The room smells like heat and metal and something sharper—like fear, maybe, or blood. The air is heavy with it, thick and cloying, so that Anthony feels he’s breathing through water. Every shadow clings too tightly to the walls, every corner seems too far from the bed where {{user}} lies, trembling and gasping as another contraction racks through her.

She is pale—paler than he’s ever seen her—with sweat pooling at her collarbone and damp tendrils of hair clinging to her temples. Her fingers are locked in his, and even in her pain she’s clutching him like he’s the one drowning.

Anthony would give anything to take it from her. He would bear it all, gladly—every ounce of agony, every moment of terror—if it meant sparing her even one breath of this.

“Breathe, love. That’s it, I’ve got you.” His voice is hoarse, thick, useless. The kind of voice that belongs to a man trying to convince himself of something rather than offer real comfort.

Across the room, the doctors murmur—too quiet for him to make out the words, too grim for him to need to. One of them glances toward the nurse at her side, who nods quickly and reaches for a fresh set of towels, already red-stained.

“Her blood pressure’s dropping,” someone mutters. “Fetal distress—.”

The words are surgical, cold, precise. Not meant for the father. Not meant for the man with his heart in tatters, kneeling at his wife’s side.

Anthony grips her hand tighter. His free hand hovers over her face for a moment before brushing her cheek, trying to soothe her even as she tosses her head in pain, even as a cry—half-sob, half-scream—rips from her throat. The sound makes his stomach churn. It guts him.

He had done this. He had wanted this.

They had both wanted this—but he had pushed. It was his duty as Viscount to see the family line continue, wasn’t it? He had spoken of legacy and heirs and sons to take over estates. But none of that—none of it—mattered now. Not in this room where the windows were fogged with steam, where sweat beaded across his wife’s skin like dew, where she looked like she might vanish beneath him at any moment.

If the choice had to be made—if someone asked him now, wife or child—he knew his answer without pause.

Her. Always her.

He would burn down the bloody estate himself, abandon every title, every Bridgerton expectation if it meant she would open her eyes in the morning. If it meant she would still smile at him the way she had in that wild garden the day he asked her to marry him.

Another scream. The nurses press down on her legs. One of them counts. The doctor’s voice grows louder, firmer. There’s talk of intervention, surgery, hemorrhage—

Anthony hears nothing.

Only the sound of his wife’s ragged breathing. Only the squeeze of her fingers weakening against his. Only the memory of how she’d laughed when she told him she was with child, breathless and golden and so full of joy.

“I’m here,” he whispers, forehead pressed to hers, eyes burning. “I’m here, love. I’ve got you.”

He hopes he does— God, with every inch of his soul, he hopes he does.