Daddy. I blinked away the sharp pang of tears. We were already parents, of twins. We'd spent the last few months trying to stay alive, and now, on top of our freedom, we also had the responsibility of caring for these beautiful new lives.
Panic rushed to the surface, but I tamped it down. Gunnar needed me to be strong, as did our babies. I pressed my lips to the soft fur of his paw instead.
"It's going to be all right,"he said.
"Shh," I whispered, though the other two could probably hear me. "I'm supposed to be comforting you, not the other way around."
Gunnar shook with another contraction.
"One more push," Sergei said. "I can see their head. Just a little bit more now."
Somewhere in the labyrinth, I heard Amber scream. Bettina and Nor were nowhere to be found, nor was Lonnie.
"Where are my friends?"
"They're with Dr. Ovnosky. If anyone can help them, she can."
My questions melted from my mind as Gunnar leaned forward, pressing his forehead to my chest and bearing down for another push. His pained sounds had been reduced to grunts and harsh breaths, but I still felt the sympathy pangs building in my gut. Finally, with a guttural cry, he sank back to the table, and a robust wail echoed off the stone walls.
"It's another girl." Sergei met my gaze with a pleased grin. "Do you have a name for her?"
"Chandra,"Gunnar said through our wolf bond."Blossom is our sun, and Chandra will be our moon."
"Chandra." The name sounded foreign on my tongue, but it fit the beautiful silver pup Sergei handed me. She truly looked like the moon in the sky until Gunnar licked her cheek, and she turned into a ruddy, wrinkle-faced baby with a lush head of hair and a powerful set of lungs. The nurse returned with Blossom in her arms. "It's time to shift, Tato. We'll see if she takes to nursing. If not, we have some babyformula to last until we can get you back to your plane."
I traded Chandra for Blossom, and Gunnar shifted, slumping onto his side on the table. "I should have done that sooner," he whispered. "My leg feels better already." He reached for Blossom, tucking her to his chest and rubbing her cheek until she latched onto his nipple with a greedy suck.
My heart ached for the time we lost. I wished I could have seen all his pregnant beauty in human form. Would his belly have been round? He didn't have a single stretch mark across his freckled midriff. His chest popped like he'd done nothing but pushups and bench presses for the last three months, but his flesh was soft beneath my questing fingers.
"I missed you," I whispered.
He grinned up at me. "Missed you, too. I kinda love you."
"You … love me?" Once upon a time, he'd hated my guts. "I love you, too." As soft as I said the words, he heard me. We were both wolf shifters, after all.
"It didn't seem right to say it when we were wolves." He gazed down at Blossom. "We made it out together. We did all this."
The nurse returned with Chandra in her arms. Taking my daughter, I listened intently as she explained we could keep the room for as long as we needed. She showed me the pile of clothes Sergei had left for us and patted my shoulder. "You will have questions. Come find me upstairs when you are ready for answers."
I had tons of questions, starting with the baby in myarms already looking like she could hold her head up and crawl around the tile floor. Now wasn't the time, though. Our babies suckled greedily for their first meals. Afterward, Gunnar needed rest. My eyelids hung heavy as I watched the three of them together. I was already failing as their father, but I, too, sank into exhausted sleep.
CHAPTER 20
GUNNAR
It tookme two days to feel comfortable enough to leave the twins with Lonnie and Amber. Two long, blissful days of sleeping when they slept and grabbing a shower and some food whenever Sebastian insisted.
I needed to stretch my legs. It was time.
Sergei and his wife Tasha, the nurse who had assisted with my labor, offered to show us around their territory, and I accepted. Sebastian seemed desperate to please me, even though he did not want to leave his friends.
"We're fine," Amber insisted. She still looked pale. From the odds Sergei had offered on someone surviving both the wolf virus and radiation sickness, she and Lonnie were lucky. Even more miraculous: Sebastian's friends were now an item. They'd succumbed to their mutual pining after they'd wolfed out together. Amber's first heat wouldn't be for a few weeks yet, but that gave them time to form a tighter bond.
"Go," Lonnie said. "Even Tasha approved." She had already transformed into a wolf and now prodded the backs of Sergei's human knees with her nose.
"All right, all right. We're going." Sergei removed his lab coat, flashing us before he stepped into the hallway to complete his transformation.
I stifled a chuckle. To hide our nakedness, we, too, wore borrowed white coats with Paskal Industries logos. The Ukrainian wolves prowled the halls either naked or in wolf form, so the only people we protected were their guests, though I doubted Bettina and her grandfather cared.
