What? No! Verity had talked about that.
“I want to push.” I glanced into the back seat as Bronson doubled over and spread his legs and somehow wiggled off his pants.
Did I pull over or dash to the hospital? My mind was clogged with questions and possibilities. I was great at the breathing technique, having practiced for months. Delivering babies? Not so much.
“Can you wait?” Maybe he could cross his legs. If he and the baby were secretly communicating, he could tell our little one to cool it for a few minutes.
“No. Babies don’t wait for traffic lights. Our child is coming now!”
We needed a doctor and pain relief and ice chips. Damn, I had a supply in the fridge at home. I zoomed through the last light just as it turned from amber to red. I could see the hospital ahead, but there were cars and ambulances going in and out.
Out of the way,my beast yelled.
Finally, there was a gap in the traffic, and I flicked my headlights on and off. The cars stopped, and I careened into the hospital entrance. Without turning off the engine, I raced around to my mate who had undone his seatbelt and was lying down, with his knees raised. Shit, I didn’t put the car in park. But I couldn’t open the door. For once, my shifter reflexes deserted me, and I fumbled with the handle.
“Hey, move your car. I need to get through.”
“We’re having a baby right here, right now. Go around.”
I jerked the door so hard, I was thrown off balance when it opened. I leaned into the front and shoved the gear stick intopark, but Bronson’s hands were gripping his bent knees and he was groaning.
“I can feel the baby.”
Gods, this couldn’t be happening. It was him, me, and the baby.
My mate’s cheeks were streaked with tears as he gasped that the baby was here. “Right now.”
I looked down, and gods, yes, he was right. The baby’s head was visible. Where were the staff? I poked my head out of the car and yelled, but an ambulance siren sounded and drowned out my voice.
Everything Verity had taught us deserted me, but she hadn’t instructed us on how to deliver our baby. My hands went numb, but there was no one else to help bring our child into the world.
My panther had his paws over his eyes because he didn’t trust me to catch our little one.
I dropped to my knees as my mate grunted and pushed again.
“You’re doing great.” I remembered Verity saying to push with the contraction, and I repeated that to Bronson. We grunted together, and then my mate let out a sound I’d only heard from my beast. I swore he caterwauled, and the baby was there on the back seat and then in my arms.
He was so slippery I was worried I’d drop him, but Bronson picked up the travel blanket, and we wrapped it around our son. We had a son, and my amazing mate had done it by himself with no doctor or midwife guiding him.
“Hey, do you need help?” There were footsteps behind me, and people appeared with a gurney.
With the baby on my mate’s chest and both on the gurney, I held his hand as we trudged to the ER entrance. I refused to let them go. They were my family and my everything, and I kissed Bronson over and over because I was in awe of him.
EPILOGUE
BRONSON
"Let me see the video." Of course, the time that I decided to take a shower was when our son, Arthur, decided to start crawling.
Lincoln was great about taking videos. We had videos for days—ones of Arthur sleeping, eating, wearing every single cute outfit anybody ever gave him, grabbing at a toy, throwing Cheerios, giggling, babbling, sleeping. And I loved every single second of them. At some point, we were going to have to edit them into something more manageable, but for now, we had every single memory there for us to revisit. That was if we could find it. Once we got over 1,000 video clips, it became exceedingly difficult, especially with most of them being dated and not titled.
"Dale gets to see our son crawl before I do," I teased.
Dale was the best uncle, and I was happy for him to experience the moments he wasn’t there for. He loved Arthur, and I could see him being a great dad of his own one day.
"Did you hear that? Your daddy's giving his brother pictures of you before me." Arthur crawled over to me… only four littleslides before he fell on his belly, but it was four more than I'd seen before. "Look at you, my sweet boy, growing so fast."
I picked him up and cuddled him close. "Pretty soon, you're going to be too big for Papa and Daddy's arms."
