14. Then There Were Four
THEN THERE WERE FOUR
HE’S GOING INTO LABOR.
Zenith grew hot and cold all over. Alarms blared in his head. Fuck, why hadn’t he read up on wolf shifter labor? Why hadn’t he prepared more?
“What do I do?” he definitely did not squeak.
“Towels on floor,” Emre panted. “Put me on towels.”
Zenith laid down some towels in a large square, adding more layers to make them softer to lie on.
When he turned back to the nest, he found that Emre had shifted back into a wolf.
Ever so carefully, he scooped Emre into his arms and laid him on the towels. Emre was all smooth grey fur. Zenith ran his hand comfortingly down his back, then his round belly.
“Thanks,” Emre said.
“Would you like to have Abbie down here with you?” She was starting to howl in the nest, small and high-pitched, and completely adorable.
“For now, yes,” Emre said.
Zenith scooped up Abbie—so tiny in his hands—and set her next to her dad. She looked at Zenith and howled in his face.
“Gods, you’re wonderful,” Zenith said fervently. He threw his head back and howled along with her.
When he looked down, he found Emre staring at him, wide-eyed. Was his wolfy face darker than usual? Wolves didn’t blush, did they?
Before he could follow that train of thought, Abbie grew bored and squirmed away. She tried to climb all over Emre, over his face onto his shoulder. Then she tumbled off his back and trotted around to try scaling his face again. Emre huffed and closed his eyes, patiently letting her.
“Awww,” Zenith murmured.
Emre grinned. “Thanks for setting up everything. This is... really comfortable.”
“Really? It’s just some towels on the floor.” Not what Zenith would give an omega in labor.
“You’re letting me stay in your very safe mansion. I’ve been in different places, but none of them were locked behind a huge-ass gate. And enchantments.”
Zenith perked up, pleased. “You could sense that?”
“A little.” Emre nodded. “You have some really nice protections around your lair.”
“I have to keep it safe. Keep you safe too.”
Emre ducked his head. “Thanks for bringing us here.”
“Anytime, sweetheart.”
Maybe it was because the mansion was so quiet—he heard the skip in Emre’s heartbeat.
Was that from him calling Emre a sweetheart? It felt familiar, like it had happened before. In bed. Zenith scritched behind Emre’s ears, grinning when the wolf shivered.
Emre gasped and tensed, and Zenith panicked.
“Sweetheart?” he squeaked.
“I’ll be fine,” Emre panted.
How many contractions had it been? How long since the last one? Zenith wrung his hands. “What do I do?”
“Stop Abbie if she tries to climb on my belly.”
“I can do that.”
The next contraction came right after. Zenith caught Abbie in one hand, just so he had something to hold onto. “You’re doing great, Emre. Not too much longer.”
He hoped.
He kept checking their heartbeats. It was difficult, with all four of them in the same room and his own thundering heart drowning them out.
When he could no longer bear to sit around, Zenith began rubbing Emre’s paws. He rubbed Emre’s forelegs and hind legs, then down his back, holding Emre whenever he tensed and shuddered.
“Do I need to check on the pup or something?” Zenith said, looking warily at Emre’s tail end.
“Feels like my first birth,” Emre panted. “Pup’s on the way. Think we’re fine.”
“Oh gods,” Zenith breathed. “I don’t feel prepared at all.”
“Welcome to parenthood.”
Zenith gritted his teeth and stared at Emre’s belly, trying not to shake apart. There was a baby on the way. A whole new fragile life, small and vulnerable.
Emre began to heave.
“Is this the part where I shut up instead of telling you to push?”
Emre bared his teeth. “Tell me to push, and I will smack your face with my paw.”
That sounded adorable, but Zenith didn’t think Emre wanted to be adorable right now.
Emre heaved. He kept heaving for so long, panting and heaving and trying again, that Zenith had to remind himself to breathe. He rubbed Emre’s back.
Only then did he remember that the internet existed on his phone. He was scrolling through endless pages of search results the next moment.
“It says here that if I rub an egg yolk all over your hole—”
“What the hell are you reading?” Emre groaned.
“Some advice column!”
“Tell them to shove it up their ass!”
Zenith was on another site now. “So you mean it won’t work if I sprinkled some rainwater from the full moon—”
“No!”
“What about waving a smoking branch from the screeching haunted tree—”
“What the hell, Zenith!”
“I’m trying!” Zenith clicked into a fourth site. “This page says that if I put some mashed up pumpkin guts into your h—”
Emre snarled with so much rage that the pup slid out of him.
Zenith froze. Everything stopped. Maybe he felt a tiny bit dizzy.
Then it hit him: There was a newborn pup on the towel behind Emre.
All his alarm bells began ringing again.
“Baby,” Zenith squeaked.
Emre panted for a while. “Grab a towel.”
Weakly, he tried to shuffle around, to get closer to the pup. Zenith slipped his hands under Emre to help him move.
When he was close enough, Emre licked the pup all over. Only then did Zenith realize that the pup was encased in a translucent sac. Emre had torn open the sac and was licking the pup’s snout, nudging it so it began to breathe.
The pup began to make tiny, whimpering sounds.
“Is it okay?” Zenith whispered, finally grabbing a towel.
“Think so.” Emre was still licking the pup, nudging it here and there. When the sac was off and Emre had licked the pup clean, he gnawed off its umbilical cord. Then he began to nudge the pup toward his belly.
The pup was incredibly tiny, with its closed eyes and damp grey fur.
“Do you want me to... dry the pup?” Zenith asked hesitantly.
“Would be nice. Please,” Emre said tiredly. The pup was sniffing; Emre helped it over to his nipple. It was such a tender moment that Zenith pulled out his phone and took a picture. Then Abbie came along, sniffing too.
“Here’s your new brother, hon,” Emre said, letting her investigate the newborn.
Zenith took another picture. The three of them belonged together, all happy like that.
Suddenly, Zenith felt like he was on the outside, looking in.
He was just Emre’s neighbor who happened to be sheltering them. But if things were different...
Emre looked up, meeting Zenith’s eyes. “Would you like to say hi? Not that he can see or hear you right now.”
Hope flared in Zenith’s stomach. “Really?”
He was already crouching and leaning closer, holding the dry towel between himself and the pup. When Emre nodded, Zenith carefully patted the towel around the newborn, gently using a corner to scrub down his fine dark fur. “Hey, pup. Welcome to the world.”
The pup twitched and latched onto Emre, wriggling his bottom. Emre nosed at him all over, rumbling quietly. The pup rumbled back. If he couldn’t see or hear his dad, did he feel the vibrations instead? Was that how he knew to rumble back?
“He’ll need some help with body heat; pups are not born with insulating fur,” Emre explained. “He’ll be sticking close to me for three to four weeks, until he can regulate his own temperature.”
“I’m warm too, if you need a break,” Zenith offered.
Emre’s face lit up. Zenith took another picture, and Emre huffed.
“I thought you might like pictures of this moment,” Zenith said, giving a small shrug. “Sorry I wasn’t more help with the birth. You did so great.”
“You helped just by being here, you know. I need to thank you for that.”
“Even with my useless suggestions?” Zenith guiltily tucked his phone away.
Emre laughed. “I don’t know, maybe it helped for me to get mad at you. The pup sure came out fast after that.”
Zenith laughed too. Slowly, he reached over, running his hand over Emre’s fur.
Emre rumbled. “You’re amazing. Carrying the pup for so long, even when it made you uncomfortable as hell.
I know you were trying to look for jobs; it couldn’t have been easy, with your belly fucking with your balance, and having Abbie to care for too.
And yet you kept your pups fed and safe. ”
The fur on Emre’s snout darkened again; he twitched his forelegs like he was trying to shrug. “Someone helped me with the rent. I came across some alphas a while back; they pointed me to those apartments and gave me enough money to cover rent for a while. Then they disappeared.”
Zenith’s protective instincts surged. “Did they have any ulterior motives? They didn’t threaten you or anything?”
Emre shook his head. “I was suspicious too. I hung around the apartments for two weeks to see if they would come back, but they never did. So I rented a place there with the money they gave me. It was running out when I met you.”
Relief filled Zenith’s chest. “I’m glad you came over to ask for some stew.”
“Me too.” Emre’s tail wagged. “Actually, one of those alphas smelled like you. Smoky. There was also a wolf, and an alpha who smelled like... sulfur.”
“Demon?”
Emre’s eyes widened. “Demons exist?”
“They do. I can introduce you to a couple of them. They have omegas, though.” Which was why Zenith didn’t mind letting Emre meet them.
“Sure,” Emre said thoughtfully. “They mentioned safehouses. Said they had a few they wouldn’t mind letting me stay in, but I didn’t trust them enough to accept.”
“Huh. I get what you mean. The thing about safehouses though—not many alphas have them around for random omegas. But my brothers and our friends do actually own a few. They come across rescued omegas sometimes.”
What were the chances that Raptor, Ace, and their friends had found an omega and tried to help?
Actually, the fact that they had pointed Emre to their building, to where they had a safehouse, and where Zenith had an apartment of his own... It wasn’t a coincidence.
It almost felt as though they had sent Emre straight to Zenith.
Not that anyone had mentioned it.
Before Zenith could get mad, Abbie wandered over, nosing at Emre’s nipples too.