Page 187

“It’s alright, love,” I said, smoothing back her hair, but what use was that?

This was everything I had sat up late at night, thinking over.

She was lying there, her body thrashing as she tried to move into a position that wouldn’t hurt her, but there wasn’t one.

She gripped my hands until both of ours were white, strangled screams forcing their way past clenched teeth.

“Breathe, Jules,” I begged, my voice cracking as I forced out the words.

She answered me only in frantic little panting moans.

I’d been in a lot of fights in my life, some of them outright beat downs, so I know that fucking horrible feeling of utter powerlessness when someone uses your body like a punching bag and just pounds you into the ground.

But I gotta say, if I thought I felt weak then, it was nothing like it was now.

For what felt like an insanely long time, that’s how it went.

Jules screamed as each wave of contractions ripped through her and everybody provided a fucking chorus in the background.

And I held her. Annie said to give her my strength, but I’d be buggered if I could see how.

This was her fight, and I was just a fucking audience to it.

I held her and stroked her and told her how well she was doing, despite the midwife’s grim expression, but when we tried to move Jules into a better position, upright, so that at least gravity was helping the process, it all fell apart.

Pain was smashing Jules like waves on a rock, and it was wearing her down.

I never thought I’d have regretted hearing her screams tail off, but they were.

Not because the pain was lessening, but because she was losing the energy to do so.

I sent reassurance and love and need and belief in her as my fucking hero down our bond, but it was like throwing my heart into a hurricane.

It swallowed it up and spat it back out again, before screaming its defiance at me.

“She’s fighting it,” Annie said with a shake of her head. “They all do the first time. It’s new, this level of pain, and hers is higher than normal. She has to accept it and do what she must, to bring this baby into the world or…”

“Or what?” The old woman just stared back at me. “Fuck it, how conscious does she have to be for this?”

“She needs to push, to sit up, and help the child out.”

“Give me five minutes, just five, alright?” Annie looked at me with a frown, but my eyes went to Jules. “Come with me, love.”

“What?” she panted, looking into my eyes for a second before her face screwed up in pain.

I counted it, the grimace lasting for about sixty seconds.

That’s what we’d been told, that she needed to be able to bear the pain for about sixty seconds, with shorter and shorter gaps in between.

“Come with me,” I said when her eyes opened again, and I stared into them until the realisation bloomed within them.

A terrible eagerness lit inside her, and then reality fell away.

“Oh my god,” Jules said, holding her stomach.

The amorphous clouds of golden light in our psychic space surrounded us, hopefully soothing my mate.

“You’re a freaking genius, Jack! I can’t feel anything here.

That pain! They said it would be bad, but…

” I watched her eyes start to tear up as she remembered it, her face immediately transforming into a mask of fear at the thought.

“Jules, we can’t stay here.”

“What? Of course we can. If I’d gone to a human hospital like I’d said, I’d be able to have an epidural or pethidine to get me through this.”

“And that wouldn’t be good for a Tirian child.”

“Bugger the child!” she snapped. I heard the ragged rasp of her voice and went to go to her, but she held me off with an outstretched hand. “Everyone’s banging on about the bloody baby. You’re picking her over me!”

I knew this wasn’t my mate talking, this was the fear and the pain given a voice, but it still stung to hear the words. I felt that pain and moved forward, not paying attention to her struggles, and just pulled her body against mine and wrapped my arms around her.

“I choose you, Jules, every fucking time. Through all our incarnations, I’ll choose you, but it’s for exactly that reason that I know we need to go back.

You want this baby, you have since she was conceived.

Your body allowed her to come into being, we couldn’t force that on you.

If anything happened to her…” I felt her tense within my arms. “You’d hate yourself if we stayed here and let her die. ”

“Is that what’s going to happen?” she said at little more than a whisper.

“You’re going to have to fight for her, for our little girl.

She needs you in ways we never have. If you can’t get her out into the world…

” I didn’t say what I knew, both mother and child would die.

I’d lose both of them, right when I’d just gotten them.

“We’ve got to go back, and you’ve got to help her come out. ”

Her hands tightened around mine.

“I’m so scared, Jack. It hurts so much.”

“I know.”

“Human women don’t do this unless they really want to,” she said. “We have medicine and science?—”

“Then if you decide to have another child, maybe we look at that, incorporating that into our birthing practices. But right now, all we’ve got is the song.”

“I can’t sing!” she said. “My body is being torn in two!”

“And it’s all we have. It’s some sort of women’s magic bullshit, but after all we’ve been through, both of us have to accept that there’s something to that.

We opened a hole between two planes of reality using some crystals and a bloody great spirit wolf.

We need to try. Can you try, Jules? Can we do what Annie says and try? ”

Her answer came in the way her grip tightened around me. I brushed my lips across the top of her head and said, “I’ll be with you with every step, love, all of us will.”

“Take me back,” she said in a small voice against my chest.

“We need to get this child out of her!” Annie said as soon as we came to. “You’ve been lying there, still as statues!”

“Just a pep talk,” I said, but my eyes went to the guys. “Get over here, all of you. Jules needs us.”

The pack moved as one, Annie disgruntled as we edged her out, but this is all the strength we had—our bonds.

“Cluster around tight and get skin to skin,” Finn said, nodding to me. He got it, I could see. “The song, it gives her power and helps her body open up to let the baby pass. We all need to use it.”

“On it,” I said. “We also need to support her body. Lying down’s not working, and the pain is wearing her out. Aaron, you’re the biggest lunk. Can you hold her up?”

“Done,” he said, and there was a rapid shuffle as he moved in, holding her up between his thighs. “Just put your hands around my neck. That’s right, love.” He stroked his hands across her swollen belly.

“When we formalised the pack bonds, we touched the gods themselves,” Finn said. “This is just the birthing of a child.”

“Just?” Jules grated out between pants.

“We need to get her out,” Brandon said, his face as pale as a ghost. “She’s getting scared.”

“You’ve…?” Hawk said, and Brandon nodded in response.

“We’ve got to fucking help her,” Slade said, his eyes beginning to dart wildly. “Both of them.”

“Hold hands, everyone,” Finn snapped, his eyes flashing green. We moved as one, doing as he said. “Jules, you can do this. You’re the strongest person I know. You’re tough and resilient, and you’re gonna be an amazing mum. Now, love, push when Annie tells you.”

His voice held that echoey quality of command, and I saw Jules straighten against Aaron, her eyes turning the same emerald colour. She nodded quickly, and then, we sang.

Ours was not the song of all the women, coming in closer now that things were coming to a culmination. Every woman in Sanctuary it seemed was now surrounding my bower. Their song washed through me, the way a stream’s current does, pushing everything else to one side. But that wasn’t us.

Finn started with an irregular beat, one we quickly joined or sang in counter to.

It was the sound of our paws slamming into the earth, the feeling of the sun on our fur, it was the dance of young animals honing their skills, the suckle of pups on their mother’s teats.

But me, I sang the fight, because that’s what life had always been for me—fighting against Mum and Nan’s power struggles, against the role some tried to force me into, the fight for Hawk, the fight against surrendering to him, the fight against all those who’d try to tear us down.

I sang our fight against the Volken, the smashing of their crystals, the sacrifice of Sylvan, the tearing apart of Leifgart.

I sang Jules’ fucking defiance when she dropped down into the cave and ran towards the women chained.

If I had any strength to give, it was this, to keep on getting up each time you were punched down.

“Now,” Annie said. “She’s coming now.”

And as ingloriously as we all come into the world, my daughter was born on my bedroll in a rush of blood and amniotic fluid and little red quivering limbs, and for once, I was shocked into silence.

She was here, my baby was here. I didn’t get to see much of her initially, the moment Annie caught the baby and then handed her to Jules was a bloody blur as tears filled my eyes.

The sound of her first little squall was the purest, most beautiful music ever, especially as the fucking Sanctuary choir had fallen silent.

“Oh my god,” Jules sobbed, and I cried along with her. “She’s so perfect.”

And she was. She so fucking was.