Page 42 of Wrong Number, Right Gray Wolf

“Do I get to meet my sister today?” Leave it to Posy to be the one to not only tell us when he was pregnant but when the baby was coming. At least this time, it wasn’t via a Sally-comment relay.

“I don’t know if that’s quite true. They’re not very frequent.”

That caught me off guard. I’d thought they were nonexistent.

“You’ve been having these all day?”

“Since yesterday.” He looked down.

“But you’ve been running around doing all sorts of things. You look on top of the world.”

“Oh, my dear sweet mate. That’s called nesting. It means the baby’s coming.” He righted himself. “See? All better now.”

He waddled over to the couch and sat down.

“If it’s all better now, why are you sitting down, Papa?” Posy said exactly what I wanted to.

“Because I know I’m about to get a lecture from you and Daddy.”

He wasn’t wrong. We had a pregnancy plan, and that included calling the midwife and Miss Caitlin, who would be the one responsible for Posy and to give Posy a way out if she didn’t want to stay for the entire birth. From the very beginning, we wanted to ensure that Posy had as much or as little a part in the birth as she wanted.

“I’m calling Miss Caitlin.” Posy grabbed her phone. She was so excited we’d caved on that phone, but it was good that she had one. And she never misused it. It lived in the charger when she wasn’t out of the house.

“And I’ll call the midwife.”

Stephen looked like he was going to try and stop me and then grabbed his side. “Fine,” he grumbled.

The midwife asked a lot of questions, and I ended up having to put her on speakerphone because playing pregnancy-symptom phone tag was not the ideal way to do that. She said to call back when they were consistently three minutes apart.

Miss Caitlin came over, gave hugs, and then whisked Posy into the kitchen where they were going to be baking cookies and I imagined a whole lot of other things to distract her as I went out back with my mate.

I offered to help my mate shower, but he countered with walking in the back yard.

“Are you sure about this?”

“I need the air and to be with your wolf,” he said.

I left my clothes on the porch and shifted, and we paced the backyard. I hated not having an exact time for how frequent his contractions were. But if my mate needed this, he needed it. We walked back and forth, and he told me stories about his childhood and everything about it that had to do with backyard fun. Anything and everything to distract him from the pain.

I never had the buildup to the birth like this with Posy and hadn’t been prepared for the emotions that came with it. Seeing him in pain and wanting it to stop, but also being excited that the baby was about to be here and wanting it to continue.

And piled on that were a lot of emotions related to how Posy came to be part of my family and the court process we’d just been through to officially have Stephen be part of her family, too.

I figured I’d be nervous. How could anyone not, but the fear caught me off guard. Fear that something would go wrong with my mate or our baby. My wolf wasn’t helping. He was in full-on protective mode. Both my beast and I wanted to take that pain away. If only we could.

When it got to the point where he couldn’t make it halfway across the yard without doubling over, I shifted back and grabbed my phone to watch the time.

“Crap. It’s two minutes, Stephen.”

“It’s fine. I’m sure we have plenty of time.”

I wasn’t so sure.

I threw on my clothes after letting the midwife know it was time, and we went back inside. The place smelled wonderful. We’d been out a lot longer than I realized. There were cookies, rolls, and what smelled like a pasta bake in the oven.

“How’s everything going with you two?” I asked after telling them what was happening.

“We’re just trying to stay out of your hair until it’s time that you want us there.”