Chapter 7
When I woke, three eggs lay nestled in the incubator beside me. Draco sat at my side, gently wiping the sweat from my brow with a soft towel.
I was just about to speak when a scream pierced the air-it was Bella.
“I can’t do this! I don’t want to give birth anymore! Just kill me, please! Kill me now!”
“Bella, hold on! You’re almost there!”
Her sobbing and the midwife’s encouragement overlapped in a chaotic chorus. Our birthing rooms were separated by only a single wall. She was still in the middle of labor.
“Clarice, you’ve been through so much,” Draco murmured, pressing a kiss to my forehead. His gaze held concern, guilt, and overwhelming tenderness.
“Is it too noisy here? Should I take you and the little ones home so you can rest properly?”
In my past life, after I gave birth, Jacob had eyes only for the child. He didn’t care that I’d labored for an entire day and night. He shoved the baby into my arms and demanded I start nursing immediately.
To him, I was nothing more than a means to produce a half-beast heir, someone to help him secure power. He didn’t care about my body or my pain.
But Draco was different. From beginning to end, his eyes never left me. He hadn’t even asked me to hatch the eggs myself— instead, he’d placed them gently in the incubator and watched over them himself.
“It’s all right,” I said softly. “I want to see how Bella’s labor is going.”
This time, I hadn’t felt the agony of childbirth. Delivering three tiny snake eggs had been unusually easy-it was over before I even realized, like waking from a short nap.
I got up and went next door, leaving Draco behind to watch over the eggs.
Inside, Bella was writhing on the bed, sobbing like her heart was being torn apart. Every time she nearly lost consciousness from the pain, the midwife pried her eyes open and screamed at her to stay awake.
Half an hour later, the child was finally born.
The moment the midwife caught sight of it, she shrieked in horror.
“A monster! Bella has given birth to a monster!”
I stepped closer to see and recoiled in shock. The child had three legs and four eyes.
Hearing the commotion, Jacob burst into the room. He froze at the sight before him.
Bella, however, smiled with motherly affection. The three-legged, four-eyed creature clung to her chest, nursing loudly as if nothing were amiss.
“Urgh-“Jacob gagged, turned green, and ran out the door, clutching his mouth.
Bella let out a cold, mocking laugh. “He’s the father, so why is he so disgusted?”
News of the wolf clan’s monstrous birth spread quickly and even reached the ears of the phoenix clan’s high priest.
The priest examined the drooling child carefully and then turned to Bella.
“Bella, did you consume anything unusual during your pregnancy? By all accounts, this child should’ve been normal.”
Bella paled. Her right hand trembled as she retrieved a small bottle from her sleeve and handed it over.
1/2
“I took this… You can save my baby, can’t you?”
The priest didn’t respond right away. He uncorked the bottle and, upon smelling the contents, gave a knowing sigh.
“This is a rat clan fertility aid-rat eggs. There’s a folk remedy that claims taking one a day for thirty days will guarantee conception. But even so, the child shouldn’t have turned out this… malformed.”
The rat clan was immediately summoned and dragged before the wolf clan.
The moment Bella saw the man responsible, she stormed over and grabbed him by the throat, screaming.
“Why isn’t my baby normal? What did you do to me?!”
The rat clansman, trembling under the weight of the moment and visibly shaken by the sight of the creature, shoved Bella away and dropped to his knees before Jacob.
“This… this must be because Bella didn’t follow instructions! She must’ve overdosed on the rat eggs! Otherwise, this wouldn’t have happened!”
Bella stared him down, eyes blazing.
“You said thirty days would guarantee one child. So I figured… if I took them for sixty days, wouldn’t I get two?”
