant before Luka was pushing.

Afterward, Sergio would never have been able to say how long it went on. It felt endless because every time Luka collapsed back against the bed, panting and exhausted, somebody gave him only a little while before asking him to do it again.

At the same time, everything moved so quickly that Sergio kept expecting somebody to tell them to slow down, that they still had time, that this was not really happening three weeks before it was supposed to. Luka's hand stayed wrapped around his. By then he had stopped complaining about Sergio talking too much. He barely seemed to hear him at all.

His hair was damp around his temples, his face flushed with effort, and every time another contraction came he closed his eyes and gathered himself before curling forward again.

“You're doing so well, baby. Come on, you've got this. You're doing it.”

Luka squeezed his hand hard enough to hurt. Sergio welcomed it.

The baby still was not coming properly. He understood that much even when he did not understand the Croatian passing rapidly between the doctor and nurses. They kept changing Luka's position, checking the monitor, speaking to him in English when they needed something from him and then immediately returning to Croatian among themselves. Sergio caught individual words occasionally, but never enough to follow what was happening, and every time the tone of the room changed he felt himself falling another step behind.

Luka pushed again. Sergio bent close enough that their foreheads almost touched. “That's it. Come on, one more.”

Luka made a strained sound and tightened his fingers around Sergio's. Then, in the middle of it, his grip disappeared.

Not loosened. Disappeared.

His hand went completely slack inside Sergio's.

Sergio looked at him. “Luka?”

Luka fell backward against the pillows. For perhaps a second nobody moved. Then the monitor began screaming.

The sound was so sudden and so loud that Sergio flinched, and immediately the entire room changed around him. The doctor shouted something in Croatian. A nurse answered from the other side of the bed. Another alarm joined the first, and people who had been speaking calmly seconds earlier began moving with terrifying purpose.

“Luka? Sweetheart?” Sergio leaned over him and touched his face. Luka did not react.

His eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open, and all the colour seemed to be draining from his face while Sergio watched.

“Luka! Lukita, open your eyes.” Hands appeared between them. Someone told Sergio to move. He barely heard it.

“What happened?”

The bed was being lowered flat beneath Luka, nurses moving around both sides of him while the doctor called something toward the doorway. Another person came running into the room. Sergio tried to stay beside Luka's head, but somebody pushed him backward.

“What happened to him? What is that?”

Nobody answered quickly enough. “Tell me what the fuck is happening!”

There was too much Croatian. That was what Sergio remembered most afterward: words everywhere and not one of them meaning anything to him. The doctor was shouting instructions, nurses answering, somebody calling into the corridor, and underneath all of it the monitors continued their relentless alarms. Sergio tried to get back to Luka. A nurse caught his arm.

“No, I need to stay with him. I'm his Alpha, I'm his husband. Luka!”

Another nurse came to help when Sergio pulled free. Behind them, somebody had moved between Luka's legs, and Sergio caught a glimpse of instruments being brought over, the doctor reaching down as another person pressed hard against Luka's stomach.

The baby. They were taking the baby out. And Luka was not awake.

“No, wait—what are you doing? He isn't awake!”

The nurses forced Sergio farther toward the door. He fought them then, not because he wanted to hurt anyone but because every instinct in him revolted against being moved away. One of the nurses was an Alpha, then another joined him, both of them speaking firmly to Sergio while they pushed him backward despite his attempts to twist around them.

“Luka!”

His heel caught against the doorway. For one last second he could see into the room between their shoulders. Luka lay completely motionless beneath the lights, frighteningly pale against the white pillow, while the doctors worked over him. One of them was pulling the baby from his unconscious body as people crowded around the bed and the monitors screamed above all of them.

Then Sergio was shoved into the corridor.The doors closed, and Sergio stopped moving.

Baka was on her feet before he had even properly registered that she was there. She had been sitting farther down the corridor with Vedran, waiting for somebody to come and tell them something, and the moment the doors opened she hurried toward them with such obvious expectation that Sergio saw the precise instant she realised Luka was not coming through. Only Sergio.

He stood in the middle of the corridor white as the wall behind him, blood smeared across the front of his shirt, his hands hanging uselessly at his sides.

She looked past him toward the doors. “Where is Luka?”

Sergio did not answer. Her face changed. “Sergio, where is he? What happened?”

Nothing. She reached him and caught his arm, searching his face while Sergio continued staring over her shoulder at the doors.

“Please. Tell me what happened to him.”

Sergio's lips moved. Luka's mother leaned closer.

“...He told me to choose the baby.”

She stared at him. Vedran had come up behind her now. “What?”

Sergio did not seem to hear him. Months earlier, in a car in Madrid, Luka had shouted those words at him after another appointment full of careful warnings about age and risk and things they needed to watch. They had argued until Sergio had pulled the car over because he could no longer drive and listen to Luka calmly discuss a world in which Sergio might have to leave a hospital without him. If everything goes to shit and they can't save both of us, you choose the baby. You take the baby and you go home to our children. Sergio had refused, of course. Luka had become furious with him for refusing. They had gone home still angry, slept wrapped around each other that night and never spoken about it again. Until now.

“What if they ask me?”

Baka's hand tightened around his arm. “Sergio, what happened to Luka?”

“What if they ask me?”

His voice was barely audible. Baka began to cry. She tried again, asking whether Luka had been conscious, whether the baby had been born, whether somebody had said anything at all, but Sergio gave her nothing. He did not look at her when she started sobbing openly, did not react when she gripped the front of his shirt and begged him to tell her what he had seen.

“What if they ask me?” That was all there was.

Vedran watched him for several seconds before stepping closer. “Sergio.”

No reaction.

“Sergio, look at me.”

His eyes remained fixed on the doors. Vedran put a hand on his shoulder and shook him once, hard enough that under any other circumstances Sergio would have shoved him away. Nothing.

Vedran let go. Then his expression hardened. “Maybe Luka was right.”

Baka turned toward him through her tears. Vedran kept his eyes on Sergio.

“Maybe somebody does need to make the decision, because you're clearly fucking useless to him right now.”

Luka's mother stared at him. “Vedran—”

“He's in there and you're standing here mumbling the same thing over and over. What exactly are you waiting for? Someone to come out and tell you what your Omega decided you should do?”

Sergio's jaw moved faintly. Vedran saw it. He stepped closer. “Maybe that's the problem. You let him tell you how this is going to go, and now you're standing here terrified somebody might actually expect you to be his Alpha.”

Sergio finally looked at him. There was almost nothing in his face yet, but his eyes had moved away from the doors. Vedran continued.

“He doesn't need an Alpha like you standing out here talking this shit while he's in there fighting for his life.”

Something flickered.

Vedran hated himself a little for what he was about to say. He said it anyway.

“Maybe I should have stayed his Alpha. Maybe I should have kept him when I had him, because look at you. Look at what he chose, look what - "

Sergio slapped him before he could finish.

There was no warning and no argument beforehand. One moment Vedran was standing in front of him, and the next Sergio's hand struck hard across his face with enough force to turn his head. Baka gasped. Vedran stumbled sideways and caught himself against the wall.

Sergio stood there breathing hard, staring at him with an anger so sudden and enormous that it seemed to have dragged him bodily back into the corridor.

Then the doors opened. A baby's cry came through them. All three turned.

A nurse stepped out carrying a tiny bundled infant, speaking first in Croatian before seeing Sergio and changing immediately to English.

“The baby is fine.”

Sergio stared at her.

“She is doing very well.”

She.

Their daughter was crying, her little face red and furious beneath the blanket, and for one second Sergio simply watched her. Then he looked past the nurse.

The doors had not closed yet. The nurse tried to stop him, but Sergio was already past her. Somebody called after him as he pushed through the doorway and back into the room from which two nurses had just physically removed him. Luka was still there. The bed had been lowered completely flat. There was equipment everywhere now, bloody sheets being stripped away, instruments being cleared, people moving around him, but Luka himself had not moved. His eyes were still closed.

“Mr. Ramos!” Someone caught his arm. He tore it free.

“What is happening to him?”

One of the doctors had stepped back from the bed and was pulling off his gloves. He looked tired, his clothes marked from what had just happened, but his voice was calm when he answered in English.

“He lost blood. A significant amount. We have controlled the bleeding, but we need to continue treating him.”

“Why isn't he awake?”

“We are treating him. Please remain outside for the moment.”

“No.”

“Mr. Ramos, we need room to—”

“No. I'm not leaving him again.”

Behind him, the baby was still crying. Baka had taken her from the nurse, and when Sergio glanced back he saw her standing just beyond the doorway with her granddaughter held against her chest, tears running freely down her face as she tried to look past everyone toward Luka. Vedran stood beside her with one side of his face already reddening. Sergio turned back to the bed. Someone tried once more to guide him toward the door. He planted himself beside Luka instead.

“You took me out once. I'm not going anywhere.” This time there was enough of the Sergio they had dealt with earlier in his voice that the nurse stopped trying.

Sergio reached the bed. Luka's hand was lying beside him, pale and limp against the sheet. Sergio picked it up carefully. He held it between both of his hands and stayed there while the doctors worked around him, his daughter crying in Baka's arms behind him and Luka giving him nothing back yet.

Nobody managed to take him out again.

Luka had been swimming for a long time.

The water was warm near the surface and cool underneath, exactly the way it had been in Mama's pool earlier that day, and he had found that perfect place between the two where he could float without feeling the heat anymore. His body was light in a way it had not been for months. Nothing pulled at his back or pressed against his hips, and he could stretch his legs without the enormous weight of his stomach making every movement an effort. For a while, he was happy to stay there. Then he became tired of it.

Luka rolled onto his side and looked toward the edge of the pool, expecting to find Sergio sitting there or Niko waiting impatiently for permission to jump in. There should have been noise. Mateo and the other children had been playing somewhere, Mia had been complaining about something, Baka had been calling everybody to eat. He could not see any of them.

The garden was empty. Luka frowned and pushed himself upright in the water.

“Mia?” Nothing. He turned, searching the other side of the pool. “Mateo? Niko?”

Nobody answered. He called louder. The silence remained, and something about it began to frighten him. He tried to move toward the steps, but the water suddenly seemed deeper than it had been a moment ago, his arms heavier as he pushed through it.

“Sergio?” Still nothing.

Luka shouted his name again, louder this time, and somewhere in the middle of that shout the water disappeared.

His eyes opened.

There were harsh white lights above him.

For several seconds he could do nothing except stare at them. His mouth felt dry, his body strangely distant and impossibly heavy, and there was a dull confusion in his head that made it difficult to understand why he was looking at a hospital ceiling when he had just been swimming.

When he turned his head, Sergio was there.

He was sitting beside the bed with his elbows on his knees and Luka's hand enclosed between both of his. He was not asleep. He was simply staring at Luka with an intensity that would normally have made Luka ask what the hell was wrong with him.

Sergio looked terrible. There was dried blood on his shirt. His hair was a mess from repeatedly dragging his hands through it, his eyes were swollen and red, and he seemed to have aged considerably in however long Luka had been asleep. Luka blinked at him. Sergio did not speak. His fingers tightened around Luka's hand.

Memory returned slowly and then all at once. His back hurting that morning. The pool. Warm liquid running down his legs. The hospital. Pushing and Sergio beside him and - then nothing.

Luka's heart began beating faster. He looked down. The blanket covered him from the chest downward, and suddenly he needed it gone. He pulled his hand from Sergio's and grabbed at the edge of it, but his arms felt weak and uncoordinated.

He managed to drag it down enough to see the shape of his stomach beneath the hospital gown. Still round. His stomach was still round. Luka knew that meant nothing. He had done this three times before. He knew perfectly well that a body did not simply become flat when a baby left it, that his stomach had remained swollen and soft for weeks after each of the children. His half-awake mind did not care.

Panic rose so quickly that he began fighting with the blanket again. Sergio caught his hand. “She's fine.”

Luka froze. He looked at him. Sergio swallowed.

“The baby is fine, my love. She's here. She's healthy.”

For several seconds Luka could only stare. “She?”

Sergio's face changed at that, something breaking through the exhaustion for the first time. “A girl.”

Luka let his head fall back against the pillow. His eyes closed. The relief was so enormous that for a moment he could not do anything with it. His chest hurt with the effort of breathing around it, and when he opened his eyes again they were wet.

“A girl,” he repeated. Sergio nodded.

“She was very angry about being born. She screamed at everyone.”

That made Luka smile faintly. “Yours, then.”

A laugh escaped Sergio, but it broke somewhere in the middle and became something else. He lowered his head over Luka's hand and pressed his mouth against it. Luka watched him. The confusion had not entirely cleared yet, but he was beginning to notice things beyond the fact that his baby was alive.

Sergio's clothes. His face. The way he was holding Luka's hand much too tightly now, as though letting go had become impossible.

Luka tried to remember the end of the delivery. He remembered pushing. He remembered being tired. He remembered Sergio talking beside his ear. After that there was simply nothing.

“What happened?” Sergio lifted his head. For the first time since Luka had opened his eyes, he looked away. That frightened Luka more than anything else had.

“Sergio.”

“You lost a lot of blood.”

Luka waited. Sergio rubbed his thumb slowly over Luka's knuckles. “The baby wasn't coming properly, and then you passed out. They had to get her out quickly. Afterward you kept bleeding.” 

Luka stared at him. “How much?”

“I don't know.”

That was a lie. Luka knew Sergio well enough to hear it immediately. “How much?”

“Too much.”

Luka looked down at himself again, although there was nothing there to tell him what had happened. He felt sore everywhere, strangely hollow beneath the heaviness, but there was no pain sharp enough to match the expression on Sergio's face.

“They fixed it?”

“Yes.” This time Sergio answered immediately. “The bleeding is controlled. They've given you blood. They've been checking you constantly, and the doctor said you were stable. You just needed to wake up.”

Luka looked at him for a long moment. “You thought I wasn't going to.”

Sergio's mouth tightened. He did not answer. He did not need to.

Luka turned his hand inside Sergio's until their palms met and laced their fingers together. “Where is she?”

“With Mama. They checked her because she's early, but she's fine. She's been fed, she's warm, everything is good. Baka has barely put her down.”

“Bring her.”

Sergio nodded immediately, but when he started to stand, Luka tightened his fingers. Sergio stopped.

“Wait.”

He sat back down. Luka looked at him again, properly this time, at the dried blood and the exhaustion and whatever remained behind his eyes from the hours Luka could not remember.

“Come here first.”

Sergio leaned over the bed. Luka lifted a weak arm around his neck and pulled him down until Sergio's face was against the side of his own. For a moment Sergio remained unnaturally still, careful of every tube and wire and sore part of Luka beneath him. Then his control finally gave.

He buried his face against Luka's neck and held him. Luka closed his eyes.

He could feel Sergio shaking. Neither of them said anything about it.

By the time Baka came back into the room with the baby, Vedran had gone home. It was almost morning again. Luka had lost an entire night somewhere between pushing and opening his eyes beneath the hospital lights, and the darkness beyond the windows had begun thinning into the dull grey that came before sunrise. Baka stopped just inside the room when she saw him properly awake. She had cried already; Luka could tell from the swelling around her eyes, but that did not seem to matter. The moment he smiled at her, her face crumpled again.

“Mama..”

She crossed the room and bent over him carefully, one arm going around his shoulders while she continued holding the baby securely against herself. Luka closed his eyes when she kissed his hair, then his forehead, then his hair again. For a while she seemed unable to let go. Luka did not make her. Eventually she pulled back far enough to look at him, wiping her face with one hand before glancing down at the bundle in her other arm.

“Do you want her?”

Luka almost laughed at the question. “Give me my baby.”

She helped him sit a little higher and then lowered the baby carefully into his arms, but instead of moving away afterward, she sat on the edge of the bed and kept one arm firmly around Luka's back. Ordinarily he might have protested that he could hold his own child. This morning, he let her. Their daughter was asleep now, apparently having exhausted whatever outrage she had felt about being born.

She looked impossibly small tucked against Luka's chest, smaller than he remembered any of the others being, although perhaps that was simply what happened when you spent eight months feeling somebody kick hard enough to rearrange your organs and then discovered the person responsible weighed almost nothing.

Luka touched one finger to her cheek. “There you are.”

There was crying again beside him. “Oh, Mama.”

“I can cry if I want.”

“I didn't say you couldn't. Isn't she beautiful?”

“Yes. And you nearly killed me. You nearly kille him.”

Luka smiled faintly. “I think technically I nearly killed myself.” That earned him a wet, offended look, and Luka decided not to make another joke.

Across the room, Sergio had not moved. He sat in the same chair beside the bed, watching them. Luka kept finding himself looking back at him because something about Sergio was wrong in a way that went beyond exhaustion.

He had cleaned himself up somewhat, although there was still dried blood on the shirt he had never changed, and his eyes were red from lack of sleep. But Sergio should have been different now. That thought settled slowly in Luka's mind while he looked down at their daughter. This was Sergio's favourite part.

After Mia, he had been so overwhelmed that he had spent hours telling anyone who came within range that she was the most beautiful baby ever born. With Mateo, he had taken so many photographs that Luka had eventually threatened to throw his phone out of the hospital window. After Niko, Sergio had barely put him down, walking around with the baby against his bare chest and looking unbearably pleased with himself every time somebody congratulated him.

There should have been noise now. There should have been ridiculous claims about whose eyes she had when she had barely opened them. Sergio should have been touching her feet and counting her fingers and telling Luka for the twentieth time that they had made another perfect child. Instead, he sat there and watched.

Mama seemed to notice it too, but she said nothing. She took out her phone instead. “Mia will be awake.”

Luka looked toward the window. “Already?”

“She'll be awake.”

She was. The video call had barely begun before Mia's face appeared, far too close to the camera, and the picture immediately became chaotic when Mateo and Niko realised what was happening and tried to get into the frame at the same time. “Tata!”

Luka smiled before he could help it. “Good morning.”

“Is that the baby?”

“Can we see?”

“Tata!” Niko's voice sounded wrong on the third attempt, and Luka's smile faded. His youngest had started crying. Not the dramatic crying Niko sometimes employed when deeply wronged by his siblings, but frightened, hiccupping tears that made Luka instinctively shift as though he could somehow reach through the phone.

“Hey, hey. Niko, I'm here.”

“I want you.”

“I know.”

“Come home.”

Luka swallowed. “I will. I just have to stay here a little bit longer so the doctors can make sure she's okay.” Niko wiped his face with both hands.

Luka adjusted the baby carefully against his chest. “Do you want to see your sister?”

That helped. Within seconds all three children were demanding a better view, Mia telling the boys to move because they were blocking the screen while doing exactly the same thing herself. Luka turned the phone enough for them to see the baby's face.

“She looks tiny,” Mateo said.

“She is tiny.”

“What's her name?”

Luka looked at Sergio. Sergio looked back.  “We don't know.”

Mia stared at him. “You had eight months.”

“We thought we had three more weeks.”

“You don't have any names?”

“We have names. We just don't know which one is hers yet.”

Niko wanted to offer several suggestions immediately, none of which Luka intended to use, and for a few minutes the room finally felt almost normal. The children talked over one another, Baka kept correcting the angle of the phone, and Luka promised them repeatedly that everything was all right. When Niko asked again when he was coming home, Luka glanced at Sergio.

“Papa will come and get you soon, okay? Then you can come see us when they say it's allowed.”

Sergio nodded when all three children looked toward him. He still did not say much. Once the call ended, Luka's mother took the baby while Luka shifted against the pillows. Sergio was immediately on his feet.

He poured water without asking and brought it over. “Drink.”

Luka took the glass. “Very romantic.”

Sergio merely waited until he drank. 

Later that morning, once Luka had slept again and the strange fog in his head had finally begun to lift, a doctor came to explain what had happened.

By then Luka could sit upright without feeling as though the room might move beneath him. He was tired and sore, but the terrible weakness from earlier had eased, and he had eaten a little. A nurse had even helped him position the baby for her first proper attempt at nursing, which had been clumsy and uncomfortable and reassuringly ordinary. The medical explanation was less ordinary.

The baby had become distressed during the final stage of labour. Luka's blood pressure had dropped rapidly, he had lost consciousness, and they had needed to deliver her immediately rather than wait for him to continue pushing. Then came the hemorrhage. They had controlled it. He had required blood. He would need monitoring, repeat blood tests and rest, but the doctor was pleased with how he was recovering. Their daughter had responded well after delivery and, despite arriving early, was doing remarkably well.

Luka listened carefully and asked questions. He wanted to know about the bleeding, whether they expected any further complications, whether there was anything he needed to watch for afterward and whether what had happened affected nursing. The doctor answered him patiently, and by the time she left, Luka felt considerably less frightened than he thought perhaps he ought to.

It had happened. They had treated it. He was here. The baby was here.

Only after the door closed did Luka look at Sergio. He had been present for all of that. Not the tidy explanation given afterward, when everybody was calm and Luka was sitting up drinking water. Sergio had been there when Luka's hand went slack.

He had watched the monitors go off. He had watched people lower the bed and shout for help. He had seen Luka unconscious while they pulled their daughter out of him.

Luka remembered none of it, but Sergio did. Suddenly his silence made sense.

Their daughter stirred in the cot beside the bed. Sergio looked over immediately. He always did. But he did not get up.

Luka watched him for a moment before reaching into the cot himself. His arms were steadier now, and he lifted her carefully, settling her against his chest. She made a small complaining noise and tucked her face against him.

“Sergio.”

He looked over.

“Come here.”

The Alpha stood and came to the bedside. Luka shifted the baby in his arms. “Take her.”

Something strange crossed Sergio's face. “You have her.”

“I know I have her. Now you have her.”

Sergio looked down. “I can hold her later.”

Luka stared at him. Of all the things Sergio could possibly have said, that one convinced him. “No.”

“Luka—”

“Take your daughter.”

Sergio's jaw tightened. Luka did not understand exactly what he was afraid of, only that he was, and that was enough. He held the baby out slightly, leaving Sergio with the choice of taking her or explaining why he would not. After a moment, Sergio slid his hands beneath her.

He was careful to the point of absurdity. Luka let go slowly. “There.”

Sergio drew her against his chest. For the first few seconds, nothing happened. He looked down at her, and she continued sleeping with complete indifference to whatever was happening to her father. One of her hands had escaped the blanket, tiny fingers curled near Sergio's thumb.

Sergio touched them gently. She closed her hand around his finger.

Luka saw his face change. Sergio lowered his head. His shoulders shook once.

Then again.

He turned slightly away, as though that might somehow hide what was happening, but Luka had known him for far too long.

“Oh, ljubavi...”

Sergio pressed his mouth against the top of their daughter's head. The first sob seemed to hurt him. After that he could not stop.

He held her closer, still impossibly careful with her, and cried with his face bent over the little knitted cap the nurses had put on her. Everything he had apparently managed to hold back while Luka was unconscious, while doctors worked on him, while Mama cried and their children called and the baby was checked and fed and brought back, finally came out with their daughter safe in his arms. Luka did not ask him to explain it. He reached out instead and put his hand against the back of Sergio's neck.

For a long time, they stayed like that, Sergio sitting beside the hospital bed with their daughter against his chest and Luka's hand resting on his neck.

By the afternoon, Luka was beginning to feel enough like himself to become irritated by how little he could actually do. The shower had been his idea.

Sergio had reacted to it as though Luka had announced an intention to climb a mountain. In the end they compromised, although Luka suspected that what Sergio considered a compromise and what everybody else considered one were increasingly different things.

A nurse helped disconnect what could safely be disconnected, Sergio tested the water three separate times, and then he stayed inside the bathroom with Luka despite being informed that Luka had showered independently for most of his life.

Standing for that long turned out to be considerably more ambitious than he had expected.

Sergio washed his hair when lifting his arms made him tired, kept one hand around his waist whenever Luka closed his eyes beneath the water, and said absolutely nothing when Luka eventually leaned most of his weight against him.

It was strange being washed by Sergio without any of the usual intimacy or teasing attached to it. Sergio's hands were almost painfully gentle, moving around bruises, adhesive marks and the places Luka was too sore to have touched, and whenever Luka shifted unexpectedly, Sergio's entire body tensed.

“You can stop looking like I'm going to collapse.”

“I am not looking like anything.”

“You are.”

Sergio kissed his wet shoulder rather than argue.

Getting dressed afterward was worse. The hospital had given Luka an extraordinary pair of high-waisted compression pants that looked, in his opinion, as though their sole purpose was to hold his entire lower body together through brute force.

He stared at them. “These are horrible.”

“They're beautiful.”

“You wear them, then.”

“I would look fantastic.”

That was at least enough to make Luka laugh, and Sergio seemed pleased with himself for achieving it. By the time they got him back to the bed, Luka no longer objected when Sergio put an arm beneath his knees and practically carried him the last few steps. The sheets had been changed while he showered, everything clean and cool when Sergio lowered him onto the mattress, arranged the pillows behind his back and then stood there studying him as though checking whether all the pieces remained attached.

Luka was exhausted. He was also clean, dressed and beginning to feel human again.

Food appeared next. Sergio made him eat more than he wanted, brought water every time the glass became even remotely empty and seemed personally offended when Luka suggested he was full. When their daughter woke and began fussing, Sergio retrieved her immediately and brought her over rather than letting Luka reach for the cot himself.

The nurse had helped Luka feed her earlier, and the second attempt went more easily. She was small and sleepy enough that keeping her interested required patience, but once she settled, Luka rested back against the pillows and watched her while Sergio sat beside them.

He expected Sergio eventually to leave. He needed clean clothes. He needed a shower of his own. Their children had been away from both of them since the previous afternoon, and somebody needed to go and get them.

Sergio did none of those things. Every suggestion that he might go home was met with a reason he could not possibly do so yet. Luka needed something. The baby might wake. The doctor might come back. Baka could manage the children a little longer.

Eventually Baka looked at him, apparently recognised that separating Sergio from Luka would require medical equipment of its own, and simply went herself.

She returned a few hours later with all three children in tow. The room had not been quiet since.

Niko had cried the moment he saw Luka. He ran to the bed before anybody could stop him, only remembering at the last second that Tata was apparently injured and pulling himself up short with such a frightened expression that Luka's heart hurt. “Come here.”

That was all the permission he needed. Sergio had helped him onto the bed, warning him approximately six times to be careful, and Niko had immediately curled himself against Luka's side. There had been fresh tears then, wetting Luka's shirt while Niko buried his face beneath his arm and held onto him. Now he had settled.

He lay stretched beside Luka, one hand resting possessively across Tata's stomach while the other periodically rubbed at his tired eyes. Every so often Luka ran his fingers through his hair, and Niko pressed a little closer without opening his eyes.

Across the room, Mateo and Mia had been entrusted with their sister. Sergio hovered over them.

“You know I've held babies before,” Mia informed him.

“You haven't held this baby before.”

“That makes no difference.”, then with a gentle smile she added "This is my little sister."

Mateo, sitting beside her and supporting part of the blanket bundle on his lap, looked up. “Papa, you're making it worse.”

“I am making sure her head is supported.”#

“Her head is supported.”

“Well, keep supporting it. We don't want her to drop to the floor like you did when you were born."

Luka watched from the bed, smiling. There he was. Not entirely, perhaps. Sergio was still too alert every time Luka shifted and far too quick to look toward the monitors whenever they made even an ordinary sound, but there was something reassuringly familiar about watching him supervise two perfectly competent older children holding their sister as though they had been handed an unexploded bomb.

Mia looked down at the baby. “She really is small.”

“She came early,” Luka reminded her.

“Was I this small?”

“No. You were enormous.”

“I was not.”

“You were the biggest baby anybody had ever seen.” Baka laughed from her chair.

Mia looked toward her for confirmation and received none. Mateo carefully touched one of the baby's hands. “Does she have a name yet?”

Luka and Sergio looked at each other. Niko lifted his head from Luka's chest. “You still didn't name her?”

Luka laughed. “We've been busy.”

“You had months.”

“That is exactly what your sister said.”

Sergio sat down beside Mia and adjusted the blanket around the baby unnecessarily. “We had a list.”

“A very long list,” Luka said.

“A terrible list,” Sergio corrected. “Your names were terrible.”

“My names were beautiful.”

“You suggested Leonor.”

Sergio looked offended. “My grandmother's name is beautiful.”

“It is. Your grandmother is also alive and would find it extremely strange if we suddenly named our daughter after her.”

Mia looked between them. “What else?”

Luka thought for a moment. “Ines.”

Sergio's expression softened. "Inés" he corrected though, Spanish accent and all. They had both liked that one. Mia looked down at her sister as though evaluating whether the name suited her. “Ines.” Mateo tried it next. Even Niko sat up a little straighter. “?” "Hi, Ines!” he called over.

For a few seconds nobody said anything. The baby stretched in Mia's arms, screwed up her tiny face and then settled again.

Sergio looked at Luka. There had been other names. They had discussed them in bed, in the car, over breakfast, sometimes seriously and sometimes only because Sergio had discovered another name he liked and needed Luka's opinion immediately. None of them had ever become hers. This one suddenly seemed to be.

“Inés” Sergio said quietly.

Luka nodded. “All right.”

Mia smiled. “That's it?”

“What do you want, a vote?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Mateo laughed. Niko had apparently decided the matter was settled and dropped his head back onto Luka's chest. “My baby Ines.”

Luka looked down at him. “Your baby?”

“Yes.”

Across the room, Sergio groaned. “Wonderful. Another Croatian who thinks the baby belongs to him. Oh, wait. She was actually even born here!”

Luka laughed and rested his cheek against Niko's hair. Mia and Mateo were still bent over their sister, arguing quietly about which of them she looked more like, while Baka watched all of them from her chair with eyes that became suspiciously wet every few minutes. Sergio finally stopped hovering long enough to sit.

He looked around the room at all four of their children, then across at Luka. Luka caught his eye. There was still something there that they would eventually have to deal with, something Sergio had carried out of that delivery room and had not yet managed to put down. Not now. For now, Niko was warm against Luka's side, Mia and Mateo were fighting over who could hold Inés next, Baka was pretending not to cry, and their daughter finally had a name.

Sergio did not leave the hospital for four more days. Luka told him repeatedly that this was ridiculous, usually while Sergio was sitting in the same chair he had occupied for so long that it had started to look as though somebody had assigned it to him permanently.

“You need clothes.”

“I have clothes.”

“You have one shirt.”

“It is clean.”

“It is absolutely not clean.” But Sergio ignored him.

In the end it was Luka's cousin who brought everything they needed, arriving with a baby carrier they had hastily bought, a bag of new clothes for Ana, clean things for Luka and enough toiletries to suggest that half the family had become involved in preparing it. Luka looked at the pile, then at Sergio.

“This is ridiculous.”

Sergio was unpacking tiny sleepsuits with complete seriousness. “Why?”

“Because my cousin has brought our daughter home from the shop before you've managed to leave this room.”

“I told you I wasn't leaving.”

“Yes, and I told you you're ridiculous.”

Sergio glanced over at him, utterly unmoved. “You can keep telling me.” So Luka did. For four days. Then, finally, they were allowed home.

The drive back to the house felt strangely quiet despite having six people in the car now instead of five. Ana slept almost the entire way in the new carrier, Niko talked until he tired himself out, Mateo kept turning around to look at his sister and Sergio checked the rear-view mirror so often that Luka eventually told him the baby had not disappeared since the previous traffic light. Mia said almost nothing.

Luka noticed that before they had even reached the house. At first he assumed she was tired. The last few days had been strange for all of them, and Mia had always dealt with things by becoming quieter rather than louder. Once they were inside, however, Luka began noticing something else.

She hovered.

Not as dramatically as Sergio, because nobody could hover with Sergio's particular commitment, but the resemblance was unmistakable.

When Luka stood, Mia watched him. When he walked toward the kitchen, she asked what he needed. When he lowered himself carefully onto the sofa, she brought him a cushion he had not requested and then another one when the first apparently did not look supportive enough. By dinner, Luka was beginning to understand.

“Sergio.”

His Alpha looked up from where he was holding Ines.

“You've reproduced.”

Sergio frowned. “Obviously.”

“No. Again.”

Luka nodded toward Mia, who was currently rearranging the glass of water beside him so that it sat closer to his hand. Sergio followed his gaze. Mia caught them looking at her. “What?”

“Nothing,” Luka said. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously and went back to hovering.

That night, Luka found out why. Ines had finally settled after feeding, Sergio was downstairs, blessedly, with Mateo and Niko, and Luka had just eased himself into bed when there was a quiet knock at the door. Mia stood there.

“You okay?”

She nodded. Luka knew immediately that she was not. “Come here.”

She crossed the room slowly and climbed onto the bed beside him, careful in a way that made his chest tighten. For a moment she simply sat there, looking down at her hands. Then she asked, very quietly,

“Did you almost die?”

Luka looked at her. Somebody had said something. Perhaps not directly, perhaps only enough for a twelve-year-old who had spent four days watching adults lower their voices whenever she entered a room to put the pieces together herself.

“Mia.”

Her face crumpled before he could say anything else. The sound she made was so young that Luka forgot, for a moment, that she was twelve and becoming taller and more independent by the month, that she rolled her eyes when Sergio kissed her in front of people and complained when anyone treated her like a child. She folded into him and cried.

“Oh, sweetheart.”

“I thought you were okay,” she managed. “They said you were okay, and then Baka was crying all the time and Papa wouldn't leave you, and Mateo said you had to get blood, and nobody would tell us anything properly.” Luka held her closer. She sounded furious and frightened and very small.

He rocked her without thinking about it, the same slow movement he had used when she had been a baby and refused to sleep anywhere except against his chest. His hand moved over her hair while she cried into his shirt. “I am okay.”

“You weren't.”

“No.”

That made her cry harder. Luka kissed the top of her head and held his tongue. He did not tell her she was too old for this. He did not tell her to calm down or remind her that everything had worked out, because right then none of that mattered. Mia was still his baby too. She could be twelve and clever and increasingly independent and still climb into Tata's arms when the world frightened her badly enough. So Luka kept rocking her.

Eventually her breathing began to slow. She stayed curled against him, one hand gripping his shirt as though she needed proof that he remained there. Luka rested his cheek against her hair and looked toward the open bedroom door.

Somewhere downstairs, Niko was laughing. Mateo was arguing with Sergio about something. Ines made a faint noise from her cot beside the bed.

Four. He had four now.

Four children who could frighten him, exhaust him, make him laugh, break his heart and somehow still make his life feel fuller every time he looked at them.

Luka tightened his arm around Mia and kept rocking her until she fell asleep.

Vedran came by the next afternoon, ostensibly to meet Ines properly, although Sergio suspected from the way he looked Luka over the moment he walked into the house that the baby was only half the reason.

Luka was stretched out on the sofa with Ines tucked against him, still pale and moving carefully enough that nobody could quite pretend he was back to normal yet. Vedran sat with him for a while, asked how he was feeling without making too much of it and eventually took Ines when Luka offered her.

“You're very small,” he informed her, studying her seriously. “Your father is going to make this your problem for the rest of your life.”

“Which father?” Luka asked.

Vedran glanced toward Sergio. “The loud one.”

Sergio, from the kitchen, raised a finger at him.

It was reassuringly normal. It took Luka another few minutes to notice the faint yellowing bruise along Vedran's cheekbone. His eyes settled on it, narrowed, and then moved slowly across the room to Sergio.

“What happened to your face?”

Vedran touched his cheek automatically. “Oh, nothing.”

“He walked into something,” Sergio said.

Luka stared between them. He had known both men far too long to miss something that obvious. “Do I want to know?”

“No,” both Alphas said at exactly the same time.

Luka's eyebrows rose. Vedran took sudden interest in Ines again. Sergio took sudden interest in the coffee machine.

“Right,” Luka murmured. Neither of them elaborated.

Vedran stayed through coffee and whatever Baka decided he needed to eat before finally getting up to leave. Sergio followed him outside, partly because somebody had to close the gate and partly because there was something sitting awkwardly between them that neither had mentioned. Vedran reached his car before Sergio spoke.

“Your face okay?”

“You hit like an old man.”

Sergio snorted. “Fuck you.”

Vedran smiled, and for a moment that could have been the end of it. Then Sergio rubbed a hand over his jaw. “I shouldn't have done that.”

“No.”

“I was—”

“I know what you were.”

Sergio looked at him, and Vedran's expression lost some of its amusement.

“I wanted you angry,” Vedran said. “You were scaring the shit out of his mother standing there like that. I knew you'd hit me before you'd keep listening.”

“You could have found another way.”

“Probably.”

Sergio gave him a long, unimpressed look. Vedran only shrugged and opened his car door. Before getting in, though, he glanced back toward the house where Luka was visible through the window, still on the sofa with Ines.

“He looks better.”

Sergio followed his gaze, and something in his face softened immediately. “Yeah.”

Vedran looked at him once more. “Good.”

There was no apology for what Vedran had said that night and no thanks for it either. Neither of them particularly needed one. When Vedran held out his hand, Sergio looked at it for half a second before taking it, pulling him briefly closer and thumping him once between the shoulders.

“Don't ever say that shit to me again.”

Vedran laughed as they separated. “Then don't make me.”

“Asshole.”

“See you tomorrow.”

Sergio watched him drive away before going back inside, where Luka was almost certainly waiting to interrogate him about the bruise.

Luka had only meant to close his eyes for a few minutes.

That was happening more often now. He would sit down feeling perfectly awake, usually while insisting to Sergio that he did not need to rest, and then wake twenty minutes later with a blanket over him and absolutely no memory of falling asleep. This time, when he opened his eyes, the room was dark. For a few seconds he did not move. He was still heavy with sleep, warm beneath the covers, and the house around him had gone quiet enough that he guessed it was late. His hand moved automatically across the mattress beside him.

Empty. Luka blinked and lifted his head. The little cot beside the bed was empty too.

He found them when he noticed the balcony door standing slightly open.

Sergio was outside.

The light from the bedroom reached only far enough to outline him against the darkness, and Luka could see the small bundle held against his chest. Sergio had wrapped a blanket around Ines before taking her outside, tucking it carefully around her until only the top of her head was visible beneath his chin. He was rocking her.

Not pacing, as he had done with all their babies when they cried, but simply shifting slowly from one foot to the other, one large hand spread over almost the whole of her back Luka settled against his pillow again rather than calling to him. Sergio was talking. His voice was low enough that Luka had to listen carefully through the open door.

“You gave us a fucking fright, princesa. Do you know that?”

There was a pause while Sergio looked down at her.

“You don't know anything yet, do you? You just sleep and eat and make everyone run around after you. That's a good life. Keep that as long as you can.”

Luka smiled into the pillow.

Sergio adjusted the blanket around her, his fingers disappearing briefly beneath it to check something before he seemed satisfied.

“You have three people in there who are already going to ruin you. Niko will give you anything you ask for because he has no sense, Mateo will pretend he isn't doing it and then give you twice as much, and Mia...” Sergio laughed softly. “Mia is going to scare the shit out of anyone who looks at you wrong.” Ines made some tiny sound against him.

“I know. Terrible family.” Sergio bent his head and kissed her hair.

“You're lucky, though. You have the best Tata in the world.”

Luka's smile disappeared.

For a while Sergio said nothing, and when he spoke again there was something different in his voice, softer than before.

“You scared me with him, pequeña. I didn't like that at all.” His hand moved slowly over her back. “But he's here. You're here. Everybody's here.”

Sergio seemed to need a moment after that. He pressed his mouth against the top of Ines's head and stayed there before continuing to rock her beneath the dark Croatian sky.

"And what would I do without him, hm? Without you?" Then, almost as though he had decided he had been serious for long enough, he murmured, “And you look like him, by the way. Everybody is going to tell you that you look like me because they're blind, but don't listen to them. I know these things. You've got his nose. Definitely his nose. Maybe my mouth, which is unfortunate for everyone else because you're going to learn to use it.”

Ines shifted again, one tiny arm moving beneath the blanket.

“Yes, exactly. You agree with Papa.”

There he was.

Luka watched him from the bed, this ridiculous Alpha who had spent days looking at their daughter as though loving her too freely might tempt the universe into taking something back, and felt something inside him finally loosen. Sergio was kissing her little forehead now, whispering things Luka could no longer quite hear, rocking her while she slept peacefully against his chest.

Luka could have called him inside. Instead, he pulled the blanket higher around himself and stayed quiet.

This moment belonged to Sergio and his daughter.

"...Oh, you will love Madrid!" Sergio suddenly said outside. "You know, you're Spanish. Don't let them tell you anything else, okay?"