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Chapter Text

Lamber isn’t stupid. He’s obviously biased but of all of his brothers he’ll argue he’s the least stupid one. Mostly he recognizes that nobody is exempt of stupidity, but there is a difference between being stupid because you’re stupid and being stupid willingly.

He’ll argue that the difference between being stupid and not being stupid is how willingly you make stupid decisions. He’s smart enough to know when he’s making a stupid decision. All stupid decisions Geralt has made have been because he’s just plain stupid. All stupid decisions Lambert has made have been carefully calculated and planned.

He knows when he’s about to do something incredibly stupid and he’s smart enough to plan for the best outcome. Sometimes you can’t avoid making stupid decisions, the least you can do is recognize that the decision is stupid and you have committed to it fully.

Then there are things outside of his control. And then there are moments of stupid good luck, which not just for being good are less stupid.

Lambert not presenting as an omega until he was out on the path could have been considered horrible luck for many. Having your first heat without the protection of a solid structure around you is, after all, dangerous. He didn’t enjoy having to watch the mouth of the cave every single second of it, snarling through pain and sweat and being mind-numbly horny. But.

Getting to be the mages’ breeding Witcher bitch is not a fate Lambert would have taken to kindly, to put it mildly. Whatever people wanted to say about omegas, that they were made for breeding so they would definitely enjoy being used for not other purpose, was absolutely horseshit in Lambert’s opinion and nobody was going to convince him otherwise.

So, shit luck, good luck, stupid luck or whatever; having his first heat out in the path meant nobody was the wiser of his designation. It also meant he had the chance to find a healer who would help him create a potion strong enough to mask his designation. Strong enough to fool a Witcher.

Lambert is a beta, as far as anyone knows.

Not that many people needed to worry about it, turned out. Stupid luck and all, by the time Lambert is actually able to go back to Kaer Morhen, there’s no more Kaer Morhen to go back to. There’s no more mages, no more halls bursting with miserable children roaming around, no more Witchers drinking and laughing and telling stories of their year on the path. Nobody laughs for a good decade.

Lambert hates the fucking place. He thinks he may hate the silence more.

However much he may tolerate the remaining of his brothers, or even Vesemir, Lambert still doesn’t tell anyone about being an omega.

The thing is, omegas are rare, for Witchers. Not many omegas make it through the trials. Not many schools tried to even use omegas for the trials because they knew it would most likely be a waste of time. Most children had already shown a designation by the time they went through the trials too.

Lambert arrived there late. By the time he was taken he was already around eleven. He was starved and beaten and spent the winters half-naked sleeping on the floor by his mother to keep her warm. Spent his days foraging since he could walk, killing birds and other small animals since he could aim. He, in other words, had no time to develop any designation.

Then the trials happened before he could even gain enough weight, everyone waiting for him to not make it. He may have lived out of spite, he thinks. The first of many stupid decisions made willingly that were backed up by stupid dumb luck.

Omegas, though rare and largely rejected by most schools, had the ability to remain fertile. The mages find this out by accident. And by ‘accident’ what they actually mean is by virtue of experimenting and spying on everyone.

Lambert doesn’t know the details of how they found out,  he just knows they did. The seed of an alpha Witcher would knock up an omega, according to the stories the mages told, by virtue of the omega’s fertility alone. Lambert called bullshit to that argument, sure they must have done something to at least the alphas’ mutagenes.

Regardless of stories or the truth, the result was Witcher omegas being able to give birth. Not to regular babies either, but to babies who were sure to become Witchers, already exposed to the mutagenes, already with magic passing through their veins. They weren’t special in any other way, and their relevance was only on the mages creating more Witchers without having to take in more children who were mostly sure to fail.

Most of those babies, like many of the trainees, died during the sacking. All of the omegas in the keep that day did too.

He’s not sure as to how much this practice influenced the attack on Kaer Morhen but he is sure it doesn’t matter anymore.

In reality, it hadn’t mattered to Lambert all that much from the beginning. Nobody knew what he was because he hadn’t presented, omegas were mostly kept out of sight in breeding rooms, drugged out of their minds or under some type of magic. To Lambert, it was just one more fucked up thing to add to the list. Another reason to hate the fucking place, to stay the fuck away for as long as possible.

He knows they have come a long way but he also knows what men would do under the excuse of being a product of their time, so he doesn’t want to think about what Vesemir (or his brothers, if given the chance) would do if he found out that Lamber is an omega. He’s not a breeding bitch and he would rather get eaten by drowners than to be used to bring more Witchers into this world. Humans can get fucked, as far as he’s concerned, and Witchers can get fucked as well, and he will spit in the face of any mages he sees given half a chance.

Then, on a terrible, rainy, muddy day of summer, Lambert meets Aiden.

And in just the first of many stupid decisions Lambert will make because of Aiden, he decides to agree to meet up again. And again.

The first winter he goes back to the keep after having met Aiden, Lambert convinces himself that talking about Aiden to his brothers will definitely be too stupid a choice even for them.
Aiden is fine. He’s a Cat, and he’s an alpha, and he’s entirely too fucking pretty for a Witcher, but he’s fine.

“You’re too fucking pretty,” Lambert tells him the first time they’re cleaning themselves together by a stream. His skin is tan, his shoulders broad, his hands big. His hair is too well kept and his eyes have a weird green shine when the sun hits them just so, like the cats did some weird shit to the mutagenes that fucked with their eyes more than normal; or maybe like it didn’t fully take, like his eyes were always green.

Lambert says it as an insult. You’re too fucking pretty. What business do you have being this fucking pretty while being a Witcher, with the scars that look almost placed strategically across his skin to make him look a roughish kind of handsome rather than the type of fucked up that Lambert’s scars get even when he treats them properly.

He says it as an insult, like the bastard he is, but it must be true what they say about Cats, about them being crazy fuckers, because Aiden just laughs with his head tilted back and his pointy canines showing.

Then he looks at Lambert with a glint in his eye and says, “You’re one to talk,” and just continues cleaning himself on the stream.

Lambert isn’t sure if Aiden means that as an insult, but the heat on the back of his neck makes him think it isn’t. But Lambert isn’t pretty. His hair is a mess of some type of dark maroon curls that kind of changes color with the sun; he keeps his facial hair short for convenience rather than style, and he’s built like a very scrawny alpha rather than a beta or an omega. He’s not tall, like Aiden; the only reason he has good posture is because of the mutagenes that keep his body in the best condition possible. He knows that, if he had survived at all at the hands of his father into adulthood, he would have been crocked and missing teeth.

Lambert doesn’t say anything back. He cleans himself, puts on his sleeping clothes and fixes his bedroll next to the fire before checking his bag for supplies. Aiden hunts them a small deer and they drink Lambert’s weird tea that Aiden always makes faces too, and that is that. He doesn’t tell Aiden he’s an omega either.

Eventually, though, in the middle of a drunken rant in a rundown tavern, Lambert tells him about the omegas of Kaer Morhen.

“I didn’t know there were omega Witchers at all!” Aiden says, eyes wide, left hand on his tankard of ale that tastes like warm piss. “You mean to tell me you Wolves were crazy enough to sacrifice omegas to the grasses?”

Lambert looks at him for a second before responding. Aiden does this thing when he’s surprised or disbelieving, where he looks delighted at the most horrible things, like he’s about to laugh. He knows Aiden doesn’t mean anything by it now, but it took him a couple of years to get there, to not storm off whenever Aiden looked happy like a puppy in the face of something extremely fucked up somebody said, or to know that it was better for him to deal with the talking to people part of the contracts when it came to family members dying in horrific ways.

Aiden has problems with emotions, sometimes. Most of them he processes through smiles, especially the ones it’s not appropriate to smile for.

“They were fucking crazy enough to turn them into breeding machines, sacrifices be damned.”

“Breeding machines?” To this, he looks confused. For him, like everyone else knows, Witchers are sterile.

“Ye. Breeding machines. They would put them in these breeding rooms, like the fancy heat rooms that some nobles have in their houses, and they would keep them drugged and in heat until they got pregnant. When the child was born, they would put them in heat again until they were pregnant again.”

Aiden is silent for a long time. Omega Witchers were harder to create, but they were more resistant to birthing than human omegas, which would guarantee that the baby would be born, and that they could have a child after another. Then some of the betas would be put in charge of caring for the babies, and the omegas would never see them again. Sometimes, when Lambert couldn’t sleep in the empty room where his cohort used to sleep around him, all dead now, he would hear the omegas crying like ghosts. Even now, during the winters, Lambert doesn’t walk those halls; he’s just waiting for that side of the keep to collapse onto itself.

“There were never any omegas in the Cat Witchers. There are women, but most Cats are betas, few of us are alphas, mostly because we presented after the trials.”

Lambert won’t remember saying this to Aiden, but at the end of the night, when he’s almost too drunk to stand and definitely too drunk to think straight, Lambert will whisper to Aiden while leaning on him to walk up the stairs to their room, “That’s why I wasn’t there for the sacking, my first year. I wasn’t gonna let those fuckers trap me in one of those rooms.”

Aiden doesn’t say anything. Never tells Lambert he knows.

Then. Then Aiden goes missing. For five years Lambert thinks he’s dead.

Lambert isn’t stupid, he knows he’s in love with Aiden.
They’ve walked the path together for almost fifty years. They share rooms and campsites and money. Lambert trusts Aiden with his life. He also looks at him when he can’t sleep; Aiden’s eyelashes are long, they make shadows over his cheek bones when he smiles so big his eyes are barely slits. Aiden’s lips are full and constantly dry, so Lambert makes him a balm that he starts wearing immediately.
Whenever Lambert goes back to the keep for the winter, he refuses to turn around and look at Aiden because he knows he will follow him instead and then his brothers will think him dead. When Aiden has to leave, there is a pressure on Lambert’s chest, telling him to do something, to keep him near longer.

It takes twenty years for Lambert to reach a hand across his bedroll and grab onto Aiden’s hand. They are warm from the fire, and while Aiden’s eyes are closed, he smiles and squeezes Lambert’s hand back.

In the morning, Aiden kisses him on the lips while he hands him a bowl of oats for breakfast. It’s quick and almost shy, and Lambert’s heart races as much as a Witcher’s heart can race. For the last twenty years, Lambert has hated the world a little less.

Lambert would kill for his brothers, he’s said it before, but he would die for Aiden.

For fifty years they walk the path together. They fuck, always outside of Lambert’s heat, when he disappears for three days and comes back without saying anything, smelling of misery and loneliness. Aiden doesn’t say anything; Lambert is sure he must know by now, but neither of them mentions anything. As a Witcher, heats only happen once a year for Lambert, always during late spring. Sometimes they happen before he meet with Aiden for the spring, right after coming down the mountain, but sometimes they happen when they’ve already met. Regardless, there is a pattern that Lambert knows Aiden’s not stupid enough to not recognize, but he doesn’t say anything. They don’t mate, even though Lambert knows Aiden wants to as much as he does.
He knows it’s his fault. That they won’t mate until Lambert is ready to admit his designation to Aiden, and that Aiden won’t push him to it.

They are fine, though. For the first time in his life, Lamber thinks he may be happy.

Then Aiden gets involved in a political contract, trying to break a curse. And for five years after, Lambert spends his time tracking down those who killed him.

It is only after Jad is dead that Lambert find Aiden again. He’s missing an eye and two fingers, and his left shoulder is basically screwed, and when Lambert finds him, his right leg’s still broken, but he’s alive. He’d been hiding in a healer’s house, using Axii to make her forget he’s living in the tiny attic she uses to store dry herbs. Lambert finds him there, almost kills the woman when he sees Aiden’s horse among her animals. When Lambert walks into the house with his sword out and demanding to know where she got the horse, Aiden basically falls from the ceiling to his feet.

Lambert isn’t stupid. Being stupid is to unknowingly make stupid decisions. He makes his stupid decisions fully aware and conscious and without regrets because he’s always prepared for the outcome of his stupidity.

That night, when Lambert is changing Aiden’s bandages and making him drink Swallow, he opens his mouth to make one of those stupid decisions. He asks Aiden to share his heat and bite his neck.

Chapter Text

Lambert doesn’t think about it. He goes off his masking potion and doesn’t think about what could happen if Aiden’s pheromones don’t actually trigger his heat before heading up Kaer Morhen instead of after coming down. Doesn’t think about possibly being with child if they go through heat together.

Lambert doesn’t think about it while Aiden’s leg recovers, and they don’t talk about it at all until Aiden wakes up from a nightmare in the middle of the night and shakes for hours afterwards.

“What are we doing, Lamb?” He whispers. What are we doing, like Lambert may have the answers. He doesn’t, he only has a fucked up plan and hopefully the same stupid luck that brought him to Aiden.

He’s stays silent for a while, holding Aiden until he almost falls back asleep. “They can’t kick out a mated omega. They can’t.”

It’s mostly to convince himself, that they wouldn’t. This is the only family he has, but if they take a look at Aiden and want him gone, Lambert will find somewhere else to winter.
They can’t send away a mated omega and they can’t send away his mate and they wouldn’t dare send away a child.

Lambert doesn’t think about a child.

It takes three weeks for Aiden’s leg to heal completely and three days after that, after making sure that he can walk properly, they leave the cave they’d been staying in and start making their way to Kaedwen.

“What did the babies look like?”

Aiden’s been asking him questions about the omega Wolves, humming instead of being disappointed when Lambert turns out to not have many answers. “They looked like babies, I think.”

Aiden laughs at that. “You haven’t seen many babies, have you Lambs?”

“Like you fucking have? When does a Witcher get to see any babies?”

Aiden’s laughs and smiles have been rare. They’ve been living off the woods while they make their way up because Lambert refuses to take a contract if he has to leave Aiden behind, and there’s no way Aiden is in any condition to take any contracts yet. Aiden doesn’t complain, but he is constantly tired and thirsty and trying to eat as much as possible even though he’s not really that hungry, just to kick his body into gaining the weight he’s lost and healing faster.

“We used to take care of the babies, in the Caravan,” he says, slowly, with a strange melancholic smile on his face. “The older Cat Witcher would take any child, of any age, when asking for the Law of Surprise. They would give them to the trainees and expect us to keep them alive. Some of them didn’t make it. I guess it didn’t matter much at that point, to die earlier or later; the younger the child was brought to us, the less chance it had of surviving the grasses, but they wouldn’t listen to us. I was beaten one time for mentioning it. I liked the babies the most, but they never made it too long.”

Lambert doesn’t say anything to that, he stays silent and hold Aiden’s hand when the other seems to be getting tired of walking. They still have to find a camping site.

“I think they had Witcher eyes,” Lambert finally mumbles. “I only saw a couple of them a couple of times, when I was asked to bring something to the mages by someone who didn’t know me better.” Aiden chuckles at that, because he does know better than to ask Lambert to be civil to mages in any capacity unless it’s a life-or-death situation. “They just looked like babies, but I think their smell was wrong. Different. Like they had dipped them in the mutagens or something. I don’t remember if they had the yellow Witcher eyes, but I do remember they had the light reflection thing, because the mages always kept the room bright as shit.”

“Those were some creepy babies then.”

Lambert laughs and it feels like it’s been forever. “Yeah. Those were some creepy babies. Kinda cute though, when they were chubby.”

Five full days after that, Lambert starts nesting.

He’s never actually nested before. The first time he went into heat it was so sudden he barely had the time to find a cave and lay down his bedroll before his clothes started to itch. This time he’s got an alpha though, and every dumb instinct Lambert has ignored for over fifty years now comes back with a vengeance. He needs a nest where his alpha can provide for him, where his alpha can fuck him good.

He doesn’t realize he’s doing it until Aiden catches him picking up flowers and murmuring to himself about smell combinations. Aiden takes a long sniff and just says, “You’ve gone into preheat, Lambs.” And then laughs when Lambert curses loudly.

So he nests. Aiden lets him steal all of his clothes and pile everything on their bedroll when they find an empty cave near a stream, insisting they can’t keep moving until the heat is done, and then insisting on hunting for them, even though Lambert tells him to sit his ass down by the fire. Aiden comes back with both their waterskins full and five dead rabbits, and though he tries to fight it down, the primal part of Lambert’s brain preens at having chosen a good mate. He doesn’t need dead animals to know Aiden’s a good mate, but the pheromones don’t feel like agreeing with him.

The heat doesn’t start slowly, like Lambert was hoping, it hits him in the middle of the night and he wakes up sweating and feeling like he fell into a soft fire. He’s not in pain, though, he realizes. He feels disoriented and hot but also like he woke up from a nice dream, like the world slowed down around him; like waking up to the smell of honey cakes and candied figs and a good roast.

They took to sleeping naked when Lambert’s preheat started, so he can feel Aiden’s arm around him, so he grabs onto it and holds it against his chest. Aiden’s not awake yet but he’s sniffing the back of Lambert’s neck.

By the time Aiden fully wakes, Lambert’s shivering with his first orgasm, grinding against Aiden’s cock and licking the palm of the hand that was around his waist.

Aiden doesn’t have either of his pinkies anymore, like they were planning on cutting all the fingers of both his hands slowly; his shoulder is fucked, possibly forever, so he can’t lay on that side anymore and his knee bothers him when it get too cold at night, but he pulls Lambert on his back and kisses him before even saying good morning. Lambert complains about that later, but only after he’s come three times.

“You’re so good, Lamb, so good. You smell so good, you have no idea how bad I wanted to smell you all this time,” he whispers in Lambert’s ear before licking his neck.

Lambert sighs. There’s a silence in his brain, like all the thoughts he has constantly going in the background are muffled, and Aiden’s voice is far away but he can feel it on his skin. “Lambert, Lambert…” he keeps murmuring while he makes him come a second time.

After, when his legs still feel like liquid, Lambert turns around on his elbows and knees, hiding his face between his arms while he presents. Aiden takes a sharp breath, going directly to lick at Lambert’s entrance where he’s wet and leaking. “Aiden.”

“What do you need, Lamb, tell me what you need.”

“I need you to knot me, you piece of shit, what do you think.” Aiden laughs but doesn’t stop licking him for a while. “Aiden, come on, please.”

“I like when you beg me, Lambs. You’re always so quiet. Do you want me to breed you, love?”

Lambert gasps and doesn’t even try to hold back his hissed, “Yes. Please Aiden, please.”

When Aiden finally gets inside him, Lambert is confused by how different it feels. They’ve had sex before, so many times, in so many places, for so many years, but Aiden’s never knotted him before, and Lambert’s nerve endings have never felt raw and alive like this.

Lambert’s never particularly cared either way for being an omega. He doesn’t look like one, and he’s made the effort to not let anyone know that he smells like one. Being an omega’s never been the problem; the problem’s always been the way people decide that they can treat him differently if they were ever to find out. Aiden sees Lambert for Lambert, and it’s been a while since Lambert’s felt that it would make any difference if Aiden knew or not.

But, Lambert realizes in a second of clarity, in a moment in which everything feels like too much, like he’s taken too many potions and he can see clearly the sweat of his forehead falling on their nest, this will be the first time that they smell like each other properly. The first time in which Lambert’s scent will be all over Aiden, and Aiden’s all over Lambert, and all their clothes will smell like them, like heat and sex and the desperation Lambert is finally letting himself feel at the notion of having Aiden back.

Aiden wraps his hand around Lambert’s chest and pulls him up, effectively sitting him on his cock, reaching with his other hand to hold onto Lambert’s.

Lambert comes before Aiden’s knot swells, right when clarity is coming back to him, and he can feel Aiden get bigger and lock them together, can feel Aiden’s seed inside him, filling him up, so he places his own hand on his stomach and drops his head forward, whispering because he knows Aiden will be able to hear him, “Aiden. Aiden, you have to bite me Aiden. I want you to bite me. Please, Aiden.”

And without answering, Aiden does.

Chapter Text

Lambert doesn’t drag his feet, no matter what Aiden says. It does take them longer than it would regularly take Lambert to reach the town at the skirt of the Blue Mountains, but Lambert’s sticking to blaming it on being two of them rather than just him.

When they finally make it to the town, then they have to do a supply run, because if they don’t get kicked out down the hill (which they won’t. They can’t.), Lambert would do anyway or Vesemir would be pissy about it. And if they do get kicked out (which they won’t), then they’ll need the supplies to survive. If Lambert spends extra coin on a honey cake he eats pretty much by himself because he’s been craving it since two towns ago, that’s his business and his business alone. Aiden doesn’t say anything.

The thing is, Lambert knows he’ll never be like his father. He’s fucked up, there’s no way he isn’t after all the fucking training, but he’s not the brand of fucked up that his father was. He’ll fuck up, though, he knows; he’ll fuck up a child if he ever comes across one; not for trying or wanting but because that’s what always happens. What’s a witcher to do with a child if not fuck them up. Still, there’s a part of him that’s always wanted the opportunity to prove everyone wrong, to prove that children are not for fucking Destiny to decide or some such horseshit. That children should be chosen, not let to chance.

Lambert tells himself he chose this, as much as a choice would have been made. He saw the options and he took this one.

He didn’t ask Aiden, though. For days and days he doesn’t ask Aiden. They arrive to the last town and he doesn’t ask Aiden. They start to climb the mountain and he doesn’t ask Aiden.
On the third day up the hill, resting close to each other to guard against the chill that’s always persistent up the mountains, Lambert turns to look at Aiden, nearly asleep, and doesn’t say anything for a long time because he doesn’t know how to ask.

“You’ll make a hole on the side of my head if you keep staring like that, Lamb.” Aiden says, with the little smile he gets every time he’s just existing, not thinking of anything, the way Lambert’s never managed to do, even before being fucked up by mutagenes; even when he’s meditating.

“Did you even ever want a child?” Is what he ends up saying, like an idiot. ‘Too late to ask now, isn’t it, you imbecile,’ Lambert thinks to himself. Aiden wanted to be there for Lambert’s heat, Lambert knows he did. Aiden said he did. It feels stupid to be doubting it now, but spending heat together is not the same as having a child. Even becoming mates doesn’t mean wanting a child. And sure, the possibility was implied, Lambert knows he said, but with any other witcher, Aiden wouldn’t have had to worry about it at all. Sometimes Lambert still doesn’t understand why Aiden chooses to spend time with him, even after all those years. Sometimes, even though he knows better than to even think it, there’s a part in Lambert’s brain that wonders if Aiden just feels responsible. They don’t talk about things and it’s not necessary for them most of the time, but sometimes Lambert gets stuck.

The idea of a child is horrifying, still, even when Lambert’s heart wants it.

Aiden turns his head then, to fully look at Lambert and keeps his smile light, like he doesn’t even need to think about it. “I’ve only been looking for reasons for you to let me stay with you forever, Lambert. I love everything of you and I’ve loved everything of us, and that won’t change regardless of anything. I want a child if a child is what I get.”

It’s selfish, Lambert thinks. Of both of them, not just Aiden. It’s selfish to want someone the way they want each other. But Cats are selfish, Lambert has learned, and Aiden has taught him why that’s not always a bad thing. Lambert wants to be selfish about this.

He grabs onto Aiden’s face and rests his forehead on Aiden’s shoulder, and then he stays like that for a while, just breathing until he can hear Aiden drift off to sleep.

Lambert doesn’t start actually feeling anything different until they can already see the Keep’s doors. There’s hunger, but there’s always hunger. There’s exhaustion, but a lot has happened since he found Aiden and the mountain’s not doing them any favors, so he pushes through that the same way he always does. There are weird cramps he’s never had before and then cravings that are almost (almost, if it weren’t for witcher training) too much for him to not complain about. His pupils are constantly slit because light is too much and his skin feels hot and thin in the morning, but the road is harsh and he’s not thinking about reaching the top of the mountain, so any minor inconveniences are just that and nothing he feels like he should be paying attention to.

Then one evening, just as the sun is coming down and Aiden is preparing the fire while Lambert hunts anything small he can find this close to winter, Lambert’s stomach does a flip. There’s a feeling on his chest on his way back to camp, as if his heart’s skipped a beat, and then something in his stomach drops, sending Lambert to his knees. Not because it’s painful but because it’s strange, all the air punched out of his lungs, he falls to his knees with a gasp, half holding himself on a tree to try to stay mostly upright.

“Shit.” It’s all he says, and spends the next several minutes trying to catch his breath. There’s panic somewhere, he knows. He knows what this is. There is no pretending this is just a possibility now and the panic of the consequences of his stupidity has finally arrived. He’s had a plan, Lambert reminds himself. Then he acknowledges that having a plan doesn’t necessarily mean he knows what the fuck he’s going to do.

He picks himself up and tries to not look like he just encountered a fucking Striga or some shit in the middle of the fucking Blue Mountains on his way back to his mate, who happens to be waiting for him and may be wondering where the fuck he went.

It’s not regret, he knows. The panic doesn’t mean regret. It’s a normal response to the uncertain things to come, but it doesn’t make him feel all that better. In a couple of days, he’ll start smelling different, the way pregnant omegas always do, and a couple of days after that, he may even start hearing a second heartbeat within his own.

Witchers aren’t allowed to be scared. Of all the feelings they supposedly don’t feel, fear may be the one they’ve truly put aside. He doesn’t know if it’s the mutagens or fucking magic, or just the fact that they’re trained to know how to act on the face of danger, and there is safety on not being caught unaware and unprepared. There’s no fear that can reach you when you’ve seen all the horrors already.

Despite that, Lambert was once a child, like every witcher. Lambert remembers that child, maybe more clearly than most witchers, having arrived late to Kaer Morhen, being too old to forget any of it. Lambert remembers being a child, scared constantly; constantly walking around as if on eggshells. Hungry, terrified. Angry more than anything. Being afraid for his mother more than for himself or his own life. Remembers being right about that fear.

Panic has taken over his heart like a vice by the time he makes it back to camp, his hands full of dead animals and wooden sticks and trying to take in air that doesn’t seem to want to make it inside his lungs.

Aiden smiles when he sees Lambert, then frowns and walks up to him, taking everything from his hands to put it on the ground to hold Lambert’s head, scratching the back of his neck, pulling on the small hairs there until Lambert doesn’t feel like he’ll suffocate anymore.

“We will be fine, Lambert. We’ll make it okay, whatever happens.” He says, and Lambert remembers that Aiden didn’t almost die just for Lambert to panic at the smallest sign of something he was fully aware would happen.

They eat. Lambert tells Aiden they may be able to smell it in a couple of days; Aiden tells him he doubts they’ll be able to smell anything again until they take a serious bath; Lambert throws a stick at Aiden’s head. But that night, Aiden holds onto Lambert extra tight, taking advantage of the slightly less cold night to get them partially naked, just enough to get himself off between Lambert’s thighs after taking Lambert’s spent to slick the way.

Lambert’s not scared anymore by the time they reach the Keep’s doors.

Chapter Text

The first thing he notices after spotting Lambert in the distance is not his companion, the fact that he’s not alone, how early in the season he is for him, who never wants to return but never has other option in his mind. No, the first thing Vesemir notices is the smell. A smell that hasn’t existed for centuries.

Vesemir stands at the entrance until both men are close enough to see him, then he breathes, deeply, rudely enough to make Lambert stiff his shoulders and look at the ground. He hasn’t looked at Vesemir yet, even though he’d had to have spotted him from long away. This is the first time since he was a child that Lambert has averted his eyes from him, in something akin to maybe shame or fear or insecurity, none of which matches Lambert. None of which matches what Vesemir can tell Lambert decided to do, just by smell. Vesemir didn’t think he had it in himself to be surprised by Lambert anymore, but it’s too much this time, bringing this back from extinction, bringing this out of the cells.

“Lambert.” Vesemir says. His hands are shaking but his voice is firm, hurt. Not by Lambert and what he’s done, but hurt nonetheless, by a millennium of mistakes. “My boy, Lambert, what did you do?”

He asks because it cannot be. It cannot be that Lambert has kept this secret for so long. That even after that section of the Keep was destroyed Lambert still felt unsafe enough to keep it to himself. That if it hadn’t been for this, this something that Vesemir still isn’t sure exactly what it is, he may have gone to the grave with it. He knows he deserves this pain; he just suddenly feels too old to stand it.

“I didn’t do shit,” he says, still not looking at anyone or anything. The man—the alpha standing next to him holds himself tight, standing as close to Lambert as possible. “I didn’t do shit. What do you want me to say, old man? Surprise? I'm the bitch everyone said I was.”

Vesemir gasps, low, clenches his teeth. “Lambert. You know that’s not what I mean.”

“No, I very well fucking don’t know what the fuck you mean.”

He looks at Vesemir then, but he must not like what he sees because he looks back down, to the side, then finally to his companion. “This is Aiden. Of the Cats. He’s staying with me.”

Vesemir frowns, a tiny line on his brow betraying his face, the things he knows he shouldn’t say. His worry that Lambert won’t accept. “He’s your alpha.”

It’s not a question but Lambert answers anyway, looking him straight in the eyes this time, daring him to say something. Daring him to send them away. “Yes. And he’s staying with me.”

Vesemir hums but doesn’t move yet from the door to let them in. The alpha is silent, almost like he’s frozen to the ground. It’s likely, Vesemir thinks with something akin to humor. The Cat’s skin is a deep, warm brown, his hair dark and wavy, indicative of the peoples of the south to the east, where it never snows. Vesemir knows this man is old enough to have seen snow before but maybe not old enough to have chosen to spend time among the snow many times.

“Is he the reason you are with child?” He asks because he needs to know. He needs to know that at least that wasn’t taken from Lambert.

“That’s not your fucking business,” Lambert says at the same time the alpha speaks up for the first time, “Yes I am.” The alpha says. “I am the reason he’s with child.”

“Aiden.”

Lambert is angry, Vesemir can tell. It’s always easier for Lambert to be angry when it gets to be too much. When Vesemir knows he still hasn’t given him the security of knowing that he’ll be allowed to stay. But the alpha’s voice is soft and firm; knowing that he can’t allow anyone to doubt it now. He is Lambert’s alpha and he is the reason Lambert is with child, and he’s standing at this Keep knowing he has no right to ask for refuge but he won’t leave his mate’s side.

Vesemir knows, without a doubt, that this is his boy’s mate. He knows that if he were to look at Lambert’s neck there would be a bite there the size of Aiden’s teeth.

“Come in, then. The fire is burning in the kitchens. Sit. I’ll get the fire going in your room.” He turns around then, walking inside, not missing the way the alpha’s shoulders relax if just a little, and not missing the way Lambert still holds himself stiff, not giving even an inch.

By the time Vesemir is finished carrying wood to the room and getting the fire going, Lambert and Aiden have taken the heavy and wet overcoats off and sat down at one of the tables closest to the fire, eating the bread and cheese that Vesemir left out for when Geralt and Eskel woke up. They had arrived two weeks before Lambert and now they sit several tables away from him and stare at his companion in silence like confused children.

It's Geralt the one who breaks the silence, as it often happens. “Why didn’t you say anything?” he says, barely a whisper, voice betraying the hurt of realizing their brother never had any trust in them, not really.

Lambert stops chewing for one second before shoving another piece of bread in his mouth, looking at Geralt from the distance. Vesemir sits down on the table closest to the door and from there he can see Aiden’s hand on Lambert’s thigh, not sure if in reassurance or to hold him back from getting up and hitting someone. They all know better than to stare at Lambert, it’s never done any good, but if there were ever a time in which it may be justified, Vesemir is inclined to say that it’s this one.

“Didn’t say anything about what?” Lambert says, full of sarcasm, a tiny smirk on the corner of his mouth. He’s daring his brothers to pock at the bruise and Geralt’s face falls. Eskel hasn’t taken his eyes off Aiden. Vesemir knows better than to think the Cat is unaware of every single movement in the room.

“You’re an omega.” Geralt says. And there it is, his stupidity and bravery both getting the better of him as they often do. It’s not that it matters to them that Lambert is an omega, it’s that it hurts to never have known. It’s like having known Lambert for so long only to realize that they never knew him at all, that a stranger was more worth his trust.

But then again, Vesemir thinks, Aiden is not a stranger, is he.

There’s a snarl now at the corner of Lambert’s mouth, just the shadow of all the things he doesn’t want to talk about, all the punches he doesn’t inflict on Geralt’s face because he knows Geralt won’t fight back now, in this moment; knows that Geralt’s stronger than any of them on a good day but still won't fight him back.

 “I wasn’t gonna let any of you fuckers try to make me your whore. I know your idea of what omegas are for,” he says, his voice raising. “I remember. Even if you bastards like to play pretend so much.”

It’s a good thing, Vesemir thinks then, that Aiden is holding him down. That Lambert has found someone he trusts enough to allow himself to be held back when he can’t do it himself.

Still, from the angle where he’s sitting, all of them can see Lambert’s stomach, the rather prominent bump compared to Lambert’s normally flat stomach. He’s still got months to go and it’ll only get bigger and bigger.

“So you decided to go be someone else’s whore.” Eskel says, still looking at Aiden, and before Vesemir can even finish processing what’s been said, before Geralt’s shock can finish settle on his face, there’s a knife landing to the right of Eskel’s hand on the table. A Cat knife, sharp and slender, made to kill in the blink of an eye. 

“Lambert is my mate and I am his,” the Cat says.  “It is my fault that we are here. I will accept any insult to my name, as I know it may be well deserved, but I cannot allow you that, Eskel.”

They all realize many things at once. For someone with missing fingers, the Cat’s still incredibly fast with knives, possible faster than any of them. The Cat knows of every single one of them, Lambert’s spoken their names to him, and so they aren’t strangers to him. And Eskel would rather leave the Keep completely in that moment, not out of fear or pain but out of shame.

Eskel doesn’t respond to the Cat; he turns to Lambert instead. “Why didn’t you say anything, Lamb?” His whole body is still, like he’s turned to marble, but his hands tremble. “You have to know we wouldn’t have. You have to know we wouldn’t have let anyone take you.”

And to that Lambert finally rises from the table, slamming his fists against it. “Wouldn’t you!? Wouldn't you, Eskel? Because last time I checked none of you could do fuck all against any of the mages. Last time I checked none of you even fucking cared about any of the omegas who died. None of you ever speak of them.” He’s yelling now, and none of them can look him in the eyes because they know this to be true, regardless of what they want to believe they could have done better, done differently. “I don’t know shit. For all I know you still have a cell waiting for me, but I won’t give any of you my baby.” His voice cracks at the end and Aiden hands twitch, like neither of them are used to call it that yet; like they haven’t accepted the reality of a child that belongs to them.

“We don’t want your baby, boy. And we don’t have any cells waiting for anyone in this Keep.” Vesemir finally speaks and Lambert collapses back down, like the adrenaline is draining from his body and now he’s just tired. “You can’t blame your brothers for this, Lambert. You should have known better than to insinuate any of that. If you don’t know better, then that is my fault. We’re here to protect you, boy. We’ve already lost too much.”

None of them look at each other for a long time. The thing is, of all of them, Eskel is the closest to Lambert, the only one Lambert ever really thought of as his older brother, if he ever thought of any of them that way. Eskel has a right to be upset, but none of them has a right to blame Lambert. The screams of the Keep’s omegas still haunt Vesemir at night, he won’t presume to even begin to understand what they do to Lambert.

“Go to bed, boys. We have chores to do in the morning.” Vesemir finally says as he gets up. Eskel rises as well, but instead of leaving the room he walks to Lambert and pulls him into an embrace. Vesemir pretends not to hear what they whisper to each other. There’s a tentative smile on Geralt’s mouth, like he’s not sure but wants to believe it’ll all be okay, and Aiden’s shoulders have finally dropped all the way, like they’ve either crossed a line or he’s finally just too tired to keep fighting.

They go to bed. Vesemir decides it may be fair to let them all sleep until late.

Chapter Text

Lambert doesn't notice the bump of his stomach until he's taken his cloak off and is sitting at the table to try to eat something before going to his room to try to sleep. There hasn't been any time or opportunity to take many clothes off, with the cold and the need to keep moving, any chance to look himself over and take account of any changes to his body. It isn't until he's sitting down that he realizes he's gotten bigger than he thought. That he doesn't know how much faster or slower a baby Witcher takes to grow.

He wants to say he's the first one to see it, but the truth is that he doesn't see it until Geralt enters the kitchens and after the tiniest, most subtle sniff that Lambert could have expected, his eyes land directly on Lambert's stomach. But if there's something to say about Geralt is that pretty boy has always known when to keep his mouth shut and wait. It used to make Lambert angry, how Geralt would go silent for no apparent reason, like a predator waiting to pounce, until he realized that it was the only thing that keep Lambert from constantly wanting to punch him in the face, that it made him have to wait, letting the rage simmer down and fade instead of feeding the fire.

Eskel, on the other hand, has always been the one with the words, so when he walks in and immediately shuts down while staring at Lambert, he knows that things won't go well.

Lambert doesn't have an answer for why he didn't say anything all those years other than the obvious one. No matter how much he could have trusted his brothers, he couldn't have trusted anyone with this one thing until Aiden came along. He doesn't have an answer for Geralt's hurt or Eskel's pain other than the cautious panic that comes with knowing there's a bigger predator out there than yourself. Lambert isn't weak, but he's also not pedantic and self-centered enough to believe that he could have taken either of his brothers in a fight, if it had ever come to that; not because they're stronger, because he fights dirty when it's needed, but because there is a part of him that isn't sure if he would have been willing to fight at all, after everything. A part of him that just didn't want to find out. Being betrayed by strangers is always expected, so it doesn't hurt when it comes, but being betrayed by them may have just been too much for Lambert to even try.

Lambert wants to believe they would have fought for him, not with him, but he was never willing to be in the position to find out, at least not while he was alone.

When they finally make it to their room, forgoing the bath they so desperately need to get the rest they need so much more, Aiden doesn't touch Lambert's stomach, but he does look at Lambert carefully while he takes his clothes off. His bump is small, still, but compared to the body he's used to seeing, it makes his abdomen look huge. Neither of them is sure if they want to touch it quite yet. They've barely talked about its existence. Lambert's feet hurt now that he's allowed himself to sit down on the soft bed, the one he made one winter, big enough for three people because if he was to live in misery, he may as well pretend he was some type of lord at least in his sleep. His feet hurt and his head is cold and his hands are shaking, and even though they were told they cannot cry, his eyes burn like they're trying to prove everyone wrong.

"What the fuck are we doing, Aiden." He says, because Aiden stands by the closed door, almost like he's frozen yet again on the spot, but his leg must be killing him and he needs to change the bandage over his eye.

"Something very dumb, probably." Aiden says, with one of those smiles that make him look completely unhinged, the ones he uses to scare the rich lords into paying them what was agreed, the ones that say he's not afraid of letting out the crazy. Lambert laughs, softly, because he thinks if there's ever been a time to let out the crazy, surely it's this one.

"Something very dumb indeed."

Aiden finally walks to the bed, taking most of his clothes off on the way, kneeling in front of Lambert with a wince when his bad knee hits the floor. "I'm all fucked up, Lambs," he says, like Lambert didn't account for them both being very fucked up. "I'm all fucked up and I love you so much, and I really really want this baby." He's still smiling like he's very well lost it on the way up the mountain, but he takes Lambert's hands on his, slowly, like he thinks Lambert may move away, and then places them together on Lambert's stomach.

They can't feel anything yet and Lambert isn't really sure when they'll be able to, but the disturbance to his body makes everything sink in, makes Lambert close his eyes and puts a frown to his mouth, like he's in pain. There's so much they don't know yet. There's so much Lambert has no plan for. He's taken the stupid decisions and trusted that he's chosen them, consequences be damned, and Aiden has gone along with everything, like he trusts Lambert to know where the next step goes.

"I really want this baby too." He finally says, because it's the truth. If he doesn't know anything else, he knows that much.

Every winter Lambert can hear the echo of the omegas screaming, what he's pretty sure is crying. He knows it's not real, but the memories are there, in his dreams, in the darkness of the corners of the Keep they don't ever bother to fix or even turn to.

That night he sleeps like his very soul is tired. Aiden holds him as best as he can without resting on his bad side, and Lambert doesn't dream of scream or crying, but he does dream of faint laughs; of the moments when there was silence enough to hear the babies' breath. He wakes up when the sun is fully out, which doesn't happen often, to the sound of someone knocking on the bedroom's door, Vesemir announcing that the food is getting cold.

Chapter Text

Lambert doesn't get huge. Truth be told, he thinks he barely gets any bigger than at the beginning until the day he pretty much drops and suddenly there's unmistakably a baby in there, like it’s made a pocket in his belly and decided to go to sleep there. At night, Aiden holds his stomach in his hands and puts his head on Lambert's chest, and just waits and waits for something to happen. For the longest time, nothing does happen. Sometimes Lambert wakes in the middle of the night from a nightmare; not the old ones, which he's used to swearing through and walking out on the cold if he can't go back to sleep, but a new one, where the baby continues to be still forever; where nothing ever changes, and when the pain comes there's nothing but blood and a sorrow Lambert didn't think he could ever feel again.

Vesemir doesn't know how many babies survived. He's been quiet for the most part but, to Lambert, Vesemir has been so much of his adult life that sometimes he just simply forgets that the old man doesn't have all the answers. That it doesn't matter how long he's lived, there were things he wasn't told either. Lambert wants to blame him for not doing anything, for surely being a master in the fucking Keep would have meant something. But then again, only the mages ever touched the omegas for anything other than breeding and, as far as they know, no babies survived at all after the sacking. There are no answers that Lambert can get from anyone; there is only the comfort of Aiden's hands on him while he sleeps, like he thinks he can hold onto hope if only he grabs onto Lambert tightly enough.

Then one day, just a little after the end of the first month of deep winter, when the pass is  finally completely closed, while they sit by the fire in the kitchen, the only place that gets really warm anymore and where Lambert has taken to napping on the nest he made just a couple of weeks before, when his bones started aching for no particular reason and to which his brothers pretend not to be adding an increasingly ridiculous amounts of blankets when they think Lambert is not looking. One day, while Aiden sits yet again with a hand on his lower belly, the faintest murmur of a tiny heartbeat can be heard over the cracking of the fire, slower than any human, so very soft. Then, the disturbing feeling of something punching him from the inside.

Geralt and Eskel are sitting at the table where they all eat, foregoing the big hall where all the witchers used to gather, and Vesemir sits by the fire on a grand chair he dragged all the way from the library several decades ago. For a second, it's like the whole Keep has frozen over—not the type of frozen that happens by means of the cold and the frigid, unrelenting snow, but the type of frozen where time itself seems to have stopped completely—then Aiden's eye opens real wide, and he sits so fast his vision goes a bit blurry and he almost falls back on the floor. Everyone turns to stare at Lambert. Then Geralt, like the freak he is, starts to laugh, causing Eskel to drop his head on the table to cover the most undignified giggles Lambert's ever been witness to, and Vesemir to smile that little smile of his that only ever happens when he seems to be pleased by something. Aiden's too shocked to do anything but sit there looking at Lambert.

Lambert hates all of them, truly.

He's also grateful, though he'd never say, that Geralt can find joy yet, where Lambert would have cried with relief to know there was still hope for life inside of him when he had started to doubt, in that place in his mind that tells him he doesn't deserve for anything good to ever happen to him.

He hates all of them, and he lets them know, which only makes Geralt laugh harder and causes Eskel to snort before also being overtaken by laughter—those big, belly laughs that he gets when he's truly happy.

It's not that the Keep has been silent necessarily. It has been quieter than other years. Lambert will never admit that it's shame that keeps him quieter than usual, but there is a part of him that knows that is the case. He's not sure, shame for what, but a deep sense of shame, nonetheless. It is shame that keeps them all quiet. They work on the walls and care for the animals, and cook, and play, and follow routines like nothing has changed, but the air around them has felt heavy with something none of them dare name—this shame, Lambert knows. Shame so they don't have to feel the sorrow; so he doesn't have to think about adding another little ghost to what's already a living tomb.

It's not that everything is better now. Lambert knows that neither his brothers nor Vesemir trust Aiden yet; that they tolerate him only so far as they can keep their eyes on him. That they don't really know what to do with a Lambert that allows someone so close to him, to have them cuddle him by the fire, or massage his feet when they're tired, after having bathed in the springs after doing training. They don't know where to draw the line of care that won't make Lambert snarl at them because he doesn't want to feel like an invalid. He knows this. But in the low light of the fire where they smile while Lambert curses at them to cover the fact that he's just as stunned as Aiden, it feels like a sigh of relief.

Chapter Text

Lambert has lost track of the months. This is new to him, he thinks; for the first time since he came back to the Keep after spending a year on the Path, he cannot really say how long it's been, how much time has passed. It's an exaggeration, probably; he would be able to say roughly the date based on the amount of snow gathering outside, but it is the first time he hasn't felt the need. He cannot leave. The only reason he keeps such close track of time every year is because he cannot wait to get out of the Keep, to have some peace from the ghosts that become too much at night most of the time. It is good to be with his brothers, and even to see Vesemir after so long without knowing if the old man finally kicked the bucket, but neither of those things negate the shadows of the memories Lambert can't get rid of. It is, more often than not, a relief to leave once the winter is over.

This time, he knows, he cannot leave, so he's pretending to have lost track of time. He doesn't know for how long he won't be able to leave, and he doesn't know how long he will actually be able to stand this cursed home. He has Aiden this time, though, and Vesemir's strange good humor, and Geralt's stupid soft eyes, and Eskel's even stupider little smiles. He won't be able to keep that forever, his brothers must return to the Path, but something tells him they won't leave until the baby is born, however long that may take.

It doesn't take very long. The last of the big storms has just ended, the doors are barred from the outside and there is nothing but white as long as the eye can see, like every year. It'll be warmer days from there; occasionally a windy night or morning that may set a chill deep on someone's bones, but if the weather holds, like it usually does, there won't be any more storms.

It doesn't hurt, when it starts. Not how he thought it would.

Lambert has seen omegas give birth before. When you live as long and travel as much as witchers do, coming across birth-giving is unavoidable somehow. None of those experiences have been pleasant; not for Lambert and definitely not for the omegas involved in the matter. It hurts them, that much is clear. Lambert does not particularly like seeing people in pain; it is a part of his job, deaths and such, but not something he likes to stop and admire like some other fuckers he's had the displeasure of coming across. He has never been inside a birthing room, however; has never felt compelled to go inside. Has never been able to separate the human scream from those of the witchers he used to hear at night in the Keep when he was a child. It is a particular kind of pain, Lambert thinks. He has heard enough people screaming in pain to recognize that birthing pains are their own kind of torture.

He wasn't afraid of the pain. There has been enough pain in his life to know that, regardless of the type, pain is not new or surprising or something he can't just work through. There'd be pain and then the pain'd be done and that'd be that.

He doesn't feel any better to realize that it is entirely possible that witchers wouldn't really feel much pain to begin with. There is a cramping on his abdomen, his legs feel weak and breathing started to feel difficult at some point in the morning, but it doesn't feel any different that coming down from a potion high would feel like.

The first time he took too much Cat too close to dawn he was convinced that the sun would kill him. His eyes burned even when he kept them closed, he was so nauseous he had to lay down on the ground for almost two hours, and when he could finally move again he felt like he could piss for the whole rest of the morning. Except, pissing burned so bad he was convinced his dick would fall off.

The pain he feels when he wakes up is something akin to that, in the sense that it feels foreign, like his body has betrayed him and it's trying to do things he's convinced it's not supposed to be doing. He feels like peeing but the cramps won't let him get anything out properly, and then when he finally manages to pee, it's like it'll never stop. He decides against eating. Otherwise, he feels normal, so he doesn't realize he's going into labor until his pants start feeling wet with slick.

"Ah," he says where he's sitting on his nest in front of the fire, everyone else just finishing the morning meal. "I think the little bastard's trying to come out."

Eskel freezes with the spoon to his mouth, the dumbest expression on his face, and Lambert laughs until the cramping decides to make itself known again. Aiden's gotten so fast from where he's lazing about in front of the fire that he winces when his shoulder pops and readjusts itself.

"Alright," Vesemir says, standing up from his chair and sends Geralt to get clean linens and water to boil.

None of them know what they are doing, Lambert thinks, and there's a part of him, the part that's always angry, that can't stop thinking about the fact that he's nowhere near screaming in pain. Why did the omegas in the Keep cry out until that was all you could hear? Why did they scream so much that it still haunts the very stone? They weren't in physical pain, Lambert realizes now, after decades of thinking it was the pain of giving birth over and over. It was the pain of knowing they would never get to see their child. Or the knowledge that they would never get their bodies back, not after the mutagens, not after being violated. Lambert wonders if they felt relief when the fire started; if they could hear everyone outside fighting and screaming and dying and felt nothing but grateful, knowing by then that death would be their only way out. If they were thankful when the babies stopped crying. Or if they tried to escape then, when everything was chaos, when nobody would notice them; if they fought. If any of them survived and managed to make it out. If any of them saved any of their children. If they felt any affection for any of them, or if they hated them for what had been done to them in order to bring them to life. If any of the children survived, and if they know what they are and how they came to be.

It's not until Vesemir returns and tries to help him up, not saying anything, that Lambert realizes he's crying, for the first time since Voltehre died. When he thought Aiden had died, he was too angry to cry then; he raged and burned shit down and took too many contracts. He had thought the part of him that could feel this emotion had died with the only friend he ever had in childhood, when he understood that the world didn't give a single fuck about them; that hoping was for fools. He cries now, though he's not really sure why—if it's for all the things that were or all the things he wants for it to be, or just simply because everything's so fucked.

They bring him to his room where they've pulled his nest on the floor and Vesemir tells him to squat, not lay down. "You want gravity to do the job, boy," he says, and Lambert is too tired to snarl at him. Aiden is petting his hair and helping to keep him up, his brothers are fluttering around in the room, and Vesemir is holding his hand tight. He's naked from the waist down and if his body didn't feel stretched thin he thinks he would laugh. He thinks about all the ways his body has been pushed to the limits and marvels as this different kind of pain, which doesn't feel like more but it does feel like something other; he can tell exactly what muscles are working, his hearing and vision seem to have closed off to the exterior to focus on the rush of his own blood, and his heart is doing an excellent job at trying to pump as if he were human. There's slick running down his legs and his entrance feels stretched and full at the same time, like he desperately needs to take a piss and he's trying to hold it in as hard as he can.

"You need to let go, Lambert," he hears someone say, though he's not really sure who it is right then. "You need to push out, Lambs." It's Aiden, he realizes. It's Aiden talking on his ear, softly, like he does on the nights when he can't sleep but is too tired to really keep up a conversation and knows he's just talking nonsense. Lambert chuckles, like a lunatic, and then he starts to push.

It doesn't take much, really. He thinks human omegas would be very upset with him if he were to say this to any of them, but it's probably the lack of what his brain has been used to registering as pain—it burns, and it's like stretching his muscles past the point when he knows he should have stopped, but it doesn't really hurt him the way he knows hurt. He thinks he may be bleeding because he can smell blood, but blood is nothing new for any of them. When he finally pushes until the burning stretch stops and he hears a loud cry, Lambert collapses back onto Aiden and takes a very deep breath.

"Lemme see 'em," he says, though he can't really focus his eyes quite yet. He wants to feel the baby. He wants to know all the terrible things he's thought about aren't true. Sudenly, desperately, his mind goes back to the cries echoing on the stone around the keep and tries to get up immediately, grabbing for the baby still in Vesemir's hands, bloody and crying. "Give 'em to me. Now." Vesemir doesn't say anything, he simply passes the baby to Lambert with a couple of linens to get them clean.

"I'm going to clean your legs, Lambert," Vesemir says, like he's talking to a spooked animal, and Lambert thinks hysterically that he may not be very far off, so he nods in acknowledgment and lets him do what he needs to do to make himself feel better.

Geralt and Eskel are kneeling behind Aiden, watching them clean the baby. Lambert can't focus quite yet, even though it already feels like a long time. The baby finally seems to have stopped crying and Lambert has just started to feel his heart slow down, but he can't look at the baby yet. He is sad, and relieved, and Aiden is saying soft, silly things to the both of them, "I've no fucking clue whose looks this baby's got, Lambs, but is the cutest thing I've ever seen."

Yours, Lambert thinks. You're way too fucking pretty you bastard, it must be your looks. "Aiden," he whispers, though everyone in the room can hear him clearly. "Aiden. Aiden, what about the eyes Aiden. Is it… is it a creepy baby Aiden?" Lambert says, because he is, to his core, and absolute prick.

Aiden laughs so hard that he makes Lambert's body shake where he's been held against Aiden's chest. He laughs because there's a reason they're in love—Aiden's also a fucking prick. "No Lambert. No. They're beautiful." Aiden says, because he's also a fucking sap. The baby does have witcher eyes, but they are, Lambert thinks. They really are quite fine despite everything.