“Then I’m blaming the forest.”
The car. I drove. My hands were still on the wheel. My heart was not. Andrea was gripping the door handle with her eyes closed, breathing in counts between contractions. When the next one hit she grabbed the handle above the window and screamed, loud, raw, the sound filling the car.
“Oh God,” she gasped when it passed, tears running down her cheeks. “Oh God, that one was worse. They’re getting worse.”
“We’re ten minutes out.”
“I don’t have ten minutes.”
“You have ten minutes.”
“Finneas, I swear to God, it feels like my insides are being wrung out like a washcloth.”
“That’s... a visual.”
“Don’t you dare laugh at me right now.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“You’re doing ninety.”
“I’m aware.”
“If you run another red light I’m going to name this baby after my least favorite person.”
“Who’s your least favorite person?”
“Lorraine.”
“I’ll stop at the lights.”
She almost smiled. Then another contraction. The smile was gone. She grabbed my hand on the gearshift, squeezed so hard I heard my knuckles pop. “Finneas, if this baby has your head size I will never forgive you.”
“My head is a normal size.”
“Your head is enormous. You have a king-sized head. It’s genetic and our son is going to inherit it and I’m going to have to push it out and I will hold that against you for the rest of our lives.”
Another contraction. Shorter gap this time. She screamed through clenched teeth, her back arching off the seat, tears streaming. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, Finneas, please drive faster.”
I drove faster.
47
— • —
Andrea
The hospital was bright and cold and I hated it immediately.
Finneas pulled up to a side entrance I’d never seen before, away from the main emergency doors, quieter. A nurse was already waiting with a wheelchair. The fourth floor, he’d said on the phone. The private wing. Shifter staff, shifter doctors, a place where nobody would blink if the King’s eyes went gold during delivery. I didn’t care about any of that right now. I cared about the contraction that was ripping through me like someone had reached inside my body and squeezed.
“Oh God,” I gasped, doubling over in the wheelchair. “Oh fuck, that’s a big one.”
Finneas was beside me, one hand on my shoulder, the other on the wheelchair handle, walking so close to the nurse pushing me that the poor woman kept bumping into him. His jaw waslocked. His eyes were doing the thing, brown flickering to gold and back, and he was growling. Actually growling, low in his chest, at every person who came within arm’s reach of me.
A nurse tried to take my arm to help me onto the bed. Finneas stepped between them.
“Don’t touch her.”
