My Baby’s Birth

1

Wilder

It’s a wonder we slept at all last night…

This morning Sterling was up even earlier than normal, which is a feat I won’t be copying from him soon, because today we’re getting Maddy back. Today we’re going to the courtroom and we’ll be making sure that we’re not leaving without Maddy at our side.

A couple of days ago, we got the news that I’m now officially recognised not just as Sterling’s Alpha, but also as Maddy’s Alpha. So, no matter how much Logan’s parents may try to get us in trouble, we’re now going to make sure that they’ll never get their hands on her again.

I sit behind my computer, trying to get some work done, but I’ve got no concentration today and just knowing that Maddy will be back with us soon… it makes me way too excited.

“Wild?” Sterling stands in the doorway. “Are we going to do this?”

Over the last couple of days, we’ve decided to move some things around in the house. Maddy will move into Logan and Sterling’s old bedroom, the office will move upstairs and the downstairs bedroom will stay our bedroom and the downstairs office will become the new baby room.

Now we’ve got the wedding and all that out of the way, we decided that it’s probably time to introduce people to the other thing going on in our lives… the baby. But, of course, adding another person to our family will require a lot of moving and reorganising, especially of the spaces that we’re using right now.

“I’m coming.” I stand up. We’re moving some things from Logan and Sterling’s bedroom to a storage room upstairs, it’s not got a lot of space, but it’s enough to move a few things out of the way so we can start to decorate the new room together with Maddy.

I wrap my arms around Sterling for a moment, pulling him close. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” This is us moving his and Logan’s items, there have got to be a lot of memories attached to them.

“We’re not throwing stuff away, we’re just moving them.” He looks at me and then kisses my cheek. “It’s going to be fine. And I’m never in there anyway, it’s no use leaving it empty when Maddy would love the bigger room.”

“Okay.” I pull him along up the stairs, to the bedroom. I open the door and step inside.

There is so much personality in here, but I know that it can’t be easy for Sterling to be in here, not with everything that has happened in here, how he used to share it with Logan. And, even for me, knowing which elements were definitely influences from Logan and which elements Sterling brought to it…

“What do you want to do first?”

“I want some of the dressers and stuff like that moved downstairs into our bedroom. It’s no use keeping putting our clothes on bookshelves.” He laughs, then he lets out a little sigh. “Let’s move the bed to the storage room, that’s the biggest thing in here. And Maddy’s got her own bed that we’ll have to fit in here.”

I walk over to the bed and look under it. “Can we take this apart?”

“Yeah, just take the mattress off, and we should be able to pull it apart.” He starts tugging on the mattress and I help him, lifting it off. “Now, we get this to the storage room first.”

He pulls it along, trying not to drag it over the floor, but it’s too big and heavy so we drag and push it until it’s in the other room. Then I look at Sterling, who’s out of breath and laughing. “It didn’t feel this heavy when we moved it in.”

“Well, that was nearly a decade ago.” I wrap my arm around his shoulder as we walk back to the bedroom. “Lots of things changed since then, including our age.”

I don’t even want to think how different I am now in comparison to then… But there is no use lamenting our bodies from back then when we need to move everything from that room with the bodies we have now.

It’s going to be a couple of rough hours.

***

We’re waiting in front of the courtroom, we’re a little early, but that doesn’t matter. Sterling keeps walking from one end of the hallway to the other. Then he looks up at me.

“Why aren’t they here yet?” He checks around the corner towards the front door of the building.

“Star.” I call out to him and he looks back at me. “Almost. She’ll be back with us soon. We’ve done it. She’s coming home with us today.”

Just at that moment our lawyer, Chuck, nearly walks into Sterling as he is about to check around the corner again. “Afternoon.” He looks at me for a moment before he looks at Sterling.

“Afternoon.” Sterling now comes back over to me, standing next to me, sliding his hand into mine.

“Did you prepare anything? Will you be able to bring her back home safely?” Chuck looks at us.

“Of course. There is always space for her and we’ve always got a safety seat for her in the car.” Sterling huffs.

“Well, that should be fine then.” He steps back a little. “Did you have a nice wedding ceremony?”

Sterling lights up as he nods. “It was beautiful and it was amazing to have Maddy with us that day. To be able to share it all with her too.”

“Good. It’s good that you had a lovely wedding. Everyone deserves that.”

Then a whole set of voices reach us, and a group of people comes around the corner. I recognise Sarah in the front, looking very annoyed, Maddy at her side, holding her hand tightly. Behind them are Logan’s parents and their lawyer. Uh, oh.

“Daddy!” Maddy starts pulling as soon as she sees him and Sarah lets go of her.

Sarah follows her closely, her parents staying behind a little, purposefully not looking at us.

“What’s wrong?” I give Sarah a quick hug.

“They’re just being difficult. I don’t know exactly why. I went over to their house to see Maddy before she came here, just to give her a little support, but they’ve been really difficult about it. So I followed them to here and now they’re annoyed with me. It may have a little to do with me supporting you two and having been at your wedding.” She sighs. “Just life, I guess.”

“Well, at least we’ll hopefully not have to deal with them for a while again.” I look down as Maddy takes my hand and I come down to her level for a quick hug. “Hi, princess.”

“Hi.” She pushes a little closer. “Do I now call you Dad or Wilder?”

I guess that’s a reasonable question to ask. “I don’t mind either way. Do what you want. But Dad will make your grandparents annoyed.”

Maddy lets out a huff, one that lets me know exactly how much it annoys them and how unimpressed she is with that. Then she turns back to Sterling, wrapping her arms around him as I stand next to them. It’s so good to see them together.

It was so hard when Maddy had to leave after the wedding, no matter how much we tried, no matter how much we tried to make it easier. To have to let her go after all that… Yeah, not easy.

I look around, and finally the doors open. We walk in, with Maddy at our side. This is it, we’re going to finally bring our family back together.

***

“Alternating weekends.” Sterling fumes, shaking his head, throwing up his hands.

Apparently, no matter the fact that Sterling is Maddy’s Omega and only living parent, the judge decided that Logan’s parents still had rights, at least for a weekend every two weeks. We will be the primary caregivers, but Logan’s parents still get visitation rights…

Not what we expected. Definitely not what we hoped for, and now we need to live with that… Sarah is with her parents and Maddy, ‘allowing them to say goodbye’, but at least it allows Sterling to vent his anger before he has to face his little girl again.

Sterling looks at me. “Why?”

I reach out, wrapping my arms around him. “I have no idea.” Especially not since I’m still not convinced they actually want to have anything to do with Maddy…

I still feel like it’s just some pride thing for them… But that won’t help Sterling, so instead I hold him, letting him know I’m here for him.

Sarah and Maddy walk out of the room, both of them walking slowly, their heads up high, until they’re out of view and then they rush at us.

“Home.” Maddy grabs our hands and starts pulling.

“Yes, yes.” Sterling lets himself be dragged along, but I trail behind a little with Sarah.

“And?”

“That girl has guts. She’ll be fine. I think they’re kind of glad to be rid of her for a few days.” Sarah laughs.

“Why’s that?”

“I heard them mutter something about my mother’s nerves not being what they used to be. Which, I guess, we can see as a compliment.” She smiles, looking at her niece. “This will work out fine, especially with Maddy being the way she is.”

“Yeah.” I’ve been looking at her a lot, she really does seem to be able to handle just about anything.

“Sarah! Dad! Come on.” Maddy turns around a little, they’ve gotten pretty far ahead of us while we were talking.

“Coming!” Then I turn to Sarah. “Are you coming home with us?”

She shakes her head. “I’ve got things to do and if I come with you guys I won’t leave until the evening.”

“We’re not that bad…” I look at her.

She gives me a pointed look.

“Okay, maybe. But, are you sure?”

“Yeah. You go have fun with Maddy. I’ll be by soon.” She gives me a quick hug. “Tell Sterling and Maddy that I love them.”

“Will do. You take care of yourself.” I take her hand for a moment. “And really, thank you for everything.”

“You’re family. It’s what family does.” She smiles broadly. “Now, I’m off. You go be with your family.” She turns around and walks off, not looking back again.

I quickly catch up with Sterling and Maddy. “So, what are we going to do?”

“Well, home first, after that…” Sterling shrugs. “We’ll see by then, I guess.” He looks at me, winking.

Oh, so Maddy doesn’t know yet. The new room will be a nice surprise, I’m sure.