Jason swallowed desperately. “Stay here. Don’t move. I’m getting Urho.”
“I’mfine.”
Though Vale wasn’t fine, they all knew it. He’d been having new, intense pains for the last several days, and the baby had shifted to a head-down position. Urho was plying Vale with the strongest muscle relaxants he could without injuring the babe, and yet the pains were growing more intense. He was barely sleeping at night and drowsing all day. Jason was doing the same. But they both knew the baby was coming soon. The issue was how soon and if it would survive.
Still, Jason soothed Vale, saying, “This isn’t about you. Not this time.”
“Touch that reeking omega and I will kill you both,” Vale muttered darkly, propped up on pillows and barely able to move beneath the lump of the baby growing in his stomach. Jason almost asked just how he thought he’d manage that, but he couldn’t bring himself to upset his omega any more than he already was. What was happening, and Jason’s physical and pheromonal reaction to it, wasn’t anyone’s fault, but it was still a very big problem. And he could tell Vale was pissed as hell about it. Being aroused by another omega in front of a very pregnantÉrosgápewas never a good look, and Jason needed someone, anyone to fix it.
“This can’t be happening,” Jason muttered, as he left Vale fairly crackling with barely repressed rage and rushed through the hall looking for Urho. “Not now. Not right now.”
But there was no denying that he was hard as a rock, and it had nothing to do with Vale, and everything to do with the overwhelming scent Caleb was letting off. He reached Urho’s bedroom door and shoved it open, finding Urho napping in his bed. He supposed he couldn’t knock his friend for that, given his and Vale’s tendency to sleep the days away as the babe grew bigger and bigger, and yet he was frustrated to find him napping at a crucial time like this.
“Urho, we have a problem.”
Jason couldn’t believe he had to spell it out to Urho. Even after Urho noticed the change in Jason’s pheromones in reaction to the proximity of an omega in heat, he still didn’t seem to get it. But when the realization finally took root, Urho leapt into action. He might be an uptight prig, but he could be counted on in an emergency, and there was no doubt this counted as one.
Especially since Vale started crying out in true agony not even ten minutes later.
Vale could scentthe ripe omega in the house, and it infuriated him. Logically, he knew it was his friend Caleb, and deep inside, he felt sorry for what Caleb was going through. He knew him well enough now to understand why the arrangement between Xan and Urho worked so well for Caleb, too. But some other primal part of him viewed Caleb’s heat, and the reaction it inevitably drew from all the alphas in the house, as a threat to his bond with Jason.
Beached like a whale in bed, he rolled onto his side, struggling for purchase on the sheets to stand up and follow to wherever Jason had disappeared. Jason claimed to be getting Urho, but Vale’s exhausted, sleep-deprived mind was happy to supply him with all manner of visions, like Jason screwing a heat-addled Caleb up against a wall, while Caleb cried out for more, and begged for his knot.
Vale gnashed his teeth. He tried to roll off the bed, and instead froze, his stomach going rigid with a painful tension. He cried out, the contraction refusing to release. It amped up and up, scaring him until he was left moaning and panting as it finally let go. Sweat popped up at Vale’s temples and in his armpits. He breathed in and out, trying to catch his breath.
Only a few minutes passed before the pain grabbed him again, and he yelled, loudly, trying to attract help from any direction. There were always beta servants around. And Jason…he needed Jason!
By the time the pain had released him again, Jason was there. “Baby? What’s happening? Are you all right?”
Vale collapsed back on the bed, letting Jason’s wild concern to wash over him. “Where were you?” he asked, leaning back on the pillows, panting from effort and feeling tense all over. “Did you go to him?”
“I was with Urho. He’s going to deal with—”
Vale groaned and turned onto his side, his back and neck tensing, as he endured another contraction. They were coming fast, too fast from what he remembered. Pressure ground against his hips hard as the baby seemed to move inside him. “If you touched that omega—”
“You know I didn’t. Don’t be absurd,” Jason said, his voice gruff and firm. “Look at me.”
Vale looked over his shoulder, his breath still coming in sharply.
“Urho is going to handle it.” Then his voice lost his alpha command, tipping up with concern and fear. “Are the pains worse? They seem worse.”
Vale sighed as the contraction fled again, leaving him exhausted, but in no pain now. “I think…I don’t know.”
Jason went to open the window. The air from the gardens was cool and damp, and Vale took in big gulps of it, a strange foreboding washing over him. Closing his eyes, he lifted up a prayer to wolf-god, first for his baby, and then for himself, and then he met Jason’s gaze again, seeing his own worry reflected there.
“I think the baby’s coming,” Vale said, slowly. “The pains are harder. Stronger than they’ve been. And…” He gasped as the overwhelming clutch gripped him. He shouted in agony.
Jason was up and running again before Vale could stop him. He was left reaching toward the doorway until suddenly one of the servants ducked his head inside. “Mr. Sabel is getting the doctor. He told me to tell you that it’s going to be all right.”
Vale gaped at him.
The man babbled on, “And I should know. My brother had a wee one last month, and it looked like it hurt somethin’ awful, sounded like it, too by the shoutin’, but they were both all right. You’ll be all right, too.”
Vale hauled himself from the bed, and the servant came rushing in to help him. “The window,” he grunted. “Need some air.”
Vale gripped the window frame, staring out at the garden as the pain came over him again. He was in the throes of it when Jason returned, his arm snaking around Vale to give him support. Jason nuzzled Vale’s neck and whispered reassurances that barely made it past the white noise of pain and fear buzzing in Vale’s head.
“You’re going to be fine, baby,” Jason said more firmly. “Do you hear me? Do you understand?”
