Read The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins novel by Artemis Z.Y. Updated 2025 -26 - The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins Chapter 509

The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins Chapter 509

The kind of morning that doesn’t care about sleepless nights, or kitchen floors covered in towels, or how your knees have gone numb from kneeling too long.

The sun rises anyway.

Gas is still lying in the whelping box. Her breathing has slowed. Six puppies are clustered against her belly—six tiny bodies, each no bigger than my palm. Their eyes are sealed shut, their ears folded flat against their heads. They move the way all newborns do—not quite coordinated, not quite intentional—small twitches and squirming motions as they search for warmth, for milk, for the heartbeat that was their entire world just twenty minutes ago.

The first one—the one that almost wasn’t—is in the middle.

I can see it from here. Smaller than the others. Its fur is still damp, not fully dried despite all the towels, all the rubbing. But its chest is rising. Falling. Rising again.

“Mama.”

Alexander’s voice is a rasp. Sandpaper wrapped in cotton. He’s been talking for hours—to Kyle, to the puppies, to anyone who would listen, and some who couldn’t. His throat has to be raw.

“Yeah, baby?”

“I’m really tired.”

“I know.”

“But I don’t want to sleep.”

“I know.”

He’s sitting on the floor next to Kyle. Not in Kyle’s lap—that would take more energy than either of them has—but close enough that their shoulders touch. His dinosaur pajamas are streaked with something I don’t want to identify. There’s a smear on his cheek that might be blood, or might be something else, and his hair is sticking up in seventeen different directions.

He looks like a child who has just witnessed a miracle.

Or a war.

Maybe both.

“The puppies might need me,” he says. “What if they need me and I’m asleep?”

“They have Gas.”

“But Gas is tired too. Look at her. She can barely keep her eyes open.”

He’s right. Gas’s eyes are half-closed, the third eyelid visible at the corners—that milky film that means she’s on the edge of sleep but fighting it. Fighting to stay alert. Fighting to watch over the small lives she made.

“She’ll rest when she knows they’re safe,” I say. “That’s what moms do.”

Alexander thinks about this. His head tilts—that familiar gesture that makes him look like a tiny professor studying a particularly interesting specimen.

“Is that what you do?” he asks. “Fight sleep to watch us?”

“Sometimes.”

“That’s dumb.”

“Probably.”

“But also kind of nice.”

Kyle shifts beside him. The movement is small—just a slight adjustment of weight, a repositioning of his legs.

“We need to clean them,” Ethan says. He’s standing near the whelping box.

“Clean who?” Alexander asks.

“The puppies. And Gas. There’s still… material on them. The amniotic fluid, the—”

“Ethan.” I lift a hand. “We know.”

“I’m just saying. From a hygienic standpoint—”

“We know.”

He nods, satisfied that the point has been made, even if no one shares his urgency.

Madison is still sitting exactly where she was through the entire ordeal—cross-legged on the floor, Eleanor clutched to her chest. Her dark eyes move between the puppies, Gas, and the rest of us. She hasn’t said anything since the first puppy started breathing. She’s just watched. Just waited.

I push myself up from the floor.

My knees scream. My back joins in—a full chorus of protest from joints that have been locked in place for too long. I’m thirty-two years old and feel eighty. I feel like something that should be returned to the manufacturer for defective parts.

“Okay.” My voice sounds steadier than I feel. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to get warm water and clean towels. Ethan, you’re in charge of making sure the puppies stay warm. Alexander—”

“I want to help clean them.”

“You can help. But gently. They’re very fragile.”

“I know. I know they’re fragile. I’ve been gentle all night. I’ve been so gentle—”

“I know you have, baby.”

He stops. His mouth closes. Something in his face shifts—softens—and for a moment he looks less like a five-year-old who’s been awake far too long and more like something smaller. Something that needs to be held.

“You did so good,” I say. “You did so, so good.”

His lower lip trembles.

“Don’t,” he says, his voice cracking. “Don’t be nice to me right now. I’ll cry.”

“That’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. I’m not a baby. I didn’t cry when the puppy wasn’t breathing. I was brave.”

“You were.”

“I was so brave, Mama. I counted and I pressed and I didn’t—I didn’t—”

He’s crying now.

The tears come fast, carving clean tracks through whatever is smeared on his cheek, dripping off his chin and onto his ruined pajamas. His whole body shakes with it—sobs that feel too big for such a small frame.

Kyle’s arm comes around him.

“I know,” Kyle murmurs. “I know. You were so brave.”

“I was so scared, Daddy.”

“I know.” Kyle’s eyes close. His chin rests on top of Alexander’s head.