“What about Kehl and Cy?” I laughingly asked.
“They next. Wait turn,” Elm muttered.
Sounding very much like the dirty style potato appreciating afficionado I may be corrupting him into, he growled out, “MINE!”
Later. Much later, Kehl decided licking the gravy he’d made off of his mate was preferable to being sticky in any way, and Cy settled the cake fight we got into by calling a truce that involved us licking frosting and cake goop off of each other.
Best not fake surprise picnic wedding day ever.
Sunny insisted after learning bits of our proposals we hadn’t exactly gone traditional with that wasn’t what she’d meant, what she’d had in mind when she’d suggested it, but I honestly couldn’t have imagined it going any better. I’d never want it to go any other way.
Epilogue
The days turned to weeks, then a month, and longer still.
I was heavily pregnant, wondering if I was ever going to see my best friend again but refusing to lose hope, when word finally reached us that the portal had reopened.
Vurhg, Sorak, and Berkr had yet to return from the little camp they’d set up. They meant to live out there until Dace found her way home, it was presumed at this point. Birch divided his time between the village and keeping vigil by the portal campers. Dace had left more than an impression on him if he’d sprouted horns for her—a Lepyr trait.
Celuk had provisions stockpiled for an emergency rescue mission but that was a last resort kind of deal with a herd of angry rhinelephalos, the human mates’ nickname for the massive, generously horned, rhino-elephant-buffalo looking beasts that migrated towards the village during the chill-you-to-the-bone months.
Celuk and the rescue crew were trying to give Dace and Maroumak time to come home and the rhinelephalos a minute to move on and no longer pose a threat of any kind to the village. Joanie’s male was trying to look at it from all possible angles.I understood and respected that. He, like Veck, had everyone’s best interests at heart, whether that was what I wanted to hear right in that moment or not. We needed able bodies here to protect the home front too.
The day my water broke, I just lost it. Dace wasn’t here. She was missing this. My babies needed to know their favorite auntie. I needed my best friend. Sobbing all over Kehl as he tried to get me out of my soaked clothes, Elm rushed off to grab Dorothy, who I had chosen for my birthing healer, and Cy helped lay out sheets on the bed to protect it from the mess that was about to happen all over the place. One moment I thought I was fine, then next I just looked at Kehl, my chin started to wobble, and then I burst into tears.
“Where is she? She’s supposed to be here,” I sobbed out.
“Be ‘kay, my Purr-roo,” Kehl crooned as he risked standing this close to the splash zone or worse at close range.
A contraction hit me the next moment and my knees buckled. Kehl helped me down to the floor so I didn’t drop. Squatting, I leaned forward, grabbing onto his hands for dear life, and snarled.
“AAAArgh. Something’s happening!” I growled out.
Kehl snapped at Cy to hurry over and Cy came stumbling over, dropping the sheets in his arms, just in time to catch our first born.
“Slippery!” Cy called out as he basically caught our baby as it came shooting out of me.
“Girl,” Kehl purr-rumbled at me as he stared down at Cy’s hands.
“He needs help,” I mumbled as I turned and gripped the end of the bed instead of Kehl.
Kehl rushed over, assured I was okay, and helped Cy cut the cord.
By the time Elm had returned to tell us Dorothy was on her way, baby number two was crowning.
“Come help!” Cy called out. “Babies slimy slippery! Cy not have ‘nough hands!”
“My babies are not slimy,” I burst out, which gave Kehl a chuckle as I tore at his forearms as he held them out to me.
“Babies not slimy. Babies bootiful,” he assured me.
“Move,” Elm growled, to trade places with Cy.
Like it was the most natural thing in the world to him, Elm got right down in there, not an ounce of hesitation, and helped deliver babies number two and three in short order, all girls, all healthy, with each a beautiful set of lungs on them.
By the time Dorothy came scrambling through the door with Lukar on her heels, there wasn’t much Elm hadn’t already taken care of.
Lukar even complimented Elm on his abilities, something Elm took to heart. We had a healer in the making in our midst. While he liked farming with Forest and his brothers well enough, I could see that spark in his eyes as he worked to help me bring our children into the world. It came to him naturally.
