Page 211 of As The Shifter World Turns

We’d already arranged for Martin to be on standby if I had to go to hospital and he was home. Micah took our daughter to him, along with Patch—the last thing I needed was being distracted by our dog.

“I’ll get the car,” Micah yelled as he picked up my hospital bag.

“Love, no,” I said as I leaned forward and panted through a cramp.

“What?” He skidded across the floor.

“Unless you want the baby born in the car, we’re staying home. Help me get this tee off.”

They alway say you forget how painful childbirth was but not me. I remembered every painful contraction, every back rub, every voice yelling at Micah who had been stuck in traffic.

“We didn’t plan it, but this is also going to be a home birth,” I grunted.

“Home birth? Again?” he repeated, fear glinting in his eyes.

My wolf was panting with me, encouraging me to breathe through the pain and he had no time for my mate’s reaction to it being just us.

“Can’t I phone?—?”

“The baby’s coming, Micah.”

“Okay.” He took my arm. “The bed?”

I shook my head, trying to conserve my energy. My body was telling me what to do and that was to get on my knees. “Blankets and pillows, Micah, please.” With the bedding on the floor, my mate helped me to my knees and he kneeled in front of me and held my hands.

The intense pain was making my back ache and giving me a pounding headache but my body was telling me it would be over soon. I pushed once,twice and three times and the baby arrived with a rush being born on the soft bedding.

“A boy.” My mate wrapped the baby and left the cord intact, he helped me lie down and placed the baby on my chest. We have a son.” While the new arrival and I lay cocooned in the warmth of a thick quilt which Micah had brought to replace the blankets, he phoned the hospital.

And while we waited for the paramedics to arrive, Micah cuddled me and the baby. Though we had decided not to find out if the baby was a boy or a girl, we’d chosen a boy’s name but hadn’t agreed on one for a girl.

Jasper, meaning treasure, was what we’d decided on and as I studied our little boy with a head of dark hair, the name fitted him perfectly. In all likelihood, this was our last child. Our family was now complete.

We decided not to introduce Elune to her baby brother until we’d been to the hospital and both Jasper and I had been checked out. But when we did, she studied him with her big eyes and then presented him with her teddy.

“Awww, that’s so sweet.”

“Don’t get too carried away,” Micah warned me as he held our daughter.

“What’s her beast saying?” It still took some getting used to that Elune’s unicorn could communicate with Micah’s.

“From what I can gather, she’ll allow him to play with the teddy but the rest of her toys are off limits.”

“I’m sure once she gets used to having a brother, her attitude will change.”

“Let’s hope so,” he agreed.

92

IT SOUNDED LIKE A GOOD IDEA…

Martin

“Is it weird that we are showing up all together like this?” Neil asked.

And I could see his point. Most kids had two parents or possibly more with step-parents in the mix, but play groups tended to be a one parent kind of thing. At least from what I remembered back when Toby was little.

Not that I went to them often. My mate handled that part of things. The one time I went it was because he had a dentist appointment and I’d felt so over my head. Everyone knew the routine and each other and… I felt out of place.

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