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In the jet’s back room, I curled up on the bed with my arms cradling my belly and closed my eyes. My nerves were jumping with so much anticipation that I wasn’t sure I’d managed to drift off at all when Aaron came to wake me for the landing.
Something in my heart brightened at the sight of my estate, the windows all along the walls of that miniature castle gleaming in preparation for our arrival. One of my mates had called ahead for the staff to be ready, and they’d expected us in the morning anyway. The four alphas formed a shield against the cold wind as they ushered me into the house.
I’d just made it to my bedroom when the first contraction came, like a pinch expanding into an ache that spread across the base of my belly. My breath caught. I sat down on the edge of the massive bed.
“It’s started, has it?” said one of the healers from my own estate—a wolf shifter named Lydia whose face was lined and whose hair was slate-gray streaked with white. She’d helped my mother deliver me and my sisters, and she guided me farther up the bed with a knowing look. “It’ll take some time before we have any real work to do. Rest as well as you can until the pains start coming close together.”
“What do you need from us?” Aaron asked me.
I swallowed hard, feeling abruptly uncertain with the unfamiliar sensations starting to rise through my body. “Just—stay with me.”
“Of course.”
They all climbed onto the bed around me, surrounding me so I could nestle between their forms. I breathed in their combined scents, my forehead resting on West’s shoulder, one hand clasped around Nate’s fingers while my other palm stayed on my belly, and right then I didn’t feel nervous at all. My daughter was coming. My mates and I were here, ready to welcome her. I was simply going to do what every dragon shifter before me had done.
Bathed in that warmth and reassurance, I did doze for a while. When I woke to dawn light streaming through the bedroom windows, it was with a sharper pinch that radiated all through my abdomen. A shiver ran through me. I waited for the next contraction to come, just a few minutes later, but I was ready for it. I could feel it. She was on her way.
My mates stirred when I sat up. “Should I call for the healers?” Aaron asked, studying my face.
“Yes,” I said. “I—” My voice hitched as I rode out another contraction. “I think it’s time.”
Marco brought me a glass of water and rubbed my lower back as I drank from it. Nate slipped out and returned in a few minutes with an orange and some toast with butter. The younger healer who’d already arrived in the room nodded approvingly.
“It’ll probably be a long day,” she told me. “Best to keep up your strength.”
I gulped down the meal I didn’t really feel hungry for as quickly as I could. In between swallows, I practiced the steady inhale-exhale the healers had taught me during the birth preparations over the last few months. A restless urge wriggled through me.
“I don’t want to just sit here.”
“Walk around,” Lydia said. “Find a good rhythm. That often helps carry you through the earlier stages.”
West had already been pacing the room. He fell into step with me as I wandered from one side of the room to the other, pausing here and there to brace myself against those deepening twinges.
“Don’t look so fretful,” I told him. “You’re not the one about to propel an entire dragon shifter out of her body.”
His tense expression broke with a chuckle. “I can’t argue with that. I’ve never been good with waiting.”
As another rush of pain shot through me, an idea sparked with it. “You can get the water running in the tub,” I said. “I think I’m going to want that pretty soon.”
He gave me a kiss and a grateful look before hurrying off to the en suite bathroom. Marco had started my phone playing the songs we’d picked out ahead of time—I’d almost forgotten about that. The sweet music of my mother’s favorite folk singer filled the room. It brought a fresh inspiration.
“Her book,” I said. “Where’s my mother’s book—the one Nate’s kin gave me?”
The bear shifter grabbed it off the side table where I must have set it down last night. “Do you want to read it now?”
I pressed my hand to my belly as another contraction rocked me and then started walking again. “I don’t know if I really can. I feel better if I keep moving. Can you read a few of the stories to me?”
He gave me that warm smile I loved and sat down on the edge of the bed, opening the book. His low voice washed over me as he read a mouse shifter’s account of seeing my mother when she’d come to the disparate estate for the first time to officially claim the alpha as her mate and be welcomed by his kin. I could almost picture her there, a younger version of the woman I remembered, telling the assembled shifters how proud she was to be the one to serve them, already preparing an even-handed resolution for some dispute.
He was on to the fifth account, from a bobcat shifter, when my legs started to wobble with the intensity of the labor. “West!” I hollered. “Is that bath ready?”
“It has been for a while,” he said from the other end of the room. I’d been so lost in the stories and keeping myself steady that I hadn’t noticed him coming back in. “Let me make sure it’s still hot enough.”
I followed him in and paced on the tiled floor while he and then Lydia adjusted the water. With their help, I clambered into the tub. The warm water closed around my body in a liquid embrace that gave an immediate relief. I sighed, leaning against the polished side of the tub.
My mates took turns sitting by the edge, stroking my hair, rubbing my shoulders. After a while, the contractions blurred together so much that I wasn’t aware of much except bracing myself for each new wave and gripping the hands that reached out to me. As the pressure inside built, my dragon’s claws started to extend from my fingertips with each rush. Scales broke out on my sides.
“Partial shifting is normal during this stage,” Lydia said, unperturbed. She made me sip some fruit juice. The other healer added more hot water to the tub. Then all at once my entire body seemed to clench from the waist down. Tears sprang to my eyes.
