Page 87 of Omega’s Fold

I breathe through it. Four in. Four out. By the time it has eased, I am at the bathroom door. Julian is in the hallway with my dressing gown over his arm and a pair of the thick wool socks he bought me in November.

He helps me into clean clothes and then the dressing gown.

I let him kneel on the bathroom mat and put the socks on my feet one at a time, and I put my hand on the top of his head while he does it.

We come down the stairs together. He is behind me with one hand at my elbow, not gripping, just there in case.

I am a man who has driven posts in his own field for eight years and I can come down a flight of stairs in active labor without help, but a hand at the elbow of an omega in labor is something an alpha needs more than the omega does. I am not going to tell him that.

Donna is there moments later. She comes in without knocking, the way Donna comes in. She looks at Julian and the bag over his shoulder. She nods.

“Right,” she says, in the voice she uses when there is no time for niceties. “Off you go, the pair of you. I’ll stay here tonight. If labor goes on too long, I’ll take them over to mine with Biscuit.”

She comes over to me. She puts her hand on my cheek, her palm warm and dry and smelling of the chamomile soap she has used my whole life.

“Good luck, you are going to be fine.”

“I know.”

“You are. Your mother had you in three hours flat and breezed through it. You have her hips. You will be fine.”

Donna pats my cheek and turns me towards the door, and I go.

The truck cab is warm. Julian has been out and started it five minutes ago and the heater is going at full.

The bag is in the back seat with my coat folded on top of it. He has thought of everything. He has thought of things I had not thought of, including the towel he has spread across my seat and the bottle of water in the cup holder and the small soft pillow from our bed jammed against the door so I can lean my head on it.

He helps me into the seat because I am a waddling whale, then he gets into the driver’s side.

He pulls out of the yard. I look back once, through the side mirror, and I see Donna in the kitchen doorway watching us go.

I face front. I put my hand on the bump.

“Hello,” I say to her, very quietly. “Today is the day.”

She kicks me under the ribs.

The drive to Eastfield is an hour and ten minutes. The roads are dry and the air outside is cold but it is not freezing.

The contractions are getting closer. I time them on the dashboard clock. Six minutes. Five minutes. Four minutes. By the time we are halfway to Eastfield they are at three and the back end of each one is something I have to breathe through.

I lean my forehead against the cold of the window and keep breathing.

Julian’s hand comes off the wheel. He puts it on my thigh, palm up. I put my hand into his and he closes his fingers around mine.

“You are doing well,” he says, eventually, when the contraction has passed.

“Drive, Julian.”

He drives.

We get to the clinic at four forty.

The clinic in Eastfield is a small clean low building set back from the road behind two Douglas firs, with a small maternity wing run by three midwives and an obstetrician who comes in for the cases that need her.

I had a tour two months ago. The midwife on duty is the one I met at the tour. I’d forgotten her name but she has a little badge that tells me that it is Sarah.

“Wyatt, lovely to see you. How far apart are you?”