“Pressing down on what?” Anders asked, when she paused a semi-perplexed look on her face. In the next moment, her eyes suddenly widened and she exclaimed, “There’s a second baby pressing down on the first. It’s why the baby couldn’t turn.”
“Twins!” Mortimer exclaimed, forgetting himself and turning back, only to turn green and swing abruptly away. “I’ll fetch the blood if they have any.”
Valerie’s face was scrunched up with concentration. “I think I can—that should do it,” she muttered and leaned back slightly.
“What did you do and did it work?” Anders asked. Valerie didn’t bother to answer, Leigh’s sudden shriek would have drowned it out anyway. In the next moment, Lucian and Leigh’s first child was lying silent and still in Valerie’s hands.
“Is he all right?” Lucian asked anxiously, cradling Leigh and rocking her gently from side to side as she sank back against him.
“She’s alive,” Valerie said, holding her to her chest and rubbing her back until the baby coughed and began to breathe normally, her little arms beginning to wave now.
Anders saw the relief on Valerie’s face and knew the baby’s stillness had worried her.
“I need something to cut the cord,” she said.
“I can help with that,” Rachel announced, appearing behind her and frowning as she peered at Leigh.
“Valerie, this is Rachel,” Anders announced, reaching past Lucian’s shoulder to take the blood bags she was holding out. He passed the first one to Lucian, and held the second one while Lucian popped the first bag to Leigh’s teeth. She didn’t even appear to be conscious, he noted.
“Nice to meet you, Rachel. If you have something to cut the cord, we should do it quickly,” Valerie said. “I don’t think the second baby is going to wait long to join us.”
“Twins?” Rachel asked, a smile claiming her lips. But she didn’t react at once to Valerie’s suggestion. Instead, she watched Lucian tear the now empty bag from Leigh’s teeth and replace it with a fresh one. Anders didn’t know what she was looking for, but after a moment, she relaxed and turned to gesture to someone Anders couldn’t see. Etienne, he realized when the man appeared in the opening, a large duffel bag in hand that he opened for Rachel to dig through. After a moment, she turned back with surgical scissors and clamps.
Valerie held the baby as Rachel made quick work of the umbilical cord, and then offered, “I can take the baby if you want to take over here.”
Rachel grinned, but shook her head. “Are you kidding? You’ve done all the hard work. This is the fun stuff. I wouldn’t take that away from you,” she said, taking the baby and using a wet nap to clean her up as much as possible before wrapping her in a blanket.
Valerie watched silently, but turned back to Leigh when she groaned around the blood bag in her mouth.
“Bear down, Leigh,” Valerie ordered. “Push.”
Within moments, the second baby emerged to join the world. This one began to squawl and wriggle about at once, arms and legs flailing as Valerie sat back on her heels with it in her hands.
“A boy,” she announced and met his gaze with a smile.
When canine whining roused Valerie from a deep sleep, she eased one eyelid open and scowled at the furry face in front of her.
“You’re kidding, right?” she muttered with disgust. “You couldn’t let me sleep in this one time? Just this once? I mean it was only four A.M. when I finally crawled into bed last night. But you can’t let me sleep?”
Roxy whined again, shifting on the spot, and Valerie sighed.
“Fine,” she said, pushing herself wearily to her hands and knees to get up. She then froze as she took note of the man in bed beside her. Anders. Damn. He wasn’t there when she’d crawled into bed last night. He hadn’t even been at the house. Once the second baby was born and Leigh had been fed three or four bags of blood, they’d deemed it time to move and everyone had come back to the house. Well, everyone but Mortimer, who had taken the rogue back to the Enforcer house to be locked up. He’d returned later with Sam, though, so she could see the babies.
It seemed like half of Toronto had arrived at the house last night to see the babies. Valerie had been introduced to at least two dozen new people, all related in some way or another to Lucian and Leigh. And those people had stayed hours, trying to help as Leigh and Lucian had debated on the babies’ names.
It seemed Leigh had refused to pick names before the baby was born. She’d miscarried a previous child and had gained some superstitions from the loss. One of those superstitions was a fear that if she picked names before the baby was born, it wouldn’t be born. Or they wouldn’t, since the baby had turned out to be two.