I tried to smile, but it was sure to be more of a grimace. The babe was having a restless hour, but not long ago it had been so still I'd grown terrified. Nothing would feel right until they had arrived, until I'd seen them with my own eyes, held them in my arms.
My belly had indeed dropped early in the week, and I'd been a groaning, waddling, aimless, and impatient monster ever since. Mairwen and Ronson had been summoned days ago, and Catherine Eames had finally come with her daughters, and there was a doctor…somewhere, ready and waiting.
Waiting. So much waiting.
And when I grew sick and scared and bored of waiting, all I could do was?—
"Walk," I growled out, and Mairwen helped heave me up to pace once more around the room.
The momentof arrival was in a quiet spell, Eames and her daughters napping in armchairs as Mairwen read by candlelight. I braced my hands against the cold stone of the windowsill, watching the sun lower toward the horizon. Ronson and Torion had returned, only to drive us all mad and be sent to the kitchens to brew tea.
There was a strange, gentle shift inside of me, and then a not so gentle trickle of fluid down my thighs. Mairwen looked up at my gasp or the sound of the water dripping to the stone floor, and we shared the shock and understanding of two women who had never given birth before but were somehow made for the experience, designed in nature but novices all the same.
Her book snapped shut, waking one of the Eames daughters, who took one look at our pale faces and stood up.
"Very well. Let's see if we're ready to start."
But I'mnotready, I thought, even as fiery hope bubbled up alongside the fear and eager excitement.
You are,a bright voice answered my thought, foreign and familiar at the same time.We are ready.
"I've got you.I'm here, my love. Deep breath."
"We'll bind the wings now, my lady."
"Do it."
My mind was on fire. The rest of me was possessed by pulsing thorns, digging in and tearing me apart. I was exposed and everything waswrong. It was too bright and too open and there were too many scents, and I might be sick or faint, except that there was too much pain. Words rumbled through my back, and the contact of another body against me was madness and horrible, but familiar too, safe. My hands gripped tightly around broad fingers and callouses and the steady, reassuring presence of…
Mate.
Torion was here with me. In spite of the older woman's claims that I wouldn't be able to stand the sight of him, I was grateful for his presence. I grabbed onto him and focused on the scent of cinnamon and ash, on his warmth. He was right. He was meant to be here with me. It should've been just us but?—
"May I watch?"
I snarled at the question, at the reminder of the others who were close—other omegas.
"Don't ask her, lovey, she can't be spared to answer. Come and see if you must, but don't faint. You'll be too underfoot on the floor."
I was both insensible and too aware of what went on in the room, and I shut my eyes against the view of bustling bodies and the sunset colors washing the room and bright candlelight and heavy shadows and three feminine faces peering down between my spread legs, like a gathering of the fates. One maiden, one mother, one crone.
I giggled, but it came out like a sob.
"I have you, and you have the child. Deep breath, my love," my mate murmured, and then he purred for me, and the sound filled my body and my ears, softening the edges of the world.
I breathed as deeply as my body would let me while in the throes of nature's most insane plan.
"Done. Now step back. Do we mean to get her in the water?"
"Justdoit," I found myself howling, my body gathering strange strength to bear down on itself, to shrink and condense into a blinding point of effort.
"Here, then," someone said.
Here, indeed. I was here, and my child was coming. My child was coming.
I wept and tried to break the fingers that held mine.
The world was too quiet,strange and wrong after so much blaze and bellowing screams. An uncanny, terrifying, peaceful moment of silence, like the whole of Grave Hills was holding its breath.
