Chapter Twenty-Three
Raiel
Pierce’s Family Estate
At home, I got Alvis settled in on the sofa only after making sure he peed before he sat down.
This close to delivery the baby was doing cartwheels on his bladder and with our mating link wide open, sometimes the signals got crossed and I thought I had to pee when I didn’t.
I didn’t want to deal with that while my lion was the one in control.
I gathered up all the things my mate might need that would require thumbs and made up a few extra bloodshakes.
Only when I was certain that my mate was properly settled in and comfortable did I give in to the sabertoothed beast inside me.
After stripping down, I stretched out on the floor.
Fur started on my stomach and my hair grew out turning the tawny color of my lion’s mane.
My canines extended and my claws came out of my fingers and toes.
I grew larger, stronger, and furrier until I was my lion.
Alvis reached down and scratched between my ears.
Normally, I’d take off the hand of anyone who treated me like a housecat but I loved Alvis’s touch and craved it in every form.
I nuzzled so gently into his hand. My mate was strong but he was also fleshy and pregnant.
He was my whole world and when you nuzzled the very person who was the reason you got out of bed in the morning, you were gentle. How could I be anything else with him?
Purrs echoed from deep inside me as he scratched me until he fell asleep.
I catnapped on and off, opening one big eye to check on him every few minutes.
Eventually, he was deep enough asleep that I scooted out from under his hand and did some big stretches.
My muscles were tight and ached to run. Maybe I could run around the house a few times.
Maybe run in between the houses even. That would help ease this stir-crazy feeling eating away at my bones.
I prowled to the door and stepped on the little lever we had installed so that a press of a foot could open the door from the inside.
Then I stepped outside. I sprinted around the house, stretching and picking up speed.
At first, I stayed right next to the house, following its edges as if they were my boundaries.
Then I spread out a little more with each circle until I was running all over the place and around all the houses.
Crilus waved to me out of his kitchen window but I didn’t slow down.
Couldn’t slow down. I lost myself to the run and the damp grass crushing beneath my massive paws.
“RAIEL!” Alvis’s voice cut into my thoughts.
How long had I been running? Shit! I knew something would happen the moment I left him. I leapt across the yard, landing in front of the house with a quiet thump before squeezing back through the doorway and over to the sofa. The whole house smelled as if kittens were on their way.
“I was just---” I started over our mating link, but Alvis spoke before I could finish my sentence.
“My water’s broke,” he whispered. “Calm. Stay calm. This isn’t an emergency.
Babies are born every second of the day.
It’s not an emergency. Even if we stayed right here nothing bad would happen but I’d much rather be at the hospital with a little bit of pain medicine and a whole lot of people to make sure the baby’s okay when she gets here. ”
I started to grab his arm in my mouth but stopped short.
Alvis wasn’t another cat. He didn’t have fur to protect him while I dragged him around.
My cat yawned and gave in, and slowly but surely, I was back to being my fleshy form.
I scooped up Alvis and carried him out to the car.
His hospital go bag was already in the backseat.
I started to slide into the car when Crilus ran out of his house like a bat out of hell.
I glanced around, sniffing out the threat the elf must’ve seen but there was none.
He waved a pair of pants in the air as if they were his battle flag.
“Mate, you’re not dressed,” Alvis said, trying and failing not to laugh. “You should at least put some pants on. No one here cares if you’re running naked but the hospital might.”
“If the hospital hasn’t seen a penis…” I started but Crilus handed me the pants to put on.
“I doubt they’ve seen one like yours,” Alvis pointed out.
I rolled my eyes at Earthside customs and did up the fly.
My daughter wanted to be born, and everyone was worried about me covering up my dick as if it would somehow impede everyone doing their job.
I took a deep breath and let it out before sliding behind the wheel.
I leaned over and grabbed Alvis’s seatbelt strapping him and our baby in.
“Do we have time to get to the hospital?” I asked.
“We have plenty of time. No speeding or breaking any laws,” Alvis said, but he was holding onto the oh-shit handle for dear life.
His pain radiated into me, and I almost shifted back.
Pain almost always meant a fight and my lion usually took over for those.
Only this wasn’t that sort of fight. This was the sort where I needed to keep my head in the game and get my mate to the hospital in one piece.
Little Fangs Midwives Clinic wasn’t too far away fortunately.
While I drove, Alvis managed to text the clinic and let them know we were on our way.
“You’re doing so well, mate. You’re so big and strong,” I said, and Alvis reached over to squeeze my leg.
Another pain hit him and he squeezed harder.
No one had warned me that I’d feel his labor too.
That his pain would be mine, but it made sense.
If his pleasure was mine, why wouldn’t I feel his pain too?
I panted as I stopped at a red light. I rolled down the window desperate for fresh air an older draconic woman in the next car over asked if we were alright.
“Having baby,” I said. Just those two words because all the other Earthside words I knew left my head.
She said something congratulatory, but I didn’t quite wrap my head around what she said before the light changed to green.
A few moments later, I fish-tailed the car into the parking lot and swore under my breath. Was I trying to kill my mate. My pants had blood on them from where Alvis dug his nails into me. He tried to apologize but I shook my head as I undid his seatbelt.
“Don’t you dare apologize. My leg is fine.
It’s there for whatever you need. Squeezing, biting, whatever,” I said, getting out of the car to open his door.
A tall woman was already there and my arm was around her ready to toss her across the parking lot and out of my way until I realized she smelled like a blueberry scone because she was a nurse and not because she was some fruit-scented assassin.
“Don’t!” Alvis said and I let go of her.
“I’m sorry he’s like that. He’s a first time sire and…” his words devolved into a scream of pain.
“Hurry up and give him the medicine!” I roared.
The nurse flinched and I felt like an utter asshole.
“Raiel, get my bag and stop yelling at the nurse! She’s young! Looks like she’s barely out of school,” Alvis said to me before turning his attention to the nurse and assuring her that he’d done this five times over and that she’d be fine if she just stuck with him.
While I got the bag Alvis allowed the young blueberry nurse to help him into a wheelchair.
She started pushing it across the parking lot and I almost hipchecked her out of the way before reminding myself that she was supposed to help.
She wasn’t some object in the way. She wasn’t some person trying to steal my laboring mate away.
She was a nurse, and this was her job. She was like a beta back home trying to help out.
Though, betas were few and far between these days.
Ophelian was there when the door opened, and I had never been so glad to see his unmoving face.
He took over giving the nurse directions and taking the bag away from me so that I could hold onto Alvis’s hand.
Inside a cozy birthing room, I helped him undress while the blueberry nurse grabbed him a gown to wear.
Everything happened so fast. The midwife and nurses all talked in circles using words that I’d forgotten the meaning of but soon Alvis was settled in with enough pain meds to make things more bearable.
Once things were calmer, I picked up the important details over our mating link.
He was almost dilated enough to push, and it was all happening quickly.
The doctor was going to come back in and do another ultrasound because he’d only seen him a few hours ago and no one was sure about how things changed so quickly.
“I think the baby shifted into her cat form,” I whispered in his ear. “I think wolves and the like do it too, but it’s really common for babies to shift for us. It makes delivery easier most of the time.”
“Come lay with me,” he said.
“Am I allowed?”
“If they try to stop you, I’ll drink them dry, Raiel. Hospital or not, this is the birth of our child, and they aren’t in charge,” he said.
“It’s sexy when you talk like that,” I said, crawling into bed with him and offering him my wrist.
He took it and kissed it, but shook his head and said, “not yet. I’m okay for now.”
“It’s normal for the baby to shift,” I whispered in his ear.
“I know that,” he nodded. “I’ve been penpaling with your carrier.
I want our daughter to know all sides of her family tree and heritage.
I want to know how to take care of a little cat.
I know you’ll be there but I never want to be in a spot where I don’t know if something with our kid is normal or an emergency.
Like, kittens can lose teeth over and over and it’s okay.
That broke my brain a little. And if you lose a sabertooth it will grow back! ”
“I’m aware,” I grinned. “Eventually, you’ll have one of those to carve your amulets.”