“Rascon?”
I blinked in the darkness, disoriented, reaching for her before I was fully awake.
Her hand found my arm, fingers pressing hard. “It’s time.”
The statement hit me like ice water. I sat up, heart hammering, every thought scattering in different directions at once.
“Now? Are you sure? How far apart are the?—”
“I’m sure.” Her voice was strained but steady. “My water broke. We need to go.”
I threw off the covers and promptly tripped over my own shoes, cursed, and found the light switch. Isabel was already sitting up, one hand pressed to her belly, her face tight with concentration.
“Okay.” I took a breath, then another, forcing myself to think. “Okay. Hospital bag is by the door. Car keys are on the hook. I’ll bring the car around.”
“Rascon.”
I stopped halfway to the closet.
“Pants,” she said. “You might want pants.”
I looked down at my boxers. Right. Pants.
Three minutes later, we were in the car.
It’s time. Heading to hospital now,I texted Snapper, who, along with most of the rest of my family, had been staying in one of several guest houses on Press’ estate. They’d arrived two days ago after Ma insisted the baby would come before the end of the week.
His response came before we hit the main road.On our way. Don’t let her have that baby without us.
“Right,” I muttered. Somehow, I doubted it was up to Isabel or me. Our daughter, our precious Anaïs, would come into this world in her own time. She’d learned well from her mother.
The driveto the hospital was a blur of dark roads and Isabel’s controlled breathing. I held her hand at every red light, watching her face in the glow of the dashboard, counting the seconds between contractions.
“You’re doing great,” I told her.
“You’re speeding.”
“Only a little.”
By the time we reached the hospital and got Isabel settled into a room, the first wave of reinforcements had arrived. My mother burst through the waiting room doors less than an hour after my text, still in her travel clothes, her eyes wild with excitement.
“How far along? Where’s the doctor? Get the doctor. She needs to be here. Now.”
“Jeez, Ma, Isabel is inlabor. You’ve done it enough times to know they’re monitoring her, but it’s going to be a while.”
“A while.” She grabbed my face in both hands and kissed my forehead. “My baby is having a baby. I can’t believe it.”
Alex and Maddox arrived next, then Snapper and Saffron, followed by Bit and Eberly, then Cru and Daphne, then Brix and Addison. The waiting room filled with Avilas, whose presence turned the sterile space into something that felt almost like home.
“Who’s watching the kids?” I asked when I realized none had come along.
“Baron,” quipped Alex.
“No!”
She laughed. “Hell, no. Laird and Sorcha have been camped out on Ma’s doorstep since Isabel’s due date came and went.”
Maddox’s mother and father were probably the only people on earth our mother would trust with her “g-babies,” as she called them.
