Barry
It was three days before we saw Dead Martha again. For three glorious days she left us to our own devices. We explored all the little shops VILLAGE had to offer and got a couple’s massage every day. I’d almost forgotten about her when she showed up one evening and knocked on our door. Whatever SLEEP used to keep sounds separated must’ve kept out the dead too. That or she was just kind enough not to walk in on two naked men about to make love.
“Let’s ignore it,” I whispered in Xenos’s ear.
He was curled on his side, belly propped against a pillow while I kneeled over him, lining up our bodies. We were so close to coming together again. Everything inside me ached for him. To sink into his warm, welcoming body and forget the rest of the world for a while. For a long while. Soon we’d return to our real lives and as happy as I’d be to have the family back together, real life was a course of obstacles keeping us from finding time alone together – not just for romping or mating but for those million little smiles, touches, and whispered conversations.
“Uh… I think it’s Dead Martha,” Xenos groaned and hid his face in the pillows.
“She can wait a few hours. A romp and a nap and…”
Knock! KNOCK! Knock!
“Her son isn’t going to be any more dead later, is he?” I groaned back at him.
“Asshole!” my wolf sounded off in my thoughts.
“No, but she’s probably itchy to move on,” Xenos sighed and rolled onto his back. “We promised we’d help her. We promised that we’d help our baby lay his past life to rest. You know how much trouble Star had when Mel kept showing up inside his head. It was him but wasn’t the current him. I don’t want our kid to go through that. I love Star and Mel was freaking fantastic. He’s an elf and a friend worth remembering for everyone who knew him and loved him or even just heard about him but let’s get Jarl laid to rest properly so in his next life he’s not plagued by his past self, okay?”
I blew out a long, slow breath and told my dick to calm down. As much as I hated to admit it, Xenos was probably right. My mate usually was about these sort of things. How our trip to VILLAGE turned into a working vacation was beyond me but I couldn’t go anywhere until I calmed down.
“I think I’m going to hit a cold shower to settle down,” I sighed, slipping off the bed.
Leaving Xenos there naked and alone killed something inside me. For once I wanted to be the selfish bastard who did what he wanted and let everything else fall to the wayside. Frost in a pickle jar. If it wasn’t for Jarl’s possible connection to our pup, I probably would.
Xenos sprung up, ramrod straight and winced, putting a hand on his back. I froze at the foot of the bed. It was too early for labor pains. It was too early for Braxton-Hicks contractions too.
“She’s yelling!” Xenos said and I fell onto the bed to touch the first part of him I found.
“SHE’S GONNA DIE! THE BABY IS GONNA DIE TOO! ANCESTORS, HAVE MERCY! HAVE MERCY ON US ALL!” Dead Martha wailed.
“Who’s going to die?” I asked, pulling on the pants I discarded early. The sobbing, hysterical woman in the corridor was the cure all for my erection.
KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!
“We hate to disturb guests but we’ve been informed one of you may be a doctor. There is another guest down the hall who---” a woman’s voice called from the other side of the door, speaking in very rapid elven.
“What’s going on?” I opened the door still shirtless.
Xenos pulled the blanket over his lap as the woman panted for breath.
“The village healer is across the way delivering twins. Her mate thought he could handle it but there’s so much blood,” the woman said, holding up her red stained hands for me to see.
“Selfish bastard,” I swore into my thoughts and swerved back into the room to grab my black, leather medicine bag. It’d been ages since I did a field c-section but I stayed in the loop about medical advances in that particular arena just in case it was Xenos who some day needed my hands to know what to do.
“Alpha, what do I do?” Xenos called over our mating link as I followed the hotel worker down the hall.
“Call Moonscale General. We’ll need to airlift the carrier out of here, more likely than not. If she’s an alpha, maybe not but chances are she’s not. Then keep death away. Keep the doors shut.”
“What’s her name?” I asked the hotel worker just outside the door.
The copper smell of blood filled the corridor now. I had meds to slow the bleeding, but we needed to act fast.
“Mercy,” she whispered.
“Hey, Mercy,” I stepped into the room past the alpha elf who guarded the door. I wasn’t sure if he knew the parents to be or was merely another worker here. The elves called SLEEP a B&B because it was cozy, but it functioned like hotels would in some places. “I’m Bartholomew. I’m a doctor for the Nightshade Bears.”
“Help her!” The alpha elf next to her yelled.
She blinked at me as if trying to see me through a haze of lights. I took a deep breath and set to work. Something definitely wasn’t working and I didn’t need heart monitors to know that mama and baby were both in distress. A moment later, Xenos, smelling like hand soap and disinfectant, made his way into the room. He scrubbed my hands quick as we had practiced on a thousand other deliveries. Then he set to work starting the IV while I surveyed the damage. Blood was everywhere. That alone was enough to tell me that it was time to get the baby out of her for both of their sakes.
“Mercy, love, we have to get the baby out, okay? They’re having some trouble coming out on their own.”
“No more pushing,” she shook her head. “Can’t do it. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”
Her light brown hair was matted to her skin and scalp from sweat and her eyelids dropped over bloodshot eyes. She trembled and I asked her mate if he understood what a c-section was.
“Here? Though?” he asked, dumbfounded, his pheromones turning protective.
“We can either fight about it or I can save them both. That’s up to you,” I said.
“No, it’s not. You’re going to save him. He can fight me instead,” Xenos said, meeting the father to be’s gaze.
“I just…” his words trailed off. “Is it safe?”
“Safer than doing nothing until the ‘copter gets here, yeah,” I nodded.
We did the best job of sanitizing the space we could under the conditions and I set to work. My wolf held his breath, offering his stability to me. His surefootedness on the hunt translated into my steady hands while I operated. Mercy would likely need a blood transfusion at the hospital but there was nothing I could do about that here. A few minutes later, I passed her blue-lipped little boy off to Xenos as I worked on undoing the damage the c-section caused.
Mercy’s mate, whose name I still hadn’t caught, was torn between staying with his mate and rushing to his child’s side. The baby was in obvious distress, but Xenos had handled more babies than anyone I knew. He knew how to coax the spirit to stay and to thrive. He worked to clean out the baby’s airways and gently patted his back until he took his first gasping breath of oxygen. His first wail cut through the room and the alpha holding onto his mate burst into tears right as the ‘copter guys from Moonscale General burst into the room.
The EMTs moved quickly, loading up the mother and child and pulling the sire into the ‘copter out front. As soon as they were safely gone, Xenos hit his butt to the carved elven bench in front of SLEEP and wailed. His worst nightmare was needing an emergency c-section.
“Mate,” I cooed, squatting down in front of him and being careful not to touch him because even with my gloves off I was covered in blood.
“I am too!” he sobbed, hiding his face in his hands.
“She’s going to be okay. She’s going to be alright. The baby too. He was breathing and it sounded like his heart knew what it was doing.”
“She was so pale, Barry! So freaking pale! He should’ve taken her to the hospital or got someone sooner! I don’t---”
“Not everyone is a healer, and things can go south fast. I don’t think he was slow. I think the blood was fast. Not as fast as us, though, mate. Not as quick as we are. We saved them. We did our job. We’ll call and check on them in a few hours but with some care and rest I bet Mercy will be as good as new. Let’s go inside and get cleaned up, okay?”
“Dead Martha is here too,” he sobbed, ignoring my question.
“Right now really isn’t the time,” I said to the dead woman through gritted teeth.
If she was solid, I’d have bitten her. This wasn’t the time to push and shove at my mate. Jarl’s bones could wait. The dead were important but the living had to come first. Xenos was in no shape to trek through the woods and dig for bones. Hell, neither of us were. I couldn’t leave him alone like this. Ignoring his sobs and meager protests, I scooped him up and carried him back inside. The lady at the desk asked if we needed anything but I ignored her because I didn’t trust myself not to snap. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t Mercy’s fault or her mate’s. It was nature’s but with my pregnant Xenos crying so hard everything looked like a throat that needed to be ripped out.
I carried him back into the room and kicked the door shut behind us. Neither of us had time to put on shirts or shoes and that made undressing for the shower easier than it would have been otherwise. I started the shower but washed his face at the sink. He stopped trying to push me away and surrendered to my ministrations. His tears kept coming but I kept moving too.
I lifted Xenos into the shower once the water falling from above was warm enough. I slipped in with him and took us both down to the marble floor under the shower head. The water ran red around us, washing the life blood of Mercy down the drain and casting the illusion that the marble was pink instead of white. I scrubbed him clean from head to toe and then washed him again for good measure. Mercy had smelled healthy, but blood and oxygen bred bacteria and I wasn’t risking my pregnant mate getting sick or contracting an infection.
Once we were both scrubbed clean, I turned off the water and grabbed one of the B&B’s fluffy towels to dry him off with. Then wrapped him with another. I didn’t bother finding clothes for either of us before carrying him back to bed. It wasn’t our bed back home. It wasn’t in front of one of our fireplaces, but it was the closest that we had. I held him while he cried himself to sleep and at some point, I dozed off too.
I woke up before him the next morning. The sun wasn’t even showing its ass yet when my eyes opened. Dead Martha stood in the corner of the room. She was either strong or desperate because I saw her even after I got out of bed. With a long finger, she beckoned me to follow her. I rolled my eyes and grabbed clean clothes from my suitcase. Sooner or later, the job had to be done, and I wasn’t putting my pregnant mate through another stressful ordeal. If he was angry at me when everything was said and done, I’d deal with it then. At least, he’d be healthy and rested enough to be angry with me.
Dead Martha was in a hurry, but I stopped for a cup of coffee in the lobby before returning to the room to empty out my medical bag. It felt like sacrilege to unpack the supplies that might save lives, but I needed something to carry Jarl’s bones back with. Then I sent Saun a quick email from my phone to expect me and Jarl at BAKE sometime today.
The lady at the front desk didn’t know what to make of me asking for a shovel but she called someone from the gardening department who brought one in under five minutes. Not only was I a visitor but I was the guest who stopped a carrier and baby from dying on their premises.
Back when we first met, I might’ve left Xenos a note, but we didn’t need notes or texts anymore. After decades of living in each other’s heads we were always connected. There was no time that we were ever really alone or apart. If he woke up, he’d probably know where I was before I felt him awake. I wasn’t sure how much of his theory about Jarl’s bones lost in the woods affecting our baby was true. I believed in reincarnation both because of Star’s experience and because without it true-mates wouldn’t be true. If enough pieces of a theory were true, then the theory had to be too. It was just the way the world worked.
I followed Martha through SLEEP’S garden and off the beaten path into the woods while thinking about my mate. It didn’t matter if Jarl wouldn’t affect our pup. He affected Xenos from the moment Dead Martha mentioned him. I had killed my brother for murdering his chosen mate and trying to murder his baby. I could move some bones. I could dig them up and pack them up. Maybe I’d feel a pang of knowing that I could’ve been bones so many times during battles and I wasn’t. Maybe I’d feel lucky to be alive but it wouldn’t dive deep into my soul and tear at me like it would Xenos. It wasn’t that he was incapable of doing the dirty work, I just didn’t want him to ever believe he had to. That’s what he had me for. I might not be able to chase away hauntings but I could do this.
The sun was halfway to its zenith by the time Dead Martha stopped and stomped her translucent feet over a spot. I took a swig from the canteen I brought with me and got to work. Xenos woke while I was digging. His energy turned frantic as he tried to untangle himself from the towel find found his clothes.
“Mate,” I whispered over our mating link. “It’s fine. It’s better this way and by the time you get here I’ll probably be halfway back. I’ll do this part. You can help Saun and the others lay him to rest.”
Xenos sat on the edge of the bed crying for a long time. I sort of got it. It was sad when almost anyone died. It was even sadder if they died for a good cause. It was heart wrenching to think of what our unborn baby might’ve went through in his past life but I couldn’t dwell on that too long because we had lots of children. Xenos and I had past lives. Most people did. If I stopped to consider every ‘owie’ I’d never be of any use to anyone ever. So, I kept digging and let him cry it out for a while. When it became clear that he wasn’t going to stop crying on his own I turned to an old friend. It was an epic poem about Frost and Juda and I recited it over our mating link.
“Bring me your battles. I’ll fight them. Cut them down to size. Send your enemies to the Pit of Frost. We’ll mate on battlefields of conquered foes. None will rise above us. All worlds will sing songs of our victories.
Bring me your love, your broken soul, and I’ll carve pieces from mine to make it whole. Bring me your pain. Bring me your aches. I’ll carry them today, so that you might rest…”
Slowly his sobs receded, and he dried his tears.
“Careful, alpha. You’re getting close. You have to be.”
Taking his words to heart, I squatted down and ran my fingers over the loose dirt until they found bone. A femur and then Jarl’s skull. I let out a long, slow breath and said the obligatory prayer that I hoped he found his way back to his folks on the other side of the door. Then the hard work began. Bone by bone, I dug him up and placed him into my medicine bag. There was nothing I ever carried inside of it that would’ve saved him from the fire that charred him straight to some of his ribs but it could house him and cradle him on the path to his final resting place.
Dead Martha sobbed as I zipped the bag, stood up, and dusted my hands off. If I had been alone I might’ve carried the bag as I carried it every other day but whether or not he was a pile of bones now, he was still her baby. That part of her grief I understood. So, I clutched the medical bag to my chest and followed her back out of the woods.