EVERLY Hours Later All night I panicked, and I felt useless, sick with worry and guilt that I was just sitting here waiting for them to return. I would have just got in the way or become a constant worry for Valen. Sometimes, you need to sit back and allow someone else to take over. But for me, that was easier said than done. However, Valen had proven to me that he could be relied on. Even when we didn’t see eye to eye, he still showed up and still kept his promises.
And this time was no different. Valen said he would bring Macey home, and he did. Earlier in the night, not long after Valen left, Zoe couldn’t bear being home alone. Ava felt unsafe at home with just Zoe, or maybe it was her guilt about what happened to Zoe that she struggled to be alone with her. I didn’t know; I was just relieved to have them here. So my room in the maternity ward had turned into a drop-in center.
We sought comfort from each other’s presence. Zoe had some of the warriors bring in blow-up mattresses for the kids to sleep on. The nurses had also found two extra beds and brought them in. Macey had caused quite a fuss when she got here. She refused to be checked over until she saw Taylor.
Valen, Tatum, and Marcus dealt with pack dramas, council members, and officials. Ava had gone home with Dad and Kalen after they left, and I felt wired and overly emotional. Or maybe it was because of everything that had gone on recently, or perhaps it was my fluctuating hormones from having the girls.
Yet as I looked around the room, I was brought back to the day I met these two women, two women who became my sisters. Macey laid beside me in the hospital bed, a drip in her hand, Taylor tucked against her side asleep while she held one of my girls.
Zoe sat by my feet, holding my other daughter while I breastfed the other one in my arms. Zoe feeling my gaze on her, looked over at me, placing my daughter over her shoulder to burp her.
“Don’t you start? You cry, we all bloody cry,” she chuckles sniffles, shaking her head and glancing at Casey and Valarian asleep on the blow-up mattress in the room’s corner. She turned back to me and smiled sadly, then stared off at Macey, who was watching us.
Zoe’s guilt was clear on her face. She felt terrible Macey killed her mate for her, for all of us. “Man, this is like a dose of déjà vu,” Macey mutters, and it is clear she was thinking the same thing as me. “
Only thing missing is our rumbling bellies and the rude nurses and midwives,” Zoe chuckled darkly. “And the sneers and mutters, let’s not forget those,” Macey says, and I swallowed.
“This hospital is a little nicer, too,” I snickered, peering down at my daughter attached to my breast. “It feels like a lifetime ago,” Zoe mutters, and I nod, looking around at our kids, at my sisters. “That’s because none of us are those girls anymore,” I told them, and it was true.
All of us came from nothing and built ourselves up in our own images. We raised our children together, and we did it through blood, sweat, and tears.
We did it despite not believing we could at the start until we showed ourselves what we were capable of.
Showed ourselves we didn’t need anyone because we had each other. “We aren’t alone this time. It’s not the same. We aren’t scared little rogue women with no names, no identities, and no chance.
It’s different because we are. It’s different because we know our worth; back then, we didn’t.” I tell them. Macey nods, wiping a stray tear that escapes, and Zoe, I see, bites her lip to stop it from trembling. “I know, it’s just I hate maternity wards,” Macey says, and I understood that fear. Understood what it was like seeing families gushing excitedly while we were tucked away, not to be seen.
Understood the trauma that was left behind from that experience. I know the feeling of walking out the hospital doors with a newborn in your arms and not knowing what you’re doing or who to turn to. Not knowing how to provide for the baby in your arms when you can’t provide for yourself.
“We’ll get through this,” Zoe says, pursing her lips, a faraway look in her eyes, and I brush her lower back with my feet through the blanket, bringing her back from where her mind took her.
We all know that feeling of being so low we thought we would drown in our despair and fear, and it’s what brought us together. It’s also what drove us to prove everyone wrong. We would be heard, seen, and prove to them and ourselves that we didn’t need anyone.
And we did just that. So I knew Zoe was right. This was just another obstacle we would get through. Because despite everything going wrong and finding ourselves back where we started, in a sense. It was not the same.
We were far from that place and faced new challenges, but now we had the knowledge and drive backing us to overcome them. And most of all, we had each other and the village we built.
The village we watched get destroyed and then rebuilt again. Brick by bloody brick, we would rebuild the fractured parts of us. We won’t bleed anymore. We’ll patch those walls, repaint, readjust, adapt, and rebuild ourselves.
We would morph into the next phase of life because life would continue, and we would continue showing it we weren’t to be beaten. We would show life that all our flaws and scars, the peeling paint and cracked crumpling pieces, didn’t mean we were broken or condemned. No, those broken pieces, once put together again, restored, strengthened us, and just added character.
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