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Chapter 58 : Fated Babe
Maeve
Cleo felt over my belly, finding a spot just below my navel where my stomach went suddenly limp, as
though the muscles I had there just up and disappeared. I looked down, slightly concerned.
“It’s just your ligaments loosening up,” she said with a smile, unrolling a length of measuring tape and
laying it vertically over my skin. “You’re going to start feeling
something like… being snapped with a rubber band, every once in a while, around your waist.”
“Yeah, I’ve felt that a few times,” I said, watching as she measured my stomach. I definitely wasn’t
showing yet, but I did feel a little softer, looser. I had tried to explain it to Troy, trying to find a word for
the way my body felt. What had he called it? Limp noodle?
Ah, yes. My bones felt like overcooked pasta. I was suddenly clumsy, dizzy, and extremely fatigued. I
felt so out of sorts, like my mind and body were no longer connecting. And when I brought it up to Cleo,
she had simply nodded, telling me it was all totally and completely normal.
“You’re measuring ahead, but I expected that, carrying twins and all,” Cleo said, rolling the tape around
her finger and putting it back into the bag Una had given her, which was full of practically everything
needed to tend to a pregnancy and deliver a baby. She pulled out a stethoscope next, placing it on my
skin to listen to whatever lay beneath.
“Can you hear them yet?” | asked. She put the stethoscope away and gently prodded my stomach. It
was amazing to watch her work. She had delivered so many children during the course of her career.
There was no one else I trusted with my pregnancy more than Cleo.
She was also the only person even remotely qualified to deliver the babies, especially given the fact
that we were traveling into the unknown.
–
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“Not very well, but I guarantee you, they’re there. Both of them. You’re probably txo
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months along, I’d say.”
“When will she start getting round?” Myla was standing in the corner of the room! shared with Troy,
watching us with her arms crossed over her chest. She looked a little uncomfortable.
“I already feel round,” I said as I pulled my shirt down. I struggled suddenly to sit upright, needing
Cleo’s assistance as a wave of dizziness washed over me.
“You’re likely a little anemic, Maeve. I’ll let Olly know. You’ll need more iron in your diet.”
“Your boobs are huge,” Myla said curtly, and both Cleo and I turned to her.
“Are you okay,” I said, but Myla was already out the door, slamming it shut behind her. “What’s her
problem?”
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Cleo sighed deeply as she put her tools back in the bag, running her fingers along the smooth leather.
“Her biological mother died in childbirth, remember?”
“Oh,” I replied, feeling incredibly insensitive. I blushed, drawing my knees into my chest. “I’m sorry, I
wasn’t thinking,”
“It’s not you, honey. She’s concerned.”
“But… I’ll be fine, won’t I?
Cleo gave me a soft smile, nodding. “You’ll be fine. I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. I wouldn’t let
anything happen to her, either.”
“Is that what she’s upset about?”
Cleo folded her hands in her lap as she sat down on the edge of the bed, looking over at me with a look
that told me whatever was said between us was not, under any circumstances, to be repeated.
“Myla asked me recently how to prevent a pregnancy from occurring. She is terrified of it, Maeve. She
may not have known her mother, but she was orphaned moments after she was born. That would make
anyone have second thoughts.”
“She was talking about having ten children with Keaton when we were in Dianny-”
“And maybe someday she will, but for now…” Cleo trailed off, picking at a patchwork
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quilt “She’s not ready. And I don’t think Keaton is, either.”
“What did you tell her to do?” I asked, genuinely curious. I hadn’t ever even considered it given that I
was in a situation where I was supposed to get pregnant instead of not
*Not have sex, for one. But that’s not plausible after meeting your mate, is it?” Cleo laughed, shaking
her head.
“Cleo?” I asked, taking advantage of our moment alone to ask her something I had never known. “Did
you ever find your mate?”
Cleo’s smile faded, her eyes shimmering suddenly with a distant, somber memory.
“1-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry-”
“It’s alright, darling. I just haven’t talked about her in a long time.” Cleo’s expression underwent a series
of expressions as she got lost in her memories. After a moment she looked up at me, the corner of her
mouth twitching with the shadow of a smile. “I did find my mate. Her name was Olivia.”
“How old were you when you found her?”
“Oh, twenty-two, I believe. So young,” She laughed gently, looking down at her hands. “She was
beautiful, truly. I know everyone thinks their mates are beautiful but Liv was just… I was enraptured by
her. She was the daughter of a lesser Alpha from a small pack in the West. I was training under the
midwife in her village when we met and we… ran away together.”
“You did?” I leaned in, wanting to know more.
“We had to. She was being married off. Her father would have never approved of our relationship. We
thought we’d have a chance if we fled to the Isles, but…” She trailed off, knitting her brow, “We were
caught. I was arrested,”
“Arrested?” I was shocked.
“For kidnapping her, if you can believe that.” Cleo rolled her eyes, shrugging her shoulders
“What happened then?”
“I didn’t see her again for many years. Twenty years… the longest years of my life. By
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that point, I had trained to be a midwife. I ended up setting up a practice in Mirage. That’s when-“She
exhaled deeply, her eyes misting with tears. She met my eyes, shaking her head. “I’ve never told Myla.”
“Told her what?”
Cleo bit her lip, looking suddenly so young. Cleo was a beautiful woman already, but at that moment, I
could picture what she would have looked like in her youth.
“I was… I was working in Mirage. A man came to me; he said his wife was struggling in labor. When he
brought her inside, I thought–I just…” A single tear rolled down her cheek. She looked away from me,
settling her gaze on a random spot on the far wall. “I hadn’t seen her in so long. And then, there she
was, right in front of me! | couldn’t believe it! But she was so sick, so far gone by that point.” She
blinked several times, trying to steel her expression as she turned back to me.
“Before I met Olivia, she had been betrothed to another Alpha. Once he found out about us, he wanted
nothing to do with her. Her father believed she shamed their family, so he sold her. And she spent
twenty years…. I didn’t know. Oh, Goddess, 1 regret not knowing every day. And I see her in Myla.
They are so alike. I thank the Moon Goddess daily for bringing us together, one last time, even though
she died in my arms while Myla cried in the bassinet next to the bed. I couldn’t…” She swallowed, her
eyes willing me to understand.
“You raised Myla-”
“She was mine the second she came into the world,” Cleo said firmly, nodding her head as though she
were answering an unsaid question. “She was meant to be ours. When Olivia died, the man never
came back. I never saw or heard from him again. I don’t know if Liv had other children. I don’t know
anything about how she spent the last twenty years of her life. I blamed myself for her death for a long,
long time. But I never, ever resented Myla for it. Liv gave her to me, I truly believe that. It was fate that I
was the one that terrible, disgusting man came to when Liv was dying from a hemorrhage. I never told
Myla about him. Never. And I never want to.”
“Why haven’t you told her the truth?” I asked, my heart shattering into pieces for
Cleo
She only shook her head, inhaling and exhaling with effort. “She told me Myla’s name as she was
dying. She told me Myla was a gift, and to love her as much as we
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had loved each other. I was in pain, Maeve. I didn’t know, and still don’t know, how to explain this kind
of grief to Myla.”
“She would understand,” i said, although part of me understood Cleo’s secrecy. Myla had a flair for the
dramatics, and though that wasn’t a good excuse for Cleo not telling her about this part of her past, I
could definitely see Myla responding out of nothing but raw, unfiltered emotion. She would, at least for
a time, be angry with Cleo
“I can’t lose them both,” Cleo said, her voice trembling as she reached into the pocket of her apron,
pulling out the little navy–blue purse she always carried. She reached inside and handed me a folded-
up piece of paper, thin with frayed edges. I opened it, gently, unable to hide the gasp that escaped my
lips as I gazed down at a sepia-tone photograph.
Olivia and Myla looked nearly identical. They had the same tightly curled black hair and rich umber
skin. Their eyes were the same shape, large and fanned with thick lashes. I wished I could see the
color of Olivia’s eyes in the photo, or the sharpness of her jaw and nose, but the photo was faded,
some details lost in time.
“They are the loves of my life,” Cleo said, her voice threaded with sadness. “I’d be lying if I said the
idea of Myla finding her mate and possibly having a child in the near future didn’t make me fearful. I
can’t imagine losing them both.
“Cleo!” I exclaimed, taking her hands in mine, “You’re a midwife, for Goddess’s sake. The best one
around, I’d say.”
She snorted with mirth, giving me a side-eyed look. “I’m the only one around,” she said, her mouth
twitching into a smile.
“Has she seen this picture?”
“Yes. We had it framed and resting on the bookshelf in the living room. It’s the only thing I grabbed
when we had to flee the house.”
“You should tell her, Cleo. Tell her everything. She deserves to know.”
“I know. I know I should. And I will when the time is right.”
Cleo stood as I handed the picture back to her. She gave me a soft, knowing smile.
I missed my own mother desperately, especially now that I was pregnant. Mom
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wouldn’t know about any of it yet; not the babies, not Troy, not my incredible and ridiculous quest. I
wondered if she knew I was still alive, and the thought of my parents worrying about me made me
suddenly sick to my stomach.
I laid back against the bed, resting my hands on my stomach.
I wondered, briefly, what I would tell the twins about how I met their father.
And then, I wondered what Troy would tell them if anything were to happen to me.
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