Page 48

“Don’t you dare say take photos.” Joss rested his head on my chest and grunted as another contraction wrapped around his belly.

“No, I thought he could… ummm… hold the towels.”

“I trust… m-my body to tell m-me what to d-do.” Joss’s voice had a touch of certainty buried beneath the doubt. He’d been emphatic that the baby should come into the world in the birthing unit, but now there was a stretch behind his words. And I couldn’t argue with a laboring omega.

“Okay, go. We’ve got this.” Joss may have, but I didn’t, and I watched Ralph leave as a man would being left alone on a raft in the middle of an ocean.

My mate insisted on pacing around the car, leaning on the hood or me when another contraction gripped his belly.

“Lay the blanket on the grass in the shade.”

With his clothes off, the breeze kissed my mate’s belly, and he’d never looked more beautiful. I wished Ralph was here to capture this moment, but it was fixed in my memory.

After helping my mate onto the blanket, he turned around to face me, and I squatted while he kneeled and grunted as more contractions took hold of him. When he said he was ready to push, I sat behind him, and he rested his arms on my legs.

I lifted my head and studied the landscape, seemingly so calm while our lives were a frenzy of contractions and nagging doubts that I could be the alpha Joss needed me to be.

“Laurie, Archie, Mac, Stefanie, Katrina.” Joss let out a stream of names.

“Babe?”

“We haven’t chosen a name,” he said between pants. “And I’m chanting any name that pops into my head. It helps somehow.”

Joss dug his elbows into me as he bore down. “Bob!”

He fell back, gasping mouthfuls of air. “This is hard.” He leaned forward, every sinew in his body straining with him as he pushed. “Marigold, Nancy, Herbert, Eddie.”

I wiped sweat from his face each time he finished pushing.

“It feels… it feels like… I don’t know.” My mate sobbed, and I held him tight with one hand and wiped away his tears with the other. “Can you see anything?”

His limp body suggested he had little strength left, but he had to get the baby out. And this would have been a good time to have a third person here. One who would support my mate while I checked the baby’s progress.

Do you know how to do that?

In the movies, they always yell that they can see the baby’s hair.

I peered over Joss’s shoulder between his legs, but the angle was wrong and I couldn’t leave him.

“How about trying to feel for the baby?”

He gingerly put his hand down. “Oh my gods, Garner. I can feel the baby’s hair.”

Huh, maybe I should pay more attention to medical dramas. Seemed like they had a clue.

“Ocean, Angela, Tamzin, Eric.” Joss grunted and groaned, and now I could see the head.

“That’s the hard part, babe. Yell those names. You’re doing this.”

“Sammy, Thorn, Tanisha, and freaking Gerald.”

The baby slid out, and I crawled to my mate’s side and picked up the squirming little bundle. Wrapping him, the baby was a boy, in a towel—now I understood what the towels were for—I lay him on Joss’s chest and tucked the cushion behind my mate’s head.

Covering them both with more towels that were so useful, I put a hand on our son’s back, enjoying the warmth of his tiny body.

“Can’t believe he’s here.” Joss kissed our son’s damp head.

I grabbed the sign we’d used in the photo and dug a pen from my shirt pocket. I drew an arrow from the word “days” and wrote “zero.”