Chapter 9
Gregor
If a perimeter was breached, I had a plan. If Artem needed to leave a meeting through a service corridor while Ivan distracted a room full of armed men with insults and broken glass, I had a plan.
If the Pakhan was assassinated, there were protocols.
However, I didn’t have a protocol for a furious pregnant Irish omega going into labour on a custom velvet sofa while the other two thirds of our pack were en route to Moscow.
This was a failure of preparation.
The moment I saw the fluid hit the floor, my mind began arranging facts.
Nearest hospital.
Distance.
Traffic.
Exposure.
Medical support.
Likelihood of making it there before delivery.
Likelihood of Maeve arguing the entire way.
The second thought was high enough to be useless.
“Gregor,” she gasped as her hands splayed across her belly.
“Let me get you on the bed.”
“I need the hospital.”
I picked up off the floor, and placed her on her feet. “Can you walk? Or can I carry you?”
“I’ll break your back.” Her fingers dug into my sleeve as another pain ripped through her, and something old and ugly in my chest sharpened into focus.
I held her against me.
I had carried wounded men under gunfire. Once, I dragged Ivan from a burning warehouse while he complained about a knife. I’d even held men still while they bled out and lied to me.
But none of that prepared me for Maeve shaking in my arms.
“It’s Braxton Hicks again,” she said through gritted teeth.
“The fluid on the floor says otherwise.”
She glanced down. “Why now?”
“Babies are poor at respecting schedules.”
“That is not helpful.”
“It is accurate.”
“Gregor.”
The way she said my name did something unpleasant to my composure.
I got her onto the sofa, lowering her carefully. Fergus stood nearby trembling with outrage, every inch of him radiating the deep offense of a tiny dog whose omega was in distress.
“Guard,” I told him.
He barked once and positioned himself by the new Prada slippers Artem had bought her like an armed perimeter unit in a fur coat.
Good.
One competent male in the room besides me.
I called the private medical line Artem kept on retainer.
The doctor answered immediately. “Doctor Jacobson speaking.”
“Gregor here. I have an active labor. Waters broken. Birth may be imminent. I need guidance now.”
“How far apart are the contractions?”
Maeve grabbed my forearm hard enough to leave marks and made a sound that went through me like a blade.
I looked at the clock. “Too close. Minutes. It happened so fast.”
“And why are you acting as a doula?”
Maeve groaned in the background.
“Put me on speaker,” Dr. Jacobson said. “Wash your hands and then listen carefully.”
I put the phone down, stripped off my jacket, rolled my sleeves, washed my hands as I took one measured breath.
That helped my hands to stop shaking by less than a millimeter.
“Gregor,” Maeve panted, clutching at her stomach. “I can’t do this.”
“You can.”
“No, I absolutely cannot. I’d like to cancel.”
“Denied.”
Her eyes snapped to mine in furious disbelief. “Did you just deny my labor?”
“Yes.”
For one second she looked like she might laugh. Then the next contraction hit and that possibility vanished.
I dropped to my knees beside the sofa.
This was my job now. Not because Artem told me to stay. Because she was pack. Our omega.
Because she was ours and terrified.
“Look at me,” I said.
Her eyes found mine at once. Bright with tears. Wild with pain.
“I’m here,” I told her. “You’re safe. Do you hear me?”
She nodded once, ragged and desperate.
“They left,” she choked out.
“Maeve. They’ll come back.”
“What if they die and don’t meet Mac?”
“Mac.”
Her mouth trembled as she nodded.
I leaned closer and let my scent deepen carefully. Not enough to crowd her. Just enough to steady and ground her.
“Please don’t leave me, Gregor.”
“I never leave my post.”
Something in her face softened around the panic.
The doctor came through the speaker. “Maeve, can you hear me?”
“Unfortunately,” Maeve said.
“Good. Is there heavy bleeding?”
I checked. “No.”
“Pressure? Urge to push?”
Maeve made a strangled sound. “I have an urge to kill everyone who told me childbirth was natural.”
“That means yes,” I said.
“I hate you.”
“Noted.”
The doctor’s voice sharpened. “Gregor, you need clean towels. Wash your hands thoroughly. Sanitizer if you have it. Bring water. Is there a first aid kit?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Move.”
I moved.
The new flat still smelled of paint and sawdust. Artem had stocked it like a man preparing for siege conditions, which in fairness was often how he approached domestic life. I found a batch of new towels, bottled water, antiseptic, a medical kit, and a sanitizer.
No maternity supplies.
A separate failure.
When I came back, Maeve was trying to sit up.
“No.”
“Do not tell me no, Gregor. I want a hospital.”
“It’s no longer safe to move you.”
“It’s also not safe to leave me here with a man whose medical training is probably bullet removal and glaring.”
“I also know suturing.”
“That is deeply unhelpful.”
I sanitized my hands while her scent thickened around us. Fear, caramel, milk-sweetness rising under panic. The room smelled like her and fresh plaster and the beginning of something none of us had planned well enough for.
Artem and Ivan should have been here.
“Breathe,” I said.
“I am breathing.”
“Better.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Am I not breathing to exact Russian standards?”
“Your Irish standards appear inefficient.”
She made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.
Good. Humour meant she was still anchored.
Time stopped behaving properly after that.
It broke into pieces.
Pain. Breath. Instructions from the speaker. Fergus growling at invisible threats. And he growled at her Prada slippers when Maeve was quiet. Rain against reinforced glass. Maeve gripped my wrist hard enough to bruise.
She swore at me.
She swore at Artem.
She swore at Ivan.
She swore at God.
She called me “an emotionally constipated wardrobe,” which I chose to accept as a stress response rather than an insult requiring discussion.
At one point she burst into tears because the baby was going to be born on a brand new velvet sofa.
“He won’t know,” I said.
“I’ll know.”
“Then we burn the sofa.”
She stared at me in disbelief. “You cannot burn the sofa. Artem just bought it.”
“Artem can buy another sofa.”
Her chin wobbled. “He would.”
“Yes.”
“He’s ridiculous.”
“Yes.”
“I miss him and Ivan.” The admission came out quiet. Small enough it nearly disappeared.
I lowered my forehead briefly to the back of her hand. “They’ll be back. Nine months without you was stressful. They won’t waste another minute if they can get away with it.”
“Thank you, Gregor. I’m happy you’re here.”
“Me too.”
She cried harder after that, but the panic in her scent eased.
The doctor talked me through everything. Positioning. Timing. Signs. Pressure. What to watch for.
I did exactly as instructed. Towels under her. Pillows behind her.
My hand at her back when she shook. I kept my voice low when her panic climbed too high.
“Gregor,” she gasped my name in a different way. “Something’s happening.”
I looked and saw the baby and every system in my body stopped for one beat and then restarted too hard.
“The baby is coming.”
“I guessed that.” She cried out. Her finger nails dug into my shoulders. “Breathe.”
“That continues to be unhelpful.”
“It remains accurate.”
“Only push when you feel you need to,” Dr. Jacobson called over the phone.
Maeve’s head fell back onto the arm of the sofa. “I’m going to die.”
“No. You’re going to breathe and push when your body calls for it.”
“You don’t know that. I survived for years, Gregor and this baby is going to be the death of me.”
I leaned over her until she had no choice but to see me. “Maeve.”
Her eyes found mine.
“You crossed countries alone. You built a business while pregnant. You’re an omega who survived, Maeve.” I kept my voice even. “And you can do this.”
Fergus barked.
I glanced at him. “Yes. And you took on a dog who needed a home.”
Maeve laughed once, broken by pain. Then she screamed.
I’d heard men scream in war zones. In torture rooms. In alleyways behind expensive clubs. None of it prepared me for that sound.
“Push,” the doctor ordered.
Maeve did.
Once.
She gritted her teeth and pushed a second time.
The whole world narrowed until it was nothing but her breath and her body and the absolute animal force of our omega bringing our child into the world.
Then suddenly there he was. A small slippery weight in my hands.
Everything went silent. My eyes watered.
He was tiny. Too tiny and for one terrible second, he made no sound.
“Gregor?” Maeve said, barely a voice now. “Is he...”
Dark hair slick to his head. Red, furious, deeply unimpressed already.
My lungs forgot their function.
The baby inhaled.
Then he let out a wail so loud and offended it filled the room completely.
Fergus started barking as if announcing royalty, while my chest tightened so hard it was almost pain.
I had seen newborns before, from doorways and hospital corridors and safe distances chosen by men who preferred not to feel anything too directly.
I had never held one. He fit into my hands like he belonged there.
“He,” I managed. “He’s perfect.”
I wrapped him in a clean towel and laid him against Maeve’s chest and pressed a kiss on her lips. “You were perfect.”
She smiled at me and then at our son. The sound she made then was one I will remember until I die. Relief. And it was so deep it changed the room.
She folded around him and kissed his damp head over and over. Tears slid down her face unchecked.
“Hi,” she whispered. “I’m your mama and this is one of your daddies.”
My chest constricted. My son.
He wailed again.
“Yes, I know. This was not the plan. There was meant to be a hospital and lots of happy drugs and some lovely competent woman with warm hands.”
I looked at the tiny dark head against her skin.
Ours.
Maeve looked up at me, shattered and glowing all at once. “Mac.”
“Mac,” I repeated.
His name settled into the room like it had always belonged there.
Maeve refused to let go of him.
“We need to get you and Mac examined by a doctor.”
Maeve looked at me.
“Gregor.”
I straightened.
“Hold him properly.”
Mac came into my arms warm and impossibly small. His face was wrinkled with profound dissatisfaction. One tiny fist escaped the blanket and waved at me like he was lodging a complaint.
I froze.
He froze.
We regarded each other.
Then his hand opened and closed around my finger.
Very lightly. Barely a grip at all. It still felt like being pinned in place.
“You okay?” Maeve asked softly.
“He’s warm,” I said.
“Babies do tend to be. It’s one of their better features.”
I looked down at him. He already appeared displeased by management.
“He has your expression,” I told her.
“Rude,” she said. “Accurate. But rude.”
Fergus climbed onto the sofa cushion and gave me a suspicious growl.
“Perimeter remains secure,” I informed him.
He sneezed.
Maeve laughed, tired and breathless and real.
That sound mattered more than any lock in the room.
I handed Mac back with more care than I have ever used for anything.
“You did well,” Maeve whispered.
I looked at her. Then at him. “We did well.”
Maeve’s scent had changed completely now. Milk and caramel and warmth, all the fear burned out of it. Even the sharp edge had gone.
Mac began to fuss.
Not crying. Just offended little noises, as if the world had failed several inspections in a row.
“He’s hungry,” Maeve murmured.
“Let him latch onto your breast,” Dr. Jacobson called through the phone. Maeve’s eyes flicked to me first.
“Can you help me sit him up a little?” she asked.
I slid one hand behind Mac’s back and held him while I helped her to sit up. When she was ready I settled him against her.
I brushed my thumb over his cheek and Mac stopped fussing instantly.
Maeve looked down, then up at me with a sleepy little smile. “Well. Look at that.”
“What?”
“You’ve been a father for twenty minutes and he already knows you.”
“Hello, Mac,” I said quietly.
His dark unfocussed eyes barely opened.
Maeve smiled. “He has your expression.”
“Impossible.”
“Gregor, he looks like he’s assessing the world around him.”
I studied him more closely.
Maybe he was mine. Not that it mattered. He was pack. “I’ll let Artem and Ivan know.”
“Is it safe?”
I nodded as I took out my encrypted phone.
“Everything okay?” Artem answered immediately.
The engine roar of a private jet filled the line. Ivan was speaking fast in Russian somewhere behind him.
“Yes.”
“Then you shouldn’t be calling,” Artem said, voice tight.
“I have news.”
Silence on the line as I looked at our omega and our child.
She was stroking Mac’s cheek with one fingertip, looking half dead with exhaustion and half lit from within.
“You need to secure that council seat quickly,” I said.
A beat.
Then a whisper, “Gregor.”
“Our pack has a baby. A son. His name is Mac.”
“A boy,” Artem said. The ice had gone clean out of his voice.
“I’m a father.”
“We are fathers,” I said.
Maeve lifted her head. “Tell him if he complains about the name, I’m divorcing him before I marry him.”
“Maeve said—”
“I heard.”
“Good,” she called toward the phone, voice hoarse. “I pushed him out without drugs and on your ridiculous expensive sofa, so I got naming rights.”
Artem went quiet for one more second. Then he laughed. Low. Broken. Disbelieving.
“Ivan wants to turn the plane around,” Artem said.
“Ivan is emotional. Do not turn the plane around,” I said.
“I can hear you, you giant bastard,” Ivan yelled.
Maeve smiled down at Mac. Her eyes were already drifting shut.
Artem’s voice changed again when he spoke. Softer. Controlled with visible effort.
“Tell her we’re coming back. Tell her we’ll secure this seat and then we’re coming home to her and our son.”
I repeated it.
Fresh tears slid down Maeve’s face.
“And tell her,” Artem added, “we’re going to take care of her and all our babies.”
Maeve’s eyes widened. “Babies. Plural.”
I considered my answer carefully. “Alphas tend to be ambitious.”
She laughed weakly.
“I’m ending the call,” I told Artem. “I may need to use my field knowledge.”
Maeve narrowed her eyes on me. “Why did you say that?”
I paused.
“Gregor,” Maeve said slowly.
“I have a field suture kit,” I said.
Her expression transformed instantly into horror. “You were going to sew me up with a field kit?”
“Only if necessary.”
“Artem!,” she yelled toward the phone, clutching Mac tighter. “Tell him he can’t sew me up. I need to look neat down there."
Ivan’s laughter exploded down the line.
Artem made a strangled sound. “Gregor.”
“Pakhan.”
“Do not sew my wife.”
Maeve glared at the phone. “I’m not your wife.”
A beat.
Then Artem, very slowly said, “Do not sew my not-yet-wife.”
I looked at the ceiling. “I’ll call you later, Pakhan.”