A Reject (Completed)

Bonus Chapter - Breathing New Life

Bonus Chapter - Breathing New Life

"You can do it, honey," Frederick urged his wife. Both their faces were slick with sweat, hands clammy and cold. Karen barked out a harsh laugh from the birthing cot. "You do it then, Fred," she taunted, gritting her teeth and crushing her husband's hand. Frederick chuckled nervously, not aware of why he did so. 

"Karen," the doctor said curtly as he strolled in. Frederick turned his head so quickly he was in danger of whiplash. "Where have you been," he snarled. "My apologies," the doctor continued with a touch of absent-mindedness. "I will further elaborate. After your wife is safely out of labour." At that, Karen gave a gut-wrenching scream. The Beta blood in Frederick demanded an answer from the doctor who couldn't seem to care less about his beautiful partner. 

"Hurry it up," Frederick growled, stepping out of the doctor's way. The doctor immediately walked to Karen's side.

He took Karen's other hand briefly and rattled off words he had practised time and time before. "Karen, I need you to breathe in and out. I know it's painful but you have to push as hard as you can." Karen flared her nostrils, struggling to do as he said. 

After a tense hour of screaming and cursing from Karen and comforting words that were to no avail from Frederick, a separate voice shrieked in synchrony with Karen's past utterances. A separate pair of lungs gasped and breathed new life independently from Karen. She reached for her new baby wrapped in a blanket - despite a continuing discomfort in her lower regions - and cuddled it, looking at the precious fragile being that she had helped create. 

Frederick looked from the foot of the cot, completely bewildered. He had had a baby. Well, technically, his wife had but he was a Papa. Dad. Father. He stepped forward, still in a trance, to catch a glimpse of his son.

Karen beamed up at him and Frederick returned it, the previous uncouth swearings forgotten between them. She turned the bundle in her hands to face him and Frederick looked at the long lashes that fluttered close with exhaustion and pink heart-shaped lips. His own lips parted, a question forming in the back of his mind, just as Karen whispered, "Say hello to our little girl, Frederick Fairs."

In the decades to follow, Frederick would wonder from time to time what made him snap. Emotions would flow through him at this memory. Anger, shame that he had been cursed and confusion as to why it had to be him. Never before would he recall regret for what he did.

Frederick snatched the baby from his wife's arms and forced it into the doctor's hands, still bloody from the birth. "Oh, god, no," he gasped, gaping at Karen. "We...we can't. Not a girl." Karen narrowed her eyes and furrowed her brow. "What do you mean?" she asked. 

Frederick ran his hands distractedly through his hair. "I mean that we can't. We can't give the title to a girl. A man is meant to carry the position. The fate of the pack in his hands. Just look at that thing!"

He pointed at the doctor, although he no longer carried anything, having settled the newborn in a cradle. 

"What would Dylan say?" Frederick demanded. He knew full well that the Alpha would not object to a female Beta in the future. His heart was abnormally good. But Frederick grasped at straws, convincing himself that in the high of celebrating his son's second birthday recently Dylan would not think straight and make the horrifying decision of letting a girl live to take the pack's destiny and destroy it in the future.

"What would I say?" a voice steely with experience and power floated through the door with its owner. The doctor bowed his head respectfully. "Alpha." Dylan smiled at him and patted his back. "I would shake your hand at the moment, my good man," he said jovially, "but they are rather less than hygienic."