Tanner clapped his hands together. “Excellent! Don’t worry, Omega, if there's one thing I’m good at, it’s finding a vein for a blood draw.”
Corvin growled at his terrible, terrible joke. “Not funny, vampire,” he rumbled.
I snorted. It was a little bit funny. Tanner seemed oblivious to the menace of my Alphas as he drew my blood with all the expertise he’d just bragged about. He didn’t even seem fussed when he moved on to Cooper, Corvin and then Beckett. He left Darius for last.
He bowed his head. “Omega.”
Darius grinned. “Has anyone told you that you look too young to be a doctor?”
“Several people. Luckily for me, I was turned at a time when twenty-three meant you had been working since you were twelve.” He quickly took blood. “Shortage of doctors in Australia in the early 1800s. Shortage of everything except blow flies, actually.”
He grabbed his doppler ultrasound machine, hooking it up to what looked like a state-of-the-art tablet. He waved them in our direction. “Gift from Raine and the Convocation. She was predicting—or maybe hoping—for an increased need for some fetal imaging equipment.” He turned back to Darius. “May I? I’ve never done this before on a bloke. Or on a Manix, so you’ll have to cut me some slack as I work it out. Your biology is different. I’ll just get you to lie down.”
Darius pulled off his shirt, which led to more growling, though no one protested. Tanner put the gel on the wand thing and waved it around.
“I’ve studied the notes on male Manix pregnancy, not just from your Doc, but from the ones before him. It’s made for interesting reading, but I’m a hands-on kind of guy, you know?” He put the wand on Darius’s stomach, and I think we all took a collective breath in. “Alright, let's see if we can navigate this bad boy. So if we go over… Oh, nope that's your bladder. No babies in that one. Okay if I head over here… Ah-ha! There we go. The womb. Hey, that makes sense, that would have been your prostate if you’d been born a human. Now, if I turn on the sound…”
He clicked a button, and my world came crashing to a halt. Echoing around the room were several fast whooshing noises. Heartbeats. Sweet Goddess.
“Okay, let me see if I can drive this thing. Alright, over here we have one.” He handed Darius the tablet, and Cooper scooped me up in his arms so we could all go and have a closer look. A weird black blob shifted around the screen like mercury. Tanner moved the wand and then there was another black blob. “That’s two. And if I go just slightly over here to the left, there’s three.” He looked up at us and grinned, his eyes shiny. “Congrats, mate. You’re having triplets.”
Darius’s eyes looked too wide as he stared at the screen, watching as Tanner positioned the wand so you could see all three sacs at once. And not just that, you could see the definition of three tiny bodies. Each one was curled up, comfortable and safe inside an Omega who wanted them more than anything in the world, and supported by a Pack who thought they were a literal miracle.
“Doc’s notes said that the gestation time for a male Omega is half that of a human pregnancy, so I’d like you to come in for regular checkups. Also, if it’s okay, I’d like to track their progress for my own notes.”
“My Omega and cubs aren’t your lab rats, vampire,” Corvin growled, and Beckett slapped him on the head.
“Shut it with the growly shit. This guy is gonna deliver a whole new generation of Manix, and the last thing we want is for him to go into it blind.”
Tanner smiled. “Thanks, man. Speaking of delivery, you might wanna decide if you are delivering these guys the traditional way, or having me do the C-section, because you don’t really have that long to decide.”
I frowned. “The traditional way?”
Tanner’s face got excited. “One of the Alphas would slice open the Omega with his claws, from sternum to pelvic bone, while the others prayed to the Goddess for safe passage of their young. Then, when the cubs were delivered, you would bind him together as best you could and wait for his Manix healing to knit the wound. Can take anywhere from 2-5 days if you don’t use stitches, I hear.”
Cut. They wanted to cut him open? With their claws? Chanting and blood and… “I don’t feel so good.” I went to stand, but the room spun a little. What was wrong with me? I’d gutted all sorts of animals before—why did the idea of Darius being split open and scooped out like a piece of fruit make me feel like this?
The world went a little white, and the last thing I heard was, “So a C-section it is then, I guess?”
Strong arms caught me just before I hit the floor.
22
CORVIN
“Yo, Corvin. The boss wants to see you. The big boss.”
“Jeff?” Why the hell would Jeff want to see me? He ran the engineering and mechanics arm of the Legion, and my boss, Crowley, ran the mechanics portion of that. Only time I ever saw Jeff was at holiday Christmas parties or when I ran into him at the bakery.
“Nah man, the Alpha General.”
Oh, fuck. I schooled my features into something neutral and reminded myself that this wasn’t like being called to the Alpha General’s office years ago, where you were either going to get yelled at for forty-five minutes, or get the shit kicked out of you with no recourse.
Courtland was different. He ran things differently.
I put down my wrench and stretched my back. I’d been working on a busted pump all day, cursing my giant fucking fingers for at least three hours. Maybe while I was there, I could ask Radic if we could fork out for a new pump—there were only so many times you could Frankenstein something back together.
I wiped the grease off my fingers and told Crowley that I’d be back after lunch. Crowley grunted. Honestly, as long as I got my required quota of work done, Crowley wouldn’t give a damn if I did it naked in the moonlight.
