Page 8 of The Minotaur’s Little Peach
SOREYA
T he pain starts as a low ache in my back, like someone's pressing their knuckles against my spine. I try to ignore it, focusing instead on the herb tea Mirath brought me, but the sensation spreads and deepens until it wraps around my entire middle like a vise.
"Mir." My voice comes out strangled as another wave hits, stronger this time. The cup slips from my hands, sending warm liquid across the bed linens. "Something's wrong."
She looks up from her mortar and pestle, dark eyes sharp with instant attention. Takes one look at my face and sets her work aside with careful precision. "How long have you been feeling this?"
"Just started." But even as I say it, another contraction builds, stealing my breath and making my vision blur at the edges. This isn't the gentle warning I expected. This is urgent and demanding and completely beyond my control.
Mirath moves with the swift efficiency of someone who's done this before, gathering supplies I didn't even know she'd prepared. Probably in the months I’d been living like a ghost. Clean linens, sharp tools, bottles of something that smells medicinal and strong.
Her movements are calm, practiced, but I catch the tension in her shoulders as she realizes how fast this is moving.
"The baby's not waiting for a convenient time," she says, helping me shift positions as another wave of pain crashes over me. "This little one's got their own schedule."
The hours blur into a haze of agony and effort.
Pain becomes the entire world—sharp, relentless, demanding everything I have and then more.
Mirath's voice cuts through the fog, steady and sure, telling me when to breathe, when to push, when to rest. Her hands are cool against my fevered skin, anchoring me when the intensity threatens to tear me apart.
"I can't." The words rip from my throat during a brief lull between contractions. Sweat stings my eyes, mingles with tears I don't remember shedding. "I can't do this without him."
"You're already doing it." Mirath's voice carries absolute conviction, her cinnamon-brown hands steady as she checks my progress. "You're stronger than you know, Soreya. The baby needs you to be strong now."
But I want Korrun here. Want his massive presence filling the room, his rumbling voice talking me through each wave of pain.
Want his hands holding mine, his amber eyes bright with excitement and fear and overwhelming love.
He should be pacing the floor, should be asking Mirath a dozen questions she doesn't have time to answer, should be here to catch his child when they finally decide to make their entrance.
Instead, there's just me and the mounting pressure and the terrible certainty that I'm doing this alone.
The final push feels like it's splitting me in half, like my body is trying to turn itself inside out.
Mirath's voice cuts through the roar in my ears, urgent now, telling me the head is crowning, telling me one more push will do it.
I bear down with everything I have left, pouring all my grief and love and desperate hope into this last effort.
And then suddenly the pressure releases and there's a thin, high cry that cuts through everything else. A sound so piercing and perfect it pulls me back into my body like a fishhook in my chest.
"It's a boy." Mirath's voice is thick with emotion as she lifts the tiny, wriggling form. She works quickly, clearing his airways, checking his breathing, her skilled hands gentle but thorough. "A beautiful, healthy boy."
When she places him in my arms, I can only stare.
He's so small, so perfectly formed despite arriving weeks before I expected him.
His skin is pale but warming, taking on a healthy pink flush as he settles against my chest. Dark eyes blink open, unfocused but alert, searching for something familiar in this strange new world.
My heartbeat pounds in my ears, mixing with the sticky heat of sweat and blood that clings to my skin.
Everything feels raw, exposed, like my nerve endings are sitting on the surface.
But beneath the physical exhaustion, something else stirs.
Something fierce and protective that I didn't know I still had in me.
"Hello, little one." My voice cracks as I study his face, mapping each feature with desperate intensity. The curve of his nose, the set of his eyes, the way his tiny fist curls against my chest. "I'm your mama."
He's beautiful. Perfect. And looking at him hurts in ways I wasn't prepared for.
Because I see Korrun in the shape of his eyes, in the stubborn set of his jaw even as a newborn.
The promise of broad shoulders in his tiny frame, the potential for massive hands in his delicate fingers.
This child will grow up to look like his father, will carry Korrun's features and mannerisms and maybe his gentle strength.
And Korrun will never see any of it.
The tears come hard and fast, mixing joy and grief until I can't tell where one ends and the other begins.
This perfect little person is everything we dreamed of and planned for, the future we built together made flesh.
But he's also proof of everything I've lost, a living reminder of the love that was stolen from us before it could truly bloom.
"He's perfect," I whisper, pressing my lips to his downy head. His hair is dark like mine but with a softness that speaks to minotaur heritage. Soon there will be tiny horn buds pushing through, marking him as his father's son. "Your papa would have been so proud."
Mirath settles beside us, her expression soft with exhaustion and wonder. She reaches out to stroke one finger along the baby's cheek, her touch reverent. "Have you thought about a name?"
"Taran." The word comes without hesitation. It was Korrun's choice, a name that means 'thunder' in the old minotaur tongue. Strong and bold, like he wanted his son to be. "His name is Taran."
He makes a small sound, almost like he approves. His dark eyes focus on my face with startling intensity for someone so new to the world. He knows my voice, recognizes the rhythm of my heartbeat from months of hearing it from the inside. I'm his anchor in this overwhelming new reality.
A knock at the front door shatters the peaceful moment, sharp and insistent. Mirath looks up with surprise, her brow furrowing as she wipes her hands on a clean cloth. "I'm not expecting anyone."
"Send them away." My arms tighten around Taran instinctively. I can't handle visitors right now, can't pretend to be gracious or grateful when everything feels so raw. "I don't care who it is. Just make them leave."
But Mirath hesitates, studying my face with the careful attention she reserves for complicated diagnoses. "Let me see who it is first. They might have news, or?—"
"I said send them away." The words come out harder than I intend, but I'm beyond caring about politeness.
This moment belongs to me and my son. To the first fragile minutes of his life and the last remnants of my connection to Korrun.
I won't share it with strangers who want to offer empty condolences or curious neighbors hoping for gossip.
Mirath nods reluctantly and heads for the door, her footsteps quick and light on the wooden floor. I hear the sound of it opening, followed by a conversation too low for me to make out the words. But the tone is serious, urgent in a way that makes my stomach clench with fresh anxiety.
When she returns, her expression is strange. Confused and careful and something else I can't identify. Her dark eyes dart between me and the hallway behind her, like she's trying to solve a puzzle with pieces that don't quite fit.
"Soreya." Her voice carries a note I've never heard before, cautious but not afraid. "You're not going to want me to send him away."
"I don't care who—" I start, but the words die in my throat as a massive shadow fills the doorway behind her.
A minotaur steps into view, and my breath catches in my chest like a physical blow.
He's enormous, even by minotaur standards, with the kind of presence that seems to fill a room just by existing.
Warm brown fur with dark speckling covers his frame, and sea-glass green eyes survey the scene with careful intensity.
But it's not his size that steals my voice.
It's the terrible, aching familiarity of his features.
The broad set of his shoulders, the curve of his horns, the way he carries himself with quiet confidence.
He looks like Korrun in ways that hurt to witness, like someone took my beloved's image and stretched it slightly, changed the colors but kept the essential structure.
I've never seen this minotaur before in my life. But looking at him feels like staring at a ghost, at a cruel reminder of everything I've lost made flesh.
Taran chooses that moment to let out a thin cry, his tiny voice cutting through the charged silence.
The sound makes the stranger's green eyes snap to my face, then down to the bundle in my arms, and something shifts in his expression.
Something raw and unguarded that makes my chest tighten with fresh tears.
Because it hits me.
Korrun had a little brother.