My Stepbrother's Baby Vol.3 by Calvin Cox

Nora is eight months pregnant with Cole’s second child when the six months run out. June is already in the house, still nursing, still using her mother’s body as furniture. The private country they built while their parents were gone is about to get a front door. Labor comes first. Cole stays through the ugly hours and the ward light and the moment their second daughter arrives. The empty feeling hits Nora harder than she expected, even having felt it once before. She does not dress it up as hormones. She wants the weight back. She wants the shortest gap the doctor will allow. Cole does not turn polite just because there is a newborn in the bassinet. He waits until she is cleared. Then he starts again. The third campaign is already underway when the suitcase hits the hall. Their parents walk into a house that no longer matches the one they left. Two children. Nora obviously claimed. Cole standing next to her like the father he is, not like the son they remember. Shock tries to become a lecture and runs out of floor. There is no kinder story left that fits the rooms. Nora says whose children they are before anyone can invent a version that keeps the word stepsister useful. Cole does not step away from her while she says it. What follows is not a reconciliation in the pretty sense. It is three adults and two children learning how to occupy the same kitchen without pretending the third pregnancy is a rumor. Nora keeps the rules she made in the dark. Cole keeps taking her. The house stops being a secret and becomes a fact. Volume 3 follows the second birth, the third breeding, and the end of privacy. Nora belongs to Cole. The children belong to him. Their parents can live with that or they can look away. The work itself does not pause.