“Who are you?” he asked.
“Miri.”
“Jace’s Miri?” The woman on the bed struggled up onto her elbows. “Really?”
Caleb put his arm under her shoulders, supporting her. “The introductions can wait, Allie.”
The man at the foot of the bed turned around. Again the similarity to Jace, the frown on his face also familiar.
“No, they can’t.” Allie swatted the big vampire as if he were a gnat, showing absolutely no fear of his power. She wasn’t an attractive woman, especially with her face smeared in blood and sweat, but she had the prettiest blue eyes, and when she smiled, Miri knew why Caleb looked at her like she was his world. She was beautiful. “I’m so glad he found you.”
“Thank you.”
Allie clutched her stomach and doubled over. “Oh, crap. Hold on.”
Caleb held her, blood appearing at his temples. Obviously he was trying to take the pain from her. “She doesn’t need to hold on. I’m sure she’ll get that this is a bad time and come back later.”
“I came to help.”
“Do you know anything about having babies?”
“She should,” a woman said behind her. “She had one herself.”
Miri would recognize that voice anywhere. Raisa.
She turned, facing a woman she almost didn’t recognize. Gone was the drawn face, pale skin, pain-filled eyes. This woman bloomed with good health. “You look wonderful.”
Raisa tossed her head. The thick mass of her hair spilled across her shoulders. Light gathered in the blond strands and rippled across their length. “So do you.”
Miri wanted to hug her, share with her all the emotion churning inside, but she was frozen in the unreality of the moment, unsure the connection was still there without desperation to bind them. Afraid to touch for fear of falling apart. “I guess anything looks better than when we saw each other last.”
“Amen to that.”
“Did you bring those ice chips, Raisa?”
“Caleb!” Allie gasped. “You’re interrupting their reunion.”
He was totally unapologetic. “They can catch up later.”
Miri blinked. Yes, they could. And that in itself was a novel concept.
“Have you met?” Raisa asked, crossing the room and handing Caleb a cup.
“We were just getting around to introductions,” Allie said, popping an ice chip into her mouth.
“No, we weren’t,” Caleb growled. “And damn it, Allie, that piece is too big.”
Allie rolled her eyes while Caleb watched her like a hawk.
“Ignore him,” Allie panted. “He’s just stressed out from too much coffee and the imminent arrival of his son.”
Caleb was not a man Miri would ever ignore, even if she wasn’t wolf and raised to defer to Alphas.
“If I’m stressed out from anything,” Caleb snapped, “it’s dealing with your unnatural beliefs about childbirth.”
“I’m not introducing drugs and God knows what into his body.” The last word ended on a squeal as another contraction hit. Caleb wrapped his arm around Allie and murmured soothingly into his wife’s ear, his frustrated anger muted under his concern. But it would be back. Of that Miri had no doubt. Men like the Johnsons were more comfortable fighting something than just sitting back and letting it roll out as it would.
Allie groaned. Caleb rocked her gently. It was so different from the birth of Miri’s child. The pain was clearly the same, but the emotions surrounding it were totally different. Desperation and terror did not make for an easy delivery. Even an artificial one.
Raisa looked at Miri. “Do something.”
“What would you have me do?”
Raisa shrugged helplessly. “You’re the one who had a child.”
“They cut mine from my body.”
All sound in the room ceased. Four pairs of eyes locked on her for the space of a heartbeat. Oh, God, she’d said that out loud.
The man at Allie’s feet spoke. “And we’ll make them pay for it, don’t you worry.”
He’d looked so sedate until he said that, a spot of calm amid the chaos of the room, drawing her notice with his very lack of activity, but then he looked at her and she saw the illusion for what it was. The man was a time bomb of emotion waiting to explode.
She did not want to be the one to set him off. She made her “Thank you” very calm.
He went back to frowning, staring at Allie. Though Miri couldn’t see the energy coming off him, she could sense it. He was studying her from the inside out. Allie drew her knees up. The sheet fell down her shins.
“You damn well better not be looking, Slade.”
Caleb sounded so much like Jace just then that Miri felt a spurt of liking for him.
“Kind of hard to deliver a baby without my vision.”
Caleb swore. “As soon as this is over I’m wiping your memory clean.”
“Thank God!”
“Well,” Allie sniffed. “That was hardly flattering.”
“Son of a bitch, you made her cry.” Caleb wiped his thumb across his wife’s cheek.
Slade looked appalled by the very idea. “I didn’t mean anything, Allie, I’m just getting Caleb’s goat.”
“Well, get it when I’m not feeling so horrible.”
“Will do.”
“It might be easier if the men leave.”
Miri might as well have dropped a bomb as make that suggestion. She was suddenly the center of attention. Allie looked hopeful, Raisa amused, Slade and Caleb belligerent.
Miri elaborated. “Among weres it’s not customary for men to”—she bit back the word “invade” as the men frowned harder at her, and substituted—“frequent the birthing room.”
Caleb didn’t twitch a muscle; he just sat there on the bed like an immovable object and said, “I’m not a were.”
She moved farther into the room. “But I’m thinking your wife is wishing you were right now.”
Allie tossed her a grateful glance as Caleb glowered. “What in hell makes you say that?”
“Because you’re focused on one thing, and she’s trying to focus on something else.”
“We’re having a baby. What the hell else is there to focus on?”
Raisa came up beside her, not touching her, understanding her problem with people touching, maybe because she had it herself. Allie was the one who answered, “A lot.”
Caleb didn’t move. “I’m not leaving you.”
Clearly someone had to take charge of this mess. Miri crossed to the bed, letting Jace control her pain, ignoring her weakness.
“How long have you been lying down?” Miri asked, nudging Slade aside.
“Hours.”
That wasn’t good. She motioned to the foot of the bed. “Do you mind if I take a look?”
Allie waved her hand. “Why not? Everyone else has.”
Miri couldn’t help her grin at the disgruntled proclamation.
Slade watched her carefully as she pulled the covers back.
Allie was dilated, but not anywhere near enough. And there was a lot of blood. More than she’d ever seen a were lose. She glanced up at Caleb. “You can replace all the blood she needs?”
His mouth set in a straight line, a gesture she’d seen Jace adopt more than a time or two. Apparently all the Johnson men were stubborn. “Yes.”
“Good.” She dropped the sheet. “How does standing up sound to you, Allie?”
“Like heaven. I’ve got a cramp in the base of my spine.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” Caleb accused.
“There’s a lot I don’t tell you.”
“And don’t think we’re not going to be discussing that when this is over,” he growled, hands hovering at the ready as Allie shoved the sheet back.
“Is it safe?” Slade asked.
She had no idea, but from what she could see, the greatest danger Allie faced was blood loss. “It will probably speed up her labor.”
At least it did for weres,
and vampires couldn’t be that different. They all had the same equipment.
“How do you know so much about this?” Raisa asked.
“The women of my line are midwives.”
Slade’s heavy brows came down. “Your line?”
She nodded her head. “D’Nally.”
His gaze searched her face, lingering on the betraying color of her eyes. “Any relation to Ian?”
“His cousin.”
“Damn, Jace is screwed, isn’t he?”
She brought Allie’s knees together and swung them to the side. “Not if I can help it.”
“See,” Allie said, tugging down her pale blue nightgown and kicking the cover off her legs. “Not everyone is doom and gloom.” She stood carefully. “I can’t wait to see your baby, Miri. Is it a girl or a boy?”
Pain, white-hot and sharp, ripped through Miri. If not for the discipline she’d learned at the Sanctuary’s hands, she would have dropped to her knees. She held her hand out for Allie’s. “I had a little girl.”
“I bet she’s just precious.”
“Yes. She is.”
“What’s her name?”
“Faith.”
Allie paused, whether from another contraction or the name, Miri couldn’t tell. “That’s a good name,” she gasped.
“I thought so.” The pain inside Miri grew to a yawning hole that threatened to swallow her completely. She changed the subject. “Have you settled on a name for yours?”
Caleb was in their way. If the Johnson brothers’ reputation was anything to go by, there wasn’t a sweet bone in them. Just cold, deadly skill and a tendency for revenge that even hard-edged weres respected and admired. Yet, watching Caleb with Ally was sweet. There was no doubt that they shared a soul bond: her pain was his, her hope was his. It went against everything she knew about vampires. She elbowed Caleb aside, ignoring the discontented rumble in his chest. Clearly he wanted to be the one supporting Allie, and if Miri didn’t think he’d whisk her back to bed after the first step, she’d let him. But right now Allie had momentum and it needed to keep going. “Don’t you need to…replenish before you can give her blood again?” she asked.
A wolf couldn’t be more distressed, which meant Allie had to feel Caleb’s anxiety as much as she did. Not good.
“Yes.”
Miri adjusted her grip on Allie. “I believe there’s a whole line of weres downstairs willing to supply it.”
Another concept that took some getting used to. Weres who trusted vampires to the point of being their food supply. She’d call them trolls—wolves enslaved to the vampires—but there hadn’t been anything subservient about Jonas or Micah. The only moment of deference they’d displayed had been when they’d acknowledged her status with a bow of their heads.
“Vampire takeout,” Allie quipped. “Hurry and get yourself some, Caleb, before they get distracted and run off in pursuit of something.”
Caleb laughed. Allie took a step and then groaned. “How can something so good”—she cut a glance toward her husband, forced a big smile, and, in a voice pitched slightly higher than normal, finished—“be so distinctly uncomfortable?”
“I know exactly how much pain you are in, Allie girl. No need to butter up the words.” Caleb turned to Miri. “My wife’s newly turned—could that affect things?”
Miri absorbed that. “Define ‘newly.’”
“Within the last year.”
Newly turned, wife to a vampire, and delivering a baby. She had Miri’s total sympathy. “I don’t think so.”
Caleb hesitated in the doorway, his need for blood battling with his need to stay with his wife. “You going to be okay?”
“I’m having a baby, Caleb,” Allie answered, “not taking a bullet.”
His right brow arched up. Apparently all the brothers had that attribute. “And that means?”
“I’m okay. Go tank up.” She glanced down. Blood marked her progress across the room in a bright crimson trail. “I’m going to need it.”
With a curse, he vanished.
“Thank God he’s gone.” Then, just as fast, Allie whipped her head around and glared at Slade. “If you hurt his feelings by telling him I said that, I’ll geld you.”
Miri blinked, not only at Allie’s words, but at the fact that Slade was still in the room. She’d forgotten about him.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
She looked at him again. The man had a way of blending into his environment that would have made a wolf proud, but now that she looked at him, she wasn’t sure how he did it. If a person focused her attention on him he practically vibrated with energy. A genius, Ian had called him. A man of science. She ran her gaze over Slade from the top of his head to the toes of the scuffed boots he wore. She’d never seen a man of science look more like a predator waiting for a moment to pounce. “Why are you here?”
They had reached the end of the room. She turned with Allie, matching her pace to the shorter woman’s.
An enigmatic smile touched the corner of Slade’s mouth. “Playing doctor.”
Allie pushed Miri aside. “If you don’t mind,” she gasped, panting through a contraction, slowly doubling over as the grinding pain tightened her muscles, “I’d like to try this on my own for a bit.”
“Of course.” Miri watched as she took a couple steps. Many women couldn’t stand to be touched when in labor. Too much going on to take any more stimulus.
Raisa came up beside her as Allie took one step away, then two. Toward Slade. Miri didn’t worry about her falling. The second she’d let go of Allie the man had snapped to attention. He’d catch her if she faltered.
“How are you really?” Raisa asked in a low voice.
The sympathy in the other woman’s voice almost did Miri in. Her physical pain had nothing on the mental agony she battled. She felt like she was teetering on the edge of a huge black chasm, and all she had to hold on to was a thread, and her dwindling strength. “I’ll be fine when I get Faith back.”
It was her mantra. The statement with which she refueled her strength.
Raisa’s hand grazed the back of hers. “The brothers will get her back for you.”
Allie faltered. Slade leapt to his feet in a move too fast to see, even with her wolf abilities. Miri took a breath, bracing herself. “I know.”
She turned her head and met Raisa’s warm brown gaze. The woman’s health and energy struck her like a blow. So did the memories. Raisa’s small face distorted in a scream, the pain in her eyes nothing compared to her determination not to give in. That vampire stubbornness of hers so much stronger than her body. Miri remembered watching the Sanctuary scientists make her bleed, suffer; holding the threat of more suffering for Raisa over Miri’s head if she didn’t cooperate. More than anything she remembered those cold eyes watching and waiting for one of them to break. Neither of them had. Not before Raisa had been sent from the Sanctuary and not in the month since. “I don’t know how I thought you frail when I first saw you in that hellhole.”
Raisa smiled, her pixie features blooming with a beauty that made Miri blink. “I didn’t have the benefit of Jared’s blood. It doesn’t make me sick like everyone else’s.”
All it had taken was Jared’s blood?
“Or it could be my size,” Raisa continued jokingly. “Everyone thinks I must be a delicate flower.”
“Uh-huh.” Allie grunted, coming back toward them in shuffling steps, Slade hovering behind her. “Are you the same woman who had Jared coming back to the house to remove a spider last night?”
“Just because I don’t like spiders doesn’t make me helpless.”
“You could have just squashed it,” Slade offered in a deep voice that resonated along Miri’s mind in a tendril of energy that felt so good she instinctively opened to it.
“That would have been gross.”
Raisa’s answer drifted through a cloud of comfort that seemed to increase the more Miri focused on it.
Raisa stiffened beside her and grabb
ed her arm. “Cut it out, Slade.”
The tendril dropped off. Miri blinked, disoriented with the abruptness of the disconnect, her talons instinctively surging in reaction to the helplessness of the moment.
“I was just checking her health.”
Allie stopped and spun around, holding her belly and gasping as she did. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“He was in my head.” The horror of it lingered. Slade had been in her head, and she hadn’t been able to prevent it any more than she’d been able to stop the Sanctuary from probing her mind. Jace. The cry was instinctive and from her heart. Jace.
The pointless call only served to further blur the line between past and present. He’d never heard her before. It didn’t matter if he heard her now.
Right here, princess.
His life force poured into her consciousness in a steady stream, finding the cracks in her control and filling them with a surge of strength her soul embraced. She was wrong, Miri decided, as Jace bridged the gap in her reality and anchored her in the here and now. He mattered. Too damn much. Allie’s eyes narrowed as she glared at Slade. Energy shimmered off her in waves that were reinforced by the equally bright rays of energy coming off Raisa.
“You are so out of here.”
Slade didn’t move. “I’m afraid not.”
“Yes. You are.” Allie pointed to the door. “Miri’s helping. You’re not.”
Slade didn’t move. “Miri has been a Sanctuary captive for a year and her mind is an open book to anyone who wants to manipulate it. She’s not the sort of help you need.”
Miri stared at him, pain lancing through her in a shocking wave, mentally stepping into the comfort Jace immediately offered. “I would never side with the Sanctuary.”
“You’d do it and never even know you had.”
Beside her, Raisa drew up as taut as a stone and hollered, “Jared!”
She didn’t say anything more. She didn’t need to. Three seconds later, Jared appeared in the door, Caleb on his heels, Jace to his right. “You bellowed?”
Raisa jerked her chin to the side. “Remove Slade.”
Jared’s brow went up and he glanced at Slade, the women, and then back at Slade. “What the hell did you do to get Raisa all imperious on you?”
Jace Page 10
