Scorch(53)

It was all worth it, and I couldn’t wait to meet our little one… which, as near as we could figure, should happen soon. Both Wes and Mikkel had given birth at around six months, and I’d already been feeling cramp-like twinges for days. Maks’s dragon would have to take the child from me, and I’d called Wes the week before, hyperventilating when I felt the first pain, asking how I would know it was the right time. He hadn’t had any pre-labor pains—another difference between us—but he insisted that when it was time, I would have no doubt, and Mikkel had agreed.

I leaned back against the counter and steadied my own coffee cup on top of the big mound of my belly with one hand. Decaf. God, the sacrifices.

Ben always asked about my pregnancy. I didn’t know if it was because he’d grown up with a human father and so felt more empathy for me, or if it was just a part of his gentle personality, but he was fascinated by it and never seemed to grow bored with hearing every detail. Maks was also attentive, of course, but both he and Dane were more interested in ensuring my safety than in hearing about the wonders of watching my belly button pop out or the results of switching to a new brand of moisturizer for the tight skin of my belly.

Ben, on the other hand, was almost as good as having Sarah around.

“Are your ankles still hurting?” he asked, a look of genuine concern on his face. “Because I was Googling some yoga positions that might help. It’s probably a lack of circulation.”

I laughed. I was definitely not flexible enough for yoga, but I appreciated the thought. “I can’t even see them, Ben,” I reminded him.

He stood up, smiling. “Let me show you, Dev. You should be able to do these poses anyway, and the comments I read online said they really help—”

My sudden gasp of pain cut him off, and he was instantly at my side, catching my coffee cup before the mug hit the ground and steadying me as I doubled over.

“What is it?”

“I need Maks,” I gritted out. “Please get him, Ben.”

But my mate was already at my side. He’d felt it through our bond—the sharp pain gripping my middle like a metal band—it had been shocking in it’s intensity, but by the time his arms were around me it had eased. This was much stronger than the little twinges I’d been feeling, and as another contraction hit me I realized what Wes had meant. This was definitely it.

And God, it hurt.

Maks picked me up and started heading for the bedroom. But that wasn’t going to work.

“Maks, no,” Ben said, realizing it at the same time that I did. “If the baby is coming, Devin needs your otherself.”

“Where?” Maks said, freezing in place.

I tried to dredge up some patience as another contraction hit me. Obviously we had to go outside. Maks’s dragon was too big for the house, and I needed his dragon to take the baby. Feeling my pain had apparently burned away his common sense.

Between contractions, I felt a giddy excitement—it was finally happening, our baby would be in my arms within the hour!—but then another contraction would hit, blotting out all that excitement with pain. Our child was trying to find a way out where there wasn’t one. I needed Maks to get it together and get this baby out of me.

Thank God Ben was there. He grabbed Maks’s arm and pulled him out the door. It was October, and cold, but that wasn’t something that bothered me now that I carried my mate’s heat inside me. For a split second I worried that it would be too cold for the baby, but then I realized that that was ridiculous.

The little one would carry his fire, too.

Maks lay me down on a chaise lounge on the lower deck, and I immediately curled up and clutched at my stomach as another contraction ripped through me. His hands were all over me, trying to soothe me, maybe, or reassure himself that I was okay, but I batted them away impatiently. I didn’t need that. I needed him to shift, so his dragon could help.

I couldn’t talk as the pain gripped me again, but I shot him a frustrated look I wasn’t proud of.

Maks blanched, but thankfully—this time—he read my mind. His body rippled, and he shifted.

I had never been as happy to see anything as his moon-colored otherself, towering over me and looking down with whirling eyes that were full of love. They were Maks’s eyes, but also something more.

“Devin,” his dragon said in that delicious, echoing voice. It washed over me like liquid heat, relaxing the clenched muscles in my body and soothing the tight pain that had been squeezing me so relentlessly. “Are you ready, love?”

“Yes,” I gasped. “Please. I want to meet our child.”

Wes had told me what to expect, but it was still almost magical how all the pain washed away as the dragon’s razor-sharp claw touched my swollen belly. I watched in awe as my skin—stretched as taught as the head of a drum one minute—rippled and parted the next.