Three months changed the reef by inches, which was to say it changed everything.
Jake had once thought the sea was a place without landmarks. The first weeks among the Metkayina had made him feel as if water erased all difference, turning every direction into blue glare and every path into an argument with drowning. He had been wrong, as he was wrong about most things before Pandora humiliated him into wisdom. The reef had landmarks; they simply did not announce themselves the way forest paths did. They lived in color shifts, in the texture of current against the thigh, in the shadow of coral shelves beneath the surface, in the timing of tide through mangrove roots, in the angle at which birds wheeled over baitfish, in the way certain ilu called near certain channels and avoided others entirely. The reef did not lack paths. It only refused to carve them where a forest-born man could see them at first glance.
Three months taught him enough to stop hating that.
Not love it. Not yet. Jake was too stubborn, and the forest still lived too loudly in him for the reef to become home simply because it had become familiar. He still missed the smell of leaf rot after rain, the sound of ikran wings between stone, the deep steady presence of roots underfoot. He missed High Camp in ways that hit him at strange angles: the uneven floor of their sleeping space, the old scrape of Bob’s claws on stone, Mo’at’s voice cutting through a council argument, the way Tsu’tey had known where every person stood without looking. He missed the grave beneath the roots so sharply some mornings that breathing the salt air felt like betrayal. But the reef no longer felt like a place trying to reject his body. It had become a place that argued with him daily and, occasionally, allowed him to win.
Jake could swim now.
Not beautifully. Not like the Metkayina, who moved through water as if the sea had remembered them before birth. But he could dive beyond the shallows without panic eating his air in the first ten heartbeats. He could hold a long breath if he prepared properly, could let his throat remain soft, could keep his limbs from trying to fight every current into submission. Ronal still said his body thought too much. Maru said this was because Jake had been a sky person and sky people used their heads to compensate for not trusting their feet. Lìtu said both of them were being generous because Jake used all his body parts badly when annoyed. Jake, by then, had become fond enough of the sa’eveng circle to tell them all exactly where they could put their opinions, which made them laugh and pass him more food.
Tsu’tey could swim properly too, though he continued to describe the process as if he and the ocean had reached an armed truce rather than mutual understanding. Tonowari had taken him into deeper water often enough that Tsu’tey’s body had changed around the lessons. His shoulders moved differently. His breath had grown longer, less visibly held. He had learned how to dive without making the first stroke look like an attack. He had learned the basic paths beyond the reef, not enough to travel alone with full confidence, but enough that Tonowari no longer watched him like a man expecting pride to kill him at any moment. He had not yet ridden tsurak. That remained a sore point, though Jake suspected Tonowari delayed it not because Tsu’tey was incapable but because he wanted the forest alpha to understand that a skimwing was not merely the reef equivalent of an ikran. It was not a mount to be won through audacity. It was a relationship to a creature that could turn command into blood in the water if approached with the wrong kind of certainty.
Neytiri had become worse, which was to say better.
She had not softened into the reef so much as sharpened along a new edge. Veyä taught her the outer mangrove paths and the hunting channels, and Neytiri pretended this was purely practical even though everyone with eyes had begun to notice how often the lessons happened near dusk, how often Veyä returned carrying both spears while Neytiri stalked at her side with her mouth set in a line that had not quite become a smile. They fought constantly, or appeared to. Veyä teased with the calm confidence of someone born to water and patient enough to let Neytiri crash against it until she learned the rhythm. Neytiri responded with forest-born ferocity, threats, and the occasional demonstration that the reef had many teeth but she had brought her own. Jake did not ask questions. Tsu’tey asked too many questions, received one lethal look from Neytiri, and thereafter decided silence was politically wise.
The children learned faster than the adults in the unfair way children often did.
Tuk took to the shallows with delighted suspicion, declaring herself a reef person only when convenient and Omaticaya whenever the water offended her. Kiri had become almost impossible to separate from the lagoon. The reef did not calm her so much as answer a call in her that the forest had begun and the sea continued in another language. Lo’ak learned recklessly, beautifully, and with enough natural skill to become intolerable when praised. He could not yet admit that Tsireya’s approval mattered to him, which meant everyone knew it did. Neteyam learned with careful, controlled grace, as he learned most things, but his relationship with the reef had become tangled with Ao’nung in ways Jake tried not to monitor too openly and failed at because he was a mother, pregnant, exiled, and nosy by vocation.
Ao’nung had changed too.
Not into someone else. That would have been too neat. He was still proud, still sharp-mouthed, still capable of saying the wrong thing when embarrassed and then looking furious that the words had betrayed him by existing. But after the fight, after Tonowari and Tsu’tey and Ronal had carved the difference between apology and repair into him, he had begun trying. Awkwardly, often badly, but sincerely enough that even Neytiri had stopped looking as if she might feed him to an akula on principle. He apologized to Kiri in private first. Jake did not hear it, but Kiri returned from it quiet and thoughtful rather than wounded, which mattered more. He apologized to Lo’ak and nearly lost a tooth when he phrased the first attempt like an insult, then tried again under Tsireya’s appalled supervision. With Neteyam, it was different.
Everything with Neteyam was different.
Ao’nung approached him like a boy trying to move toward a skittish animal while pretending he did not care whether it ran. Neteyam received him with such cool politeness that even Tsu’tey, master of dignity as weaponry, looked faintly impressed. For weeks they orbited each other. Ao’nung carried things he claimed were too heavy for forest arms. Neteyam thanked him in tones so formal they could have frozen seawater. Ao’nung corrected his breath positioning too quickly, got told that instruction required accuracy rather than volume, and spent the rest of the lesson looking like he could not decide whether to be insulted or fascinated. Neteyam looked at him sometimes when he thought Jake was not watching, and Jake watched anyway because parents were liars when they said they would give teenagers privacy. There was something there again, tender and irritated and careful over the scar of that first harm. Jake did not know whether it would become anything. He only knew Ao’nung was trying hard enough to make himself uncomfortable, and Neteyam was letting him remain close enough to keep trying.
Three months changed bellies too.
Ronal had been four months pregnant when the Sullys arrived, though she had carried with such authority that Jake initially assumed she was farther along and simply too terrifying for anyone to mention it. By the seventh month, even Ronal could no longer pretend her body had not become a central fact of every room. Her belly had rounded high and heavy beneath her ornaments, the child inside active enough that the curve shifted visibly when she stood too long scolding someone. She continued to work, of course. No one expected otherwise. She inspected births, corrected swimmers, prepared medicines, handled disputes, instructed Jake with relentless precision, and gave every impression that if the baby attempted to arrive at an inconvenient time, it would be expected to wait until she had completed the necessary tasks of the day. But she moved more slowly now. Sat more often. Accepted Tonowari’s hand with only half the usual glare. Sometimes, when she thought no one important watched, she pressed both hands beneath the weight of her belly and closed her eyes for a breath or two before resuming command of the world.
Maru had bloomed.
There was no more maybe about the twins. By the fifth month, his body had announced plurality with such enthusiasm that even he had stopped pretending Ronal might be wrong. Now he was further along, visibly round, his belly carried forward in a way that made his walk slightly theatrical even before he began performing suffering for attention. His children delighted in the bump, drummed gently on it, shouted into it, and argued about whether the babies could hear insults yet. Teyla, his ‘etlu mate, had become both more protective and more amused, treating Maru like a sacred vessel only when others watched and like her ridiculous beloved when they were alone. Maru complained constantly about being full of elbows, then glowed when anyone suggested the twins were strong.
Jake had expected his own pregnancy to feel easier once the first fear passed.
It did not.
At twelve weeks, he should not have been showing so much.
He knew bodies changed after multiple pregnancies. He knew Mo’at had warned him years ago that after Neteyam, Lo’ak, Tey’ral, and Tuk, his body would remember the shape faster each time. He knew Ronal had said the same thing in harsher terms, something about old paths opening more quickly because the body was not stupid even when the person inhabiting it was. Jake had not expected to stay flat for long. But this was more than familiarity. By the end of the third month, his lower belly had rounded visibly enough that loose wraps no longer hid it unless he arranged them with effort. The swell was still small compared to later pregnancy, still soft at the edges, still easy to dismiss from a distance if one wanted to be polite. But Jake did not dismiss it. He had carried enough children to know his own body’s early map, and this felt different.
Not wrong.
That was the frightening part.
Wrong had a smell, sometimes. A quietness. A pressure that became dread before thought knew why. Tey’ral had taught him that terrible instinct, and every pregnancy afterward had been haunted by it. This was not that. This was fullness. Too much fullness too early. A stretching sensation deep and low that did not hurt but made him aware of himself constantly. Hunger that came in waves sharp enough to leave him shaking. Nausea worse in the mornings, then again at dusk, then sometimes for no reason except the sea had chosen a smell he disliked. Fatigue that made him fall asleep upright if he was left still too long. His breasts had grown tender so fast that Tuk hugging him too enthusiastically made him swear once and then apologize for five minutes while she stared, fascinated and offended.
Tsu’tey noticed everything.
For two weeks, Jake tried to pretend he did not.
That was a stupid plan. He knew it while doing it. Tsu’tey had been mate to him through too many pregnancies to miss the changes, and Ronal had the unsettling ability to know things about Jake’s body before Jake had finished lying to himself. Still, Jake tried because naming concern made it real, and making pregnancy real too soon had once led to a bead and a grave. The new child—children, his body whispered before his mind allowed it—had no name yet. No songcord bead. No story beyond the cautious joy that had begun beneath falling stars and crossed an ocean as a secret pulse. Jake did not want fear to touch it too early. He did not want hope to grow too large and become a target for fate.
The morning he went to Ronal, he did it alone.
That was not an accident.
Tsu’tey had gone before dawn with Tonowari to the outer current line. Neteyam and Ao’nung were helping repair an ilu pen, which Jake knew because Lo’ak had reported it with the gleeful disdain of a brother who absolutely noticed the way Ao’nung stood too close and Neteyam tolerated it too well. Kiri had vanished to the quiet tidepools. Tuk was with Tsireya and a pack of small Metkayina children, allegedly learning shell counting but more likely organizing social chaos. Neytiri had gone with Veyä again and returned from each outing less interested in pretending the woman annoyed her purely on principle. Everyone had a place to be. Jake waited until the mauri emptied, then walked to Ronal’s healing space with one hand low over his belly and his jaw set like he was entering combat.
Ronal looked up before he spoke.
She was seated on a woven mat with a bowl of crushed medicine beside her, one hand braced at the side of her own belly while the other sorted dried leaves into three piles. Her eyes moved over him once, sharp and immediate. Jake saw the moment she took in the set of his shoulders, the careful way he lowered himself to sit, the fact that he had come without Tsu’tey.
“You waited too long to ask,” she said.
Jake exhaled. “Good morning.”
“It is not.”
“Okay.”
She gestured to the mat before her. “Sit properly.”
Jake did.
There was comfort, by now, in Ronal’s lack of softness. He had fought it at first because he thought softness was what he needed, and maybe sometimes it was. But Ronal’s certainty had become its own kind of safety. She did not soothe before assessing. She did not lie to make dread easier to swallow. If something was wrong, she would say so. If something was not wrong, she would say that too, and then scold him for inventing new ways to exhaust himself with imagination.
He set both hands over the small swell beneath his wrap and forced the words out. “I’m bigger than I should be.”
Ronal’s face did not change.
“I know it happens faster after multiple pregnancies,” Jake said, because if he did not explain that he knew, he would feel like an idiot. “I know I’ve had four—five, depending how you count Kiri, not in the body way but in the parenting way, which obviously doesn’t matter medically, so four. I know the muscles remember. I know I’m not seventeen and doing this for the first time. But this feels different.”
Ronal waited.
Jake swallowed. “Not bad different. Just different.”
Still she waited.
“I thought maybe it was swelling from the wound. Or stress. Or I was eating too much because everyone keeps feeding me like I’m going to blow away.”
Ronal’s mouth twitched very slightly. “You are not eating too much.”
“I figured you’d say that.”
“You are still not eating enough.”
“I also figured you’d say that.”
She leaned forward and placed her hand over his, not moving it away yet. Her palm was warm, the pressure steady. “Show me.”
Jake untied the wrap with fingers that were steadier than he felt and folded the fabric down enough to expose his lower abdomen. The swell looked more obvious in the morning light, a gentle but undeniable curve rising from the plane of him, skin already pulled taut enough to catch a faint sheen. Ronal’s gaze sharpened. She said nothing, but her hand moved with more care when she touched him.
The first part of the examination was familiar now. Ronal palpated his abdomen with skilled hands, feeling the size and position of the uterus through the abdominal wall, the tension of muscle, the way his body responded to pressure. Jake lay back because she told him to, one arm over his eyes for a moment while he focused on slow breathing. Her fingers pressed low, then higher, then to either side. Not painful, though uncomfortable in the way all medical touch became uncomfortable when fear sat beneath it. She asked about nausea, appetite, cramping, bleeding, fatigue, sleep, urination, dreams, movement even though it was too early for the kind that counted. Jake answered each question as honestly as he could. No bleeding. No sharp cramps. No fever. No sense of wrongness. Nausea worse. Hunger intense. Fatigue humiliating. Belly too big.
Ronal made a soft sound under her breath.
Jake removed his arm from his eyes. “What?”
“Breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
“You are preparing to stop.”
He hated that she was right.
Ronal sat back. “I need to examine internally.”
Jake’s stomach flipped, not from modesty exactly. Na’vi did not treat bodies with the same shame humans loved to invent and then call morality. Jake had birthed under Mo’at’s hands, been healed, examined, stitched, checked, and handled in every necessary way a body could be handled. Still, internal examination carried old memories. Labor. Loss. Mo’at’s face going still. The body becoming evidence before the mind could bear what it proved.
Ronal saw the fear move through him. This time, she did soften, just enough to make the sharpness feel chosen rather than default.
“I will stop if you tell me to stop,” she said. “I will tell you what I do before I do it. You will breathe. If you want Tsu’tey, I will send for him.”
“No,” Jake said too quickly, then corrected himself. “Not because I don’t want him. Because if he’s here, I’ll watch him watching me, and then I won’t be honest with what I’m feeling.”
Ronal inclined her head once. Approval, maybe. Or simply acknowledgement that Jake had learned one useful thing.
She called for one of her attendants, an older sa’eveng with quiet hands, and prepared the space with brisk care: clean cloth, warm water, oil, a shallow bowl of herbs whose scent cut nausea down by half, a screen drawn across the open wall though the sea remained audible beneath them. Jake undressed as needed and positioned himself on the mat the way Ronal instructed, knees bent, feet braced, body angled to allow the exam without straining the healing wound at his side. He stared at the woven ceiling and told himself this was information. Information kept people alive. Information had no moral quality. It was only fear that made knowledge feel like a predator.
Ronal touched his knee. “Ready?”
Jake breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth. “Yeah.”
“No. Not yeah. Say ready when ready.”
Despite everything, a laugh almost escaped him. “Ready.”
The pelvic exam was uncomfortable, clinical, and mercifully quick in the way Ronal did all necessary things. She examined externally first, checking for swelling, irritation, discharge, any sign of bleeding or infection. Then, with oil-warmed fingers and the attendant near Jake’s shoulder where he could grip a wrist if needed, she performed the bimanual exam, one hand internal and the other pressing gently but firmly over his lower abdomen. Jake’s breath caught at the pressure, not pain exactly but deep discomfort and vulnerability, a full-body awareness of the place where fear and hope lived. Ronal talked him through it in a low voice, not the softer voice of comfort but the steady rhythm of instruction.
“Breathe lower. Do not clench. I am feeling the cervix. Closed. Good. No blood. Good. Now the size of the womb. This pressure will be strange. Breathe. There. Again.”
Jake’s hand tightened around the attendant’s wrist. She did not flinch. Her thumb stroked once over his knuckles.
Ronal’s expression changed.
Jake knew because the silence changed.
His eyes snapped to her face. “What?”
Ronal did not answer immediately. Her concentration deepened, not alarm but certainty building through touch. She adjusted the external hand, pressed to one side, then the other, palpating carefully while the internal hand assessed the uterus from below. Jake forced himself not to interpret every pause as catastrophe. Closed cervix. No blood. She had said good. Good meant good. Unless good meant good before bad. Unless—
“Jakesully,” Ronal said.
His breath stopped.
She gave him a sharp look. “Do not stop breathing when I say your name.”
“That’s a mean trick.”
Her mouth twitched. Then she withdrew carefully, covered him with the cloth, and sat back on her heels. Her face was not afraid. That was the first thing Jake understood. Not afraid. Not pitying. Not bracing around death. Ronal’s eyes held something else entirely, something like satisfaction mixed with deep, practical concern.
His voice came out hoarse. “What?”
Ronal rested one hand over her own belly, then reached and placed the other over Jake’s covered abdomen. “Two.”
Jake stared at her.
The word did not land.
It hovered.
Two.
His mind, unhelpfully, sorted the possibilities. Two what? Two concerns. Two measurements. Two months? No, that was impossible, and he was at twelve weeks, and she was looking at him like—
“Twins,” Ronal said, because she was not cruel enough to make him assemble it alone. “You carry twins.”
For a second, the world went silent in the way it had gone silent before impact in old war. Not because sound disappeared, but because his body pulled all attention inward. Twins. Two beginnings. Two lives. Two possible heartbeats too early for him to feel but already shaping him. Two. The small swell beneath the cloth became suddenly enormous in meaning, though not in size. His hands moved over it without permission, shaking.
“No,” Jake said.
Ronal’s expression sharpened.
He heard himself and shook his head quickly. “Not no like I don’t want—just no like—no way.”
“Way,” Ronal said, dryly enough that hysteria cracked at the edge of his breath.
A laugh burst out of him, shocked and terrified, then broke into something dangerously close to sobbing. “Twins.”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“From your hands?”
Ronal gave him a look that would have humbled a lesser man. “My hands have served longer than your skepticism.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“I will confirm again as they grow. I am sure.”
Jake pressed both palms over his abdomen. His body suddenly made sense and became terrifying in the same breath. The hunger. The fatigue. The size. The early heaviness. The strange full feeling that had not been wrong but had not been one. Twins. Eywa help him, twins.
Tsu’tey was going to lose his mind.
That thought arrived with such clarity that Jake laughed again, this time helplessly.
Ronal’s brow rose.
“My mate,” Jake managed.
“Will be unbearable.”
“He’s already unbearable.”
“He will become worse.”
“Yeah.”
Ronal’s mouth softened by a fraction. “You are pleased.”
Jake looked down at his hands. The answer came from somewhere below fear. “Yeah.”
Then, because truth had become a habit he was trying to practice before it spoiled, he added, “And scared out of my mind.”
“Good.”
Jake looked up. “Good?”
“Fear knows there is more to protect. Joy knows there is something worth protecting. You need both. Not one devouring the other.”
He breathed. Not well, but he breathed.
The attendant helped him sit after he dressed, and Ronal handed him a cup of warm broth as if she had not just rearranged the entire architecture of his future. Jake drank because refusing would be pointless and because his stomach, informed of twins, had apparently decided to prove the point by demanding food immediately.
Ronal’s instructions multiplied along with the pregnancy. More food. More rest. More breath work. No deep dives without her approval. No riding beyond the reef until his body’s response to the pregnancy was better understood. More checks. Watching for bleeding, cramps, dizziness, excessive vomiting, swelling, pain, anything that shifted from difficult to dangerous. Twins meant joy and risk together; Ronal made no attempt to separate them for Jake’s comfort. He appreciated that, even when it scared him. Especially then.
When he left the healing mauri, Maru was waiting outside.
Of course he was.
He leaned against a post with one hand under the curve of his own belly, rounder now by far than Jake but wearing the same expression of deeply theatrical patience he wore when pretending he had not been hovering. His children were nowhere in sight, which meant Teyla had either taken pity on him or threatened them into usefulness elsewhere.
“Well?” Maru asked.
Jake stared at him.
Maru’s eyes widened slowly. “Ah.”
Jake pointed at him. “Do not.”
“You too?”
“Apparently.”
Maru’s face split into a grin so delighted and horrified that Jake nearly shoved him off the walkway. “Oh, this is good.”
“This is terrifying.”
“Yes,” Maru said, coming forward to grip Jake’s shoulders. “Good terrifying.”
Jake laughed, and then Maru was laughing too, and then somehow they were holding each other on the walkway between Ronal’s healing mauri and the lagoon, both of them pregnant with twins, both of them frightened, both of them caught in the absurdity of bodies deciding one child at a time was insufficient. Maru’s belly pressed lightly between them, and Jake felt the strange future echo of his own. Not alone, then. Not in this either.
Maru pulled back, eyes bright. “Teyla will be unbearable. She will say she knew because I became too beautiful too fast.”
“Did you?”
“Obviously.”
Jake laughed harder.
Ronal stepped out behind them. “Do not make him laugh until he vomits.”
Maru released Jake at once. “I am medically supportive.”
“You are loud.”
“I am joyfully loud.”
“You are always loud.”
Jake wiped at his eyes. “I have to tell Tsu’tey.”
Maru’s grin returned, wicked and warm. “May I watch from a safe distance?”
“No.”
“I will hear him from anywhere.”
That, unfortunately, was probably true.
Jake found Tsu’tey near the ilu pens with Tonowari, both men bent over a damaged harness while Neteyam stood nearby holding a bundle of straps and Ao’nung attempted, with visible effort, not to stare too obviously at Neteyam’s hands. The moment Jake appeared, Tsu’tey looked up. His face changed immediately. Not fear this time. Alertness. He knew Jake had gone to Ronal. He knew something had happened because Jake’s scent was too bright with terror and laughter and shock to hide. Tonowari noticed too and, because he was kind in the quiet ways, took the harness from Tsu’tey’s hands.
“Go,” Tonowari said.
Tsu’tey was already moving.
He reached Jake at the edge of the pen and put both hands on his arms. His eyes searched Jake’s face, then dropped to his belly, then returned. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Tsu’tey’s ears flattened. “Do not begin with that word.”
Jake laughed, breathless. “Okay. Nothing bad.”
“That is different.”
“Yeah.”
Tsu’tey’s grip eased slightly, but only slightly. “Tell me.”
Jake looked past him and realized Neteyam was watching now, and Ao’nung was pretending not to but absolutely was. Tonowari had turned away with the kind of polite discretion that still left him close enough to intervene if someone fainted. Maru, the traitor, had followed at a distance and was standing near a mangrove root with the wide-eyed innocence of a man absolutely hoping for drama.
Jake looked back at Tsu’tey.
“I went to Ronal because I’m showing too much,” Jake said.
Tsu’tey went still.
“She examined me. Everything’s okay. Cervix closed. No bleeding. No sign anything’s wrong.”
Tsu’tey’s breath left him hard. “And?”
Jake took one of Tsu’tey’s hands and placed it low over his belly.
His mate’s palm covered the small curve entirely.
Jake smiled, terrified and helpless. “There are two.”
Tsu’tey stared at him.
Jake watched the words move through him.
There are two.
For a moment, Tsu’tey looked almost blank. Then his eyes dropped to his hand on Jake’s belly. Then back to Jake’s face. Then down again, as if expecting the answer to visibly appear beneath his palm. His mouth opened. Closed. His ears lifted, then flattened, then lifted again. His tail gave one hard lash and then went still.
“Two,” he said.
Jake nodded. “Twins.”
“Two children.”
“That is generally what twins means.”
Tsu’tey looked up sharply, eyes suddenly wet. “Do not joke when I am trying to understand.”
Jake’s smile trembled. “Sorry.”
Tsu’tey sank to his knees in the sand.
Jake’s breath caught.
The movement was not dramatic in the way humans made kneeling dramatic. It was simply the body finding the height of reverence without asking permission from pride. Tsu’tey knelt before him in the pale sand beside the ilu pens, surrounded by the smell of salt, wet leather, and shocked teenagers, and placed both hands carefully over the small swell of Jake’s belly. His forehead lowered to rest against Jake’s abdomen, so gentle the touch barely pressed.
Jake put a hand in his hair.
Tsu’tey breathed once, and the breath shook.
“Two,” he whispered, not to Jake this time.
Neteyam made a sound behind them.
Jake looked over Tsu’tey’s shoulder. His oldest stood frozen, straps forgotten in his hands, face open in a way Jake rarely saw in public. Lo’ak had appeared from somewhere—because of course he had, drawn by family news as if by scent—and stood beside him with his mouth slightly open. Kiri was suddenly there too, barefoot and damp, as if the water had delivered her. Tuk came running from the shallows, Tsireya behind her, shouting that everyone had gotten weird and no one had told her why.
Jake laughed, and this time he could not stop.
Tuk reached him first. “What? What happened? Did Ronal say the baby is nice?”
Tsu’tey lifted his head but stayed kneeling, one hand still at Jake’s belly. His face was wet. He did not seem to care.
“Babies,” Jake said.
Tuk blinked. “Babies?”
“Two,” Tsu’tey said, voice thick.
Tuk’s eyes went enormous. Then she screamed.
Not in fear. In outrage.
“Two babies? That is too many babies!”
Lo’ak burst out laughing so hard he had to bend over. Neteyam started laughing too, helplessly, one hand over his mouth as if trying to contain joy because it felt too big and too sudden. Kiri moved to Jake’s side and put both hands over Tsu’tey’s, her face luminous with wonder and something deeper, listening already perhaps to a doubled quiet under Jake’s skin. Tsireya clapped both hands over her mouth, smiling. Ao’nung stood behind Neteyam, stunned, then looked at Neteyam’s face and softened so visibly that Jake, despite everything, noticed.
Tuk pressed both hands to Jake’s belly with Tsu’tey still kneeling in front of him. “Are they both in there?”
“Yeah, baby.”
“At the same time?”
“That is also generally how twins work,” Lo’ak said.
Tuk rounded on him. “You did not know either!”
“I knew more than you!”
“You screamed when a fish touched your foot!”
“That fish was suspicious!”
Kiri laughed, clear and bright, and Jake felt the sound like sunlight on water.
Neteyam came closer slowly. His eyes stayed on Jake’s belly. “Twins,” he said, as if testing whether the word could be real.
Jake reached for him. Neteyam took his hand at once.
“You okay?” Jake asked softly.
Neteyam nodded, then shook his head, then laughed again with tears in his eyes. “That is… a lot.”
“Yeah.”
Lo’ak pushed in from the other side. “Do we have to make two beads?”
Tuk gasped. “They need shells too.”
“They are not even born yet,” Lo’ak said.
“So?”
Kiri’s hands remained over Jake’s belly, gentle and certain. “They are very quiet.”
“That’s because they’re tiny,” Jake said.
“No.” Kiri tilted her head. “They are quiet together.”
Tsu’tey looked up at her sharply, and for once he did not ask what that meant. He only pressed his forehead again to Jake’s belly, eyes closed.
The news moved through the family like tide through reef cracks, filling every hollow. Fear remained, of course it did. Jake could see it in Tsu’tey’s wet eyes, in Neteyam’s careful grip, in Lo’ak’s laugh that kept catching on concern, in Tuk’s immediate questions about whether two babies meant she had to share twice as much, in Kiri’s stillness. But joy was there too, wild and terrifying and impossible to deny. Two. Two new heartbeats to hope for. Two new futures to imagine and fear and make room for. Two new names they would not choose too early, because superstition and grief had made caution into habit, but already Jake could feel the family making space around them.
Maru shouted from his safe distance, “Twins are fashionable now!”
Ronal, who had followed at a slower pace, called back, “Twins are work.”
Maru put a hand on his belly and announced, “Beautiful work.”
Tuk yelled, “Too many babies!”
Even Tsu’tey laughed then, though it came out broken and wet.
For a while, that was the whole world: Jake standing in sand with his mate kneeling before him, children gathered around his belly, reef and forest tangled together in laughter and shock, Maru crowing from the side like a man personally responsible for fertility becoming communal, Ronal pretending not to be pleased while watching Jake’s face for signs of dizziness, Tonowari smiling quietly as if he had seen enough births and battles to recognize fragile joy as something worth guarding.
Then, because no joy in their lives had ever been left untouched for long, the world tilted again before sunset.
The trouble began with Lo’ak being invited.
That was how he explained it later, and though Jake was not there to hear the first invitation, he knew his son well enough to imagine the tone. Not kind enough to be friendship, not cruel enough to be obvious danger. A group of older reef boys, not Ao’nung and not Rotxo, because those two were both busy and, more importantly, had developed enough sense to understand that baiting forest boys had consequences. The others had watched Lo’ak’s progress for weeks with envy sharpened into disdain. He learned too fast. He smiled too easily when praised. Tsireya liked him. Tonowari corrected him but did not dismiss him. Ronal, though she scolded him, had begun trusting him in water enough to stop watching every stroke. To boys who wanted hierarchy neat and reef-born superiority uncontested, Lo’ak was a splinter.
They told him there was a hunting trip beyond the reef.
Not far, they said. Not dangerous, they said. A chance to prove he was not still a child paddling in shallows. A chance to see the real water, the hunter’s water, the place where reef boys became men without their fathers holding their queues. They used exactly the words most likely to find the gaps in him. Prove. Not child. Real. Hunter. Lo’ak had spent three months being told to slow down, listen, breathe, wait, respect the reef, respect the teachers, respect the danger. He had learned, yes. But he was still Lo’ak. Still fourteen. Still alpha-proud. Still carrying the bruise of exile and the ache of Spider’s absence and the humiliation of needing rescue more times than he wanted to count. He wanted, desperately, to be seen as capable in this place.
So he went.
Ao’nung saw them too late.
He had been near the ilu pens with Neteyam, repairing the last of the straps from the morning lesson, both of them stuck in the strange quiet after the twin reveal. Neteyam’s face had remained soft for hours afterward, wonder lingering at the edges of his composure. Ao’nung had been careful with him all afternoon, as if the knowledge that Neteyam’s family had just opened around joy made him unwilling to bruise the air near him. He saw the older boys leading Lo’ak toward the far path and frowned. He knew them. He knew that particular swagger. He knew the difference between an invitation and a trap because he had once carried that same kind of cruelty in his own mouth.
By the time he realized Lo’ak was going with them beyond the supervised channels, the boys had already mounted ilu and cut through the inner current.
Ao’nung ran to the shore and shouted.
Either Lo’ak did not hear, or he mistook the shout for challenge, or the other boys laughed over it and told him Ao’nung was only jealous. Later, Ao’nung would not know which possibility made him feel worse. He grabbed his own ilu and tried to follow, but his sister caught his arm long enough to demand where he was going, and by the time he tore free with the truth half-explained, the group had vanished into the outer channel.
He found them only after the prank had already become danger.
The older boys had taken Lo’ak beyond the reef line, farther than any learner should have gone without an adult hunter, into the rolling blue where the water deepened fast and the protective geometry of coral fell away beneath darker currents. They had pretended to hunt. They had teased him into dismounting near a rocky rise, told him to wait, told him they were circling prey. Then they left him there. Not forever, perhaps. Not in the murder-shape of intention. Boys like that often did not think their cruelty through to its conclusion. They imagined fear, humiliation, maybe a frantic swim back if he was lucky, a story to laugh about later. They did not imagine currents changing. They did not imagine larger shadows rising from deep water. They did not imagine how quickly a joke beyond the reef could become a body no one found.
Ao’nung saw the boys returning without Lo’ak.
He cut them off near the outer channel, fury making his voice crack. “Where is he?”
They laughed at first.
Then they saw his face.
One said Lo’ak had wanted to prove himself. Another said he could swim back if he was so good. Another muttered that forest boys should learn fear. Ao’nung punched him hard enough to bloody his mouth, which was probably not what Tonowari would have advised but felt extremely necessary at the time. Then he turned his ilu toward the village so fast the animal shrilled beneath him.
He did not go to his friends.
He did not go to the youths.
He went to Neteyam.
Neteyam was on the lower walkway outside the Sully mauri, helping Tuk untangle a shell cord while Jake rested inside under Ronal’s explicit threat and Tsu’tey spoke with Tonowari about deeper water routes. The twin news still lived in the air around them, warm and fragile. Neteyam looked up when Ao’nung came running, wet to the waist, breathing hard, face pale under his tattoos.
For one second, Neteyam’s expression closed by reflex.
Ao’nung stopped before him, chest heaving. “Lo’ak.”
The shell cord fell from Neteyam’s hands.
“What?”
Ao’nung swallowed so hard Jake, hearing the sharpness in Neteyam’s voice from inside, was already moving toward the entrance before he understood why. “They took him beyond the reef. Tämok and the others. I saw too late. I tried to stop them, but they—he went with them. They stranded him.”
Neteyam went white.
Tuk stood slowly, shell cord forgotten at her feet. “What do you mean stranded?”
Ao’nung’s face twisted. “They left him past the outer break. Near the Three Teeth rocks. I came as soon as I knew.”
Neteyam moved.
Ao’nung caught his arm, not to stop him entirely but to keep him from launching blindly. “Wait. We need adults.”
Neteyam rounded on him with such fury that Ao’nung flinched and still did not let go.
“My brother is beyond the reef,” Neteyam said, voice shaking. “You think I am waiting?”
“I think if you go alone, your mother will lose two sons,” Ao’nung snapped, and the words were ugly but true enough to freeze them both.
Jake reached the doorway.
Tsu’tey appeared from the lower path at the same moment, Tonowari beside him, both alerted by Ao’nung’s shout or by whatever parental instinct translated fear faster than sound. Ronal came from the healing mauri, one hand beneath her heavy belly, face already hard. Kiri emerged from the tidepool path as if called by the water itself. Neytiri and Veyä turned from the outer walkway, bows and spears in hand.
For one impossible heartbeat, everyone stood at the center of converging dread.
Ao’nung released Neteyam and turned to the adults, shoulders squared despite the fear in his scent. His eyes went first to Tonowari, then to Tsu’tey and Jake.
“Lo’ak is beyond the reef,” he said. “Some of our boys took him there and left him as a prank. I was too late to stop them. He is near the Three Teeth rocks. We have to go now.”
No one moved.
Not because they doubted him.
Because the words were too terrible to enter motion all at once.
Jake felt his body go cold around the two lives inside him.
Tsu’tey’s face emptied.
Ronal’s eyes cut to Tonowari with a fury that promised consequences later if there was a later.
Neteyam looked at Ao’nung, and beneath the terror, beneath the dawning horror of Lo’ak alone in dangerous water, something changed between them. Not forgiveness. Not romance blooming neatly under crisis. Something more important in that moment: belief. Ao’nung had come. He had chosen truth over pride. He had chosen Neteyam’s brother’s life over saving face with his own people.
Neteyam gripped Ao’nung’s wrist once, hard.
“Show us,” he said.
Ao’nung nodded.
And the village erupted into motion.
For one terrible heartbeat after Ao’nung spoke, no one moved.
Then everyone moved at once.
Tonowari was the first to recover because he was olo’eyktan and because men who led people through storms learned to make their bodies useful before fear finished arriving. He turned toward the nearest hunters and began issuing orders in clipped reef dialect, the words moving too quickly for Jake to catch in full but clear enough in shape: ilu, spears, outer current, Three Teeth, watchers, now. The village responded like a struck reef. People ran. Children were pulled back from walkways. Hunters threw themselves toward the pens. Voices rose and crossed, sharp with alarm but not panic, not yet. The Metkayina knew the outer water. They knew how quickly a prank beyond the reef could become a death with no body to bring home.
Jake heard all of it from very far away.
Lo’ak is beyond the reef.
The words had entered him and stayed there, repeating with each beat of his heart until they no longer sounded like language. Lo’ak is beyond the reef. Lo’ak is beyond the reef. Lo’ak is beyond the reef. His reckless, bright-burning, too-proud son was somewhere in deep water because boys with cruel mouths had decided humiliation was funny and Lo’ak had wanted so badly to prove himself that he followed them. He was fourteen. He was an alpha already in scent and temper and foolishness, broadening fast and convinced every warning was really just someone’s lack of faith in him. He was still Jake’s child. He was still the three-year-old in the tree calling down, I’m okay, Mom, you don’t have to worry, right before gravity taught him otherwise. He was still the boy who had broken his arm and tried not to cry because he thought crying would prove the fall had won. He was still the child who forgot his dead brother’s name sometimes and hated himself for grief he did not know how to hold.
And Neteyam was already moving.
That snapped Jake back into his body.
“No,” Jake said, because he knew that face. He knew the way Neteyam’s control had gone crystalline, the way his fear had turned immediately into purpose because purpose was easier to bear than helplessness. His oldest had already decided. If Lo’ak was beyond the reef, Neteyam would go. It did not matter that he was not the strongest swimmer among them yet. It did not matter that the outer current belonged to hunters, not newly arrived forest boys. It did not matter that Jake could see the terror in him, white around the mouth and wide in the eyes. Neteyam had been following Lo’ak into danger since before either of them understood what that meant. He would do it now because love had trained him too well.
Jake reached for him.
Tsu’tey caught Jake first.
It was not rough. That somehow made it worse. Tsu’tey’s hand closed around Jake’s upper arm with absolute certainty, not bruising, not dragging, but stopping him as effectively as if he had put a spear through the sand between them. Jake turned on him, already furious, already afraid enough that anger came as a relief because anger at least had direction.
“I’m going,” Jake said.
“No,” Tsu’tey answered.
The word was immediate. Not discussed. Not questioned. Not softened by mate or yawntu or any of the tenderness Tsu’tey knew how to wield when he wanted Jake to hear something difficult. No. Just no. The kind of no an olo’eyktan gave when a decision had been made before debate could make it weaker.
Jake stared at him.
Tsu’tey’s face was carved shut, but his scent was not. Fear poured off him beneath the command, dark and sharp and almost choking. He was terrified for Lo’ak. Terrified for Neteyam. Terrified for Jake and the twins hidden under his hand and the old story of a child dying where Jake’s body had tried to keep him safe. The fear should have made Jake gentler. Instead it struck sparks against his own.
“Do not tell me no,” Jake said, low.
Tsu’tey’s ears flicked back. “You are not going beyond the reef.”
“My son is beyond the reef.”
“Our son,” Tsu’tey snapped, and the crack in his voice showed then, one flash of father beneath commander. “Our son, and I am going to bring him back.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
“No.”
Jake yanked his arm free. “I can swim.”
“Not there.”
“I can fight.”
“Not this water.”
“I am his mother.”
“And you carry two more children.”
The sentence hit the air like a blade dropped flat.
Jake went utterly still.
Tsu’tey knew at once that he had struck the wrong place, not because the words were false but because truth could still be used cruelly if thrown without care. His expression shifted, regret moving under fear, but there was no time for repair. Tonowari had come close now, face grim, and Ronal stood at his side with one hand beneath the heavy curve of her belly and the other already lifted as if she could physically bar Jake from the sea by will alone.
“You will not go,” Ronal said.
Jake rounded on her. “Do not start with me.”
“I have already started. You are not going beyond the reef at twelve weeks with twins and a healing wound because fear has made you forget what your body is doing.”
“What my body is doing is standing here while my son might be dying!”
“And if you go and cramp in deep water? If you panic and spend your breath? If you bleed? If Tsu’tey must choose between reaching Lo’ak and keeping you above water?” Ronal’s voice sharpened enough that several nearby villagers flinched. “You would make your fear into another body for them to rescue.”
Jake’s vision flashed white.
Neytiri appeared at his shoulder before he knew she had crossed the space. “Jake.”
“No.” He did not look at her. If he looked at Neytiri, he would see understanding and that might break him faster than opposition. “No, all of you do not get to stand here and decide I’m the fragile one. I fought the RDA pregnant before any of you knew I was carrying Neteyam. I flew through fire. I killed men. I was Toruk Makto before I was anybody’s sheltered little—”
“Enough,” Tonowari said.
The word did not carry anger. It carried reef authority, and that might have been why Jake hated it more.
Tonowari stepped forward, broad body blocking part of the path to the water. “This is not your forest. You do not know the outer break. You do not know the channels near Three Teeth. You do not know what hunts there or how the current changes when the tide turns. I do. Ao’nung does. I will take Tsu’tey because he has learned enough to follow command in deep water and because he is Lo’ak’s father. I will take Neteyam because we will lose time if we restrain him and because he may call to his brother in ways Lo’ak will answer. But you will stay.”
Neteyam’s face snapped toward Tonowari at that, as if only then realizing he had been granted the thing Jake was denied.
Jake saw it too.
The world narrowed around that injustice with such force that for a second he could not hear the sea.
Neteyam could go. Neteyam, his oldest, his omega child who had already spent too much of his life following Lo’ak into danger, could go beyond the reef. Tsu’tey could go. Tonowari and Ao’nung could go. The men, the boys, the hunters, the ones deemed useful in the direction of danger. Jake had to stay. Jake had to wait on shore with two unborn lives turned into chains around his ankles. His body, which had made warriors and buried children, had become the argument everyone else used to make him smaller.
Tsu’tey reached for him again. “Yawntu—”
Jake stepped back so sharply Tsu’tey’s hand closed on air.
“No,” Jake said, and his voice had gone strange even to himself. “Don’t. Don’t you yawntu me after that.”
Tsu’tey flinched.
Good, some vicious part of Jake thought. Good. Feel it. Feel what you just did.
But there was no time. There was never time. The ilu were being brought in, sleek bodies cutting through the shallows, their riders already mounting with spears strapped and breath bands secured. Ao’nung stood near one, pale and shaking but ready, eyes flicking between Neteyam and the adults. Neteyam was looking at Jake now, and all the fury in Jake’s body collided with the terrible plea in his son’s face. Let me go. Don’t make me fight you too. Lo’ak is out there. I have to go.
Jake wanted to say no. He wanted to grab Neteyam by the back of the neck and hold him on shore by force. He wanted to keep one son safe even if the other had already gone where Jake could not reach him. But Neteyam would never forgive being kept behind while Lo’ak was missing. More than that, Jake would not forgive himself if the delay cost Lo’ak breath.
So he did the thing that tore him open.
He nodded once.
Neteyam’s face crumpled for half a second with relief and terror.
Jake crossed to him fast enough that Ronal made a warning sound, but he ignored her and caught Neteyam by both shoulders. His hands shook. He could not stop them. Neteyam looked younger than sixteen with fear stripped bare across his face, younger than he had in months, younger than the careful, controlled boy who thanked people politely for hurting him and then apologized for bleeding on the mat.
“You stay with Tonowari,” Jake said.
Neteyam nodded.
“You listen. You do not break off. You do not try to be a hero. You find your brother and you bring him back, but you come back too. Do you hear me? Both of you or neither of you leaves this shore again without me losing my mind.”
Neteyam swallowed hard. “I hear you.”
Jake pulled him in and pressed his mouth to his son’s temple, too hard, too desperate. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Mom.”
That nearly did it.
Jake released him before he could make the choice impossible.
Tsu’tey was waiting at his ilu. His eyes remained on Jake, and the pain in them was almost enough to cut through the rage. Almost. He crossed back for one breath, just one, and Jake knew he meant to touch his belly, to touch his face, to say something like trust me or I will bring them home. Jake could not bear either.
“Go,” Jake said, flat and furious.
Tsu’tey stopped.
For the first time since Jake had known him, Tsu’tey looked as if obedience hurt.
Then he bowed his head once, not as olo’eyktan, not as alpha, but as mate accepting a wound he had helped make and could not mend before leaving. “I will bring them back.”
Jake’s mouth twisted. “You better.”
Tsu’tey mounted and turned away.
That was the image that broke something in Jake’s chest: Tsu’tey turning away from him toward the water, Neteyam mounting behind Ao’nung’s urgent direction, Tonowari already cutting a path through the shallows, the rescue forming itself without Jake inside it. His mate. His oldest son. His lost son somewhere beyond the reef. All going where Jake had been told he could not follow.
The ilu launched.
Water exploded around them. Tonowari led, Ao’nung close behind, Neteyam with him, Tsu’tey cutting into the current with the fierce controlled movement he had spent months learning for exactly this kind of day and never wanted to need. Hunters followed in a widening line. Their bodies became dark shapes against the glittering water, then smaller shapes, then moving points beyond the reef break.
Jake stood on shore and watched until they passed the outer coral line.
Then the first cramp hit.
It was not severe.
He would understand that later, after Ronal told him fifteen times and Maru said it in three increasingly ridiculous ways until Jake threatened to drown him in six inches of water. It was not severe. It was a tightness, a stress spasm low and deep, the body reacting to terror, dehydration, sudden movement, too much standing, too much everything. But Jake did not experience it as a neutral sensation. He experienced it through the memory of loss. Through Tey’ral’s stillness. Through the impossible silence after birth. Through the way his body had once held death and not warned him soon enough. The cramp folded through him and became proof before reason had a chance to speak.
He was losing them.
The twins.
No.
Jake took one breath.
It did not work.
He tried another.
The air hit halfway down his throat and stopped as if his lungs had closed around stone. His chest tightened. His ears filled with the roar of the reef and the blood in his own head. He pressed both hands over his lower belly and bent slightly, waiting for the cramp to pass, waiting for the next breath to come, waiting for the world to right itself.
It did not.
The horizon tilted.
Someone said his name.
He could not tell who.
His vision tunneled around the outer reef where Tsu’tey had vanished. Lo’ak beyond it. Neteyam beyond it. Tsu’tey beyond it. Jake on the sand, useless, left behind, pregnant, guarded, managed, protected so thoroughly he had become absent from his own children’s rescue. Another cramp pulled low, sharper because fear made every muscle clamp down around it. He gasped, but the sound came wrong. Too high. Too thin. His throat clicked shut around the inhale.
“Jake,” Neytiri said, close now.
He jerked away from the hand that touched his shoulder.
Not because it was Neytiri. Because touch had become restraint. Because everyone had been touching him to stop him. Because hands had kept him on shore while his sons went into deep water. Because if he was touched again, he might tear someone open just to prove his body still belonged to him.
“No,” he snarled.
Neytiri’s hand withdrew immediately.
Good. Safe. Wrong. He did not know.
Ronal was in front of him then, heavily pregnant and fearless enough to step into the radius of a panicking marine who had forgotten which world he stood on. Her eyes were sharp, but her body was calm. Too calm. Infuriatingly calm. She held both hands where he could see them.
“You are cramping because you are panicking,” she said.
Jake shook his head hard. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No, something’s wrong.”
“Your breath is wrong. Your body is afraid. That can make the womb tighten.”
“I’m losing them.”
“You are not bleeding.”
“Not yet.”
Ronal’s face flickered, just once, because she knew exactly what memory had spoken through him. Then she came closer anyway. “Look at me.”
“I can’t breathe.”
“You are breathing enough to speak.”
“It’s not working.”
“Because you are trying to breathe like a man being shot.”
Jake made a sound that might have been a laugh if it had not broken into a gasp. The air would not go deep enough. It scraped at the top of his chest and bounced back, useless. His fingers dug into his belly, then released in horror because what if he hurt them, what if pressure hurt them, what if fear hurt them, what if everything hurt them. He could feel his heart slamming too fast, his skin gone cold under the sun, his mouth wet with nausea. The world narrowed further. Voices stretched.
He had not had a panic attack since after the discharge.
Not after the first war. Not after transfer. Not after Hometree, somehow. Not even after Tey’ral, though maybe grief had been its own larger version and he had never named it because Pandora had given him better words for screaming. But this, this old human malfunction, he remembered. The VA hospital smell. The small apartment. Waking on the floor because fireworks outside had become mortar fire in his nervous system before his mind could translate. The humiliation of not being able to trust air. The rage afterward. The fear of the fear returning. He had thought that body had been left behind. Human lungs. Human legs. Human panic.
But the body changed and the wound remembered anyway.
The world dropped out from under him.
He did not fall. Or maybe he did. Later he would not be sure. He knew only that sand hit his knees and Ronal’s voice sharpened, not with alarm but command. Neytiri was behind him, not touching at first, then touching only when Jake pitched too far forward and would have struck his head. Maru appeared on his other side with surprising speed for a heavily pregnant man carrying twins, his scent warm and startled but intentionally steady. Someone shouted for water. Someone else moved children away. Kiri’s voice cried out from somewhere, and Jake’s panic tried to lunge toward her too, because if Kiri was afraid then something was wrong, something was wrong, something was wrong.
Ronal snapped something in reef dialect.
The world quieted around them.
Not completely. The sea still roared. The village still breathed. But the immediate circle cleared, leaving Jake on his knees in the sand with both arms locked over his belly, Ronal crouched before him, Maru at his left, Neytiri at his back like a wall made of grief and teeth. Kiri was there too, Jake realized through the blur, held back only by Neytiri’s tail curled around her ankle in an almost unconscious restraint. Tuk was not there. Thank Eywa, Tuk was not there. Someone had taken her away before she could see this.
“I need to go,” Jake gasped.
Ronal shook her head. “No.”
“My sons—”
“Are with hunters.”
“My mate—”
“Is with them.”
“He thinks I can’t protect them.”
“He thinks if he loses you too, he will not survive it.”
Jake’s breath broke. “That’s not fair.”
“No,” Ronal said. “It is true.”
He hated her. He loved her. He wanted her to shut up. He wanted her to keep talking because her voice was a rope in water and he was drowning in air.
Maru lowered himself with a grunt beside Jake, one hand braced under his own belly. “Listen to me, forest brother.”
Jake shook his head. “I can’t.”
“You can. You are being dramatic and terrifying, but you can.”
Neytiri hissed at him. “Maru.”
“What? He likes honesty.”
Jake made another broken sound. It was almost a laugh. Almost.
Maru leaned closer, his face suddenly stripped of teasing. “When the twins in me cramp because I am frightened, I think the same thing. Every time. I think, now they leave. Now I was too loud, too careless, too happy, too hungry, too angry. Now joy is punished. It is not truth. It is fear wearing a healer’s voice.”
Jake stared at him through the blur.
Maru put one hand over his own belly, then held the other out, palm up, not touching Jake until Jake chose. “Here. My twins are making me miserable this very moment. Yours are too small to kick you yet, so they make you miserable with imagination. Very rude. But not death. Not today.”
Jake’s hand shook over his belly.
Ronal seized the opening. “Breathe into your back.”
“I can’t—”
“You can. Not big. Do not gulp. Small breath. Through the nose.”
Jake tried.
Nothing.
His chest locked.
Neytiri’s voice came from behind him, low and fierce and trembling under the control. “Jake. Listen to me. You are not in the metal room. You are not in the war body. You are here. Sand under knees. Salt in mouth. My hand at your back. Ronal in front of you. Maru beside you. Kiri near. The children within you still hidden, still held.”
The metal room.
She knew. Of course she knew. Not the whole human history, maybe, not every night after discharge when Jake had woken fighting the walls, but enough. Neytiri had always understood fear in the body. She had been sister to him long enough to see the ghosts he joked around.
Jake dragged a breath in.
Tiny.
Ragged.
It made him cough.
Ronal nodded as if he had accomplished something enormous. “Good.”
“It wasn’t good.”
“It was air.”
Maru squeezed his offered hand in the air until Jake, almost without meaning to, took it.
Maru’s grip was warm and strong. “Now another.”
Jake tried again.
The second breath came smaller. Less desperate. Still terrible, but lower. The cramp in his belly remained, a band of warning that his mind wanted to translate as loss. Ronal reached forward slowly, eyes on his face the entire time, and touched the back of his wrist where it pressed to his abdomen.
“May I feel?”
Jake flinched.
Ronal waited.
That was what made him nod. Not trust in the abstract. The waiting.
She placed her hand low over the swell, not pressing hard, only resting and listening with her palm. Her other hand moved to his side near the healing wound, feeling the tension through muscle. Jake shook under the touch, every instinct screaming that examination would turn fear into fact, that she would feel what Mo’at had felt, that her face would go still and the world would end on a beach while Lo’ak was still missing.
Ronal’s face did not go still.
“Stress tightening,” she said. “No more than that now. The womb is firm because you made your whole body a fist.”
Jake squeezed his eyes shut.
“No bleeding,” Ronal continued. “No sharp one-sided pain. No signs of losing them in this moment. Hear those words. In this moment, you are not losing them.”
In this moment.
Not promise forever. Not false certainty. A truth small enough to hold.
Jake clung to it.
In this moment, you are not losing them.
Neytiri’s hand moved slowly up and down his back, not restraining now, grounding. “Breathe, brother.”
Jake breathed.
Once. Twice. The third caught. The fourth made him gag. Maru, still holding his hand, said cheerfully and loudly that if Jake vomited on him, he would name one twin after him out of spite. Jake choked on a laugh and then actually could breathe a little better after it, which made him furious because Maru looked pleased with himself.
“There,” Maru said. “See? Spite has healing properties.”
Ronal muttered, “Do not teach medicine.”
“I teach morale.”
“You teach noise.”
“Important noise.”
Jake would have told them both to shut up if he had enough air to waste. He did not. He kept breathing, rough and uneven, but breathing. The world slowly widened by fractions. He became aware of the sand under his knees, wet where the tide had reached earlier. The heat of the sun along his shoulders. The salt drying on his lips. Neytiri’s hand at his spine. Kiri’s quiet crying nearby. Ronal’s fingers steady over his belly. Maru’s grip in his hand. The absence ahead of him where the rescue party had vanished beyond the reef.
That absence still hurt.
It would keep hurting until he saw them return.
But the panic had crested enough for anger to find its way back in.
Good.
Jake knew what to do with anger.
He opened his eyes, breathing hard, and looked toward the outer water. “When Lo’ak gets back,” he rasped, “I am going to kill him.”
Kiri made a wet, startled sound.
Neytiri exhaled something almost like relief.
Ronal sat back slightly. “Good. Future discipline means you believe he has a future.”
Jake looked at her. “Do not therapy me right now.”
“I am healing you.”
“You are being smug.”
“I can do both.”
Maru nodded solemnly. “She can.”
Jake glared at him weakly. “You’re next.”
“I am pregnant with twins. You cannot threaten me.”
“I am pregnant with twins.”
“Yes, but you are new at it.”
Despite himself, despite everything, Jake laughed. It hurt. His belly tightened again, but less this time, more protest than terror. Ronal felt it and did not look alarmed. That helped more than anything she could have said.
Then the anger turned, inevitable and sharp, toward Tsu’tey.
Jake’s face hardened.
Neytiri felt it under her hand. “That fight is for later.”
“Oh, it’s happening later.”
“Yes.”
“He left me here.”
“He went to bring Lo’ak back.”
“He told me no like I was some pretty housewife waiting for her husband to come back from war.”
Neytiri’s hand stilled. Maru went quiet. Even Ronal did not interrupt.
Jake’s voice shook again, but this time with fury clean enough to stand on. “I am not that. I am not some delicate thing he tucks behind him when battle comes. I fought my way into this life. I fought the RDA. I fought in a body that wasn’t even fully mine yet. Hell, I was probably carrying Neteyam when I fought the first war, and nobody knew, not even me. I bled for the Omaticaya. I killed for them. I led them. I carried his children and buried one and got up again. And now because there are two in me, suddenly everyone gets to decide my place is shore.”
Ronal listened.
Neytiri’s ears had gone back, but not in disagreement. In grief.
Maru said quietly, “Do you think he believes you cannot fight?”
Jake looked away.
That was the problem, wasn’t it? Beneath the rage, beneath the humiliation, he knew Tsu’tey. He knew his mate did not think him weak. Tsu’tey had seen him at his most brutal and his most broken and had never confused either for uselessness. He had seen Jake lead war parties with milk still leaking through his chest wrap. He had seen Jake shoot men out of gunships while carrying their family in his body. He had seen Jake labor Tey’ral dead into his hands and survive the kind of pain that made battle look simple.
Tsu’tey did not think Jake incapable.
Tsu’tey feared the cost of Jake’s capability.
That was worse.
Because fear dressed as reverence still became a cage if it made every choice for him.
“I think he would rather have me angry and alive,” Jake said finally.
Ronal nodded. “Yes.”
“I hate that.”
“Yes.”
“I’m still going to fight him.”
“Yes,” Neytiri said.
Jake glanced back at her.
Neytiri’s eyes were wet too, though no tears fell. “Fight him when he returns with both sons. Not before. Save your breath.”
Jake let his head drop forward. “I hate all of you.”
Maru patted his hand. “You are welcome.”
They kept him on the sand because moving too soon made the cramping threaten again. Ronal made him drink slowly. Maru stayed beside him despite Ronal telling him three times to sit somewhere more comfortable, finally declaring that if Jake was allowed to be dramatic in public, so was he. Neytiri remained at Jake’s back, not holding him down, never that, but anchoring him when his body tried to lunge toward the water each time a distant shape moved near the reef line. Kiri sat near his knee and held his free hand, silent now, listening outward with eyes half-lidded. At some point Tuk appeared, having escaped whoever had been meant to distract her, and climbed straight into Jake’s lap with tearful determination despite Ronal’s warning about his belly. Jake held her carefully, apologizing when his arms trembled.
“Lo’ak is coming back?” Tuk asked.
Jake looked toward the empty water.
“Yes,” he said, because there were some lies parents told not because they knew the future but because children needed a bridge to stand on until truth arrived. “He’s coming back.”
“And Neteyam?”
“Yes.”
“And Dad?”
Jake’s jaw tightened.
Neytiri squeezed his shoulder once.
“Yes,” Jake said. “All of them.”
Tuk tucked her face against his chest. “Then you can yell.”
A broken laugh went through the little group around him.
Jake kissed the top of her head, eyes fixed on the outer reef.
“Yeah, baby,” he whispered. “Then I can yell.”