Page 55 of His Prodigal Alpha

A strangled sound came from the back of his throat, and he leaned out of the shower, pulling me with him as he shouted, “Uh, a little help?!”

Eric and Brandt were at the open doorway within seconds.

Usually, I’d be a little uncomfortable being completely naked in front of the men who were also my employers unless we were all preparing to shift, but they’d seen everything when they’d been monitoring my pregnancy, and I was in too much pain to care who saw me naked at that point. Hell, they could invite half the town in and, as long as they were helping me survive this experience, I wouldn’t care at all.

“What’s happening, Day?” Eric asked me as he walked into the room, grabbing the towel he’d set aside on the closed toilet lid. He carefully helped dry my skin and gestured to Brandt to swap places with Rex so he could also get dried off.

I immediately missed being in Rex’s arms and I whimpered. “I need to push.”

Eric nodded, not at all surprised. “Gravity has done its job, then,” he smiled up at me from where he was drying my legs. “I’d like to check dilation before you follow those urges, okay?” He nodded at Brandt again. “Can you grab the shower chair? And a mirror?”

“What, are you planning on some kind of magic trick?” Isnarked as Rex stepped back in to support me. I didn’t need it now that the contraction had eased, but I relished his presence. My puma relaxed, too.

Brandt disappeared down the hall and returned in less than thirty seconds, carrying what I called the ‘old people seat’ — a plastic seat with a hole in the center, not unlike a rudimentary camping toilet. All you needed was to put a bucket under it or dig a hole in the earth and…that wassonot what they were planning on using it for.

Eric gestured to the seat. “Sit down and we’ll check you out, okay? This is going to be easier than getting you onto a bed if you’re planning on squatting to deliver.”

“Squatting?” Rex sounded horrified as he helped me to follow Eric’s instructions.

Eric just nodded, but he was focused on the square mirror he had just slid under the chair. “Or kneeling braced over the side of the bed. It makes gravity work in your favor as opposed to pushing against gravity in a reclined position.” He looked back up at us and smiled again. “You’re fully dilated, Day. It’s showtime. How do you want to do this?”

I could feel another contraction building and I groaned and gripped the plastic arms of the chair, pushing without even thinking about it. Eric got me to breathe through it, but he was once again focused on what was happening underneath me.

“Okay,” he coached as the contraction eased, “good. Now, we’re not staying in the chair for this. That’s not an option. So, squatting, or kneeling, or on the bed?”

In the end, I chose the bed. When Rex and Brandt helped me up, I felt too wobbly to trust myself squatting or even kneeling. They guided me from the bathroom and into thesame treatment room where I’d gone for scans and other prenatal care. The bed was no longer a narrow medical exam bed, but a proper hospital bed, complete with waterproof mattress and adjustable side rails. The back had been raised, ready for us.

“Rex, up on the bed behind him with his back against your chest,” Eric instructed, then helped me up onto the bed after Rex was settled, getting me positioned between his legs. “Okay, I want you to bring your knees up as close to your chest as you can. Rex will help hold them there.”

Another contraction was starting up and I was suddenly terrified, but I did what Eric told me to, automatically bending forward to push as the pain built.

Eric nodded. “That’s it, just like that. Good. Well done, Day. Now relax.”

“Stop telling me to relax,” I snapped. “I can’t relax. I’m…ohhhhwhy is there another one already?”

He didn’t need to tell me to bear down through it. My body was determined to boot the kid out as quickly as possible.

“Every birth is different,” Eric answered my question, even though it had been mostly rhetorical. “You’re doing great.”

Rex kissed the crown of my head. With his chest pressed to my back, I could feel his heart beating wildly. For all his calm demeanor, he was as panicked as me. I appreciated that he wasn’t giving in to it, though. He was soldiering through for me. For our son.

That realization made me determined to do the same.

“You’ve got this, darlin’,” he murmured into my ear as I braced for the next contraction.

His reassurance fortified me.

I bore down and screamed.

* **

Two hours later —including a lot of tears, bargaining with the universe, and telling Eric to shut the ever-loving fuck up and justhelp me— Eric held a wriggling, bloodied, tiny humanoid up for us to see.

“Congratulations, guys. Meet your son,” he declared as the pitiful wailing started. “All ten fingers and toes accounted for, and a healthy set of lungs, too.”

My heart ached.

Our son.

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