Chapter 19
Bennie
The Hemlock Wolf Pack, Star’s Territory
It turned out that Alby was already dilated two centimeters.
What he referred to as achy was actually early labor and his contractions could start at any time.
When we first started talking about his birthing plan I had brought up the option of a water birth, but Alby didn’t like the idea.
He wanted to den down. So, over the last few months, Raziel and I had carried in several large boulders and slabs of rocks to make a rock wall around the inside of the doorway of one of the guestrooms. It mimicked the mouth of a cave and made Alby feel safer.
Then together, we all brought in everything babies might need for the first few weeks of their lives.
We didn’t plan on living in the ‘den’ but that was going to be up to Alby.
We even had a plan to enforce it. If someone bothered us about it, I’d keep Alby calm and Raziel would either calm down the other person or eat them.
I offered to carry my mate up the spiral staircase, but he wouldn’t hear of it.
So, I walked behind him, trying to hide how nervous I was every time he walked up or down these particular steps.
He was so front heavy that I always feared he’d tip over.
He stopped halfway up the stairs and held his lower back.
I was just about to make the offer to carry him again when the staircase that had been pissing me off for the last two weeks flooded.
Alby’s eyes went huge as we both looked down at the fluid trickling down onto the next step.
“We’ll clean it up!” Clyde called as the back door opened, announcing that he and Raziel were back. “Don’t you worry about it!”
His voice was half gentle grandparent and half command. Alby gripped the handrail and we continued to climb.
“I’m glad I ate first. This is a fucking hike,” he panted, stopping to rest again. “No! I don’t want to be carried!” he said, holding out a palm before I even had the chance to offer again. “I have feet.”
I nodded at him and didn’t say anything because it felt like one of those life moments where the best thing you could do was shut the hell up until the other person told you what, if anything, they needed.
Eventually we made it upstairs and into the den.
Alby lowered himself onto all fours on one of the fur and hide piles we made and ignored me for the next ten minutes.
I stood in the doorway, watching him breathe.
He didn’t shift but his scent changed. In anyone else, I would’ve known it was his mind shifting into the focus he needed for labor.
With Alby, with my poor mate, he smelled like fear, agony, and rage.
“He’ll be fine, kiddo,” Clyde said, squeezing past me to take Alby his frappe. Clyde had thought ahead and brought a big, long straw with the coffee. Alby sipped it and then curled in on himself. His first contraction. The first contraction of so many.
Clyde stayed beside Alby until it passed and then walked over to me.
“Stop standing there like he’s dying. He’s probably feeling more alive than ever. He’s having your kids. So, get over there and be there for whatever he eventually needs. You’re not going to break him. Believe me, if anyone leaves here with battle wounds inflicted by another person, it’ll be you.”
“I…”
“Don’t waste breath talking to me. Go to your mate. I’ve already called your parents,” he said. “They’ll be here soon. If you faint on Alby, I’m going to bite your tail, hard.” He said and walked out.
I sat down near Alby and rubbed small circles on his back. He leaned into my touch and looked over at me.
“Don’t mind him. He thinks he was born owning every labor and delivery room,” Alby chuckled.
Clyde was right. Alby needed the sugar and I needed armor.
At first, Alby said his contractions were manageable.
Then as they progressed he paced between them.
Every time one hit, he grabbed my arm for dear life, and squatted down snarling at everyone in the room.
His fingernails shifted into his wolf’s claws and dug into me.
I healed quickly because of the alpha gene, but fucking hell, it hurt!
Only, I didn’t complain as the blood ran down my arm, because I wasn’t the one who still had to deliver three babies.
By dinner time, Alby was halfway dilated but his birthing plan was starting to go out of the window. Midwife Wane was no longer allowed close enough to him to check his progress. That job fell on me.
“And if you…” he growled, “don’t do it right, I will eat you! I will eat you and let the babies eat your bone marrow!”
“Okay,” I nodded. “You’re a little over five.”
“Good. Good boy. I love you. I really do but oh my Juda on a biscuit and the Crow King in a zoo! Why did you put so many fucking babies inside me, Benjamin?!” he snarled.
The whole house froze as he used my entire first name. I almost told him because he asked me to, but I knew he wasn’t looking for an actual answer. Plus, neither of us actually decided how many babies we’d have. That was all on nature.
“If you ever do this again, I’m going to pick up Raziel and beat you with him!” he snarled, slapping the floor as another contraction hit. “I will beat your heads together and you’ll have to feel bad for Raziel because he didn’t even get laid and he’s getting his head beaten against yours!”
After the contraction he got up onto his feet. I moved next to him because I thought he was pacing again but he started for the doorway. Clyde, Sylvan, and Raziel were hanging out in the hallway.
“Raz?” he asked, his voice so level. For a moment, my feelings were raw and wounded. Why was he gentle with Raz when he had just threatened to murder me?
“Yeah, Alby? Need me to grab something?” Raziel asked, starting to walk over.
Clyde smirked like he knew something the rest of us didn’t.
“Come in here for a minute,” Alby beckoned him with a wave, stepping back.
“Alby, are you going to eat Raziel?” Slyvin asked.
“No,” he shook his head. “I still have that smoothie Grandpa brought me a bit ago. It’s my third one. Three smoothies and a coffee and my babies still won’t come out.”
“Is everything okay?” Raziel asked, but Alby shut the door as soon as he was inside. Then he growled. I started to slide in between them, but Alby grabbed Raziel by the ears and pulled his tall ass down to his level.
“You listen to me and you listen well,” he growled.
“You are a great fucking guy! I don’t know what dark secret you think you’re carrying but stop acting like you’re some war criminal!
” he shook his ears and if Raziel wasn’t shocked into immobility I might’ve tried to free him from my mate’s grasp.
“I don’t know what the hang up is about your true-mate but you’re going to get through it and go find that man and make him fucking happy because you are a fucking great guy!
I love you like a brother but I’m telling you,” he growled and winced and I hoped he let go of Raziel’s ears before the next contraction hit him.
“If one of my littermates or the others pulled this moping around shit, I would kick their asses so badly that they’d pray their true-mate was a healer and crawl to them.
I don’t want to hear that it’s complicated.
I want you to figure it out because you’re breaking my Frost-damnded heart moping around and smelling so sad about it all the time.
Do you understand me?” he asked, shaking his ears for emphasis.
To his credit, Raziel managed to nod and gently reach up and pry Alby’s fingers off his ears.
“Thank you, Alby,” he said, his voice a lot quieter than I expected it to be. “What happened in our past life, I’m sorry about it.”
“Raziel,” Alby said, tears falling down his cheeks.
“I don’t know what it was but even if you killed me, it wasn’t me.
That’s why reincarnation exists, right? So that we get to be different people and learn to be kind?
Brad and I talk about it a lot. Frost had said something about helping someone from your past life when he was talking about ‘remember Chad Boston.’ He’ll tell you too.
We don’t want to think about those lives in personal ways.
We’re glad we don’t remember them. All we want is to be happy now and we are.
We don’t need answers. I just need you to realize that you don’t have to spend the rest of this life making it up to us.
You are fucking great and even if you were horrible or something before, you learned from it.
You literally mashed those bears up for kidnapping that baby!
You’re a fucking hero, Raz. So I’m not saying to get a big head.
Just stop beating yourself up!” It looked like he had more he wanted to say, but his claws dug into Raziel’s arms as he squatted down consumed by the storm of another contraction.
I closed the space between us and squatted down with Alby.
When the contraction ended, he fell into me sideways and I hit my ass, but caught him.
Raziel sat down with us but didn’t say anything.
I didn’t know any more about Raziel’s previous incarnation than Alby did but my mate had pretty much summed up how I felt about it.
Maybe his true-mate would remember it differently but no matter what happened with him, Raziel would always have a home with us.
That day of Alby’s laboring turned into a night of laboring and it was sunrise before Alby had his ‘golden hour.’ Everyone was exhausted, but no one said a word about it.
Everyone except Clyde sort of shuffled out of the room and away from the doorway.
I stretched out next to Alby who lay grinning, his eyes so big he looked high, at the three tiger cubs laying on his chest and belly.
Only ‘Big Boy’ still had his wings out, tucked in close to his body.
They were as black as night. Clyde took care of the vaccines and watching all four of them for any post birth/post delivery complications.
I stroked my mate’s hair and tried not to cry.
Our three little boys were beautiful and healthy.
Alby couldn’t stop smiling. Logically, I knew his brain was a rush of all the hormones that make parents love and protect their babies, but as his mate, I couldn’t help but to look at him with awe.
He’d not only put a dragon in his place, but delivered three wonderful and healthy babies.
He deserved every second of his golden hour.
He dozed on and off with the babies and I murmured to him about how strong and incredible he was.
“Thank you for not fainting,” Clyde looked at me. “Really, thank you. He didn’t need that. I couldn’t have predicted that he’d have chosen now to tell Raziel to stop moping around, but it was good timing. Can’t argue with a man in labor.”
“I guess not,” I chuckled.
“You get some sleep too. You’re going to need it,” Clyde said. “I’ll keep watch.”
“Big Boy’s name is Razlin. Bunny Feet is Ashlin. And…” Alby yawned. “Thump is Cyldus.”
We had talked about names a little, agreeing that we’d combine parts of the names of the people who were important to us.
Clyde’s mouth dropped open. His mate had named several of their kids after him, but from the look on the older wolf’s face, I’d have guessed that this was his first great grandson named after him.
“Are you sure, Alby?” he asked.
“Yeah. Raziel, Grandpa Ashley, all the ‘in’ endings for Slyvin and you. Some of the strongest people I know. I want my kids to be happy and kick ass when they need to, Grandpa. You gotta know how to kick ass to be happy. You taught me that,” Alby laughed, half out of it.
“He was the quiet one in the womb. So he’s going to need to know how to kick the most asses. ”
Clyde kissed Alby’s forehead and wiped away a single tear.
As I lay with my family dozing off, I realized that Clyde was more like Raziel than I first thought.
For whatever reason, they both spent so much time trying to prove that they were good and useful to people who already adored them.
We loved them for it, but like Alby, I wished that they would learn to rest and accept that they were the good guys.
“BENNIE!” it was Daisy’s voice that sounded from downstairs.
“Shit!” I swore under my breath, starting to push myself upright to stop her from barreling into the room, but Alby grabbed my hand.
“Let her come see them. She can nap too. She did almost eat a hand for them,” Alby said, yawning.
I really was the luckiest tiger in the territory.
I had my mate, my friends, and my family and they all got on well.
I had three healthy newborns and a village to help if we needed it.
Daisy stretched out on Alby’s other side and dozed off after a few minutes of ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the babies, especially Razlin’s wings.
“Gonna make him be happy if I gotta kick his butt to do it,” Alby grumbled as he fell asleep. “He doesn’t get to make our lives happy and then be miserable forever.”
Look out for my next book to find out what happens to Brad as he settles into his new life with Baby Oaklan and Resin! <3