It was not that a warrior was trained not to feel pain, but rather to not be controlled by it. To endure it, to be indifferent to it.
But in a war that had demanded so much death, it would be the bringing of life that finally broke the commander.
Theo had led an army equipped with little more than a sword and a story going on four years now. The battles were the exciting parts that gave them purpose and drive, but a majority of the time had been spent in the collective misery of hopelessness, starving and angry and exhausted in a harsh foreign land.
It was during these times that the men often found comfort in each other’s tents, arms, beds—it wasn’t a matter of attraction so much as a connection borne of shared experience, of knowing that the person next to you would suffer with you, fight beside you, die for you. And that you would do the same for them.
But Theo was the commander. He was supposed to be stronger than the rest. He wasn’t supposed to need or feel or fear anything, and any evidence to the contrary might cause his men to lose faith—both in him and in their mission.
He wasn’t supposed to, but he did. God, did he need to be touched, to be fucked, to be held. To be told, just once in a fucking while, that one day he’d finally be able to wash the blood off his hands.
For years he resisted, but then after a particularly devastating loss—nearly half his men had to be buried that day, including his second in command, his best friend since childhood—he could not stop the cries of anguish from escaping in the solitude of his tent. And upon hearing their commander’s grief, all those closest to him—the ones that remained—came to him that night and he indulged in the physical solace they offered.
It was just one moment of weakness, one horrible night out of a thousand, but after that battle and its aftermath something changed. There was a fire in his men that Theo had never seen before and the tides were turning. They began winning more often than not, at least once without a single casualty. They were taking back villages and rewarded with cooked meals and warm beds—comforts they had not received since shipping out.
The commander had noticed his waistline thickening, but after so many months on small, questionable rations, he was happy to start rebuilding some of the muscle he’d lost.
As the weeks of relative prosperity passed, though, he realized most of the weight he was putting on was not in his arms our shoulders, despite nearly daily sparring with his generals, and instead continued to pile on to his midsection.
It was embarrassing, thinking he’d let himself become soft and comfortable, but quickly turned to worrisome. At first he could attribute the odd sensations to indigestion or heartburn or stress, but then they became more concrete. He could actually see the movement beneath his skin as he felt it, confirming that there was, indeed, something inside him.
He came up with a thousand reasons to keep the discovery to himself, rationalizing that if it was some sort of parasite, which seemed unlikely, there was nothing he could really do about it anyway, and if it wasn’t… well, there was also nothing he could do about it. Not for a few more months, anyway. He had not been keeping track of exactly how long it had been since that night, but the end of the war was in sight now and with any luck he could birth this child back home—far, far away from the hell in which it had been conceived.
But when had luck ever been on Theo’s side?
He had been uncomfortable during the whole ride to the battlefront—the enemy’s last stronghold, and hopefully the end to this godforsaken journey—but the saddle had been hell on his hips for weeks now, and he chalked it up to the new imbalance in his posture. The bump was easy enough to conceal beneath heavy cloaks and armor, but he could not entirely hide the muffled grunts and pained winces every time his back seized up in protest.
Which was why, when they finally arrived to the place they’d set up camp, he ordered the nearest soldiers to set up his tent immediately, then—perhaps with more bite than necessary—to get the fuck out.
He knew he needed to plan, to survey the land and the defenses and come up with a strategy that would allow them to defeat these bastards once and for all. It was his duty, but for the first time in a very long time, he was not sure he could fulfill it.
As much as it killed him to delegate his responsibilities, Theo knew he would become a liability if he tried to do everything his men had come to expect of him. So he sent out a small group of spies to gather intel while he stayed to devise a plan of action with his generals. He was much more silent than usual, letting the others come up with ideas even as they kept glancing nervously back to him in case they were overstepping their authority. But he would just nod and continue pacing, putting everyone on edge with his unusual behavior.
This weird, anxious energy spread through the ranks as the oddities continued—the commander did not dine with his men that night, nor did he offer any words of encouragement or morale to ready their spirits. In the morning he was late getting to the front line, and then once he was there looked as if he’d already been through the battle.
“Are you alright?” Demetrius, one of the potential fathers of his child, whispered to him so that no one else could hear.
“I will be if we can finish this,” he answered honestly, resisting the urge to groan as his stomach tightened painfully. Then, once the pain—a contraction, he finally admitted to himself—had passed, and so that everyone around could hear him, “Our suffering has been long, but our victory shall be swift. This ends today. Then… we can go home.”
If Demetrius didn’t know better, he’d have said there was a small quaver to his commander’s voice. But there was no time to question it before he led the charge toward the enemy gates.
At the start of the war, a single battle could have lasted days or even weeks. But now both sides had dwindled in number and their best weapons were stealth and violence—kill quietly and without mercy. If Theo had thought the adrenaline of combat would drown out the waves of internal agony, he was wrong. He had only a tentative control over the actions of his body, and even less over the sounds that were coming out of his mouth. The desperation was evident in his movements; every swing and strike had to be perfectly timed and executed, every enemy dispatched in the time between contractions.
That was how he knew they were getting closer together. He had less time to fight, to win, and it was taking every ounce of discipline and skill and damn luck to continue to do so.
War was messy, and Theo was well acquainted with most bodily fluids by now… which was why he noticed an unfamiliar one soaking his tunic from the inside out. It was warm and, judging from the small trickle leeching into the snow, pinkish. He thought for a moment he might have been stabbed—and the next contraction felt very much the same—but the pressure in his pelvis increased exponentially and nearly brought him to his knees.
Shit. His water had broken.
And the enemy commander was walking toward him.
He had to get up. He had to find the strength. One more fight and it would be over.
Theo was still hunched over, recovering from a contraction, when the man approached him openly and with honor. And Theo had no choice but to fight him in the same way. He blew out three quick breaths and stood to his full height, squaring his shoulders and shifting his blade into position.
The two leaders were matched in every way—weaponry, stature, patience, skill—but it only took about two minutes to reveal that Theo was at a distinct disadvantage, and his opponent was not so noble as to not take advantage of it.
The grip on his sword loosened and it was kicked out of his hand. He tried to spin into the move and grab hold of the leg, but the other commander, quick as a whip, pivoted and swiped at Theo’s leg.
He went down hard into his back, the other’s weight settling on top of him and adding unnecessary pressure to the child already bearing down inside him and he cried out as it felt like the head was shoved violently closer toward its unprepared exit. On the bright side, the sound was so unexpected that it gave Theo the opening he needed to unsheath the dagger hidden between the folds of his armor and plunge it deep into his enemy’s neck.
There was a moment of silence before cheers erupted around him. He shoved off the dead weight and watched his men chase after the few remaining stragglers, struggling to get to his feet.
“Are you wounded?” Demetrius asked as he watched his friend halt and stagger. In response, the commander immediately fell back to the ground and yelled in earnest and Demetrius rushed to his side. “Help us, the commander is hurt!” he called to the other generals—he knew the commander would not want anyone to see him weak and vulnerable, but if someone had to, he would have preferred it to be them.
Theo was in a haze of pain as he was practically carried back to his tent. Nothing existed apart from the pain that now radiated all the way down his legs from his back. He was grunting and panting and wailing and his men were at a loss as to how to help him.
“Remove his armor,” Demetrius ordered, taking command when his commander was apparently out of commission. A quick once over did not reveal any obvious gaping wounds and he looked questioningly into his eyes. “Where are you injured?”
Theo collapsed onto the floor again and halfheartedly tried to order them all out of the room—he didn’t want them to see him like this—but they didn’t move and he realized it was possible he wasn’t even forming discernible words. “L-leave me,” he finally managed between gritted teeth, though he wasn’t sure his eyes weren’t making the opposite request.
Demetrius placed a hand in the crook of his superior’s neck and held his gaze. “In all battles, the only way we fight is together. This one will be no different.”
As Theo looked around the room at his soldiers—his friends and lovers—he finally understood what they had tried to tell him so many times before: strength was just as much about vulnerability as it was about power.
Theo nodded and moved Demetrius’s hand from his neck down to his stomach and his eyes widened just as Theo’s squeezed shut. “Help me.”
A look of determination settled on his face, as if he was readying himself to enter another battle. He motioned to the other men in the room and instructed them to position themselves on each side of their commander and support him in whatever position felt most comfortable.
Theo felt strongest on his feet, held up with an arm hooked under each shoulder, but bent down into a slight squat at the start of each new contraction, following the instinct to bear down and widen his stance. It was insufferable, the men holding him up having to switch out twice in order to keep him upright during the endless cycles of pushing.
His hips were narrow, and it took hours for the babe to fully engage in his pelvis and align with his opening. Abruptly, he disentangled himself from his human supports and dropped to his hands and knees, rocking back and forth and moaning. Every so often he’d stop, sticking his ass back as far as it would go and push, shaking with the effort. The outline of the head could be seen bowing the skin out dramatically in stark contrast to the toned muscle on either side. He could no longer close his legs and a sharp pain caused him to gasp and shudder.
“Good, good,” Demetrius praised, with echoes from the other men. “It is coming.” He took the commander’s hand and placed it at his opening to feel the progress.
Theo could cup his whole hand around the bulge trapped just inside him, not even visible yet, and for the first time in his life, he was afraid that he might not be able to finish his mission.
When the next contraction demanded he push, he could not. His body was warring with his mind and it was all too much and an unbidden tear fell down his cheek.
Demetrius, ever watchful, knelt in front of him and pressed their foreheads together. “Theo.” It was the first time since his best friend had become his commander that he’d dared use his name so casually, and it had the desired effect. For it wasn’t his commander staring back at him with helpless, defeated eyes, but rather the scared little boy that had found shelter with him when his whole family had been lost to a tragic fire. “You must keep fighting. Fight for this child the same way you would fight for any of us.”
Theo looked around the small tent, into the eyes of the people he risked his life for every day, and knew that he was right. They could do this, together, just like they always did.
With some assistance, he got back to his feet. Then, with two men kneeling on either side of him, straddled their bent legs in a sort of makeshift chair and allowed gravity to pull the child down in aid to his efforts until finally he felt himself begin to stretch around the massive head.
He yelled with every push and his men yelled with him. It became their battle cry.
“More, more!” Demetrius encouraged as his hole widened from the size of a coin, then an orange, then a soup bowl. Then with a guttural cry the rest of the head popped out with a violent spray of fluids, causing all the men to cheer.
The shoulder proved at least as difficult to get moving, and Theo leaned back against a third body, letting his feet come off the ground so that he could bring his knees up by his ears and sit deeper into the squat.
He pushed, and pushed, and pushed, crying out in exhaustion and frustration and then pure blinding pain when someone pushed down on his stomach while Demetrius pulled from the other end, stretching impossibly wider over one shoulder, then the other, trapped in this hell for several moments to catch his breath, and then with one last push and one final roar, brought his child fully into the world.
The soldiers circled around him, beating their chests and chanting the victory as a large, loud baby was placed in his arms.
“Congratulations, commander,” Demetrius said with a cheeky smirk. “You have a healthy son.”
