Despite the past hostilities between their clans, his own resentment dissipated in the face of this momentous occasion, and though he couldn’t say he’d loved her before this moment, he thought he might now, for she lay abovestairs, struggling—and a heinous struggle it was—to gift their babe with its first wondrous breath of life. She was havin’ his bairn. Ach, but he was proud of her.
