Page 228 of Omega's Heart

“You should call work and let them know. Or are you planning to go to work after?”

“Ah.” He thought about it for a moment. “How long will this take?”

Holland started to laugh. “No one ever knows. Especially with firsts.” He climbed up onto the foot of the bed and sat cross-legged on the corner. “Were your mother’s labors quick?”

“Oh.” I hadn’t thought about that. “I don’t know.”

“It might be long. He’s a big baby. And Kaden was the slowest thing ever being born,” Veronica said from the doorway. She had another armload of towels, stark white and unfamiliar.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot about those,” Kaden said sheepishly.

I glanced up at him, wordlessly asking what he was talking about.

Veronica laid the towels on the end of the bed near Holland and then Raleigh came in behind her with one of our little tables to set at the foot of the bed.

“I’ll bring the water,” he said and disappeared out of the bedroom again. Julius trotted after him, curious as a pup.

Veronica stacked the towels neatly, even a little fussily, and avoided Holland’s eyes. “White towels for during the birth. It’s easy to see when the stages of birth are changing by the colors of the fluids.” She glanced around at us. “It’s similar to a female birth. You wet the towel with hot water and wring it out, and then you put it over the omega line. It eases the pinch and helps the line separate. At least, that’s what the omegas in Salma told me.”

Holland’s eyes widened in disbelief, though what he didn’t believe I couldn’t really be sure. Hurriedly, because I liked this new, helpful Veronica, I threw myself into the conversation. “Did you bring the towels?”

She nodded. “A gift. They’re good towels, soft and absorbent. And they take bleach well, so it shouldn’t be a problem keeping them clean-looking.”

It was surprisingly thoughtful. “Thank you,” I said simply. And then, because I know that all bearers like talking about their pups and telling stories about birth and babies, I asked, “So, Kaden was a slowpoke compared to his brothers, was he?”

That startled a wide smile out of her and she forgot herself far enough to perch on the edge of the bed. “Yes, he was. The pokiest thing ever.”

“Hey, I resent that!” Kaden piped up, and I elbowed him to make him be quiet. I wanted to hear this story.

I had to wait, though, because Ori and Julius came back at that very moment with my biggest pot filled with gently steaming water and set it on the little table Ori had brought in earlier.

We were as ready as we’d ever be. If this baby ever decided to come out. I ran my hands over the quiet curve of my belly and made a discontented noise. “I guess you’re going to take after your Da, aren’t you?”

Kaden nipped my ear and I elbowed him again, making him laugh and hug me.

I caught a glimpse of Veronica’s face as I twisted to give him a quick kiss of apology. She was smiling, something I’d hardly ever seen her do. And it wasn’t her usual social smile, the fake one she put on because it was required in the moment, but something softer and fonder. Seeing Kaden happy made her happy, I somehow knew, and that made me a little—not sympathetic, but maybe I could be a little more tolerant toward her. She was just stubborn and opinionated and, I thought, a little spoiled. Not so different from her sons—yes, even the spoiled bit, as Kaden sometimes got ideas into his head that he was entitled to certain privileges that he absolutely wasn’t. It was pure luck that he could usually get his way through sheer force of personality.

But she’d come tonight and was minding her manners. Maybe she could be—persuaded, her mind changed, her opinions shifted. After all, she had taken up a bunch of the slack with the new omegas.

Looking at her now, I thought maybe she wanted this but didn’t know how to get it. So I wrapped Kaden’s arms more firmly around me and said, “How long did it take pokey Kaden to make his entrance into the world?”

C H A P T E R 1 1 6

K aden guessed the baby had gone to sleep or something, he wasn’t sure. But he had Holland and Cale, Raleigh and Felix all in a room with his mother and no one had been threatened with certain doom or thrown screaming through a window, so he figured he’d take his victories where he could get them. Even if it did mean his mother was going to shred his ego and his dignity telling puppy stories.

His mother pulled her knee up to her chest and wrapped her arms around it, rocking gently as she dug the old memories out. “Tarquin was ten at the time, and Abel was only two, but he was a good smart boy and he could keep himself entertained pretty well. And Tarquin was a wonderful help at the time, such a good older brother.”

Kaden could see the steam building up inside Holland’s head as the omega tried to make the choice between whatever it was that she’d said that was setting his tail on fire, and this opportunity to hear stories about his mate’s puppyhood. His lips formed the word Quin, silently frustrated.

In the end, curiosity seemed to win out and Holland settled back, though not without some obvious disgruntlement. Kaden suppressed a sigh. I’ll have to talk to her again. Really, it shouldn’t be that hard, even in an alpha of her age, to call her oldest by his chosen name. He really hoped she wasn’t doing it just to tweak Holland. He wouldn’t put it past her.

“Well,” Veronica continued. “I started to feel contractions on a Monday morning, right in the middle of a meeting to determine what supplies we needed to get in for the Full Moon that month.”

“Oh,” Felix said, his voice brimming with mischief. “So he was brat right from the beginning.”

“No brattier than you were,” Kaden protested. “I talked to your mother, remember?” He got another elbow in his side for his pains, but the tension in the room dropped another notch.

His mom just shook her head at them, which was an improvement. And something he remembered from when he was younger, before she’d started trying to drive them down the paths to success. “Well, I made arrangements for the pups for the next day, because I was sure he would be here by evening. After all, Tarquin had been thirty-six hours from first to last, and Abel had come even a little faster. There was no reason to believe that Kaden would be any slower.”