Page 55 of That Defining Moment

His eyes rolled upward until the irises disappeared and only the whites remained, glassy and unseeing, fixed on a point on the ceiling.

He made no sound at all. His father lay rigid in his alpha’s arms like a piece of wood, his spine curved, his swollen belly straining against the jumper, and the only sound in the room was Lysander’s own breathing, coming in shallow and fast. Then the convulsions started.

Colin’s limbs jerked. His arms, still locked, began to shudder in short, rhythmic spasms that travelled from his shoulders to his fists, and his legs kicked against the duvet, his swollen ankles catching in the bedding. A thin line of saliva ran from the corner of his clenched mouth down his chin.

Diwa rolled Colin onto his side, away from the headboard and into the centre of the mattress. He pulled the pillows away from Colin’s head, swept the duvet back so it couldn’t tangle around his legs, and positioned himself behind Colin’s seizing body with one arm braced along his spine to keep him from rolling off the bed.

His hand found Colin’s belly and held it. Even now, his hand went to the baby.

“Lysander,” Diwa called out. “Ambulance — now.”

Lysander’s hands were shaking so badly that he nearly dropped his mobile twice before his thumb found the nine and pressed it three times.

A woman’s voice picked up and asked which service he required.

“Ambulance.” The word came out wet and wrecked. “My father’s having a seizure. He’s a male omega and he’s pregnant with pre-eclampsia. He’s seizing, please, he’s on the bed and he won’t stop —”

The operator asked for the address. The house number and the street and the postcode came out of his mouth in the right order, which surprised him, because nothing else inside his skull was in any order at all.

“Is he still seizing?”

Lysander looked at the bed. Colin’s body was still jerking in Diwa’s arms, his limbs shuddering hard enough to make the mattress creak. Diwa had one arm across his belly, holding him steady on his side, his legs kicking at the bare sheet.

“Yes,” Lysander said. “He’s on his side. His partner’s holding him. He’s been seizing for — I don’t know how long. A minute. Two minutes. I don’t know.”

“Don’t try to restrain him or put anything in his mouth. Can you tell me how far along the pregnancy is?”

“Thirty-eight weeks. He’s been on bed rest for pre-eclampsia. He’s having issues with high blood pressure, protein in his urine, swelling in his hands and ankles.” He recited each fact in the order Diwa had given him over the phone during their check-in calls. “He was having visual disturbances before the seizure started. He said he could see flickering spots, and he couldn’t recognise his partner.”

“The ambulance is on its way. Stay on the line for me.”

Lysander stood three feet from the bed with his mobile pressed to his ear and watched his father seize in his alpha’s arms. He described what he was seeing in words that belonged to a medical textbook because the ones that belonged to him — Daddy, please, Daddy, stop, please stop — would have been useless to the woman on the other end.

Colin stilled. The spasms stopped, all at once, as though someone had cut the current running through him. His body sagged against Diwa, his head lolling forward so that his chin dropped to his chest.

“He’s stopped,” Lysander said into the mobile. “He’s not moving, but at least he’s breathing. I can see his chest rising.”

Colin made a low and formless sound. His gaze drifted across the room without catching, passing over Lysander’s face.

The sharp smell of urine hit Lysander a beat later, even before he saw the wet patch spreading through the sheet beneath Colin’s hips, darkening the fabric of Diwa’s trousers where Colin was pressed against him.

Diwa didn’t flinch or shift away from Colin. He held Colin against his chest with both arms and pressed his mouth to the top of Colin’s head, murmuring into his hair.

The alpha’s head lifted at the sound of incoming sirens, his gaze snapping towards the window, and Lysander was already moving, his splinted ankle forgotten as he staggered down the stairs and wrenched the front door open.

Two paramedics came through the yellow door with their bags and a stretcher that they left folded in the hallway. Lysander led them upstairs, his voice steady enough to relay the basics, and then he stepped back from the bed because there was nothing left for him to do except stay out of the way.

They worked quickly, getting a blood pressure cuff on Colin’s arm, a cannula in the back of his hand while they talked to each other in a clipped shorthand. Colin lay between them with his eyes half open, his breath fogging the inside of the mask in shallow, irregular clouds.

Diwa hadn’t moved from the bed. He was sitting in the wet sheet with Colin’s hand in both of his. One of the paramedics asked him to step aside, and Diwa shook his head once without looking up.

“I’m not letting go of his hand,” he said.

The paramedic glanced at her colleague, then worked around him.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The private room was very white and very quiet, and the machine breathing for Colin was the only thing breaking the silence.