Page 1 of Healing the Leonid Doctor’s Heart (Felix Orbus Galaxy #6)

“ T alos, stay in place and hold your wife’s paw.

Hand. I meant to say hand.” Marcus wanted the glowering, panicking Tigerite to have something to do, something at the opposite end of the surgical bed so the big Felid wouldn’t start snarling at him.

Or faint. You never knew with the big, scary ones, thought Marcus.

“That doesn’t seem very important.”

“It’s incredibly important. Ask Wendy.”

Wendy, to her credit, was the calmest Queen he’d ever seen in all of his years delivering cubs, her face peaceful and composed, her hair pulled back in a silk scarf to keep it off of her perspiring neck and face. She lay back on the bed, radiating serene determination.

She was calmer than he was. Why did Bastet, Durga, God, or any other deity see fit to put the biggest Felid on the ship with the most fragile-looking human?

Wendy was a petite sweetheart who had mellowed the hulking Tigerite security officer—somewhat.

Maybe that was why. A spoon for every bowl, as his grandmother would have said.

But what a mismatched set.

This cub was huge, despite having a tiny human for a mother. There was precious little room to cut without cutting other things that shouldn't be cut, even with the most advanced laser scalpels and all the guiding imagery.

It was times like this that Marcus had to shut off his brain. Not think back to his own wife. The four cubs she was carrying—four! A miracle.

Stolen by the cursed Queen Fever.

But I am fighting it. I am winning. This will be the third Felid-Human cub that I have helped bring into the world, and that’s... That’s something. One more, and I'll have returned the four that were taken.

No. Not replacements. None of them are mine.

But I can pretend.

“Okay, Doc, all ready to catch!” Dax, the curly-headed blonde human, held out heated blankets.

“It’s very important,” Wendy was telling Talos in a soothing tone that seemed to melt him. He was bent over her hand, nodding seriously, practically purring. “This is our baby. I need you to be here with me when they hand him to us.”

“Or her. It could be a her,” Talos tried to pace, but Wendy held his paw firmly in her small hand.

“Stay here, honey.”

“You’re going to hold your cub in ten minutes, Papa.

Stay still and keep telling your Queen how strong and amazing she is.

Wendy,” Marcus kept talking as though his mane wasn’t starting to get damp with nervous sweat, “I’m going to warn you that you can’t carry this little bundle for at least six weeks.

You can hold him, but you can’t carry him around. ”

“Or her.” Talos’ eyes were wide. “Why can’t she?”

“I’m thinking this little one is going to be over twenty pounds, and this is going to be a big incision. Heavy lifting is a no-no. Don’t worry, it’ll heal up nicely. No scarring, not with the latest derma bonding seal techniques.”

Wendy smiled, eyes starry. “I wouldn’t care if there were a thousand scars. Nessa or Skyla will carry the baby for me, won’t they?”

“All of us will, sweetie.” Skyla, the Canid medical assistant with dark reddish fur, came up and mopped Wendy’s brow. “Are you kidding? I would pay to carry the baby.”

“Well, you’re going to help me catch in a minute,” Dax said. “This is my nephew or niece. I can’t believe that. That’s gotta be the coolest part of being a med assistant when both of your sisters are on board.”

Let them talk. Let them talk and let me worry in silence. Sweet Bastet, this is a big cub. Well, look at his father. “Nice and numb, Wendy? Can’t feel this?” He asked, tapping her belly with one gloved paw.

“Feel what?”

“You’re going to feel pressure. No pain, though. Just pressure. Skyla, show time. You’re going to work retractors; I’m going to cut. Dax, you catch and monitor Mama.”

“On it.”

“Yes, sir.”

And then, it all happened fast, like it always did.

The laser scalpel burned and left a shining, small trail of blood, nice and neat, and he went down through layers of muscle and fat fast. Everything was pushed to its limits, so there wasn’t much digging or visualizing that needed to be done.

The cub was a cinch to pull free, but he couldn’t even revel in that moment.

Sealing time, searching, clamping, making sure no stray bleeding was occurring, nothing nicked, nothing spurting. Keep Queens alive.

“It’s a girl!” Talos crowed as the tiniest wail started from the cub’s throat. “A little Queen! Wendy, you did it, you did it, my love!”

All around him, there was rejoicing and clamoring.

Marcus kept his head down, sealing, one less layer to fuse this time, now that the amniotic sac and placenta were removed.

This time he worked in reverse: uterus, peritoneum, abdominal muscles, fascia, and finally skin. Thirty minutes. Not even an hour.

He finally got to look up and see what he’d delivered.

Still wet and streaked with blood, her ears folded flat to her head, the little Queen was wrapped in a blanket on Wendy’s chest. She was pale orange, like the inside of the Sapien fruit, the peach.

She had dark black stripes that were thick and bold, a sign of great beauty in the Tigerite community.

Her fur pattern was more black than orange.

Marcus wondered if that was because Wendy had dark skin, too.

He would have to find that out as time went on and more couples produced cubs, not that it mattered.

No one would give a damn about a cub’s markings these days.

That was one good thing about the virus, maybe.

People stopped being so foolish about looks and kinds.

His wife had been a Servali. Servali and Leonid couples were almost unheard of back then.

Today, they would have been welcomed, and their four Leovali cubs would have been a huge blessing in a world where deaths vastly outweighed births for six solid years.

Even now, with the virus under control, the ratio wasn’t much better.

So many Queens had been sterilized to save their lives.

The ones “intact” were few and far between.

Few births occurred each year, relative to the number of deaths that age and disease still claimed as a matter of course.

And none of those dark, dreary thoughts should fill his head. Not right now.

“She is the prettiest little Tigerite cub I’ve ever seen,” Marcus crooned, rising.

And she was.

“What are you going to name her?” Skyla asked.

“Chandra Layla,” Wendy replied at once, her eyes not leaving her daughter’s face.

“Oooh, that’s beautiful.” Dax rubbed a gentle towel over the sticky, wet fur.

Marcus moved over to the coms, tossing his gloves and gown in the trash as the service droids started cleaning up the operating bay—not that there was much to clean in these days of highly sophisticated tools.

He looked over at the smiling trio of father, mother, and baby daughter, sobered by the knowledge that an inch too low or two wide would have had dire consequences.

But none of that showed on his face as he smiled and smacked his paw down on the coms and cried, “Don’t everyone swarm the med bay at once, but Chandra Layla has arrived, twenty-three pounds, six ounces, and she’s the prettiest Tigerite cub this side of Felix Orbus.”

From outside the operating bay, he could hear the cheers of the rest of the crew—this family that had been cobbled together with humans, Felids, Canids... Three cubs on one ship? Incredible. He doubted another ship in the galaxy could boast of such a thing.

“I’m going to let you have your visitors for a little bit, but Skyla, Dax—you are under strict orders to shoo everyone out after their first peep. Family needs to rest and be together. I’m going to shower and grab something to eat. Wendy, Talos? Hungry?”

Talos strode over to him, leaving his protective perch over his wife and daughter, wringing Marucs’ paw. “Thank you,” the big Tigerite croaked out.

“Welcome, son.” Marcus managed a smile, a real, genuine smile, and then walked away.