Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
“You’re such a worrywart,” Sage complained out loud, but I felt his affection through the bond.
“About you? Always.”
“Still a mindfuck,” Damon muttered under his breath, turning his head away and hiding behind a curtain of long, dark hair to give us some semblance of privacy as I bent myself in half to press my lips to Sage’s.
“So bendy,” Sage murmured when we parted.
“I seem to recall you and our alpha enjoy how flexible I can be.”
A collective groan went up around us, much to my amusement.
“Is it too late to kick him out of the pack?” Eric joked.
Sage’s lips lifted in a goofy smile. “Oh, it’s way too late for that. We’re keeping him.”
My omega trilled inside me, reveling in the sense of family. Of pack.
It had only been a handful of months earlier that I had felt so out of place, but now I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.
“You can fuck all the way off,” Sage seethed and doubled over his belly, another contraction taking hold of him.
They’d been going strong for hours by that stage, increasing in intensity once my omega mate’s birth canal had formed —amid a lot of screaming and swearing— and his water had broken.
“Fuck all the way off and —oh my God— never fucking touch me again.”
I was not going to tell him that he sounded like a cliché.
“You only mean Serge, don’t you, darling?” I cooed, carding my fingers through his sweaty red locks. “He did this to you, not me.”
On Sage’s other side, Sergio shot me an exasperated glare. I winked back at him.
“No—owww!” Sage cried out, then glowered at me. “We all agreed that you played an integral part in this so you…ah! Mother of fuck! You don’t get to touch me, either.”
“This all seems like it would have been a smarter choice maybe nine-and-a-half months ago,” Eric offered cheerfully from his position at the foot of the bed, between Sage’s parted legs. “You’re fully effaced and completely dilated, by the way. You can start pushing on the next contraction.”
Sage’s eyes widened comically. “I’m not ready for that.”
Brandt, assisting Eric, snorted. “You will be.”
“Aren’t you two supposed to be nicer through all this?” Sage hissed at his brothers. “This is supposed to be—oh God, I have to push.”
“Told you,” Brandt sounded smug. “Just follow your instincts, Sage. And breathe.”
I felt somewhat useless as my mate bent forward again, grunting and growling his way through this next contraction.
He panted heavily, flopping back against me and Sergio once it had passed.
This process repeated for a little while.
I lost track of time, too concerned with my mate’s pain and my inability to help.
“Fuck you all,” Sage whined, “this is torture.”
“You’re doing so well, beautiful,” Sergio praised, rubbing his back. “We’re so proud of you.”
Sage shook his head. “No-no-no-no-no,” he babbled, grimacing and bending forward again, “Fuck it hurts!”
“Yeah, I can see baby’s head,” Eric confirmed. “He’ll be crowning soon, and that’s going to burn, okay?”
“No! Not okay!” Sage bore down through another contraction, then fought to catch his breath. “None of this is okay!”
“I know, darling,” I attempted to soothe him, “but just think; once it is over, our baby will be here.”
“I’m naming him,” he snapped.
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’s worse! 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 was having 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.”
“Then you can 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 was graphic, 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 bare chest, 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.”
Our son’s cries tapered off in Sage’s hold, my mate’s beautiful hands, with their large palms and long, nimble fingers cradling the curled-up form of the baby under the blanket.
Despite being exhausted, with his hair stringy and matted and hastily tied back, and dark circles rimming his reddened eyes, I had never seen Sage look more serene or more beautiful.
“Hey, little guy,” he greeted the baby warmly, his voice tinged with the same awe currently thrumming through my veins, “it’s awesome to finally meet you.”
Our boy cracked an eye open, revealing a watery blue iris and seemed to try to focus, likely recognizing Sage’s voice.
“Oh, you’re going to have your Daddy’s eyes, I bet,” Sage cooed, leaning towards Sergio who, I realized, seemed just as mystified as I felt.
The baby squawked, and Sage chuckled. “Ah, so you look like your Daddy, but your attitude is all Da’s, huh?” He turned his head to wink at me.
My heart squeezed again. “Oh, the fun we will have, then. My little co-conspirator and me.” I shuffled in closer from my edge of the mattress, resting my cheek on Sage’s shoulder. “But you’re wrong. I think he looks like you. He’s likely going to have your hair.”
Now that it was drying, the downy-soft hair on his head was turning more strawberry-blonde than the dark shade it had been while wet.
“The perfect mix of all three of us, then,” Sergio murmured, daring to reach out and cup his palm over the top of the baby’s head. “I can’t believe he’s here.”
Sage snorted, then winced. “I can.” He looked towards his older brother in bewilderment. “You did that three times in one go and then immediately signed up for another round? You’re insane.”
Brandt shrugged. “The pay-off is more than worth it to me.”
Sage looked back down at his precious cargo and smiled, admitting, “Yeah, it’s worth it to me, too.”