Slow Birth

by Leta Blake

  “Yes.”

  “Too much?”

  Vale struggled with wanting to say yes, knowing Jason would back it off, and rather enjoying the sensation of discomfort. It, along with his burning nipples, was just enough to keep his mind from wandering, and with a little more stimulation, he knew he’d shortly be transported to the place he most loved to go with Jason. “It’s good, just no more.”

  “Does it feel like a knot?”

  “Almost.” It was too detached, and that overwhelming feeling of rightness was missing, but it was a good sensation—a strong one. Vale could see how it would help in a heat to let a tired alpha rest. But it wouldn’t be enough to hold off the need for a real knot for more than a wave or two.

  Jason let the pump drop, and turned his attention to Vale’s body, kneeling up next to him and running his hands over his entire form. He stroked over his shoulders and arms, his chest and sides, and spent extra time on his stomach—being tender and firm, stroking and loving it. He spread Vale’s cum and pre-cum around and then brought it up to his mouth and licked it from his fingers. “Mm, a bit minty,” he assessed.

  Then his hands dipped lower to Vale’s thighs again, and he moved to kneel between Vale’s legs once more. “This is where it gets good, baby,” he said.

  Then he took Vale’s hard cock into his mouth, reaching down to work the plug in his ass to the same rhythm as his bobbing head. It didn’t take long after that for Vale to hit the heights where he rolled between orgasms, anal and penile, and was left a shaking, aching pile of flesh.

  “Still hurt?” Jason asked, nudging the base of the plug.

  Vale shook his head, eyes still rolled back, and a little drool at the corner of his mouth. He’d lost track of time, but he thought a good amount of time had passed while he writhed in ecstasy.

  “I’m taking it out now,” Jason said. The sensation of the plug deflating was odd. Much faster than when Jason’s knot went down. The slide of the toy out of his passage left him feeling empty, but that only lasted a minute.

  At some point, Jason had shoved his pants down around his hips, and he pushed inside quickly. Holding Vale’s legs beneath the knee, he was able to get in deep. Over the curve of his stomach, Vale watched Jason pump into him. He was so beautiful, with his blond hair on his brow and his blue eyes burning hot over flushed cheeks. Vale shattered several more times on the demanding rod of Jason’s cock, until Jason groaned, coming hard, and tossing his head back with the force of his orgasm.

  “Yes,” Vale whispered. “Give it to me. I want it.”

  Jason shook and trembled, his hips jerking several more times, pegging Vale’s glands, and they finally both eased down from the final climax. Pulling out, Jason collapsed beside Vale, taking his cheeks in hand, fingers stroking his beard tenderly, and kissed his mouth. “I love you,” he whispered.

  “I love chocolate cake,” Vale replied, laughing. “And you. And him.” He put his hand on his stomach, where the baby was now calm. Fucking always seemed to rock him to sleep.

  “I can’t wait to meet him,” Jason said fondly, his hand falling to Vale’s stomach. “He’s going to look just like you.”

  “No, like you.”

  “I insist that he look like you.”

  Vale laughed and nuzzled Jason’s cheek. “Baby alpha, if you have that kind of power, then I won’t ever doubt another word you say.”

  “Then don’t doubt this,” Jason said, leaning up on an elbow to look Vale in the eye. “You’re going to be fine. He’s going to be healthy. We’re going to be a healthy, happy family.”

  “Yes,” Vale agreed. “I believe you.”

  Jason sighed and then sat up, flushed and sweaty still. “Well, I have to clean this up,” he said, looking at the jar of lotion, the plug, the semen and slick everywhere, and the cake crumbs in the bed.

  “Or we could eat more cake,” Vale suggested, nodding toward the box on the table. “I’ll even share this time.”

  Jason laughed and climbed out of bed to fetch the cake and fork. “You always have the right priorities.”

  “I do,” Vale agreed.

  You and this baby and a happy life. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  And that, he knew, was everything.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Three weeks later

  The house had descended into madness.

  Or that’s how it felt to Jason.

  Xan’s cousin Janus had returned from his visit to the city and brought back the flu. He was isolated from the rest of the house, but, from what Jason heard, Janus was sick enough to be on death’s doorstep. And now Xan had abandoned them for the city to visit his ailing pater, leaving Urho a sad-sack mess, and Caleb strangely anxious.

  And, as if wolf-god hadn’t thought all that added quite enough spice to their placid seaside life, Jason was quite certain he was losing his mind. All afternoon he’d scented something delicious in the house. Something sensually delicious. And it was making his dick hard. If Vale, huge and restless, exhausted and cranky, saw him walking around with an inexplicable hard-on, he was going to be in a world of trouble.

  At first, Jason thought it was simply something the chef was making for dinner.

  And then he’d thought a Vironian omega had crept onto their property on the verge of going into heat. Probably looking for a wealthy alpha to seduce and catch a child with. And then it’d hit him…

  Literally.

  The scent wafting into his and Vale’s room as Caleb walked by the open door, where Vale had been trying to nap, was undeniable. That anxiety Caleb had been leaking since Xan had left? It’d coalesced into a very specific, arousing scent, and it meant only one thing—one very troublesome thing.

  Vale let out a soft growl from his bed, peeling his eyes open. “Did you just get hard for another omega?”

  Jason swallowed desperately. “Stay here. Don’t move. I’m getting Urho.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Though Vale wasn’t fine, they all knew it. He’d been having new, intense pains for the last several days, and the baby had shifted to a head-down position. Urho was plying Vale with the strongest muscle relaxants he could without injuring the babe, and yet the pains were growing more intense. He was barely sleeping at night and drowsing all day. Jason was doing the same. But they both knew the baby was coming soon. The issue was how soon and if it would survive.

  Still, Jason soothed Vale, saying, “This isn’t about you. Not this time.”

  “Touch that reeking omega and I will kill you both,” Vale muttered darkly, propped up on pillows and barely able to move beneath the lump of the baby growing in his stomach. Jason almost asked just how he thought he’d manage that, but he couldn’t bring himself to upset his omega any more than he already was. What was happening, and Jason’s physical and pheromonal reaction to it, wasn’t anyone’s fault, but it was still a very big problem. And he could tell Vale was pissed as hell about it. Being aroused by another omega in front of a very pregnant Érosgápe was never a good look, and Jason needed someone, anyone to fix it.

  “This can’t be happening,” Jason muttered, as he left Vale fairly crackling with barely repressed rage and rushed through the hall looking for Urho. “Not now. Not right now.”

  But there was no denying that he was hard as a rock, and it had nothing to do with Vale, and everything to do with the overwhelming scent Caleb was letting off. He reached Urho’s bedroom door and shoved it open, finding Urho napping in his bed. He supposed he couldn’t knock his friend for that, given his and Vale’s tendency to sleep the days away as the babe grew bigger and bigger, and yet he was frustrated to find him napping at a crucial time like this.

  “Urho, we have a problem.”

  Jason couldn’t believe he had to spell it out to Urho. Even after Urho noticed the change in Jason’s pheromones in reaction to the proximity of an omega in heat, he still didn’t seem to get it. But when the realization finally took root, Urho leapt into action. He might be an uptight prig, but he could
be counted on in an emergency, and there was no doubt this counted as one.

  Especially since Vale started crying out in true agony not even ten minutes later.

  Vale could scent the ripe omega in the house, and it infuriated him. Logically, he knew it was his friend Caleb, and deep inside, he felt sorry for what Caleb was going through. He knew him well enough now to understand why the arrangement between Xan and Urho worked so well for Caleb, too. But some other primal part of him viewed Caleb’s heat, and the reaction it inevitably drew from all the alphas in the house, as a threat to his bond with Jason.

  Beached like a whale in bed, he rolled onto his side, struggling for purchase on the sheets to stand up and follow to wherever Jason had disappeared. Jason claimed to be getting Urho, but Vale’s exhausted, sleep-deprived mind was happy to supply him with all manner of visions, like Jason screwing a heat-addled Caleb up against a wall, while Caleb cried out for more, and begged for his knot.

  Vale gnashed his teeth. He tried to roll off the bed, and instead froze, his stomach going rigid with a painful tension. He cried out, the contraction refusing to release. It amped up and up, scaring him until he was left moaning and panting as it finally let go. Sweat popped up at Vale’s temples and in his armpits. He breathed in and out, trying to catch his breath.

  Only a few minutes passed before the pain grabbed him again, and he yelled, loudly, trying to attract help from any direction. There were always beta servants around. And Jason…he needed Jason!

  By the time the pain had released him again, Jason was there. “Baby? What’s happening? Are you all right?”

  Vale collapsed back on the bed, letting Jason’s wild concern to wash over him. “Where were you?” he asked, leaning back on the pillows, panting from effort and feeling tense all over. “Did you go to him?”

  “I was with Urho. He’s going to deal with—”

  Vale groaned and turned onto his side, his back and neck tensing, as he endured another contraction. They were coming fast, too fast from what he remembered. Pressure ground against his hips hard as the baby seemed to move inside him. “If you touched that omega—”

  “You know I didn’t. Don’t be absurd,” Jason said, his voice gruff and firm. “Look at me.”

  Vale looked over his shoulder, his breath still coming in sharply.

  “Urho is going to handle it.” Then his voice lost his alpha command, tipping up with concern and fear. “Are the pains worse? They seem worse.”

  Vale sighed as the contraction fled again, leaving him exhausted, but in no pain now. “I think…I don’t know.”

  Jason went to open the window. The air from the gardens was cool and damp, and Vale took in big gulps of it, a strange foreboding washing over him. Closing his eyes, he lifted up a prayer to wolf-god, first for his baby, and then for himself, and then he met Jason’s gaze again, seeing his own worry reflected there.

  “I think the baby’s coming,” Vale said, slowly. “The pains are harder. Stronger than they’ve been. And…” He gasped as the overwhelming clutch gripped him. He shouted in agony.

  Jason was up and running again before Vale could stop him. He was left reaching toward the doorway until suddenly one of the servants ducked his head inside. “Mr. Sabel is getting the doctor. He told me to tell you that it’s going to be all right.”

  Vale gaped at him.

  The man babbled on, “And I should know. My brother had a wee one last month, and it looked like it hurt somethin’ awful, sounded like it, too by the shoutin’, but they were both all right. You’ll be all right, too.”

  Vale hauled himself from the bed, and the servant came rushing in to help him. “The window,” he grunted. “Need some air.”

  Vale gripped the window frame, staring out at the garden as the pain came over him again. He was in the throes of it when Jason returned, his arm snaking around Vale to give him support. Jason nuzzled Vale’s neck and whispered reassurances that barely made it past the white noise of pain and fear buzzing in Vale’s head.

  “You’re going to be fine, baby,” Jason said more firmly. “Do you hear me? Do you understand?”

  Vale nodded. He did hear. And he understood, but what if…

  Then Urho came into the room, reeking of Caleb’s scent, and radiating frustration and worry. Urho dismissed the servant and Jason helped Vale lift his robe, exposing himself from the waist down for Urho to have a look. Vale clutched the windowpane as Urho knelt behind him and spread his ass apart to look. Another contraction came. By the time it had dissipated, Urho’s examination and evaluation were conclusive—this was it.

  The baby was on his way.

  All the months of growing and hoping came to a head in clammy hands and grinding pain, but Jason was there, solid and certain, saying all the things Vale most wanted to hear, and suddenly found hard to believe.

  “You can do this, Vale. You’re going to be just fine. And the baby, too. I’m here. I’ve got you.”

  Vale whimpered, shaking his head until Jason took hold of his chin and insisted, “You will be all right. Say it.”

  “I will be all right.”

  “The baby is healthy.”

  “Yes, the baby is healthy,” Vale agreed. Sweat slipped down his back, and he shivered as a cool breeze floated in the window.

  “We’re going to be a family soon. You and me and this one.”

  “A family—” Vale groaned as the pain took the rest of his sentence away.

  Caleb’s cries of heat-induced agony collided with Vale’s shouts of pain. And as he labored by the window, refusing to get in the bed, the household dissolved into chaos and panic. Vale could hear it in the shouts from the hall, feel it in the strain Urho exhibited. In between contractions, Vale tried to collect himself, but it was all too much. It was all Vale could do not to panic, himself.

  Jason was a rock, though. Calm and collected, putting Vale before any other distraction. He rubbed Vale’s back soothingly, sang him lullabies, and held him in determined silence when the pains grew unbearable. His earnestness was so darling that it almost made Vale laugh. Except Vale was alternately in too much pain or too exhausted to laugh. He was scared, too, despite Jason’s assurances. He was well and truly scared.

  “I’ve got you,” Jason said again. “You don’t have to be afraid. I have you.”

  Vale looked into his blue eyes and took a deep breath, trying to believe, wanting to, and then when Jason took hold of his chin again and spoke in that deep alpha voice, it came home for him.

  “You are my omega. Mine. You’re strong enough to do this. And you will.”

  A flow of certainty started like a pinprick in Vale’s doubt but soon flowed strong as Jason continued to encourage him. Yes, he would do this, and his son would be born, and they’d be a family. Just a little longer. Just a few more pushes.

  After some more discussion and debate about moving to the bed—which Vale won again—Jason helped Vale put his leg up on a chair to give Urho more access to his birth canal. He wanted to remain standing. It felt right somehow to be on his feet. Lying down in a bed seemed all wrong.

  Jason’s face was pale but calm as blood and slick slipped down Vale’s thighs onto the gathered towels. “You can do this,” he reiterated. “I believe in you, Vale.”

  Vale nodded, a contraction coming on again, and he pushed hard.

  “That’s it!” Urho cried from where he kneeled at Vale’s feet. “A little more. I can almost—”

  “Help me!” Caleb screamed from the opposite wing. The words echoed around the massive house. Vale’s memories of suffering an unserviced heat sliced through his current agony, and pity and rage tore through him at his friend’s predicament.

  “For wolf-god’s sake, help him!” Vale shouted, nearly kicking Urho in the face where he knelt with his fingers in Vale’s ass. Urho withdrew them quickly as Vale spun away from the window, glaring at him. “He’s hurting. He’s suffering. Go in there and help him.”

  “No!” Jason exclaimed, grabbing Vale
by the shoulders. His face was flushed—his voice rough and certain. “We need Urho here. If something goes wro—” He bit off his words and added, “Vale, I can’t deliver this baby. It’s too risky. Urho stays with us until a doctor or our baby arrives.”

  “A doctor’s coming,” Urho said, standing up and obviously trying to sound as confident as he possibly could. “He should be here soon.”

  Vale wanted to argue, to remind them all that omegas gave birth every day and that he could do this. Jason had just said that he could, and he’d believed him! But then he groaned and held his stomach. He strained, eyes bulging as another contraction gripped his body, and he clutched the back of the chair with white knuckles to stay upright.

  “That’s it,” Urho said. “Just breathe.”

  Vale sucked in a breath, and his entire body clenched. He screeched.

  A matching, wrenching scream echoed through the halls and the still-open hallway door. Caleb’s cries grew louder and louder as Vale’s labor intensified.

  The world was agony and he and Caleb were lost in it.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Jason’s mind spun.

  If Urho left them now to help Caleb and something went wrong with the birth, if the other doctor botched the job—assuming the other doctor even showed—he’d lose his Érosgápe.

  But if Caleb were left to suffer, Vale would never forgive either of them. And neither would Xan, much less Caleb himself.

  “Dr. Chase,” Ren said suddenly from the doorway, a terror-filled expression on his face. Of course, there couldn’t be any good news right now. Jason was starting to fear that the day was cursed. Ren raised a hand to cover his eyes at the sight of Vale’s nakedness.

  Jason snarled protectively but backed down when Urho put a hand on his chest. He turned his back on Ren, and instead focused on Vale, who was rocking through another contraction.

  Ren’s voice trembled as he explained why no one was coming to help them. “I got hold of Dr. Bainson in the village, and he can’t make it. He’s actually delivering another omega right now. He suggested I call Dr. Snid, an alpha doctor on the outskirts of town, but according to his omega, he’s gone into the city to help with the flu epidemic.”