Chapter 20
It was a rare sun filled day as Colin and Ashley prepared for their wedding. She wore a white gown, but not a true wedding gown as she prepared for the ceremony. It was getting cold outside and she felt the chill seeping through the large windows of the aging house as she stepped out to meet him in the foyer.
The dress she had selected was both functional and fashionable, a heavy wool and cotton blend maternity dress with a white lace overlay and knee-length white boots. A small veil sat atop her long blonde hair, which hung down her back in perfectly coiled waves thanks to help of Anna, who seemed to have as much finesse with hair as she did meals. The veil was the one item that would be reused with the wedding gown she would wear later for their formal wedding.
“You look absolutely breathtaking,” Colin said as she walked toward him.
“Thank you. You’re not so bad yourself,” she replied, reaching up to straighten the bright blue tie he wore with his black suit.
“I must be the luckiest man in the world,” he said.
“Yes, I’d say that you must be,” she teased, smoothing down his lapels.
“Are you ready to marry me today? I’m not going to have any trouble with you, am I?”
“I don’t know. I was considering making a run for it, but I can barely waddle right now, so I don’t think I could get away fast enough.”
“That’s my girl,” he replied, leaning down to kiss her.
“Get a room,” his father joked, appearing in the foyer behind them, always turning up for a bit of levity.
“I think that is what got us here, dear,” his mother clucked from beside him.
Ashley looked at Colin and sighed. Maybe his mother would warm to her, but it hadn’t seemed to happen just yet. She had gotten used to the cool but collected behavior and just accepted it as being the way his mother was and might always be, no matter what he said.
“But we are very happy with that, aren’t we, mother?” Colin observed with a twinkle in his eye.
“Yes, son. We are,” she replied with a soft smile.
The one thing Ashley was sure of was that his mother was over the moon that he was doing what they had wanted of him, regardless of what she thought about his actual choice or circumstance. In reality, for all their teasing and a hint of disapproval at having put a pregnancy in front of the marriage, both of Colin’s parents were clearly thrilled about the marriage and babies that were to come.
The four of them walked slowly out the rear doors and down the path through the garden, all the way up to the castle ruins. Despite the cool temperatures, it was a gorgeous day to get married. Walking past the last dragon, Ashley considered how much her life had changed since the first day she had laid eyes on a photo of one of the dragons that were Colin’s passion. She had been sitting in her office when her boss had brought her a photo of it, dropping it on her desk.
“Have you ever seen one of these before?” he asked.
“No,” she replied, picking it up to study it a little closer.
“It’s by an artist named . . . well, it’s on the paper. I can’t pronounce it and no one else seems to know either. Weird.”
Ashley ran her fingers across the dragon on the page as if she could touch its individual parts through the photo. It was a beautiful piece, all found objects, from the look of it. There were nuts and bolts, rods and springs. It was almost like steam punk, but much more elaborate with colors that were mismatched, but in such perfection that they blended seamlessly with one another.
“I want one for the gallery. See what you can do to find it.”
“Do you have any more information about where to find this artist?”
“Nope, but you are good at finding things that no one else can. So, go out and find it.”
Ashley smiled at the memory. She certainly had gone out and found it. She had found the man who created such incredible work and so much more. It wasn’t like her to be petty, but last week, she had been unable to resist the urge to send a photo of herself standing beside the dragon in the center of their foyer and sending it to her old boss with only a sticky note adhering to its surface. It said only, “I found it. You’ll never own one.”
It was a shitty thing to do, but sometimes, people just needed to realize they had earned your displeasure and that, somehow, you had come out of the other side of whatever they had put you through not only unscathed but better than ever. This was her way of achieving some closure between her old life and this one.
Her thoughts shifted back to the present as they arrived at the tower. Having realized that the inside was far too small for everyone and that it would involve having to move all of Colin’s tools just to fit them in, they had decided to hold the ceremony just outside the doors, standing behind where the back wall of the castle would have once been. There, the staff, as well as the wives of Carl and Mike, waited for them to arrive.
The minister, a friend of the family and shifter himself, waited to begin the ceremony, delivering it with a perfection that had come from more than five hundred years of practice. Ashley had sat with him at great length the day before and listened to his tales from days past, including how he had come to meet Colin’s grandparents and found his own church, with money gained through the sale of items they had given to him as gifts.
“You wouldn’t have believed it, Ashley. There were jewels and silver goblets. Things that you don’t see in this world anymore.”
“It must have been an amazing time,” she replied.
“Aye. That it was.”
Now, here he stood before them, sharing in their vows as they become man and wife. Ashley was in no way disappointed with the small, somewhat functional, wedding. The only thing that mattered to her was the man by her side. The man she intended to spend the rest of her life with. Today, they became one and in less than two weeks, they would multiply into four. She was a mixture of terrified and elated.
She and Colin joined hands, standing to face one another as they began the ceremony that would solidify their bond. He smiled down at her softly before reaching forward to raise her veil.
“I don’t think you are supposed to do that until after the ceremony,” she whispered.
“I don’t care. I want to see your face, your whole face.”
“Okay then,” she said, beaming happily back at him.
“Last chance. You can waddle slowly away and save yourself,” he told her.
“I would, but I think the twins are fighting to see who is coming out first in a couple of weeks. They might throw me off my balance and its downhill back to the gardens. If I fall and start to roll, I doubt I’ll stop until I bounce off a dragon sculpture.”
“Ah, now there’s an image,” he laughed.
“Are you two done with the comedy routine so we can start the ceremony?” the minister interjected quietly, causing everyone to laugh.
They both nodded toward him and began repeating the vows as he guided them through the ceremony. It seemed to fly by now that they were actually here. All the weeks of waiting and planning even this simple little day were being eaten away in a matter of minutes.
“You may kiss the bride!” the minister was saying when it seemed like they had barely even started.
Colin kissed her as everyone applauded before leaning down and kissing her huge belly, causing everyone to express a collective “aww.”
Afterwards, they adjourned to the house where Anna had prepared a huge meal for all to share. It was like going to some huge family gathering, something Ashley had never been able to do with divorced parents and no siblings. She rarely even talked about her parents anymore, having lost them to their own misery and vices years before. Still, there was a melancholy as moments like this reminded her of a life she had missed out on and one she was determined to share with her children so they never had to grow up lonely or confused.
The night passed and the days rolled by, counting down until her due date was at hand. Ashley wasn’t sure where the time had gone and as she grew closer to delivering their twins, she began to get incredibly nervous. What if something went wrong with the delivery, for her or for them . . . or all of them? It was fascinating how she had gone into this pregnancy with a mindset that it was someone else’s child inside of her. She had distanced herself from the creation she would have to give up when the time came.
Now, she couldn’t imagine being parted from her children or her beautiful husband, neither by distance nor death. How her parents had been willing to give so little to ensure her happiness, she didn’t know, but it was a mistake she would never make. Then again, they had lacked one thing that she and Colin shared. They had never been truly in love, it seemed. It had always been a battle for dominance between them and, in the end, they both lost.
“Ashley, are you okay?” Colin said from nearby.
She looked up from her thoughts, unaware of what he meant until she looked down and saw a puddle beneath her. How could she have missed an event like that? Even in deep thought, it seemed like she would have felt the wetness.
“I think my water might have just broken,” she replied.
“Were you having contractions?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“You don’t know?”
“I had some indigestion earlier. Maybe it was some sort of pre-labor thing? I don’t know. This is my first time doing this,” she shrugged.
“Um, let’s sit you down somewhere and I’m going to go upstairs and fetch Simon.”
“Probably a good idea,” she said, feeling petrified.
Colin went racing up the steps and returned with Simon in tow. He sat down beside Ashley and began to do a quick exam as he asked questions. When he was done, he sat back and smiled.
“Well, doll. I think we’re going to have us some babies today. Let’s get you into bed.”
He and Colin helped her to her feet. The first thing she noticed as she stood was the heaviness that seemed to have settled into her pelvic area. She moved slowly, trying to get an image of babies just falling out and crashing onto the floor out of her head. She knew it was a ridiculous notion, but she couldn’t shake the image of it as she ambled toward her old sitting room, now the nursery and, temporarily, the delivery room.
It was only once they arrived that she felt her first contraction, almost doubling her over as it crashed through her center, locking her into a spastic state for a moment before letting go and fading into nothing again.
“God, are you okay?” Colin gasped.
“I’m good. I think I just had my first contraction,” she said.
“Colin, I’m going to step out for a moment and go get some things I’ll need from my quarters. If you can help her slip into one of the gowns we set aside for this, that’ll be good,” the doctor told him.
“Okay,” Colin replied, sounding a little bewildered.
He helped her change and got her into bed as they waited for the doctor to return. He came back a few minutes later with his doctor’s bag and began prepping her for delivery, getting her into position to check for dilation once her contractions were closer together. Everything seemed to go so fast once her contractions grew closer together. Two nurses appeared in the room, called in to assist with the birth and the newborns as they arrived.
The staff and Colin’s parents paced nervously outside. Ashley could hear their footsteps back and forth and their conversation as they waited to see the new additions to the family. After all this time, Colin and Ashley still only knew the sex of one child, as the other had been positioned in such a way during every ultrasound so as not to give that detail away. Colin insisted that the mystery baby was female, due to the modesty displayed, even in the womb.
“All right, her we go then, Ashley,” the doctor said after doing another check.
Ashley squeezed Colin’s hand, feeling more frightened than she had ever been in her life, but he coached her with her breathing as they had been taught in the private Lamaze classes they had attended here at home. Much to both of their relief, everything went smoothly as one baby was born, a boy. They had no idea if he was the mystery baby or not, but he was deemed perfect by the nurse he was handed off to for care.
“And we have . . . another boy!” the doctor announced as the other baby was born.
“So much for modesty dictating little girls,” Ashley said breathlessly, feeling exhausted from the labor, despite it having been much better than she had expected.
It was nothing like some of the horror stories she had heard of babies taking hours of labor and hours of delivery. Not her boys, though. They were ready to take this world by storm and seemed to just dance right out to begin their journey. It was like, “Hey, we’re here. Start the bagpipes to sound our arrival!”
“This is the second best day of my life,” Colin said, tears in his eyes as the nurses returned with the cleaned and examined babies.
“What was the first?” Ashley asked as they lay one on either side of her chest to cuddle against her.
“The day I met their mother,” Colin replied, placing a hand on the backs of each of his boys and leaning in to kiss her.