Page 183

Finn

A couple of days later.

“You sure you want to do this?”

Old Annie, the midwife, eyed me suspiciously as we stood outside the King’s house. She was a no nonsense kind of woman, her grey hair scraped back into a tight bun, a clean plaid shirt and jeans on her whip thin frame.

“Clarissa said it would be OK,” I replied.

“I know what the girl said, but what you’re about to see…

” She shook her head. “You better keep your head, son of Grace. It’s bad enough having the men falling like flies when I’m trying to do the real work.

Don’t approve of this men in the birthing room business myself.

But you need to be a help, not a hindrance, you hear? ”

“Of course,” I replied.

I tried my bloody damnedest to keep a stoic front up, not show any of the fear that was rushing through me like a river. My palms felt sweaty, my shirt too tight, and I fought the urge to fidget like a child as the woman just watched me. Then finally, she nodded.

“Follow me.”

Get in, observe the process, learn what Annie does, and then get out , I told myself as we walked inside.

As a pack we were heading into unknown territory and already I was feeling everyone start to fracture off into their own little bubbles of fear.

I couldn’t let that happen. I needed to get a clearer sense of the challenge we were facing and then help the pack get through it.

Then I heard it. Clarissa’s long moan could be heard throughout the house, her long song of pain and fear of that pain filling every corner.

“Wash your hands, thoroughly,” she said. “For at least thirty seconds. I’ll see how she’s going, then scrub up myself.”

Not knowing what was going on made the sounds of Clarissa’s pain so much bloody worse.

Not for her, of course, but me. I had no control over my mind anymore, it was racing ahead and concocting worse and worse scenarios as I scrubbed at my hands.

I’d watched some videos of childbirth on the internet to try and prepare myself, but I think it just aggravated the situation.

The pain and the blood and the shit, that was not what I wanted for my Jules, but I squared my shoulders, dried my hands and followed the sounds to the birthing room.

Tirian births were more or less crowded than human ones, depending on how you looked at it.

Human births often just had the father, a midwife, and an obstetrician, the complexity of the birth the deciding factor.

The number of people seemed to multiply when things went bad.

Not us. When I walked in, several of the matriarchs sat at the back of the room, including Clarissa’s two grandmothers, Rose and Cybil.

Her mother and her mates were clustered around her, holding her up as she squatted, and Annie was washing her hands in the sink within the room.

“What’s Finn, son of Grace doing here then?” Cybil asked.

“Ophelia’s orders,” Annie replied with a shrug.

“Men in the birthing room?” Audrey, one of the other matriarchs sniffed. “Didn’t happen in my day.”

“A lot of things have changed since our day.”

We all turned to see Ophelia standing in the doorway.

“Hey, Nana,” I said.

“Darling boy,” she said, and kissed me on the cheek, the warm dry presence and her scent of lavender and smoke doing a lot to settle me. “It’ll be fine, my love, don’t you worry. Won’t it, ladies?”

“Time to take a look then, my love,” Annie said as she dried her hands. She nodded to the mates who leant back, supporting their mate, so she was now reclining. Annie sank to her knees with a little difficulty and lifted the loose gown the woman wore.

I wasn’t sure where to look, one of the matriarchs smirking when my eyes jerked away from looking upon the most private parts of a woman I’d worked with. Usually, her mates would have had me against the wall by my throat for possibly taking a look, but they had bigger fish to fry.

“You should have called me earlier,” Annie said, but her rebuke was gentle. “Not long to go now, my love. He’s coming, your beautiful boy.”

She looked at Nana and nodded.

“Come, ladies,” Nana said, gesturing for the matriarchs to rise. They rose as one, coming to stand in a loose ring around the group. “This is a circle of power,” she said to me. “You’ll need to pick one for Jules’ birth, and soon. We will help Clarissa pass the child.”

I wasn’t sure what I expected, maybe some of Jules’ green tendrils given to her by the Great Wolf or something.

Instead, each woman started to hum, but the word wasn’t a good fit for what it was.

It indicates a little vibration of the throat, an innocent enough thing.

The women widened their stances as their lungs filled, bracing themselves for what was about to come—power.

The sound rolled over me, making every damn hair stand on end. Clarissa sobbed as the pitch rose, her cries somehow a counterpoint to the song they sang. The pitch and the volume grew louder, more intense, until I felt it.

This was the song of age and wisdom, of having witnessed so many births, telling the story of each joy, each success.

I could see it as the song shook my very bones, each birth, each child, nestled in the arms of the pack that produced it.

My heart fucking twisted in my chest as I saw each woman’s face become Jules, each child our daughter, each pack become ours.

We would make it, I could feel that now in the song of love, life, the line never being broken.

I didn’t mean to make a sound. My role here was to be a barely tolerated observer, nothing else, or I risked being tossed out on my ear.

And I didn’t want to. I could see it now, that in our tradition at least, this was a triumphant thing for the mother, for her pack.

Like we had fought the Volken, they fought with everything they had to bring this child into the world, the hum a battle hymn, promising glory for all that prevailed.

Maybe it was that, because I was so bloody caught up in it all that I let the note fight free of my chest, and when it did, the power faltered.

My song was a deeper, less certain thing, but once the first note came out, so did the rest. My love for Jules, my need for her to get through this safe, my question almost to the more experienced in the room—would she be OK?

Matriarchs’ eyes narrowed as they watched me across the circle, some stopping, making the power wane as they shot angry looks at Ophelia, obviously expecting her to intervene.

She didn’t. She smiled as she hummed and gestured for me, for the others, for everyone to join the song.

Annie rocked back on her heels, wondering what the hell was going on, but when she saw her alpha, she shook her head and began to hum along as she worked.

The mates saw me for the first time, my song alerting them to a foreign male presence, and initially, their song was one bristling with a wary, defensive energy, but I shook my head, one glance at my Nana telling me what we needed to do.

I injected a little alpha persuasion in my song, that together we could help their mate do what she needed, and while it took a while for the suspicion to fade, they were soon caught up in it.

The room filled with our song, and the vibrations felt like waves rolling through our whole bodies, making every cell resonate. Our bodies and Clarissa’s.

My Tirian stood inside me, and I could feel the presence of many others in the room as he did.

We witness the birth , he said. We help her with the passage.

“Here he comes,” Annie said, leaving off singing for a minute to manage the physical side of the birth. “The vibrations, they let your body relax and let him pass through. Keep humming, my love, you’re doing so well!”

Clarissa’s song grew more ragged, uncontrolled, somewhere between a hum and a wail as she threw her head back, every muscle in her body fighting to push the child out.

The song became something else altogether when the baby emerged, rising in tone and timbre, it was less soothing and more exultant. I saw the matriarchs’ bodies straighten, Rose’s hands curling hard around the cane she used to stand, each one’s eyes gleaming green as the song rose.

“He’s here! A beautiful little boy!”

The sound faded away as we all focussed on that tiny little person, and Clarissa sobbed as she took him in her arms, her mates’ eyes streaming.

“He’s so beautiful,” one choked out.

“You did so well, love,” said another, pressing a kiss to her forehead, but she was completely transfixed. Then the baby started to wail.

“Skin to skin,” Annie said, gently helping Clarissa tuck the child inside the bodice of her gown.

“That’s right. He’ll need that constantly, or you’ll have a very unhappy child.

” She turned her focus to the men of Clarissa’s pack.

“Someone needs to be holding him at all times. You don’t have work for some time now, so all of you need to make that a priority.

If Mum needs a rest or to see to a call of nature, you be there for your child. ”

“That’ll be you soon.” I looked up to see my grandmother standing beside me.

She reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder, and I felt it, the first real feeling of reassurance I’d felt for months.

The pack wasn’t having sex at the moment, which was fine.

Jules wasn’t feeling it, and even those who could offload on each other didn’t out of respect for that.

But we’d also stopped touching, stopped letting that natural bond between us comfort us as we faced the unknown.

I closed my eyes, and it felt like a reservoir was filling inside me, of calm, of comfort.

“This one has power.”

I opened them again to see several of the matriarchs had approached, looking me over with appraising eyes.