by Viola Rivard
“Then it’s settled!” Lark said triumphantly. “To the storm room we go!”
“We didn’t settle anything,” Glenn griped.
Ignoring him, Lark leaped across the wide puddle, narrowly managing to avoid the water. She landed with a hard thump!
All at once, Taylor found herself shaking. She put a hand on the wall to steady herself, but to no avail. When she looked over at Glenn and saw the panic in his eyes, she realized that she wasn’t the one shaking, the entire passageway was.
Hands pushed her hard from behind, sending her crashing forward. Taylor and Holly fell to the floor, narrowly avoiding a stalactite that had come loose from the ceiling. It crashed into the floor and was quickly joined by its neighbors.
Taylor scrambled to get to her feet, but apparently she wasn’t moving fast enough. Glenn grabbed her, and with strength she didn’t know the wiry youth possessed, he flung her over one shoulder and began to run.
In the haze of confusion that followed, she saw Holly shift. In her fox form, she darted back and forth, barely dodging the falling stalactites. The whole thing felt so surreal. It felt like her friends were all characters in a video game, trying to make it through an obstacle course while on their last lives.
They made it to the storm room just in time for the passageway to collapse behind them. Part of the glass lantern had broken, but by some miracle it still held its flame. Glenn set her down, and in the dim light, Taylor was able to see the looks of utter shock on her friends’ faces.
They were quiet as they collectively caught their breath. Then, Holly burst into laughter.
“Holy fuck!” she cried out, clutching her chest. “That was fucking awesome! Indiana Jones doesn’t have shit on us!”
The others began to laugh as well. Taylor joined them, but her own laughter was somewhat forced. Rather than giving her a high, the rush of adrenaline had made her nauseous. As the adrenaline wore off, her nausea only worsened, and was accompanied by pain that spread through her lower back.
“Okay,” Holly said, finally coming down from her fit of mirth. “Now how the hell are we getting out of here?”
Leaning on the wall for support, Taylor glanced around the room. With a growing sense of dread, she realized that there were no other passageways leading out.
“Are you all right?” Lark asked, coming to her side.
Taylor gave a slight nod. “Yeah, just hurt my back in the fall.”
“Let me help.”
Before Taylor could respond, Lark began rubbing her back. The pain persisted for a few more seconds, but steadily dissipated and then vanished altogether. Taylor let out a sigh of relief.
“Better?”
“Much,” Taylor replied.
“Lark, get your ass over here,” Holly yelled.
Taylor glanced over at the doorway. Glenn and Holly had pulled away a small pile of rocks, though it didn’t look like they’d made much progress.
“This is all your fault,” Holly went on to say. “You made the whole damn passageway collapse.”
Taylor ambled over to where the others were working, still feeling quite nauseous.
“No way this is my fault,” Lark protested. “It was just bad timing. That earthquake would have happened—”
Holly’s hands balled into fists. “It wasn’t an earthquake, you moron. You upset the structural integrity of the passageway!”
“Wait a minute,” Glenn said, sounding uncharacteristically furious. “You were listening! Why the hell didn’t you say something?”
Holly raised her chin. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Glenn growled as he pulled a large rock loose from the pile. Another tremor ran through the room, causing Taylor’s heart rate to skyrocket. At the same time, the pain in her back returned, this time spreading out and around to her midsection. She clamped a hand over her belly, her anxiety increasing further.
The tremor only lasted a few seconds, and lieu of further destruction, the shifters continued to bicker.
“You’re doing it wrong,” Holly said, pushing Glenn away from the wreckage. “Haven’t you ever played Jenga? You can’t just pull rocks out willy nilly. You have to do it strategically. Like so.”
Holly demonstrated her point by pulling out a medium-sized rock from the middle of the pile. A gush of water burst into the room. Letting out a shriek, Holly immediately replaced the rock. It stemmed the flow of water, but didn’t stop it completely.
Sounding inordinately pleased with himself, Glenn said, “Nice strategy. Now we’re all going to drown.”
“Screw you,” Holly hissed. “Don’t blame me. Don’t forget, this whole thing is Lark’s fault.”
“Is not! I told you, this was an earthquake!”
“Guys…”
Taylor’s voice was soft, but they must have caught the note of urgency in it, because all three shifters stopped arguing at once. They directed their attention to her just in time to see the slow, steady trickle of water run down her leg.
“Please tell me you’re pissing yourself,” Holly said, her voice having gone small.
Taylor shook her head in a jerky motion. The reality of her situation crashed into her.
I’m going into labor.
I’m going into labor way too early and I have no doctor.
I’m going into labor way too early with no doctor and I’m trapped in a cave that’s flooding.
She looked at each of her friends in turn. Oblivious to the utterly dire circumstances, Lark was practically jumping out of her skin with excitement. Holly was busy letting out a stream of obscenities. Glenn stood perfectly still, a study in terror.
Unless they could figure a way out of there, these were the three people who would be helping her to deliver her babies.
Holy fuck.
Chapter 6
“They still sound okay,” Lark said, lifting her head from Taylor’s belly. “I am so excited right now.”
Holly rolled her eyes. “Quit being an idiot. If these pups are born down here, they’re probably going to die.”
“Shut the hell up,” Taylor bit out through her contraction.
All things considered—and there were a lot of things to consider—Taylor was staying remarkably calm. She chalked this up to the fact that everyone else in the room was insane and therefore she had to be rational, if only for the sake of her children.
“How far apart was that?” Taylor asked as the contraction ended.
She had lost the ability to time her contractions a while ago. It felt like every time one ended, she could barely catch her breath before the next one began.
“Uh…” Lark glanced at Holly. “Were you counting this time?”
“You were supposed to be counting,” was Holly’s reply.
Before Taylor could flip her lid, Glenn yelled, “One hundred and eleven seconds.”
Sighing, Taylor laid back and took what little reprieve she could get. Timing her contractions had done more than give them a frame of reference for how far she’d progressed. It also helped them to keep track of how long they’d been trapped in the storm room. By her approximation, it had been just under three hours. In that time, Glenn had managed to create a decent-sized crawlspace at the top of the collapsed passageway, but the room had also continued to flood. The water now came up past her ankles with no sign of slowing. This was particularly distressing, because with each contraction, Taylor felt more and more like she was going to collapse onto the floor.
In spite of the almost relentless pain, time did not drag in the least. It felt as though everything was happening way too fast and she’d give just about anything to slow it down. Her contractions had gone from five minutes apart to less than two in over an hour, and she was now feeling an almost overwhelming urge to push.
“I need one of you to help prop me up,” Taylor said, her voice unsteady. “And the other one has to check and see how dilated I am.”
Lark and Holly both looked at her as though she had grown a second
head. As if it was a tick neither female could shake, they began to bicker.
“Okay, I’ll prop her up and you check her out,” Holly said.
“What? Why me?” Lark asked, eyes widening in alarm.
Holly waved her hand. “Because my nails are longer and sharper. Do you want me to scratch her all up inside?”
“My nails are sharp, too! Plus, your hands are smaller.”
Taylor threw her head back and groaned through another contraction. In spite of all the reading she’d done on the subject, she now realized that she’d had a Hollywood preconception of what contractions were like. If the movies had it right, contractions were five to ten seconds of intense pain, usually accompanied by some witty insult or curse.
The reality was much different. When the sharp, squeezing pain gripped her, she could do little more than utter guttural, animalistic sounds. They lasted almost a full minute each, and by the time they were over, she was delirious with nausea, fatigue, and vertigo.
When this contraction ended, Taylor found herself squatting on the floor, her hands and knees beneath the rising water. While the water potentially meant her demise, for now, she was grateful for it. While the others were shivering and bemoaning their wrinkled skin, Taylor was relived to have the freezing water to keep her cool. It kept her from sweating too much, though she could still feel herself becoming dehydrated. Pretty soon, she may have to risk drinking the water, regardless of its dubious sanitation.
“Put her in your lap. Keep her out of the water.” Glenn’s strong voice cut through the dull roar of thoughts inside Taylor’s head.
Holly complied, pulling Taylor into her lap and out of the water. Taylor’s arms fell limp at her sides and her head lolled on Lark’s shoulder.
Glenn positioned himself at Taylor’s knees. As he looked between her legs, his confidence seemed to falter. “Okay. I need you to tell me what I’m doing here.”
Holly made a noise of disgust. “Let Lark do it, you perv. You’ve never even seen a vagina before.”
“Shut up, Holly,” Taylor and Glenn said in unison.
Glenn gave Taylor a weak smile. “Just tell me what to do.”
Overwhelmed with gratitude, Taylor didn’t feel the least bit bashful about explaining a cervical check to the teenage boy. He listened patiently, color draining from his face all the while. When she was done explaining, she saw his Adam’s apple bob. Then, he tentatively reached inside of her.
The next few moments might have been awkward, had Taylor not had another contraction. She was in too much pain to notice the various expressions that flitted over Glenn’s face, or how long it took for him to figure out what he was feeling. All she knew was that when her contraction finally ended, she heard him say, “I think I feel its head!”
“How many centimeters is she?” Holly asked.
“Uh… Um… How many inches in a centimeter?”
“Inches are fine,” Taylor said, before Holly could dive into another round of insults.
Glenn appeared uncertain. “Three? Three and a half, maybe?”
“Okay. I think I can start pushing,” she said, more to herself than the others.
The knowledge gave her little comfort. While she was eager to end the pain, she did not want to give birth here. She didn’t want to give birth at all—not for a few more weeks at least—but there was no stopping it now. They were coming.
“You can take your hand out of her vagina now,” Holly said.
Glenn’s face flushed. He yanked his hand back, sputtering an apology. Taylor could hear Holly snickering.
“Congratulations, you’re a man now.”
“Fuck off,” Glenn said, heading back to the collapsed doorway.
Taylor pushed through the next few contractions. They were, in two words, utterly horrible. Although she could feel a sense that she was making progress, it brought little relief, as each contraction seemed to be coming back to back now. They didn’t bother timing them anymore. When a contraction hit, she pushed. When it was over, she cried. Then, she went back to pushing again.
At one point, she was vaguely aware of Glenn saying he could fit through the crawlspace, but the first distinct words she heard were Lark’s. The raccoon shifter was positioned between Taylor’s legs, staring at her with a mix of fear and amazement.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Lark said in one breath.
“What? What is it?” asked Holly.
“I can see the head!”
* * *
The Whiteriver wolves crowded the main room. The majority of them had remained in their wolf forms and congregated in a few small groups, eyeing the Halcyon wolves with suspicion and trepidation. The entire room smelled like wet dog, a scent Hale shouldn’t have found so objectionable.
“I get the impression they think this is some sort of trap,” Hale said. “If we wanted to kill them, we could have just not let them hunt in our valley this winter.”
Fenix stood beside him, his long black hair tied in a tight knot at the nape of his neck. “Give them some time. They’ll get comfortable.”
“That’s exactly what I don’t want,” Hale groused. He still wasn’t entirely sure why he’d agreed to take them in in the first place.
No, that wasn’t true. He did it because he knew that it was what Alder would have wanted. It was strange that even though his daily thoughts were consumed with how to kill his brother, he still felt the need to do things Alder would approve of.
“Why do you think they stay with Silas?” Hale asked. “We gave them the chance to join us here. We have more food, better shelter, and our pack is stronger.”
“They’re loyal to him,” Fenix replied.
Hale snorted at that. “Loyalty? I sure hope that if I’m not providing for you, you have the sense to leave.”
“I can provide for myself,” Fenix said with a smirk.
Hale didn’t doubt that. The hawk was one of the most capable shifters in his pack. “So why do you stay here then?”
Fenix cocked his head to one side. “Huh. You know, I never considered that. Kind of makes me question what I’m even doing with my life.”
“Fuck you,” Hale said, punching Fenix in the arm.
The hawk winced, and then cracked a grin. “In all honestly, Halcyon is my family. If you don’t have family, what else do you have?”
Hale gave a noncommittal nod, before directing his attention back over the crowd of wolves. He stared through them, his thoughts on Taylor and his brother.
I love you more than him.
They were the words he had wanted to hear for so long, yet they’d given him no satisfaction. Though she hadn’t said it, he could tell that there was more to it.
I love you more than him, but I still love him.
That was what she’d really meant. And for some reason, Hale still thought that if she had to choose one of them, it wouldn’t be him. It was frustrating as shit.
The crowd of wet wolves parted, making way for Glenn. The skinny adolescent was running naked through the main room, his drenched hair sticking to his face. It wasn’t unusual for shifters to walk around unclothed, but Glenn in particular had always seemed adverse to nudity, and Hale found it to be an odd sight.
Something else disturbed him about the boy, and it took him a few seconds to place what it was. When he did, his throat tightened and his fists clenched at his side.
Glenn stumbled up to them, words pouring from his mouth. Hale heard nothing the boy said. His vision clouded with rage. He stepped forward in two quick strides, grabbing the boy by his hair and lifting him off his feet.
“Why do you smell like my mate?” he asked, the question coming out as more of a growl.
It wasn’t just that he smelled like Taylor. He smelled like Taylor’s sweat. Like her most intimate parts.
Glenn held up his hands, his face pallid. “I had to check her c-cervix to see how dilated she was.”
None of those words made any sense, and it only served to piss Hale off mor
e. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
The boy flinched. “She’s in labor. The pups are coming.”
Hale instantly dropped him. “Where is she?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Glenn said, sounding annoyed. When he caught the look on Hale’s face, he quickly backpedaled. “We were on our way to the storm room when the passageway collapsed and flooded. I managed to swim out, but the others are trapped.”
Glenn continued to talk, but Hale was already running for the passageway. He was aware of someone following behind him, but didn’t pause to let them catch up.
As he ran, his mind went back to the night when Taylor was taken. He had froze, had gone into a panic, and had been unable to protect her. That wouldn’t happen tonight. He kept his emotions locked down, allowing instinct to guide his steps.
His mate needed him.
Within minutes, he’d reached the flooded portion of the passageway. The tunnel dipped low and the water rose all the way to the top. He wasn’t sure how long it would be until he’d be able to come up for air, but if Glenn had been able to do it, then so could he.
He dove in, the icy water like thousands of claws on his flesh. The pain was negligible and he surged forward, feeling his way through the dark abyss. He had never been much of a swimmer, nor had he practiced holding his breath for any great length. By the time he was able to come up for air, his lungs were burning in his chest.
The area ahead of him was almost entirely blocked by fallen rocks. Without the aid of light, he had to feel his way around to find the place where Glenn had crawled through. Predictably, it was far too small for Hale’s body, and he had to dig as he fought to squeeze his way through.
It felt like an eternity had passed when he finally saw a faint light up above. His keen ears caught whispered voices, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Pushing through the last of the rocks, Hale spilled out into the room. The jagged rocks had cut his arms, legs, and chest in several places, and blood trickled down his body as he regained his footing.