BRUX
It was a jhorra female from the western ridge enclosure—a creature about the size of a Clydesdale mare, with a long swanlike neck, four powerful rear legs, and two smaller forelimbs tucked close beneath her broad chest. Her hide was a deep dusky blue with silvery dapples, and she had a crest of pale filaments along her spine that bristled when she was agitated. Normally jhorra were calm grazers–gentle and shy–their enormous violet eyes making them look permanently surprised.
This female was very much not calm when Kiera found her.
The labor had started sometime during the night, but by midday it was clear something was wrong. The young had turned badly in the womb and the mother was in distress. She was down on her side in the birthing pen, kicking and groaning, her crest fully flared and her breath coming in panicked bursts. Every few moments she made a long, sorrowful cry that lifted the hairs on the back of Brux’s neck.
Kiera worked on her tirelessly, but Brux could see despair creeping into her face.
“Oh no,” she breathed, as she palpated the squirming calf. “No, no, no—this is a shoulder—lock. The baby’s stuck!”
Then she went into motion.
She called for towels, warm water, lubricant, and birthing straps from the work—bots. She checked the fetus’s position with practiced hands and then cursed under her breath when she realized how tightly wedged it was.
“We’re going to have to turn the baby manually,” she told Brux, stripping off her outer shirt and rolling up her sleeves. “If we don’t, we’re going to lose them both.”
Brux didn’t understand all the mechanics of a jhorra birthing, but he understood enough to see that this was bad. Very bad.
The next several hours were a blur of strain and sweat and urgency.
Kiera worked tirelessly beside the laboring animal, talking to her in the same soothing voice she used for frightened theebles or injured spoolers, though now there was steel under it too.
“That’s it, girl. Easy now. Easy. We’re going to get your baby out, I promise,” she murmured.
The jhorra screamed and kicked as pain overcame her. Brux held her forequarters steady when she thrashed too violently, taking blows that would have broken a weaker male’s ribs. He obeyed Kiera’s rapid—fire instructions—brace here, lift there, hold the leg, keep the mother from rolling, hand her the straps, wipe the fluid, steady the hindquarters…
It was grueling, but he could handle it.
But while all of it was happening, Brux felt the first warning signs…a heaviness behind his eyes…the familiar, dull, dragging pressure at the base of his skull. Words became just slightly harder to catch and hold and his thoughts turned sluggish.
He did his best to ignore it.
There was no choice–Kiera needed him. The jhorra needed him…her unborn young needed him, too. He couldn’t stop in the middle of that crisis and say, Excuse me, but I think my eyes are turning gold and I need you to drop everything and anchor me with your body.
So he said nothing–he held on…held the female steady while Kiera reached deep inside to turn the calf. He held the birthing straps when it came time to pull…held his own mind together by sheer force of will as Kiera counted breaths and pushed and cursed and coaxed and sweated beside him.
And then–at long last–the calf slid free in a rush of fluid and trembling limbs. It was a gangly little thing, all silver—dappled blue and shivering, with folded forelimbs and a wet crest plastered flat to its neck.
“It’s breathing!” Kiera exclaimed, her voice filled with triumph and relief. “Oh thank God—it’s breathing!”
The mother made a weak, exhausted sound and tried to lift her head. Somehow, she managed it and began to lick her baby. The calf nudged her back, welcoming the maternal attention.
Brux stood back, panting, his whole body wet with sweat.
The sight should have filled him with triumph. Instead, all he felt was the dangerous pull of the void as his primal self tried to take over.
The world seemed just slightly too bright around the edges and Kiera’s words were coming to him as though from farther away. His wolf self was pushing upward hard now–hungry and confused.
Kiera was beside him a moment later, flushed and damp and shining with effort.
“We did it,” she said, grinning tiredly. “Brux, we actually did it!”
He wanted to answer…wanted to tell her she was magnificent, that no healer had ever worked harder or with more courage.
Instead he managed only, “Yeeees,” in a slow, dragging voice.
The word came out wrong. Thick. Rough.
