Chapter 38 #2
His female, steady and patient and commanding, guided Peony through with unflagging determination and dedication. She didn’t care about the blood or birthing fluid on her bare hands. She didn’t care about the odd circumstances. She remained calm and collected and powerful.
With a shout of agony, the head burst forth. The pup, squished and gray and so little, remained in place until the next contraction.
One final push, a tug from Scarlet, and the pup, with a gush of fluid and blood, fell into her palms. And immediately began to scream.
Peony’s entire body collapsed, like all the strength was sapped from her in an instant leaving her limp and boneless. She still breathed, sweat damp hair clinging to her scalp, but she didn’t move.
Scarlet worked while she rested. She gave the baby a quick check and ensured his mouth was clear before she turned her focus to the umbilical cord. With some thin wire that Tuvo had brought her at the beginning, she tied it off in two places.
“Atem,” She looked up at him. “Would you do the honors?”
Honors? Havali didn’t understand until she lifted the cord for him, and he realized that she meant for him to cut it. Was that something human males did? Scarlet and Alanna were looking at him expectantly like it was.
Atem, uncertainly, reached over Peony and offered his claw. Scarlet pulled the cord down across it and, with a burst of blood, the pup was freed.
Instantly, he changed color to match Scarlet’s skin tone.
Havali, Tuvo, and Atem all stilled, staring with wide eyes.
Scarlet didn’t seem to have noticed; she was doing a slightly more thorough examination. She looked into his three eyes. Tested reflexes at his face, hands, feet, and tail. Brought him up so she could put her ear to his chest and listen to his heart and lungs.
Only when she finished with all that did she finally stand from her crouch, legs wobbling a bit from the prolonged position, and bring the infant to his mother.
“Congratulations, Peony,” she said softly.
Havali thought that Peony might not move again for another day or more, but the squalling of her approaching pup immediately snapped her eyes open, and her arms lifted.
Scarlet put him down on her chest and the pup’s skin changed again.
Darker this time, matching Peony’s skin tone. So rapid. So flawless.
So impossible.
Havali and Tuvo exchanged a glance but kept their mouths shut as Peony asked Scarlet if he was okay and Scarlet assured her that he was.
Peony clutched him to her breast, cooing and awing over him as he screamed his displeasure to the universe. Alanna made similar sounds. Scarlet had returned between Peony’s legs.
She grabbed the cord and began to pull, pushing down on Peony’s belly at the same time. Peony whimpered in pain, but didn’t try to stop her as, slowly, Scarlet extracted the placenta.
More blood.
“I can’t stitch it up,” Scarlet said apologetically as she used some of the remaining rags to staunch the bleeding. “I’ll dress it for now, and once we get back to my clinic, I can repair it. If you feel any bleeding or anything leaking, let me know.”
Peony hummed in agreement, but her eyes remained focused only on her pup.
“Look at his little hands,” Alanna cooed. “And his little tail! He’s adorable.”
“Atem,” Peony looked back at her mate, smiling so brightly, it was like she had completely forgotten about all the snapping, angry words she had given him through the process. “Want to hold him?”
Atem, still not speaking, nodded. Instead of taking the pup from her hands, he reached around and cradled them both.
His entire body remained tense and shaking.
He held them as Peony gently stroked her pup’s cheek.
The exhausted smile on her face was completely at odds with the pained horror that had been there just moments before.
It was then that the comm on the console finally lit up and a message announcing the imminent arrival of the rescue team was broadcast to the room.
Just in time to be too late.
Havali turned to address the messages coming through. The energy plant had finally finished its cycle and they could be retrieved. Someone outside the ship had taken over manual control and was pulling it up and out of range of the lights.
“Did you know?”
The soft voice at his side turned Havali’s eyes from the console to Tuvo. He was still staring at the others.
“What the birth would be like, you mean?” Havali clarified, looking back as well. Scarlet had finished cleaning Peony up and was lowering her legs out of their curled positions. She walked to the small privy on the orbital and began washing her hands and arms. “No. I didn’t.”
“I…” Tuvo’s voice failed. He lowered his eyes in shame. “I was so dismissive.”
The corner of Havali’s lips curled up in a sympathetic smile. “As I said, the females are forgiving. You need only apologize. You were ignorant, not malicious.”
Tuvo said nothing, but he looked so heartbroken, it gave Havali pause.
“Tuvo? What’s wrong?”
“Just thinking…”
“Of?”
“How traumatic the birth was. How small Peony is.”
Those seemed like two rather random things to be thinking about. But then Havali realized he recognized the aching longing in Tuvo’s eyes as he stared at the little family, though he likely wasn’t even seeing them.
Peony was certainly small. However, Hattie was much smaller.
And Tuvo was the largest domini male Havali personally knew.
Tuvo had already declared he couldn’t have Hattie, not without hurting her with his sheer size.
Seeing Peony need to be physically cut into in order to deliver her son must have driven the point home that what he wanted was impossible.
“Tuvo, you-”
“Never mind,” Tuvo growled, stepping away from him.
Havali turned to follow, but at that moment, across the room, Peony was setting her pup into Alanna’s waiting arms. And that surprised him because a female domini would never allow someone other than her mate to hold a pup so recently born.
That was apparently not an instinct she had obtained from her pregnancy, because Peony was only smiling as Alanna held the boy in her arms.
And the pup, just as before, immediately changed color.
He was partially the same rich brown as Alanna’s skin, where he rested against her bare arms, but he was also partly pale purple from the dress she was wearing.
He had not only camouflaged so quickly and perfectly, but he had so effortlessly matched two different colors in distinct regions of his skin.
The sight was enough to leave Havali speechless. And it seemed that Scarlet had finally noticed as well because she was frowning at the pup.
“Alanna,” she interjected, “give the baby back to Peony.”
Alanna looked surprised and confused, but she didn’t hesitate to obey.
Immediately, again, the pup matched his mother’s paler skin tone.
Peony had long ago abandoned her own dress and was instead wearing Atem’s shirt that was fully open down the front allowing complete skin to skin contact as she held her pup close.
“Is something wrong?” She asked, worried as Alanna looked between them.
“His camouflage reflex is perfect,” Scarlet mumbled.
“And that’s bad?”
“No. It shouldn’t be.” Scarlet did not sound sure, alarming Peony further.
She raced to continue. “I mean, he’s a hybrid, right?
So, who knows exactly how his body works?
But usually, for domini infants, they’re gray for the first few weeks of life.
And then they usually pick one color to change into and they keep it for some time.
Usually, it’s purple, since that’s the predominant color of the forest where the domini evolved.
But not always. And then their reflexes are very primitive and basic and, well, inaccurate until they hit puberty.
He shouldn’t be changing colors already, much less this well. ”
Peony bit her lip nervously, looking down at her gently sleeping son. “Is he going to be okay? Are his color cells going to burn out earlier?”
Scarlet shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ll know more when I can get him to the scanner, and I can see exactly what’s happening. For now, try to keep him from changing colors. Just in case. Keep him close so he stays your skin color.”
As she was speaking, the airlock was opening.
The room quickly filled with peacekeepers of the ring, sent by the High Imperium to retrieve them.
They brought a stretcher that Atem immediately lifted Peony and their son onto.
Havali didn’t know how they knew someone needed medical aid – it could just be a standard precaution since communication had been lost.
They had been trapped in that room for so long, it seemed surreal to leave so quickly. But Havali and Tuvo gathered up the pieces of Peony’s impromptu nest – in case she had become attached to any of it – and followed after the others.
All the while, Havali was thinking that he had greatly underestimated birth among humans and he suddenly understood why Scarlet and the others were so reluctant to become pregnant, despite how fertile they naturally were.
The price was simply too high to be careless.