As a way of making myself feel better more than anything else, I slid a hand across the youngster's fur, then I tugged down on the skirt of my dress so the cloth touched Sarah's nose. Perhaps the wolf would be able to feel her parent's love soaking out of the fabric and into her own skin.
Or, if not her parent's, hopefully she could feel my own.
Chapter 16
"It's a good thing the clinic is closed for the evening," Dale greeted us as two tall shifters in kilts carried Sarah's lupine form into the doctor's office. I could see my brother-in-law's point—we definitely weren't the type of patients who usually came to call at this rural clinic, so Sarah had chosen a fortuitous time to go into labor. However, even though the support staff had all left for the day, a quick look around the entranceway proved that the doctor wasn't entirely alone.
"Hi, Aunt Terra," his son Keith offered, waving a cheerful greeting in my direction before returning his attention to the more interesting shifter who was helping Wolfie carry Sarah into the room. Wade greeted the fourteen-year-old with a quick high five, tossing the pack princess's comatose body up into the air to free one hand for the salute, and I would have protested if I hadn't known that my mate could easily have caught the sleeping werewolf had the yahoo fumbled reentry. But, to Keith's delight, Wade did recapture the pack princess's descending hindquarters easily, and the yahoo finished by gracing the kid with a wink before following Wolfie down the hall and into the room that Dale had prepared.
With Sarah safely on a solid surface, I returned my attention to my nephew, whose presence wasn't really appropriate for the life-or-death battle soon to come. At fourteen, Keith was balancing on the cusp of manhood, and I could understand why his father thought this experience might be a formative one. And yet...
"Do you really think Keith's ready to assist at a birth?" I asked my brother-in-law. As if to prove my point, the kid's usually animated face closed down and he hastily pulled out a mobile gaming device to bury his nose into. Yep, even though my nephew had been thrilled at the thought of watching a bunch of female werewolves strip down in order to shift forms a few months earlier, he was definitely much less interested in seeing Sarah's girl parts, in this setting at least. So why was the kid here?
An explanation was soon forthcoming, but the words didn't emerge from my brother-in-law's lips. "Keith is pack," Wolfie offered tersely as he walked back down the hall toward us. I could see my mate's muscles tensing as a rarely-used alpha tone entered his voice, and I could also feel his wolf rising even closer to the surface than usual as the bloodling alpha's protective instincts were aroused. Still, my mate's hands had been gentle as he laid Sarah down on the examining table, and he sent a reassuring smile in my nephew's direction as well when the kid raised his eyes to seek out those of the alpha. Unlike other pack leaders, Wolfie reserved his harshness solely for opponents who threatened his pack.
Opponents like his brother. "Justin will be out hunting tonight," Wolfie elaborated, rejoining us in the hallway and reminding us that Sarah's life wasn't the only one at stake this evening. I was suddenly glad that my mate had thought ahead to ensure Keith would be safe under our protective eye, and I allowed my hand to slide into Wolfie's in mute apology for doubting his choices. "We can't let any pack member wander off alone this evening," my mate continued, squeezing my hand gently in his massive paw, "so I sent the rest of our clan to join yours at Haven. But it seemed like a better idea to keep Keith here with his father."
Wolfie was right, but his words still made me shiver as I remembered the way my own father had kidnapped his grandson just a few months earlier. Although no one had ever taken me to task for my part in the train wreck that led up to that abduction, I was well aware that my choices had been the cause of Keith being stuck in a strange shifter village for days on end, bullied both physically and mentally in the process. I'd been the one who insinuated myself into Dale's and Keith's lives, trying to foist off my responsibilities as Wilder pack leader onto my teenage nephew, and I'd also been the one who had given Keith permission to head back to his empty house with only the yahoos for protection on that fateful afternoon. Of course, Chief Wilder bore the ultimate responsibility for ordering his underlings to snatch the kid out of his human home, but I knew deep down inside that the real burden of blame was mine.
As a result, I still woke up in terror some nights, thinking that Keith had once again been swiped from beneath my nose and was being tossed around by my father's crazy schemes. But looking at the kid now, I saw that my nephew had bounced back just fine from his trauma, and the body language in the room suggested that he and my brother-in-law were getting along better as a family unit now than they had before I'd come into either of their lives. So maybe my fumbling gestures hadn't been entirely wrong-headed after all. Perhaps it was time to simply learn from my mistakes and move on.
As I slowly forgave myself for past failures, Wolfie caught my eye and nodded his agreement, his expression much softer than it had been a moment earlier. The bloodling alpha often seemed to know what I was thinking before I spoke, and I hoped that his nod was an absolution of my culpability. Because if this accomplished pack leader felt that it was time for me to let my past mistakes go, then who was I—whose experience as alpha wasn't yet a season old—to say that he was wrong?
But before my mate could confirm or deny my guess, Blaze and David came pushing through the door in tandem, their young male energy suddenly making the room appear much smaller and more crowded than it had a moment before. "We're here!" the yahoo announced both himself and his companion, just in case any of us had missed the doors banging loudly against the walls during the haste of their entry. Then Blaze's eyes lit upon the pack princess lying prone on the table in wolf form and he paled, taking a step forward. "Is she...?" the yahoo blurted out.
"Just tranquilized," Wolfie explained, a hint of a smile turning up the corners of his lips. Although my mate couldn't be privy to the full extent of the two young shifters' competition for the affections of our troublesome pack princess, the bloodling alpha must have seen enough during our stay at All-Pack to have clued in to the yahoo's crush. And, as usual, my mate was amused rather than annoyed by something that I had considered to be a major headache.
I couldn't quite make myself share Wolfie's amusement, but I was glad to see that David and Blaze had arrived in one piece...and without coming to blows in the process. On the other hand, I could also tell that their jostling wasn't entirely good-natured as the two stepped closer to Sarah's supine form, so I followed in their footsteps, ready to intervene if necessary.
But, before Wolfie or I could squash the youths' rivalry, another chilling dose of authority blew through the room, this time from an unexpected source. "We need to decide who's going to be in the delivery room with the mother," my human brother-in-law said loudly, his shoulders seeming to gain width as he stepped forward and took command of our unruly crew. "I'd rather have just two assistants stay here with me, so who would like to be included?"
"Terra will join you," Wolfie said immediately, meeting my gaze, and I nodded my approval. Yes, I was scared to death of being shut up in a room with a dying werewolf and her bloodling child...but I'd rather be the one clutching Sarah's hand to ease her into the next world if the worst-case scenario came about. And maybe it wouldn't come to that. Maybe the tentative bond that Sarah and I had built between us would even lend the teenager some much-needed strength as she struggled to give birth to a bloodling child.
For a similar reason, I expected the girl's beaus to fight over the right to join me in the delivery room. But on this issue, the two young males seemed to be united. "How about Blaze and I trade off standing guard outside and keeping an eye on the kid?" David asked, his question aimed at me rather than at the stronger alpha, and I realized with a jolt that I was still the leader of at least one shifter in this room. I'd willingly ceded the yahoos back to their former alpha as soon as Wolfie had taken control of our flight from All-Pack, but that didn't mak
e me any less the leader of the Wilder clan.
Nevertheless, I glanced at Wolfie for his approval of David's suggestion—after all, we were all within the bloodling alpha's territory now, and I was used to accepting my mate's wisdom. But Wolfie remained silent, apparently not willing to intervene between me and my new pack, so I was left in charge of answering my cousin's question. "That's a good idea," I agreed after a short pause, and the wave of young males immediately crashed out of the room in a clatter of shod feet and banging doors, even more loudly than they'd come in. It appeared that Sarah's beaus and my nephew were all scaredy-cats when it came to childbirth...not that I could blame them.
With the youngest shifters taken care of, Wade glanced back and forth between me and Wolfie, seeking permission to either go or stay. I jutted my chin at my mate, throwing the ball back into his court, and the bloodling alpha immediately locked eyes with his underling and friend. The two shifters' wolves seemed to be speaking paragraphs without words, if the intensity of the ensuing silence was any indication, and I realized that the bond between these two pack mates was stronger than I'd at first supposed. Someday, when all of the current drama was over, I needed to sit down with my mate and learn the story behind each member of his band of misfits, and perhaps find out a bit more about my mysterious mate in the process. But, for now, Wade and Wolfie seemed to have come to a conclusion without the need for speech, and the yahoo just nodded once before striding over to stand guard just inside the door. It appeared that Wade would be my partner in delivery while Wolfie would join the younger shifters in patrolling the grounds—a division of labor that would keep us all safer, but that left me feeling bereft even before my mate had left the room.
Unfortunately, the decision also left me worried. Wolfie wasn't the kind of alpha who outsourced the worst problems to his underlings, which meant that, if the bloodling alpha was heading outdoors, that must be where he expected the greatest danger to lie. And the pack leader was probably right. There was an excellent possibility that Justin would track our little entourage down before the evening was over, and the elder Young was bound to arrive with dozens of trained shifters at his beck and call. Wolfie on the other hand, would be making his stand alone save for the help of a yahoo not yet out of his teens and my not-much-older cousin. No wonder a shiver ran down my spine as I realized that I might never again see my mate alive.
Don't be stupid, my wolf chided me tersely. And, at the same time, Sarah began to whimper, forcing me to tear my eyes away from Wolfie's gaze rather than pulling him into my arms. So I refrained from arguing when my mate brushed his lips quickly across mine and then turned on his heel to protect our pack from all comers.
No, I didn't cling to my mate as he strode out of the room. But I so badly wanted to that I had to close my eyes tightly to keep from watching Wolfie leave. Because, whether my lupine half thought my fears were unfounded or not, I had a bad feeling that more than one shifter would die before this night was over. And I didn't know what I'd do if the lifeless werewolf was my mate.
***
"So, how should we do this?" Dale asked, bringing me back to the present with a jolt. And not a pleasant one either. After all, my brother-in-law was the doctor—shouldn't he know what came next?
Well, probably not if Sarah was his first werewolf patient. And chances were very good that our pack princess was.
"You mean, should she be in wolf or human form?" Wade asked quietly, answering a question with a question and drifting back into the center of the room now that his pack leader had taken his leave. "Maybe it would be easier if Sarah stayed wolf. Do you think the bloodling would come out more cleanly then?"
"No." The whisper of sound came from behind us, and I turned to find our patient awake and two-legged at last, lifting her torso off the table slowly as she tried to project her feeble voice in our general direction. The girl paused as a tremor wracked her form, and I would have thought that the cause was merely a contraction if I hadn't been able to see the bloodling awaken within her womb. Awaken...and begin once again to scrabble with its sharp little claws, looking for a way out of the enveloping darkness.
"Bev told me that she tried that with one mother," Sarah continued once her child had stilled momentarily, allowing the pack princess to regain her breath. "The bloodling was too big to come out through a wolf's vagina, though, so both died."
Wade and I blanched at the stark words, but the mother-to-be seemed to have accepted her fate, even if her voice was still weak and broken. And Sarah wasn't the only one who seemed willing to step up to the plate and attempt to vanquish long odds. Dale reentered full doctor mode, even more in control now that a human being instead of a wolf was sitting on his examining table.
"Alright," my brother-in-law said calmly. "In that case, it sounds like a C-section is our best option. Usually, I'd do this at the hospital, but I'm guessing that's not a good idea."
The doctor's kind eyes twinkled as he spoke and I was surprised but also reassured to notice Sarah smiling back. Both doctor and patient impressed me, Dale with his easy bedside manner in the face of a medical malady that he surely hadn't known existed until a couple of weeks before, and Sarah with her stoicism in the face of long odds. In fact, it didn't seem like Wade or I was really needed here, so I stepped back and let the doctor and patient converse alone.
"Do you want a gown to cover your upper body?" my brother-in-law asked the naked pack princess as he began puttering around his workspace and readying supplies for the procedure. I tried not to look too closely at the scalpel that the human pulled out of one drawer, and even Wade's poker face turned a bit green as the yahoo took in the sharp blade. But Sarah didn't flinch, nor did she request a gown.
"It doesn't matter," replied the girl with the supreme unconcern for nudity of a born-and-bred werewolf. Or perhaps the pack princess was just using every bit of gumption she possessed in order to resist the inner pain that must have been ripping through her body as the bloodling in her womb once again began to move. I could feel a sympathetic ache starting up in my own stomach before I looked away, and I noticed that Wade had angled his body to gaze out the darkened window rather than focusing on the intrepid teenager who had brought us all together tonight.
"In that case, I'll show you two how to scrub up," Dale said, returning his attention to me and Wade. "And then we can get started."
Chapter 17
The anesthetic had taken effect and Dale was making the first incision when we heard a shout and a thud drift in from outside. It was almost a relief to be able to look away from the scalpel slicing firmly through Sarah's smooth skin, although I wasn't at all glad to realize that my suspicions about an attack had born fruit. Because the commotion beyond our walls proved that either Justin had come himself or he'd sent his lackeys to hunt us down, and both options were equally problematic without the full force of Wolfie's clan to back our small crew up.
Wade and I exchanged a quick glance, and the yahoo didn't wait for instructions before turning away to head toward the unbarred window. "Wolfie will have the doors guarded," my companion offered by way of explanation.
Not that I really needed any clarification. With only two adult shifters outside, plus one to guard my nephew in the hall, my mate would lack the manpower necessary to prevent out-pack shifters from entering through the examining room's small window. So I was glad to have Wade on the job.
Accepting the yahoo's plan with a quick nod, I patted Sarah's hand one last time and then cracked open the door to check on the other innocent under my charge—my nephew. I wasn't surprised to find the fourteen-year-old and his cousin-once-removed waiting just outside the examining room, but I was taken aback by the firmness of David's hand on the kid's shoulder. "Can you take him?" my cousin asked before I had time to speak, and I could tell that David itched to join in the fighting that we could all hear filtering in from outside the clinic's walls.
"Of course," I answered. Traumatizing Keith with images of C-sections was beside the point
now that Wolfie required every bit of manpower that he could muster, and it made sense to concentrate our weakest members into one room. David had clearly come to the same conclusion because he was gone before I'd even finished my words, the werewolf's clothes dropping to the floor as he shifted midair, then his animal form wriggling with skilled intent out of the tangled fabric in order to hit the ground running. I could hear the shifter growling as soon as he rounded the bend, and I guessed that Wolfie was already making a stand in front of the main door, just out of sight around the corner. I just hoped that the forces arrayed against our pared-down pack weren't too overwhelming and that three top fighters would be enough to keep Justin's pack outside the clinic's walls.
My wolf and I wanted to follow our cousin and balance the odds just a little more...and so, apparently, did my nephew. "I could help," Keith offered once he saw that my attention had turned in his direction, and I realized now why David had been holding so firmly onto the boy's shoulder. I couldn't tell if Keith was simply itching to experience his first battle as a werewolf, or whether the kid honestly wanted to be of assistance, but either way, my nephew was far too young to risk to Justin's nonexistent mercy.
"And you will help," Dale answered before I could come up with a firm but kind reply. My brother-in-law spoke without turning around, his hand still calmly drawing the scalpel across Sarah's belly, but it was clear that the doctor was dividing his attention between his patient and the altercation outside. "I need another set of hands to hold up this layer of skin," Keith's father continued. "And you are it."
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