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Jules

Having all of Sanctuary present as I gave birth ended up being a blessing in disguise, as everyone pulled together to get me and the pack and our daughter back home in record time.

I was gross and covered in stuff I didn’t much want to think about, but I was too tired to do anything but let Aaron carry me into the bedroom and lay me down in the bed with our baby.

She lay curled up in my arms, a blanket swaddling her tight, that little face all squished up as she slept.

Here was our baby, our little baby girl.

My eyes watered as I looked at her. I couldn’t stop staring as a love that seemed to almost eclipse that which we’d wrought to create our pack filled me.

Because of course it did. I looked around at everyone, able to drag my eyes away for a second.

She was the result of all of our love, and now she was the centre of it.

Every doubt, every worry was shoved to one side and for a moment, that’s all I could feel: love.

I loved her and I would do every damn thing I could to make her life the best it could be.

She made a cute little grunting noises, her little hands trembling, but when I rushed to do something, anything, Brandon said, “It’s OK, she’s OK. ”

“You can feel her,” I said.

He looked around at the rest of the group hesitantly, and then said, “I think she’s like me.” His eyes dropped at that, his fingers tracing abstract patterns on the bedding.

“Caring?” I said.

“Loving,” Aaron said.

“Loyal, smart,” Finn said.

“Making sure we’re OK,” Jack said, and Hawk grinned beside him.

“Topping from the bottom?” Slade said. “Shit, that’s not such a nice image when you’re talking about your daughter. Ah, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I’m just realising what that means,” I said with a frown. “She’s a seer?”

“I think so,” Brandon replied. “We’ll have to see, but…

” He shook his head. “Looking ahead all the time, it doesn’t help.

Right now, I can tell you she’s warm and comforted because she can smell Jules, and she just wants to sleep.

” A strange warbling squeak of a sound came from the little bundle.

“And probably wanting to poop sometime soon.”

“Oh god, I forgot about that part,” Slade said, rubbing his face. “Look, I better get down to the pub?—”

“We are not playing ‘not it’ with dirty nappies,” I said. “But seriously, what are we going to call her? We tossed around so many ideas.”

Everyone looked at each other.

“Well, as long as it’s not some weird combination of all your mother’s names, that’s all I care about,” I said.

“How about Nova?” Brandon said.