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“Come on, y’all, calm down,” Mimi chided, rolling her eyes. “My baby’s having babies, I can’t take time to bail your asses out of jail.”
The pack let out a collective huff and backed down. Because Mimi was the alpha female and they pretty much had to.
“They’re my grandbabies,” Mama Ginger whined. “I belong in that delivery room! I’ve been waiting Zeb’s whole life for this. I have the right to be in there with him!”
Mama Ginger tried to push up off the floor, and I forced her back down. Please, Lord, don’t let someone I know see me wallowing all over the hospital floor on top of Mama Ginger. Or the cops, who would probably assume I was trying forcibly to drain her. “No, you don’t, Mama Ginger. Whosoever’s hoo-ha is on display, that’s the person who decides who gets to be in the room. And Jolene didn’t even ask her own mother to be in the room, so that should tell you something. Zeb will come and get us when they’re good and ready to see us. Now, just sit down and read a damn magazine.”
Mama Ginger flopped onto a couch and petulantly flipped through a year-old copy of Redbook . In the choice between sitting with Jolene’s extended family, most of whom didn’t like me much better than Mama Ginger, or with Mama Ginger herself, I chose to lean against the wall. This proved to be a good call, as I had to launch myself after Mama Ginger from time to time whenever she made a break for the delivery rooms.
I could only fly-tackle a fifty-year-old woman so many times before I started losing my sense of humor, so I was grateful when my sensitive vampire ears picked up the sound of two strong cries down the hall.
15
The element of surprise is vastly overrated in any relationship.
—Love Bites: A Female Vampire’s Guide to Less
Destructive Relationships
J olene had two perfectly healthy babies, in a perfectly normal delivery, in a perfectly normal hospital room.
It was a McClaine family first.
After the inevitable squabble between Mimi and Mama Ginger over who held the babies first (Mama Ginger was lucky she lost the struggle and not, say, a finger) and the pack was allowed to sniff the babies to their hearts’ content, I finally made it back to Jolene’s recovery room. An exhausted, beaming Zeb handed me a squirming pink bundle, and I fell in love. Little Janelyn, my namesake. The daughter I would never have. The baby I could love and spoil and then immediately hand back to her real mother. Now I knew how Aunt Jettie must have felt, to love a child so completely, to want to be a part of her life, even if you weren’t a parent.
When Zeb placed a sleeping baby Joe in my hands, it seemed like an embarrassment of riches.
“They’re beautiful,” I told Jolene, who was fighting hard not to doze off in her hospital bed. Jolene smiled, her contentment so complete that she didn’t have to respond. My eyes pricked with hot, happy tears as Janelyn studied me with her big blue eyes. Her little hand crept out from under the blanket and wrapped around my finger.
“Hello, little baby,” I cooed. “I’m Auntie Jane. When your mama says it’s OK, I’m going to take you guys to the library and museums and movies. I’ll feed you food that’ll make you hyper and nauseous, and then I’ll bring you straight home. I’ll help you hide your first tattoo. We’re going to have a great time.”
“Nice,” Jolene muttered, her mouth quirked into a tired smile. I snickered.
I stroked a finger along the curve of Joe’s downy-soft cheek, and for a moment, I felt a keen sense of loss for not being able to have a baby of my own.
Janelyn, who seemed incredibly strong for a newborn, even in my limited experience with babies, pulled my finger to her mouth. Chomp!
The moment passed.
“Ow!” I exclaimed. I gently pulled the baby’s lip back to find a full set of perfect, tiny white teeth with particularly sharp-looking canines. “What the?”
“It’s a wolf thing,” Zeb said, looking completely unperturbed by his babies’ having more teeth than their paternal grandfather.
Jolene, whose eyes were still closed, raised her hand and waggled her finger at me. “Let that be a lesson on what happens when you plan on interferin’ with responsible parentin’.”
“No biting the namesake, kid,” I told the unrepentant infant. “Especially when the namesake has fangs.”
Jolene yawned. “That just means she’s happy to see you.”
“I hope she’s never happy to see you when you’re nursing,” I muttered. Jolene opened her mouth to protest. “If you launch into some story about the miracle of werewolf nipples, I will leave.”
Jolene rolled her eyes and snuggled into Zeb’s side. He wrapped his arm around her and cleared his throat. “So, we wanted to talk to you about something. We wanted to wait until the babies were here safely, because we didn’t want to jinx ourselves.”
I noted with pride how right it seemed now for Zeb to use the word we when it came to him and Jolene. And now he had two more little people to add to that unit. When he’d first found Jolene, it bothered me. I’d felt left out, abandoned. Zeb and I used to be a we. We were the we. But now, Zeb had the we he was meant to have. And I had my own we with Gabriel. This was the way it was supposed to be; growing, changing, finding your own we.
I really needed some sleep.
“We would like you to be godmother to the twins,” Zeb said. “We’ve thought this over very carefully. And we can’t imagine asking anyone else … so, no pressure.”
