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He rested his brow against hers and whispered, “I love you and I have loved your different colored eyes from when I first saw them. They grow more beautiful to me every day.”

“Out! Out!” Euniss ordered, giving him a shove. “We have to get her ready.”

“I love you always,” Sky said as his arms slipped off her and he stepped away.

Ruth gasped. “Those are the very words your mum said to Clyde before we chased him out of the room.”

“You will not leave me, wife. I will not permit it,” Slayer ordered as Euniss kept shoving him to the door. Before Euniss closed the door on him, he grabbed her hand. “Do not let her die, Euniss. I beg of you, do not let my wife or bairn die.”

Euniss stared shocked. The mighty Gallowglass warrior never begged, not ever. Yet here he humbled himself to save his wife and bairn.

She tried to reassure him the best she could. “Lady Sky is strong and brave. If she and the bairn can survive a horrible fall, they both can survive childbirth.”

Slayer stood staring at the closed door, praying that Euniss was right.

* * *

Hours passedwith no word from Euniss or Ruth. Ross sat at the dais with him waiting but as the day wore into night and Ross’ eyes kept closing, Slayer sent him on his way. Once Ross was gone, Slayer went upstairs to sit on the floor outside his bedchamber door, needing to be as close to his wife as he could get. He would have liked to have had Fane and Angel with him, but he was warned both animals would not do well hearing Sky cry out in pain and so he had shut them away in his mum’s solar.

He cringed each time he heard her suffer through another pain and he could only imagine what Fane and Angel would have suffered hearing her. He was glad he had paid heed to Euniss’s warning. He continued to cringe, hearing his wife cry out and did not think he could take it much longer when finally, he heard the cry of a bairn. It was finally over, and he could not be more relieved and ready to see his wife and meet their bairn, lass or lad. But his wife cried out again in pain and fear gripped him. He bolted to his feet and swung open the door.

“Get out!” Euniss ordered. “She delivers another bairn.”

“Two?” he asked as if he did not understand and grimaced seeing how exhausted his wife looked.

“Two, thanks to you,” Euniss said. “Now out!”

“You can do this, Sky,” Ruth encouraged. “It will not be long now.”

Slayer was about to leave when his eyes met his wife’s eyes, and he saw in them her need for him. “I’m not leaving,” he said in a tone that no one would dare oppose.

“Hold her hand,” Ruth said with a smile. “Clyde did the same for your mum, refused to leave her.”

Slayer sat at his wife’s side, taking her hand. “We’ll do this together.”

Sky gave him a weak smile. “We have a son.”

Slayer’s smile lit his whole face as he glanced at Euniss placing his son in the cradle near the hearth for warmth, then she hurried to help Ruth.

“Never saw a smile like that on him before now,” Euniss said with a laugh.

Sky groaned and Slayer was quick to brace himself behind her while keeping hold of her hand.

“A little bit more and you’ll be done, Sky,” Ruth encouraged and a few minutes later, she cried out, “It’s a lass, a beautiful lass.”

* * *

Later when Slayerand Sky were alone, the lad tucked in his mum’s arm and the lass in her da’s arm, they both smiled.

“He’s handsome like his da and she is beautiful like her mum,” Slayer said, glancing from one to the other with pride.

“She is just like me?—”

“With the same beautiful two different colored eyes,” Slayer said, “and she has an older brother?—”

“Five minutes,” Sky said with a laugh.

“Still, he is older, and he will protect her,” Slayer insisted as if it would be no other way. “Now for names.” Slayer looked from his son to his daughter. “I have decided on them.”