by Willa Okati
The midwife, who’d been keeping his own counsel down at the business end of things, picked that moment to pipe up, and he had the audacity to look amused as he did it. “He’s not dying. He doesn’t even think he is, and most Omegas do around this point. He’s tough and he’s in excellent health. Odds are he’ll be fine.”
“Odds are?” Darius demanded, sitting straighter upright. “Since when is odds are on the table? If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have --” He couldn’t lose his best friend. He couldn’t.
“Darius.” Jory looked up at him, worn to a frazzle, but with such fondness and friendliness in his face that it knocked Darius utterly silent. He even, somehow, knew what Darius was thinking. “You’ll never lose me.”
And if Darius hadn’t had his mouth firmly shut just before, that would have done the trick right there.
A brief silence fell while Jory panted. Darius recognized the signs and took hold of his hands again, ready for what looked to be a real whopper. But instead of what he’d gotten accustomed to, Jory drew in a sharp breath and shuddered. “I --” He looked confused. “I need --”
He shoved Darius with such force that Darius tumbled back onto his elbows and then he hunched forward, gripping his knees. His face turned red as a brick and he made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a roar that would have put the fear of God into any Alpha.
“Now we’re in business,” the midwife said, absolutely satisfied. “Not long now at all. He’s a good pusher.”
“Glad to hear it,” Darius growled, mostly to himself. The midwife? Busy. Jory? Utterly lost in a world that contained only himself and their child, and the final end of this struggle. But that wouldn’t do. Darius reached out and shook the midwife’s shoulder, not giving a damn for the warning look the man shot him.
“How do I help?” he demanded. “Tell me what to do.”
“You did your part forty weeks ago,” the midwife informed him tartly, but then relented. “First time fathers, I swear.” He took the hand Darius had laid on his shoulder and guided it down between Jory’s legs. “Here. This is what you can do. Do you feel that? That’s your son’s head, and it’s almost born. One more little push, Jory, just one… there, there we go. Now what do you think about that, Alpha?”
Darius didn’t think anything. His brain had temporarily frozen. He held his son’s head in his hand, warm and hard and pulsing with life, and he held his mate in his arms, panting and shaking with the effort of labor.
The pause only lasted moments. Then more directions, sharp and firm. The feel of the infant moving somehow, Jory’s snarl of agony and ecstasy, and a pop, something indefinably final, and the entirety of the baby slithered out all in a rush to land between Jory’s legs. Jory’s and Darius’s. Without being told what to do, Jory bent to gather him up and crush him to his chest. Jory’s arms shook so that Darius had to support them, and hello, there was the mind numbing awe again.
The midwife watched them, amusement written across his face. “Well done, you two,” he said. “Everyone should be so lucky.”
Shouldn’t they just? Darius couldn’t stop staring at his son’s face, except for when he turned to look at Jory and found Jory equally torn. Slowly, as if all the strain was finally catching up with him, Jory stretched up to kiss Darius. Their son wriggled and mewed between them, working up to a really good and proper roar of hunger, and they were both sticky with a mess of blood and amniotic fluid and things Darius didn’t know the names of.
It wasn’t possible to be happier. The human body could only hold so much, he thought.
“Thank you,” Jory whispered, and Darius discovered he could hold a little more yet. He’d thought before that they had it all? Oh, he’d almost been right. Almost. But now he did. A husband, a mate, a partner. A son.
All the future they could seize, together. And a bottle of Glenlivet, too.
Willa Okati
Willa Okati is made of many things: imagination, coffee, stray cat hairs, daydreams, more coffee, kitchen experimentation, a passion for autumnal weather, a little more coffee, a newfound gym habit, and a lifelong love of storytelling. Definitely one of the quiet ones you have to watch out for, her muse has woken from its long winter’s nap and she’s got a ton of stories all lined up ready to tell.
Willa at Changeling: changelingpress.com/willa-okati-a-35