This was also not the time to argue with that, either, as much as I wanted to tell him there wasn’t a chance in hell that he was going to call our son something like Moonbeam or Snowcloud if I had any say in the matter. (And, sadly, these were actual names he had suggested over the course of the previous eight months.)
“Just breathe, beautiful,” Serge fussed. “We love you so much.”
“Aaaaggghhhh!” Sage’s face, flushed and sweaty, contorted with pain. “It’sworse! Wh-why is it worse?” The words came out between panted breaths, colored with anger and fear.
It was only the fact that Eric and Brandt remained calm and unworried which kept me from becoming anxious, though I still looked to them for answers.
“He’s crowning,” Eric told us, having the grace to grimace sympathetically, “like I said before. It’ll burn a bit more. You just need to push as hard as you can on the next contraction.”
“You think I haven’t been?!”
“They know you have, beautiful. They’re just—eep.” Serge yelped, and it took me a moment to realize that Sage had gripped his hand and squeezed with all his might. If we weren’t shifters, I suspected a grip that tight might have broken bones. As it was, given our strength as shifters, it was still possible.
“Shut up,” Sage hissed, lurching as far over his belly as he could, “shut up, shut up, shut—oh fuckfuckfuck. Make it stop!” He slumped once the contraction faded, his shoulders trembling. “I can’t do this.”
“Yes you can, baby,” I rubbed his back, wishing I could lend him extra strength or energy through the bond. Unfortunately, the connection between us had seemingly muted itself once his labor had begun, almost like an inbuilt magical protection system, allowing me and Serge to continue to support him instead of writhing in shared pain ourselves. “You’ve got this.”
“You are doing extremely well,” Brandt agreed. “Not much longer and your little one will be in your arms.”
I was suddenly glad that the bond was inactive, because I felt a moment of mild panic at my brother-in-law’s words. For all that I’d known my mate was having a baby, the reality of it hadn’t hit until that moment.
My mate washaving a baby.
We were about to become parents.
Swallowing, I glanced over at my alpha, whose expression seemed to say ‘Oh, you’ve caught up now, have you?’
“He’s going to be perfect,” Sergio soothed, and I wasn’t certain if the words were intended to calm me or Sage at that point. “I can’t wait to meet him.”
“Thenyoucan do this part,” Sage sniped back, before groaning and leaning forward again.
No thank you,I thought to myself. This had completely, utterly confirmed what I had already known: I never wanted to get pregnant.
“That’s it, Sage,” Eric encouraged, “push as hard as you can. Scream if it helps. One more big push and—yep!” He declared happily at the same moment as relief seemed to overwhelm my laboring mate. “Head’s out.” He smiled up at us. “Wanna see?”
Serge bent forward without any further invitation, and I watched his face light up with wonder and awe. With glistening eyes, he tore his gaze away from his first glimpse at the baby to tell me and Sage, “He’s gorgeous.”
That was enough to spur me forward. With my hand still splayed on Sage’s back, I leaned around his belly. I was not prepared for the sight of a tiny head, smeared in red and white, poking out from an orifice which had not existed until only a few hours earlier. It wasgraphic, to say the least. Confronting, even. But strangely beautiful, too.
The little face was scrunched in displeasure or distress or some mixture of both, eyes screwed shut and tiny plump lips puckered and pursed. His nose was a red, wrinkled button in the middle of the rest of his pruned skin, and he truly looked more like a mangled potato creature than a baby.
But Serge was right: he was gorgeous.
“Oh, darling,” I resumed my spot at Sage’s side, feeling mystified and overwhelmed, “he really is perfect.”
Sage grimaced and groaned, tensing up, but seeming to listen as Eric and Brandt talked him through the next contraction, instructing him to ease up on his pushing. “He doesn’t feel perfect,” he complained through clenched teeth.
I was still too swamped with emotions to find that amusing, which was probably a good thing, all things considered.
It all happened quickly from there, though. Or at least it did from my perspective. Sage pushed through the next few contractions and then, all of a sudden, Eric was cradling a squirming newborn, his little warbling cries doing strange things to my heart.
Sage practically collapsed against the raised back of the hospital bed, his face streaked with tears and sweat, his breath coming in ragged, exhausted pants. “Holy shit,” he murmured, staring down the length of his body with wide, red-rimmed eyes, “that’s our baby.”
“Congratulations, guys,” Eric grinned back, carefully handing the baby over to Brandt to be weighed and looked over, “it’s a boy.”
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from our son —holy shit,our son!— for even a moment. Not even as Sage worked through the final stages of delivery, passing the afterbirth with what sounded like ease in comparison to the baby before it.
“He is precious,” Brandt told us as he brought our squirming bundle of limbs across from the corner of the room where he had been checking him over. His little lungs were in perfect working order, as far as I could tell, but nobody else seemed concerned about his distress. Brandt helped nestle him against Sage’s barechest, then placed a thin blanket over them carefully. “Skin to skin contact will help him regulate his temperature, heartrate, and breathing,” he explained softly, his eyes suspiciously moist. “This is my favorite moment.”
