Please make sure you've finished reading Teenage Baby before reading the prequel. It will spoil lots of stuff you're not supposed to know before you finish it, thanks! :)

Chapter 2 | Leo

Elizabeth was a queen.

Jayden's queen.

She was established royalty for him even though she wore no crown and sat on no throne. She didn't need to, really. She didn't need validation of molten, chiseled gold laying atop her headful of luscious hair to be his queen, nor did she need to sit on a large fancily gilded chair to be undisputed highness. All she needed was to look at him with her glorious face and he'd bow to her majesty.

Jayden didn't exactly understand what about her face made her so holy, so royal; whether it was the graceful arch of her brows or the smooth bridge of her nose, the perfect outline of her rosy lips or the godly slope of her cheekbones.

But did the answer matter? He didn't think so. He was alright with pondering the source of her magic everyday and coming to no answer as long as she was with him.

She was his. His queen. His wife.

His, his, his. All his. Nobody else's.

After so much pain and distance, he was finally with her. He was finally married to her, and they'd been so for over a year. Still, it felt so surreal to him. Still, he'd wake up every morning to her warmth with the same passionate adoration burning in his chest like the first day of their honeymoon and he knew she reciprocated the feeling. Still, he'd shudder when he'd remember the cruelty of the departure their very own families had been inducing; they'd tried to keep them apart because a rich man like Jayden couldn't marry a typical girl like Elizabeth. The biggest stereotype of all. Because apparently she was a gold digger with her greedy eyes rooted upon the money he owned.

But they'd been wrong and both Elizabeth and Jayden had fought to prove it. They'd managed, though only after they'd tolerated the snarky remarks thrown at them anytime they persisted to hold hands in front of their families and the covert, displeased side looks every time they passed by. It had driven Jayden along the edge of insanity, that nobody had been able to see how Elizabeth was the very reason he woke up every morning, the reason he bothered to live. The very thread that kept his sanity stitched together.

Once, rumors started spreading about how he was obsessed with Elizabeth. He'd snorted then, as if denying. But innerly, he'd thought, how could I not be obsessed with this beautiful divinity?

All this tragedy didn't matter now, though. Jayden didn't want to remember. Or more specifically, he couldn't remember because right now his mind was far too occupied with worry.

Elizabeth was still sleeping soundly whilst Jayden had been long awake with his tired, sunken eyes carefully regarding the contours of her angelic face and his fingers softly twisting a strand of her hair around. He wanted to enjoy the feeling and bask in the privilege of the living art that lay beside him and glowed like diamonds underneath the early morning light, but he was far too tired, far too exhausted to even focus enough on her.

Jayden hadn't slept well—or more so at all—which was why he felt so drained. He hadn't had a good sleep for months. Ever since his beloved Eliza had walked up to him once after he'd come from work with a smile brighter than the light her eyes harbored and a gentle skip to her steps. She'd held his hand then and guided it forwards, until his palm was pressed flatly against his stomach, before dropping the news:

I'm pregnant, Jay!

As opposed to any normal man, Jayden had never been too excited for their child. Even when they'd first gotten married, he'd insisted to take contraceptives because he wanted to enjoy those few blissful months they'd spend completely alone before they'd become intruded by the baby. Jayden wouldn't admit but he'd always wanted all Elizabeth's attention on him, with zero distraction in the form of a whining newborn.

Eventually, Elizabeth had insisted she wanted a baby. So they'd done it and soon enough she'd become pregnant. Jayden knew the pains of pregnancy and it wasn't helping him accept the entire thing. He didn't exactly like how his queen needed to tolerate a living child gradually growing in her uterus whilst shamelessly arching her spine and feeding off from the bliss in her blood. And to top it off, he'd slide out of her nine months later but only after giving her untimely, nefarious pain.

His queen didn't deserve this pain.

But only because she had been so excited about the pregnancy, Jayden had forced himself to suck it up and go along.

Despite the lingering bits of displeasure, Jayden made sure to be a perfect man for her during those months. The baby was already inflicting enough damage, and he wanted to at least ease the burden upon her. He spent hours reading all about how he should treat her properly through all the pain she'd be experiencing. But midst his research all about pregnancy, he'd accidentally stumbled upon the sections and sites filled with alarms and warnings and personal experiences about how pregnancy hadn't ended up with the birth of the new being, with balloons and presents and congratulations, and instead had winded up with caskets, burials and the darkest black.

Death.

Jayden had known birth was a dangerous thing and that some women died through it, but he hadn't put too much thought into it. As soon as the concept had been brought up, he started worrying about Eliza immensely.

Worrying was a part of human nature but for Jayden, it didn't end there. Things started getting crazy when that little natural worry about potential death turned to downright paranoia.

He'd found himself reading in his spare time about the different cases of childbirth deaths, jumping from site to site and from link to link. Then, the concern that all this knowledge had fed became powerful enough to latch onto him, grip his mind and lure him into spending all night long just skimming the percentages and chances of death while he anxiously gnawed at his thumbnail. The stakes were alarmingly high and all the info he'd been cramming in his head about the devastated men who'd shared the tragic loss of their wives during child birth were beginning to eat him up entirely. Suddenly, all he could imagine were scenarios of her dying.

Jayden didn't want to her to die. He knew couldn't tolerate such a calamity. He knew she was the oxygen he inhaled and without her he'd gasp and choke and flounder for breaths until he'd writhe like a fish out of water. Jayden was aware of how she held his entirety precariously in the soft palm of her hand, how she had him enchanted with her effortless spells and maybe he didn't mind the control she had on him.

Her absence meant his doom. A standardized formula. An inevitable destiny scrawled into solid stone.

And like that, as the months of her pregnancy had progressed, Jayden had found himself growing increasingly anxious; the more intently he read and read about childbirth deaths, the more the concern swelled in his chest. By her ninth month, he'd become completely paranoid.

Elizabeth's lashes fluttered softly, barely parting enough for her set of glimmering cerulean eyes to be put on display. Her lips pulled up into a sleepy smile as soon as she registered Jayden already awake, and she grunted tiredly before heaving herself up so that her achy back was up against the headboard. "Morning, Jay," she murmured.

"Morning, beautiful," he said with as much joviality he could muster but his tired eyes betrayed him. The blackish, swollen skin beneath them didn't go unnoticed. Elizabeth reached her fingertips up, gently tracing them.

"Haven't slept well again, Jay? What's wrong?"

"I'm worried, Eliza." Jayden let out a prolonged sigh through his lips. "Aren't you? You're in your ninth month. And- and I'm so worried about how the birth will go. I don't want you to d-"

"Don't say it," Elizabeth hushed him. This wasn't the first time he'd brought up the concept and they'd in fact just about fought over the matter before; the amount of negativity he'd been dispersing through his worry over her had become way too overwhelming. Almost annoying. "Jay, stop doing that to yourself. Stop worrying. Hopefully, everything will go fine."

"How can I not worry? Have you read how many die through it? It's risky. You know that I'll lose it without you. I can't even imagine what I'll do if anything happens to you. I just- I can't stop thinking about about all the shit I read. So many women died in birth, I don't want it to happen to you."

"Well, maybe you could stop thinking about it, and maybe just for a second think about our son? Can you do that?" She raised an accusing brow at him, before reaching out to cup the side of his bare neck in her palm and pull him close enough for her lips to brush briefly against his. Her voice softened again, barely a whisper as her eyes flickered down to her rounded, protruding stomach where baby Leo was settled. "Forget about death. Think about our son, Jay. He's coming out soon. Leo, my little prince."

Jayden stared at her for a second, before leaning forward and pressing his face in the crook of her neck. "Don't call him prince, Eliza," he mumbled against her skin. "There's no royalty after you."

And he was serious. He meant it when he'd said that he didn't see his son as a prince. Right now, he admittedly felt like Leo was only posing significant danger on her.

"Jay." Elizabeth pulled him away from her only so she'd align their gazes. "Yes, there is royalty after me. There's Leo, he is royalty for me, okay? This is getting annoying. You're not even excited that he could come out any moment now. I appreciate that you're worried about me but right now little Leo is more important. My baby is more important than anyone."

"No, you are more important, Eliza. I care about my son but I care about you much more. We fought the world to be together, remember? I don't want to lose you after all we did to get married."

"I know, I know. But all this worrying won't change a thing, Jay. Destiny is destiny. If I'm destined to die during birth then let it be. I'd be honored to die for my son to be born."

Jayden's eyes flashed with an indiscernible, wild emotion; a mix of crazed disbelief and possessive fear. "Eliza! No! You can't die, I don't want you to."

"Yeah, I've been telling you to stop thinking about it. But no. You gotta keep torturing yourself. There's nothing we can do but hope it all goes well."

"Yes, we can do something. I mean, we could've done something. Now it's too late."

"Like what?"

Jayden bit his bottom lip. It'd been a passing thought that he'd dismissed himself but with the proximity of the danger on his wife, he'd started contemplating it more. Anything, absolutely anything to keep her safe. "Maybe... maybe you could've uh... uh.. a-aborted him? Just- just because I didn't want you to risk yourself, we don't need a child—"

Elizabeth's jaw dropped. "Jayden!" Her voice was sharp and disbelieving, and the incredulity deep within it came like a slap to Jayden's face. "What the actual fuck? You wanted me to abort him? No way in hell would I ever do that! How could you, how could you ever think about this shit? My son, my little baby." She placed a hand on her stomach protectively, glaring at her husband through accusingly narrowed eyes as if offended on her unborn son's part. "I wouldn't kill him. I can't believe you wanted to kill him!"

Jayden suddenly wished he'd never even said it. Every muscle in her tensed as she scooted away from. He felt a dull throb in his heart when he realized how repulsed she looked from him. The amount of anger he'd unawarely inflicted in her gut swallowed her whole, and he knew it wasn't healthy for her to be so triggered.

"Eliza, relax, please. It's not good for you," he coaxed as he reached out to touch her, only to receive a dismissive, angry swat on the hand. She shook her head at him, her nose scrunched with disgust.

"Jay." She held out her palm before he could touch her again, struggling to compose herself through a helpless deep breath. "I'm going to act like I didn't hear this shit. Don't ever bring it up again. Ever." She swung her legs down the edge of the bed, but in doing so a deep pain bursted along her lower stomach. With a grunt, she held her abdomen and hunched forwards, hissing as another, sudden pang tore like a knife into the muscles.

Jay frowned worriedly. "E-Eliza? What's wrong?"

There was jarring silence for a moment. He watched her shoulders heave as she remained staring ahead.

"Jay," she finally breathed, her hand patting around the mattress until she found his hand and squeezed it tightly. Usually, he'd take it as an affectionate gesture but this time he felt like it conveyed something completely else. "I- I think-"

She screamed before she could speak again. Loud and blood-curdling; a sound so urgent and so pained that Jayden could feel as it dappled down his eardrums and skittered coldly across his spine. On first sight he thought he was imagining but he couldn't have mistaken the small red spot that marred the silk sheets beneath her.

"Jay! My water broke!"

*_*_*_*_*_*

Every second Jayden spent holding Eliza's hand tightly as she continuously screamed tore his soul bit by bit. Like some form of torture; slow and painful. Each pulse of the pain that shot through his veins lingered and festered like an open wound being poked.

At this point, watching Elizabeth's head slam back against the pillow each time she pushed and her skin glisten with arduous sweat, Jayden was absolutely sure that he loathed the entire process and that he shouldn't have agreed to have a baby so soon. Maybe she should've aborted him.

Eliza had been in labor for over an hour. The doctor had continuously urged her to push, the nurses had been as politely encouraging as they could be, and Jayden had been acting like he was the one giving birth instead; it was the sight of his love, of his highness, crippling under the unreal pain her own son was inducing that gave him double the sensation she was feeling. His heart, ripped and torn and mangled, and his bones, aching with profound sadness from the very depth, would rather take on pain of their own than sadness over hers.

"Come on, Elizabeth. We need you to push harder," the doctor solemnly demanded.

"I'm trying!" Elizabeth's voice was strained, wretched and scratchy from all effort she'd been pouring into giving Leo freedom.

Another push from her followed by another cry. Jayden screwed his eyes shut as he heard it. He couldn't take it anymore, couldn't listen to her shriek with the pain that whisked through every fiber in her muscles as baby Leo stubbornly refused to slip out. Because for him, that goddamn little boy insisted that he shall not begin his life without a grand entrance; a velvety red carpet made of Eliza's blood and trumpets that echoed the sound of her screams.

"Just.. Just get the hell out already, Leo!" Jayden shouted. "Why isn't he getting out? This needs to stop!"

"Sir, be patient."

Jayden disregarded the verbal abuse he'd intended to spill at the doctor. Instead, he chose to focus on his wife, leaning in towards her and pressing his face to the side of her head. The luscious blond hair was wet with the sweat that trickled along her throbbing temple, and he felt her tilt her head the slightest bit towards him. "You don't deserve this," he whispered, his words lost underneath the sound of her heavy breath. Her clammy fingers intertwined with his regardlessly and squeezed them tightly. Jayden knew that this meant she was about to push again so he readied himself and his hearing to be poisoned and torn with the inevitable scream he knew followed each push, stitched his heart with loose threads before her heavy groan would tear it apart all over again.

Except that never happened.

Jayden pulled back immediately when eerie silence persisted. "Eliza?" He called out worriedly. But her head was lolled back in the pillow, and she forcefully rolled it towards him so she could see him. Her face was a sickeningly yellow hue, almost appalling, or perhaps very much so. Her chest heaved with uneven, erratic moves, shallow rises and falls that bizarrely matched the exhausted, prolonged blinks of her eyes which were a dreary shade. A shallow blue, so disconnected and so tired it couldn't be captured.

"I- I can't anymore," Elizabeth mumbled breathily.

Jayden's head snapped towards the nurses. "Is- is this normal?"

"No, that's not supposed to happen. Doctor," the nurse urgently informed with a voice professionally balanced on a steady tone. The heart monitor suddenly began beeping and the arches of Eliza's beats became alarmingly close and fast. "Low blood pressure and fast heart beats. This isn't good."

Jayden peeked at the doctor; her movements were quick and urgent and her gloves were covered in blood. His heart dropped onto the polished tiles by his feet and shattered into shards he knew nothing could restore. Too much bleeding. Maybe it was a trigger or something but suddenly all the shit he'd read about child birth deaths bursted up from the depth of his mind to the very front, plaguing out the sense of reality he was already so precariously hanging onto.

"Isn't that too much blood? Is she bleeding too much? What- what's going on? I need to know-"

"Sir, she's undergoing some complications and we need you to go out of the room."

"No, I'm not going out. Eliza-"

Jayden never really had the chance to protest before he was urgently escorted out with demanding hands. Then, he was left behind the shut door of the room where all his world, all his sanity and grip onto life lay on a bed with what they'd called complications and a baby inside of her refusing to just get out of her vagina already. Because the pain he'd caused her during pregnancy wasn't enough. Because baby Leo gave himself the authority to pain this beautiful divinity of a wife. Or at least Jayden thought so.

He paced frantically across the tiles, a hand tugging the knotty, matted mess of hair on his head and the other held up by his mouth; he nibbled nervously at his nails. His lips parted for a set of words to flood out continuously, quiet whispers and pleas for his beloved not to die. Prayers that begged death for himself rather than her, for he fully knew that the end of his life was the precise equivalent of living without his queen.

Please don't die, Eliza, he thought. Please.

The next passing hours stretched until they seemed several torturous lifetimes for Jayden. His ears caught the frenzy unraveling in the room, the constant electronic beeps and the urgent, frantic bark of commands. Nurses were going in and out, rushing and stumbling. He was dangerously tempted to barge in past the closed door and take a look at what was happening, at what was going on with his Eliza. But before he settled on the decision, he heard something. Something new.

Soft crying.

Jayden froze. Completely. He turned so he was facing the door squarely, but something in him refused to cooperate and make a move forwards. He stood there, eyes unblinking and chest still, every cell and fiber in him straining to grasp what was going on. The crying was that of a newborn's. He knew it could be his own son, his own flesh and blood, but he didn't care.

Eliza was all he could think of.

The door was pulled open just enough for the doctor to slip through. Jayden never had the chance to look behind her or even steal the slightest glimpse; her shoulders straight away plagued the background and then the door was closed again. The plastic gloves stretched on her hands and her coat were covered in blood, morbidly large splotches of deep crimson that were hard to look at. Especially when he realized that all the blood belonged to his wife.

He swallowed hard. Somehow, he could tell from that expression of both professional gloom and somewhat sympathy on the doctor's face that something horrible had happened. "What happened? How's Eliza now?"

The doctor looked him straight in the eyes. "Sir, your child was thankfully born fine. He's good."

Jayden knew the but that was pushing its way forwards. Could sense it, could feel it. He was simultaneously impatient for her to keep going and dreadful of it.

"But unfortunately, your wife couldn't make it. My condolences for your loss, sir. May she Rest In Peace."

Jayden blinked. Only blinked. He didn't do anything else. Then he wet his chapped lower lip and laughed quietly like he hadn't been just informed of his wife's death.

"No. No way. You're kidding, right?" He questioned shakily with a joking smile. He waited for it; waited for her to burst out laughing along with him and blurt that Eliza wasn't dead like he'd been dreading, that she just had a terrible sense of humor that she probably shouldn't use during sensitive moments like these.

But she never laughed, never smiled, never took back her words and confessed her stupid joke. The reality in front of him started dawning, all at once like suddenly the entire world had conspired to butcher his heart and his sanity by taking away the one person he'd lived for. The entire world including his son, Leo, the very origin of the death itself and the devil who'd sat at the head of the table as they'd negotiated the theft of Eliza from his life. But he refused to accept it, refused to believe it had happened.

"I'm sorry, sir. But I'm not joking. She started bleeding too much. We tried as much as we could to save her."

"N-No. This- this isn't true. I know my queen is alive. I know. She promised. Eliza doesn't lie to me."

Jayden roughly pushed past the doctor to the room. He walked towards his wife and yanked down the fabric they'd pulled over her face with trembling hands. How dare they cover this beautiful artifact of curves and dips and two round pools of blue oceans? He looked at her. Looked again. And again. But why couldn't he find her? Where was her familiar porcelain skin beneath the dusky blue across her flesh, or her plump pink lips under the swollen livid ones that were now shone under the florescent lights above? Where was his Eliza?

His hand reached to touch her cheek, but he flinched at the alarmingly cold skin and the absence of warmth. At the dying, lifeless flesh. At the unchanging zero responsiveness from her to his touch. At the slow confirmation of her death.

"Eliza? Talk to me, please," he whispered brokenly as he held her flaccid hand in his own. Every inch of his skin longed for her to wrap those dainty fingers of hers around his, for them to slot into the gaps between his own so perfectly like they were made to be that way. But it never happened and an entire inferno of yearning kindled in his chest. His ribs caught on fire, so did his heart, so did his lungs. So did his sanity. "You can't die, Eliza. You- you promised me. Remember? I was afraid you'd die and you said weren't going to."

Jayden had never felt as defenseless as he was right then; with the only element which had tethered him to life now a lifeless corpse of icy skin and sickeningly purple lips. He bit his bottom lip, hard enough to draw a thin trickle of blood out through the small tear as his teeth dug deeper. His vision was getting foggy but he fought helplessly against the brimming tears, because he knew if he cried it meant he established her death and he didn't want to. He didn't want to believe it.

"Eliza, please!" His voice was a heart-wrenching mix of both a violent sob and strained words thrown out at once. There was no answer as he'd wished. There was no response. Only devastating silence. The confirmation slammed into him like a truck, and white shock swallowed his vision. Jayden collapsed onto his knees by the side of her bed, pressing his face into the back of her hand and allowing himself the tragedy of grieving his timeless loss as the situation stabbed him in the deepest part of his burning heart. "You promised, Eliza, you- you-"

The sobs that racked his chest cut him off. His shoulders shook violently with each shaky breath that filled his crippling lungs, but he managed to let out the remains of his words. "You promised! How did this happen! How!"

Jayden hadn't really said it to receive an actual answer, but apparently the nurses only understood the surface. Suddenly, they were rambling on scientific explanations which included the placenta, blood loss, bleeding, heart rate and some other shit he couldn't quite grasp. He'd never been exactly ace at biology. And he didn't care about all this, because if there were any reason at the base of her death it was one and only one he could think of:

Leo.

"Sir, here, hold your child. Leo, isn't it? That's the last word she said. He's beautiful."

Jayden heard footsteps progress towards him. He slowly pulled away from Elizabeth's hand and his blurry, tearful sight fell upon that little newborn, wrapped in a pearly baby blue blanket and bundled up in the nurse's arms as he cried softly, kicking his tiny feet out.

Jayden didn't understand why Leo was crying. He found it odd, how he was the one expressing the grief when it was Eliza who'd undergone the pain and bore the deathly consequence. He stood up, though his wobbly knees begged to remain there, and scaled forwards, almost drunkenly. As soon as he was close enough, he roughly wiped off the streams of tears across his cheeks and sniffled sorrowfully before peeking down at Leo. He chuckled bitterly, at how his small puckered face already reflected that of Eliza's, at how Leo was already taunting him.

The nurse gently passed Leo over until he was all cradled in Jayden's arms. Jayden smiled bitterly even through the tears, though the expression on his face was deciphered by the surrounding people as the joys of holding his first son. The joy that could fill in the hollow sadness of his loss. But they were wrong in every way possible. Because even if the angels of the skies themselves descended to the ground to console him they wouldn't make it up for the absence of his queen. No one ever would.

He purposely turned his back on the nurses, slowly rocking Leo back and forth in his hold. The fire which had flared in his chest settled for a moment, and between his burnt ribs sat the remains of the ashes of his heart and sanity.

"Shh, baby boy," he said aloud, tears trickling down the slope of his cheeks. He brought his son closer to his chest, then leant down until his quivering lips brushed just by his small, delicate earlobe. "Shhh. You shouldn't cry."

Jayden caressed Leo's soft cheek with his finger, so gentle yet so effortlessly menacing. With a voice lower than a toxic whisper, he said, "You don't have the right to cry. Not when you killed her. Not when you did this to her."

*_*_*_*_*_*_*

So yep, it was made pretty obvious in the first book! Childbirth accident :( your thoughts about the chapter? Leo's dad? Mom? And fetus Leo lol?

Also guys check out staliarism 's bio! She has the funniest/sweetest reference about Leo there! I loved it so much

Thank you so so so much for reading/commenting/voting <33 I can't tell you how much it means to me, you guys are the best<3

Side note: I'm just seventeen so I don't have personal experience with birth or anything. I had to make a research to write this chapter. I even asked my biology teacher. He looked at me like wtf?? And I was like 'Mister it's important trust me' The point is, I'm not sure how authentic or realistic this scene was, so if there's anything wrong please don't attack. Tell me and I'll edit. Thank you! :)