**Paige’s POV **

I don’t remember when the pain stops, not really. I remember heat, pressure, noise. Then suddenly it all goes quiet.

It’s not silence, exactly. Just a shift. Like the world exhales and rearranges itself around something new.

Her, my daughter, with the brightest, purest of souls.

She’s warm against my chest, impossibly small and yet somehow everything. Her weight grounds me in a way nothing ever has before. My hands shake as I cradle her, my ...