Mercury stared at them. “What?”
“I think he wants me to hold your shoulders, love, and help you lean. The baby’s coming. The head is already part of the way out.”
Mercury’s eyes went wide. “Oh, wow! It doesn’t feel like it. It feels like it’s still very stuck.”
“Well, you’re doing it.” Talon was a little panicky actually because he thought they’d had several hours to get used to this idea and for him to prepare to hold his baby, but this was fast.
Mercury was kind of starting to glow with a silvery mirror-like radiance that Talon had never seen. He’d heard stories about how some of the other omega’s, Elowyn and Jack’s Dex had glowed golden when they’d had their babies. And he supposed this was a side effect of all the magic.
“Do I need to be scared, braaken?” Mercury asked, gaze clinging to his.
“No, hailee. There’s no reason to be scared. The baby knows exactly what to do. We’ve got this. I think probably our child is going to be way smarter than either one of us.”
Mercury chuckled but then grunted and tried to curl up on himself again. Talon figured this was where holding the shoulders came in, so he kept more upright. Rowan was back then, and he raised the tunic up and put a sheet around Mercury’s hips and legs, sort of like a little tent. He pushed Mercury’s legs up so his feet were on the bed, his knees raised.
“Here we go, Mercury. Breathe for me, and the next time you feel a contraction starting, give me a good, hard push.”
Talon looked at Rowan and tried a little bit of mental communication.Is this normal, the way he’s glowing?
Rowan just gave him a soft smile.When it comes to dragon births, nothing is abnormal.
Oh, that was a good thing. He felt like he could live with that. Talon didn’t want abnormal, because that always meant danger. What if Rowan wasn’t worried? He wasn’t worried. They just needed to get through this.
Mercury glanced up at him, his silvery eyes glowing. “This would be a terrible time to slide, wouldn’t it?”
“Don’t you even think about it,” he laughed, but there wasn’t any humor in it. He couldn’t think of anything that would be worse to be honest. That said, he held on tight just in case.
“It’s not going to take long now, Mercury,” Rowan told them. “You’re just powering through this.”
“I thought it was supposed to take hours?”
Rowan shrugged. “Babies come when they come. You have precious little choice about the whole thing. Your son is on his way.”
There was one more hard contraction and a desperate push that made his mate scream, and he wanted to demand that the pain stop, right now.
And then Mercury suddenly relaxed, the glow blinding.
Talon squeezed his eyes closed and held on, thinking about nothing but wanting to be right here, nowhere but right here with his hailee, right here in this room with his hailee, just in case.
“He’s beautiful, Mercury. He looks just like you. You just need to push one more time, gently, for the shoulders, and he’ll be out. You’ll have done it.”
“The hard part is over?” Mercury whispered, and Rowan chuckled.
“No, that’s coming when you have to raise this child. But the hard part of giving birth is over, yes.”
Mercury smiled, the look trembling, and then the glow began to fade a bit.
“Just one more little push, hailee, and you’ll hold your son.”
Mercury sniffled, “Our son.”
“Yes.”
Goddess, he needed to let people know.Kami?
Yeah? You okay?
The baby’s here.
