Chapter Seventeen Too soon

Alexander's Pov

The next four hours blurred into a single unbearable stretch of fluorescent lights and hushed medical voices.

Dr. Sarah Mitchell emerged once, briefly, her scrubs stained and her face tight with concentration. "She's stable for now. The baby's heart rate dropped twice, but we've got it steady. I need you all to wait here."

"Can I see her?"

"Not yet. Give us time to make sure she's out of danger first."

I sat beside Rachel in the waiting room, my hands shaking in a way I couldn't control no matter how hard I tried.

"I shouldn't have told her like that," Rachel said quietly, guilt written across every line of her face. "I panicked. I thought she deserved to know before it came out some other way, but I should have waited. I should have found a gentler way."

"This isn't your fault, Rachel."

"Isn't it? I've spent months protecting her, and the moment it mattered most, I broke her instead."

David appeared with coffee none of us touched, sitting heavily beside me. "Any word?"

"Nothing yet."

We sat in silence for another hour before Dr. Mitchell returned, her expression unreadable in a way that terrified me more than any visible distress could have.

"The baby's been delivered. A girl. She's small, in the NICU for observation, but the pediatric team is optimistic."

Relief crashed through me so hard I nearly wept. "And Lily?"

"Physically, she'll recover. Emotionally—" Dr. Mitchell hesitated. "She's asking for you, actually. Just briefly. She needs to see you before I tell you something else."

I followed her down the hallway on legs that barely held me upright, my mind still reeling from the possibility that Lily might be my half-sister, that the child I'd hoped might be mine had been born three months early because of the cruelest revelation imaginable.

Lily lay in the hospital bed, pale and exhausted, tubes running from her arm, her eyes finding mine the moment I entered.

"Is she okay?" Her voice was barely a whisper. "My daughter?"

"She's okay. Small, but okay."

Tears slipped silently down Lily's face. "James Hunt is my father. That makes you—" She couldn't finish it either.

"I don't know what any of this means yet. But I know you and your daughter matter more to me than whatever blood we might share. That will never change."

"How can you say that? How can any of this be okay?"

I took her hand gently, the first time she'd let me touch her since the coastal town. "Because whatever the truth is, you didn't do anything wrong. None of this is your fault, Lily. Not any of it."

She turned her face toward the small window, tears still falling silently. "I keep thinking about my mother. All those years, she knew. She let me believe my father was just unlucky in business, that his death was some random tragedy instead of something the Hunt family engineered. And now this. Another secret she buried instead of telling me the truth."

"We don't know for certain yet, Lily. Rachel found dates that line up, but nothing's been confirmed."

"Does it matter? Even the possibility changes everything." Her hand drifted protectively over her stomach, though the baby was already gone from inside her, already fighting for breath two floors below. "What kind of family brings a child into a world already this broken?"

"The kind that decides to be better, starting now, no matter how ugly the truth turns out to be." I squeezed her hand gently. "Your daughter isn't broken, Lily. She's just early. And she has people who already love her fiercely enough to fight for whatever life she needs."

Dr. Mitchell cleared her throat softly from the doorway, an expression on her face that told me the worst news wasn't finished yet.

"There's something else you both need to know," she said quietly. "About the paternity results."

"Whatever it is, just say it," Lily whispered, her exhausted eyes fixed on the doctor's face like she was bracing for a physical blow. "I don't think I have the strength left to be surprised by anything else today."

"Given the questions about your marriage's legal status, we're required to run standard paternity testing before finalizing the birth certificate. I have preliminary results back already." Dr. Mitchell glanced between us. "I'd rather explain this with Mr. Chen present as well, if that's alright with both of you."

"David's here?" Lily's brow furrowed. "Why would David need to be part of this conversation?"

Something cold settled in my stomach, a suspicion I wasn't ready to name out loud. "Let's get him," I said quietly, already dreading whatever connected these two threads of impossible news.

Dr. Mitchell left to find him, and Lily's hand tightened around mine, her eyes searching my face for answers I didn't have yet.

"What aren't they telling us, Alexander?"

"I don't know. But we're going to find out together."