Yes. That's a sharper version of the same idea.
Waiting until Elena was in labour is not just timing. It's strategy. They knew she was the stronger one. They knew the other heroes on Earth could not match them. They knew Alex would have to choose between the city and the birth. That makes the Clan feel ancient and cold, not loud.
It also fits what you've already written: Elena grounded, Alex doing solo missions, London opening the second she goes into labour.
The claim stays simple:
The artifacts that made Elena came from their world. In their law, anything born from that fire belongs to the Clan. They did not come to negotiate.
The fight stays unfair on purpose:
Alex is strong. He is not enough. The rest of Earth's heroes can stall, evacuate, or die trying. They cannot win this.
That is a good plot. It is personal, cruel, and clear.
Chapter 44: The Claim
The second wave hit before the first one had even finished falling.
I was still in the ruined square when three more Clan members stepped out of the rift. Same armour. Same gold-black eyes. Same calm, as if London burning was a ceremony they had scheduled months ago.
They had.
That was the part that landed last.
They had waited.
Waited until Elena could not fly. Waited until the baby was ready. Waited until the one person on Earth who could match them was in a bed with her legs shaking and her voice breaking on the comm.
"Alex—" Elena's breath hitched. "Voss is here. I'm— I'm okay. Don't you dare come home yet."
"I'm not leaving them," I said.
I meant the civilians. I also meant her. Both sentences were true and neither one helped.
Command cut in, frantic.
"Paris signature confirmed. New York too. Local heroes engaging. They're getting torn apart. Repeat: they cannot hold."
I already knew that. Earth's other powered people were brave. They were not us. The Clan had counted on that.
The leader I had cracked earlier rose again. The split in his armour sealed while I watched. He rolled his neck like a man stretching after a long sleep.
"You understand now," he said. "The woman you call Thick Chick was not born of this world. The relics in her blood were taken from ours. The laboratory thought it had found tools. It had found inheritance."
He pointed at the sky, then at me.
"What grows in her belongs to the Clan. We permitted her life. We did not permit a child."
"You don't get to permit anything," I said.
He almost smiled.
"We waited until she could not stand beside you. We waited until the lesser lights of this planet would die first. You are the only one left who matters, Loverman. And you are already late."
I hit him again.
This time I did not try to kill him. I tried to move him. I drove him up through the rift-light, through cloud, into thinner air where the blast radius would not eat another street. He let me. Then he opened a smaller rift at my back and I fell a hundred metres before I caught myself.
Below, London was still screaming.
I dropped back into the fight because there was nowhere else to drop.
Two Clan members peeled off toward the evacuation routes. I intercepted one and missed the other. The one I missed reached a packed bridge. I heard the structure go. I heard people go with it.
Something in my chest tore that had nothing to do with the hole in my side.
"Elena."
"I'm here." Her voice was raw now. Close. The kind of close that meant the baby was not waiting. "Alex, listen to me. They don't get our child. Do you hear me? Not them. Not anyone."
"I hear you."
"Then stay alive."
The next minute was only motion.
I used speed the way she had taught me: not as a straight line, as a lie. I vanished left, appeared under a spear arm, broke the elbow, used the broken limb as a handle and threw the Clan soldier into his brother. Regeneration started immediately. I did not watch it finish. I put a nova into the joint of the rift itself.
The wound in the sky shuddered.
For the first time, one of them looked annoyed.
"He learns," said a woman in the same armour. Her voice was older than the leader's. "The vessel taught him."
"The vessel is busy," the leader said. "Push him until he chooses."
That was the plan.
Not to beat me in one blow. To make me split.
Stay and more people died. Leave and the Clan walked through London unopposed. Stay and I missed the birth of my child. Leave and the artifacts' owners took the city that still thought we were gods.
I chose the only thing I could still reach.
I put my body between the Clan and the largest cluster of civilians still moving.
A spear took me through the thigh. Another burned across my ribs. I stayed standing because falling meant the people behind me would not.
"Command," I said through blood. "Get every hero who can still move to the secondary rifts. Do not send them here. They will die here."
"Copy. Loverman, your vitals—"
"I know my vitals."
Elena screamed.
Not the battle scream. The other one. The one that meant the baby was coming whether the world ended or not.
I almost broke.
The Clan leader heard it through my open comm and turned his head as if he could see the room from here.
"Good," he said softly. "Let the heir arrive. We will collect it when you fall."
I laughed. It sounded wrong in my own ears.
"You waited for the wrong day," I said. "You waited until I had something I would burn the sky for."
My aura went from violet to white at the edges.
Not Elena's gold. Not enough. But more than I had given them yet.
I stopped trying to kill immortals.
I tried to break the door they came through.
I flew into the main rift and poured everything I had left into the tear. The Clan followed. Space inside it was wrong — old, dry, full of the smell of metal and dust and long life. This was their world leaking into ours. This was the place the lab had robbed.
Hands closed on me from every side.
I kept blasting.
The rift convulsed. One of the secondary signatures over Paris flickered out. Command shouted something I could not hear.
Then the leader's face was in front of mine, inches away, gold-black eyes calm.
"You cannot close what we opened," he said. "You can only die in it."
Elena's voice cut through the dark, shaking, furious, alive.
"Alex. It's a girl."
The words hit harder than any spear.
A girl.
Ours.
Not theirs.
I looked at the leader and felt the last piece of the old fear leave.
"Then you already lost," I said.
I detonated.
The rift screamed. Light swallowed the Clan, swallowed me, swallowed the ruined square below. I did not know if I had sealed it or only wounded it. I did not know if I would hit the ground as a man or as ash.
I knew my daughter had arrived.
I knew Elena was still breathing.
I knew the Immortal Clan had made one mistake.
They had waited for me to be alone.
They had not waited for me to have a reason that was bigger than dying.