Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Hayden
H e came so close. So close that I screamed out for him.
Of course, the scream also could have been due to a particularly fierce contraction.
But then he didn’t come. It was like I could feel Mace right there. Right there and…above me. But he didn’t magically materialize. And then he was gone again. Not completely gone, but he’d switched directions and was running away from me instead of toward me.
“No!” I shouted, rocking on my hands and knees.
Another contraction hit, and I growled through it, teeth grit. I’d shoved my trousers down as soon as Colin left, just in case, but for a change, I prayed that I just looked silly instead of having done something smart and necessary.
“What the hell are you doing in there, kid?” I shouted, clutching a hand to my belly. “Oh, you want to come out and see what all the fuss is about tonight? Really? You know this is no place for a baby.”
Junior didn’t seem to care. My body spasmed again as my organs rearranged themselves for birth.
I guess I hadn’t really been paying attention in the birthing classes my doctor had insisted I attend. I knew vaguely that male omegas went through a pretty hair-raising process of, shall we say, reorganization when they went into labor. Simon had attended the class with me, and since he hoped to have babies someday, I’d spent more time giggling over the way he blanched at everything the instructor said than I did paying attention.
Simon might have been right to blanche, though.
Because our reproductive organs connected to our anus instead of an entirely different opening, like female omegas and betas, our bodies had to adjust to temporarily bypass the lower digestive tract entirely. It meant our labor was much faster, since shutting down the digestive system for too long could be deadly, but our afterbirth was a bitch to clean up.
I moaned, rocking harder as I thought about it. I didn’t know how much time I had. All I knew was that I didn’t want to give birth alone in an empty storeroom, on a bare mattress that would end up covered in shit, blood, and amniotic fluid. I didn’t want to have to break the news to Junior when I held him in my arms for the first time that this was just how it was going to be with me, because his papa was a mess.
The contractions subsided for long enough that I was able to flop to my side to rest for a moment. I reached out, feeling for Mace again. He was distant from me, but at least he wasn’t moving farther away. And he was…sad? I felt a strange, twisty feeling from him, like he was…disappointed? No, that couldn’t be right.
Then another contraction started.
“God, no!” I groaned, moving up to my hands and knees again.
The other thing I remembered from the birthing class was that, also unlike female omegas, male omegas did better if they gave birth either on their hands and knees or sitting up. That’s why special birthing supports had been invented for us. If I’d been in a hospital, I would have an entire scaffolding to lean into, and Junior could just slip right down and into the world, easy peasey.
I wasn’t going to get anything like that now. I wasn’t sure I would even have?—
I gasped as the sudden sensation of Mace drawing near to me again filled me.
“Mace!” I shouted, then groaned and grit my teeth as the height of that particular contraction hit me.
I didn’t have the wherewithal to cry out again, but I didn’t need to. Mace was definitely moving toward me. So close that I could?—
The door suddenly banged hard. I wanted to get up and answer it. I knew it was Mace on the other side. But with the contraction going full blast, sweat dripping off me, and an instinctual sense that I needed to stay right where I was and focus on birthing, I didn’t.
The door banged loudly a few more times, then crashed open.
And there he was. My hero, my alpha, the man I loved against all odds. He’d come to rescue me.
“Hayden!”
“Mace?” I moaned. “Thank God, Mace!” Then I flat-out cried. “I don’t want to have our baby like this!”
“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” Mace said in the most reassuring, powerful, alpha voice I’d ever heard as he practically flew to me. He dropped to my side and gathered me into his arms. “I’ve got you.”
The contraction subsided, but my emotions still ran high. Not only did I let myself be pulled into his arms, I threw my arms around his neck, buried my face against his shoulder, and wailed with fear and pain and relief.
“This night sucks,” I whined. “I’m never going to a fundraising dinner with you again.”
Mace laughed. I could feel his own relief in the sound and through our bond. It actually made me feel better.
“Let’s get you out of here,” Mace said, tugging my trousers up, then standing with me in his arms. “We’ll call an ambulance, if there isn’t one here already.”
There was a grave note in his voice as he said that. I felt the same twist of emotions I’d felt from him when he was farther away from me, but still.
“Has something happened?” I asked, lifting my head from his shoulder.
“You’re not to worry about any of that until later,” Mace told me in no uncertain terms.
I wanted to argue with him, accuse him of withholding important information from me, but another contraction started, which not only hurt, it sent me into a panic.
I was surprised Mace could carry me as easily as he did, what with my body being huge and with me writhing in pain. I was also surprised when we left the store room and ended up in a parking garage.
“Where are we?” I managed to squeeze out through panting breaths.
“Next to the hotel,” Mace said, carrying me up a set of stairs to the top level of the garage…which happened to be level with the ground and right next to both the Grand Hotel and the beach.
It was long after dark, but the entire area, including the beach, was lit up with lights from the hotel, floodlights, and the headlights of several police cars. There were so many police cars that I almost forgot the gripping pain that had me half losing my mind.
Mace seemed to hesitate as he saw the scene as well. Something had definitely happened. And I understood what he meant by an ambulance possibly already being on the scene when I spotted a body covered in a white sheet farther down the beach.
“What?”
That was all I could manage before my labor pain got the better of me.
“Hold on, baby,” Mace said. I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or Junior. “Det. Shirley,” he called out a moment later.
“Mr. Canton,” Det. Shirley answered, walking closer to us from a bit of the parking lot that provided access to the beach. “You found him.”
“I found him, and he’s in labor,” Mace said.
Det. Shirley stared at me in alarm. “How long has he?—”
The almighty roar of pain I let out must have answered her question.
“Get him inside,” Det. Shirley said. “He seems close.”
“I am,” I whined, panting with short, sharp breaths.
Mace turned and hurried for the hotel. The only door that led into the hotel from the parking lot was thronged with hotel staff, peering out to see what was going on. I really didn’t want to be a spectacle, so I hid my face against Mace’s neck, growling and groaning and making sounds that probably would make the people Mace pushed past as he rushed me into the hotel think I was dying.
I kind of felt like I was dying.
“Why is this so hard?” I wept, gripping my stomach.
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” Mace said, striding down the hall. “I’ll make it up to you.”
I wanted to come up with a witty reply, but things shifted within me, and I had a definite sense that it was happening now.
“He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming,” I panted as Mace hurried forward.
He burst out of the small corridor we’d been in straight into the lobby. The very full, very excited lobby.
“Hayden!” Simon’s voice cut over the murmuring din and gasps of surprise that met us in the lobby.
“Simon!” I managed to groan. I had never been happier to see my brother in my life. “The baby’s coming. He’s coming right now.”
“Everybody stand back,” another voice said.
A second later, as the crowd in the lobby, all dressed in formal attire and glittering jewelry, stepped back as the man said, I realized it was Mr. Harvey. Old, rich Mr. Harvey was managing crowd control for the birth of my and Mace’s baby.
I laughed out loud, but that only made everything slip inside me.
“Oh, God! Let me down, Mace. Let me down now! He’s coming now !” I shouted.
“Get some pillows!” Mr. Harvey took charge once again. “Bring a first aid kit, clean water. Everybody stand back.
Mace not only let me down, he lowered to the floor with me, still cradling me somehow, even as he shifted me back to my knees with my arms draped, shaking, over his shoulders.
“Remove his trousers,” Mr. Harvey continued to order. Give me that towel.”
I was barely aware of what was happening, but someone pulled my trousers straight off my legs, and Simon shoved what looked like an entire pile of towels under me.
“I don’t want to do this,” I wailed.
“There, there,” Mr. Harvey said, now crouched behind Mace’s back, which meant he was facing me. “My wife delivered five babies, all of them at home. I’ve done this before, and I know how it goes.”
It was the wildest thing, but I trusted him. Mace trusted him, too, I could feel it. If my alpha trusted this other alpha, then everything would be alright.
The next few minutes were a blur. I could feel the energy of the startled hotel lobby, I vaguely sensed Det. Shirley and maybe some paramedics rushing into the room. But mostly, I felt the intense focus of my alpha as my body tried to tear itself open so that Junior could come into the world.
And then he was there. A wailing cry rent the air that was louder than my own cry. I felt the gush of was must have been half my insides coming out. Mace cried out with surprise and delight, and started weeping right along with me.
A minute or so later, I really don’t know how, I was sitting in the safe circle of Mace’s arms and legs on the lobby floor, a beautiful, wrinkly, startled baby in my arms. Off to the side, Simon and Mr. Harvey were cleaning up the floor. A pair of paramedics hovered over me—one of them must have cut the umbilical cord—and the audience we’d had for the whole thing was applauding and cooing.
It was weird, to say the least.
“When you’re ready, Mr. Kipling, we’ll move you all to the ambulance and take you to the hospital to make sure everyone is okay,” one of the paramedics said.
I nodded a breathless, “Okay,” but really, all I wanted to do was stare at my baby.
My baby. My and Mace’s baby. He was so amazingly perfect. Someone brought a hotel blanket and wrapped it around all three of us, since we were smushed so close together. I moved the top aside so I could continue to just look at Junior.
“Oh my God, Mace, just look at him,” I wept.
“I know,” Mace said, more emotion in his voice than I’d ever heard. “What an angel.”
I laughed. “Little devil is more like it. Do you have any idea what you did to Papa’s insides?” I asked him.
I sucked in a breath as it hit me. Papa. I was a papa now. This tiny, squirming baby in my arms was mine, my son, and I was now responsible for him.
The prospect was terrifying, but at least I wasn’t alone.
“Hey, Junior. Have you met this guy?” I angled him so he could see Mace, even though I couldn’t remember if babies could really see that far right after being born. “This is your daddy. He’s going to be the best daddy ever.”
“Hey, little guy,” Mace said in the sweetest, sappiest voice. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to let him name you Junior.”
I laughed. I laughed so much. I was so filled with joy and relief and amazement that the only thing I could do was laugh.
“What are you going to call him, then?” Simon asked. He’d evidently finished helping with the clean-up and came to crouch beside us.
“Oh, hey, this is your Uncle Simon,” I told Junior, shifting so Simon could get a better look. A second later, I blinked and asked, “Wait, what are you doing here?”
Simon turned grave. “I raced to get here as soon as our call got cut off,” he said. “Dad and Papa are here, too, but I think they’re talking to the police right now.”
“The police?” Everything was confusing to me just then. I was exhausted and overstimulated, but really the only thing in the entire universe that I wanted to pay attention to was Junior. Well, him and Mace.
“I’ll explain later,” Mace said.
“That’s the second time you’ve told me that,” I said, sighing a little.
Really, I was too tired to care. And I was ready to get off the floor of the Grand Hotel’s lobby and on to a nice, clean, warm hospital bed.
Things moved fast as soon as I told Mace I was ready to go. The paramedics brough in a gurney and lifted me and Junior onto it. Mace hovered as they secured me, constantly touching me, even though I could tell it annoyed the paramedics and got in the way of their job. I knew he couldn’t help it, though. Our bond was suddenly blasting between us at full strength. I didn’t want him to stop touching me either.
“This isn’t how I expected the evening to go,” Mr. Harvey said, accompanying us, along with Simon out the hotel’s front door and over to the waiting ambulance.
“It wasn’t what I expected either,” Mace said with a heavy laugh.
“I know now is not the time,” Mr. Harvey went on. “But as soon as it is time, I’d like to meet, either at your office or mine, to discuss a partnership between Canton Enterprises and the Harvey Corporation.”
“I’d like that, too,” Mace said with a big smile.
We’d reached the ambulance, and the paramedics shifted me into the clean, bright space.
“Congratulations on your happy day,” Mr. Harvey said.
He stepped back, and Simon moved in to say, “Dad, Papa, and I will meet you at the hospital.”
“Great,” I said. Or, at least, I thought I said. I was too busy gazing in wonder at the baby in my arms.
I didn’t notice much else as Mace climbed into the ambulance and sat beside me, reaching for one of my hands. The paramedics did their thing, securing everything, then shifting into the front so they could drive us away from the craziness of the evening.
“I’m not gonna lie,” I said, squeezing Mace’s hand. “I am so incredibly glad that I have you with me. Not just here in the ambulance or for Junior’s birth.”
“We’re not calling him Junior,” Mace said in a playfully flat voice.
I made a face at him, then trained my eyes on our son again. “I’m so grateful that I have you in my life,” I went on. “Not a day will go by when I’m not grateful to fate for bringing us together again. I might even be grateful to Colin for?—”
I stopped with a gasp, whipping to face Mace with wide eyes.
“That was Colin under the white sheet on the beach, wasn’t it,” I said, suddenly feeling sick.
Mace’s face pinched and he squeezed my hand, like he didn’t really want to say anything. “It was,” he said.
“You didn’t?—”
“He had a gun in the waistband of his jeans, and it went off while I was chasing him.”
I gaped, not only because that was horrible, but because I’d called it.
I really didn’t like the fact that I’d called it.
My mind flew back to my captivity, and I remembered another detail.
“There was someone else,” I said in a rush, wishing I didn’t have to think about it at all. “Someone came to the door and got into a fight with Colin. I didn’t see who it was. I don’t know for certain, but I feel like Colin was in trouble for everything he was doing, but I don’t know who with. Maybe there’s security camera footage and you can?—”
“Shh.” Mace shifted to lay a settling hand on my shoulder. “You don’t have to worry about any of that now. You’re safe, Colin is dead, and the police will handle everything else.”
I drew in a deep breath and relaxed back against the softness of the gurney.
“The only thing you have to worry about is recovering from tonight’s trauma and being the best papa the world has ever seen,” Mace continued, his voice so wonderfully soothing again.
I barked a weak laugh. “I’m going to be a disaster as a papa, you know.”
“No, you’re not,” Mace said with a smile. “You’ll be an unconventional papa, to be sure. The kids will all think you’re the cool papa when they’re little, and they’ll be so embarrassed by you when they’re teenagers.”
My brow shot up. “Kids, plural?”
Mace matched my look of surprise. “Don’t you want to have more kids with me?”
I smiled. No, not just smiled, I burst into tears of joy. “Yeah, I do,” I said, sniffling wetly.
Mace’s expression turned suddenly hopeful and uncertain. “How would you feel about marrying me, too?”
That pushed me over the edge. I wept ugly tears, snotting all over. But I nodded as I snotted, squeezing Mace’s hand in mine with a death grip.
“You have to do a big deal proposal, though,” I wailed through my emotion. “I mean, I’m saying yes now, but I want the whole romantic dinner and ring hidden in a glass of champagne thing, too.”
“Of course,” Mace laughed, leaning in to kiss my forehead, then Junior’s. Thank God Junior had drifted off into an exhausted post-birth sleep. He would have been embarrassed by his papa right then already.
“I love you, Mace,” I whimpered, exhausted myself. “I’m so glad I found you.”
“I love you, too, Hayden,” Mace said, resting his forehead against mine. “And I’ll love our entire family for the rest of my life.”