by Jill Haven
“You should leave him alone. He found me online and he uses an app to call me every few weeks. He keeps telling me he’ll come here when he’s done doing whatever it he thinks he needs to do. I gave him directions. He said he wanted to be here before the baby came, but things are taking longer than—” I hissed and sat forward as a sharp pain ripped through my stomach along the bottom. I gasped as it felt like something inside me loosened and opened up, and the fluttering kicks of the baby in my belly that I’d been enjoying recently turned frantic.
Mason sat up on his knees and placed a hand on my belly. His touch was gentle but felt horrible at the moment. “Contractions.”
“No shit,” Jade said.
“That’s what I was going to say,” I gasped, and Mason laughed, but I grabbed his hand and gripped it hard as another horrific pain tore through me. It lasted longer and was worse than the last one. “Fuck. How do women do this?”
“Yeah, that’s labor.” Mason sucked in his lips and studied my face. “Okay, we need to call Carlisle.”
Jade nodded and hopped to her feet, her phone already in her hand.
After that, I was in too much pain to tell what was going on. Mason helped me hobble into the house, but like everything else with this pregnancy, heck, in my whole life lately, it went from zero to sixty and didn’t seem to be stopping. I’d read about regular deliveries, figuring this must be at least a little like that, but no, the pain almost crippled me, and I barely made it to the bed. Mason told me to stand until he got towels down or something, but I swore at him and he stopped trying to get me to do anything.
“I have to sit down! Carlisle can buy a new fucking bed if I ruin it!”
“Yep, you do whatever you want,” he said, helping me to ease back onto the bed. “Whatever you want.”
“You’ve delivered a baby before, right?”
He smiled but wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Mason!”
“I helped once. There haven’t been many births in the clan. Most of my experience is with humans… a little over a hundred years ago.”
“Oh, god.”
He raised his hands toward me, like he was trying to get me to calm down. “It’s fine. This is normal, from what I recall.”
Growling, I hurled a pillow at him. Then the pain had me. For a while I didn’t know what was going on, except that Mason was saying stupid things to me like “relax” and trying to put cold washcloths on my forehead. Jade helped me strip out of my pants and shirt and I didn’t even care that I was naked with Mason in the room because my stomach felt like it was being stabbed apart.
Eventually Carlisle was there, taking my hand. “You’ll be fine, love,” Carlisle said. He smiled down at me, and Mason was there poking at my stomach. I gasped when it felt like something ripped open and there was fluid gushing, but not in a bad way. Relief washed through me.
“He’s there,” Mason said. “The birth canal is open.”
Then the pain was back worse than ever. The baby wiggled and moved inside me, and everything was horrible. “Get it out, now!” I yelled at Carlisle and Mason.
“You’re doing it yourself. Push for us!” Mason had the nerve to smile. I tried to punch him, but Carlisle caught my hand.
Then it was done. There was one final, huge rush of pain worse than anything I’d ever felt in my life—and I’d had a lot of stuff happen to me—and my stomach felt hot and stretched, and then Mason was holding a squalling little gunk-covered human.
My baby. My heart felt like it was going to fly apart. Quickly he handed my baby to Jade, who had a blanket held out, and she wrapped the little thing up while singing a song I’d never heard before in a language I didn’t understand. She had tears streaming down her face. Mason had towels that he packed against my stomach where I was pretty sure the baby had come out, but I hadn’t looked. I didn’t want to know. He rubbed my stomach and it didn’t hurt even a little bit compared to what had just happened. Jade handed me my baby and there was no way to pay attention to what Mason was doing to my stomach. She was beautiful with a dark tuft of wet hair and huge bluish-gray eyes. She sniffled.
“It’s a little girl,” Jade said.
Carlisle kissed my hand, kissed the baby’s cheek, and finally kissed me full on the lips before he dripped tears onto the scrunched, red face of our daughter. She was beautiful.
“She’s red like a rose,” Mason said. The baby chose that moment to cry, a piercing, beautiful sound that went straight to my heart. I tried to sit up and everyone yelled at me at once, and instead they helped me snuggle her close to my chest. The baby quieted as soon as she was pressed to my skin with the blanket over us both.
“I’ll name her Charlotte Rose, then. What do you think?” I looked up at Carlisle, but he was already nodding and smiling.
“It’s perfect, love.”
Later that night, with Rose sleeping next to the bed in a bassinet, Mason crept in quietly to check on the padding he’d wrapped around my stomach.
“You’re going to have to change this three times a day,” he said quietly when he realized I was awake.
“You can’t?”
“No. Bishop told me I need to go get my mate.” He smirked and stopped to take a peek in the bassinet and made a low, rumbling dragon noise at the baby when she started to fuss. She quieted.
“What do you mean?”
“Seth’s raising hell in his territory.” Mason stopped to fish his phone out of his pocket and showed me a series of photos that looked like they came from a security camera, and the guy in them looked a heck of a lot like Seth. “All very cloak and dagger.” Instead of looking upset that Seth might be getting into trouble, Mason couldn’t stop smiling.
“You’ll take good care of him, right? He seems like he could use a friend,” I whispered.
Mason put his phone away and finished with me. He stood and patted my shoulder. “Yes, I’ll keep him safe and happy.”
“Then good luck,” I whispered. He stopped to press a kiss to my daughter’s head before he snuck out the door. Carlisle, somehow more exhausted than me by the birth, slept deeply beside me. I was completely content for the first time in my life and couldn’t wait to see what the future held for my new family.
Get Ready for Book 2 in the Divine Omega’s, His Dragon Protector!
Coming Soon!
His Dragon Protector
Get Ready for Book 2 in the Divine Omega’s, His Dragon Protector!
Coming Soon!
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His Elder Dragon
Divine Dragons: Book 1
Jill Haven
© 2019
Disclaimer
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are all fictitious for the reader’s pleasure. Any similarities to real people, places, events, living or dead are all coincidental.
This book contains sexually explicit content that is intended for ADULTS ONLY (+18).
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