Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Only when she rubbed her scar did she realize she hadn’t been able to fight the compulsion to worry at it.
Taking her hand, Remi brushed away the baby hairs from that spot. “The biograft?”
“Yes. Removed after the failure of the experiment, but the scars remain—inside and out.” Auden found herself stroking the hair-roughened skin of his chest. “Will—” A violent wrenching pain in her abdomen, a sudden wet heat on her pants, her baby’s mind screaming in distress. “No.”
Remi’s nostrils flared in front of her. “You’re bleeding.”
Panic shrieked warnings in Auden’s brain. Her baby was coming too early! “They’ll find me! They’ll take her!”
“No one’s taking anything.” Remi’s gritted-out voice, his hands cupping her face as he made her look into his eyes. “Breathe, little cat, breathe.”
“My baby,” she sobbed, her emotions huge and violent. “I can’t let them know!”
“Can you hold on to your shields?”
“No,” she admitted, the surge of emotions inside her so intense that she’d never felt the like. “They’ll fall in minutes.”
“I’ll get you help.” He moved away from her with a speed that felt impossible to her Psy vision, was out the door before she realized he had left.
He’d come back with help. Auden believed that with everything in her.
“A little longer,” she begged her body. “Please hold her inside a little longer.”
The first contraction hit. Not a big one. Small. But dangerous. “No, no, no.”
Remi ran back inside, a phone to his ear, and sat back down on the bed. She gripped his hand, panic a drumbeat in her skull.
Through the roar inside her head, she caught only snatches of what he was saying. “…shield…help…premature baby…pick up Finn. Anything he should know for a Psy birth? What? I’ll send you the image now.”
A snapshot being taken with the phone, Auden’s brain too full to process why until the air shimmered at the end of the bed moments later.
A petite woman dressed in the stark black combat uniform of the Arrow squad, her hair short and feathered, stood with a tall man with sandy hair and eyes of leaf green. He wore a checked red shirt, and his face…it held a gentleness innate.
The Arrow vanished a heartbeat later, but the man snapped into action.
Putting down his small case, he came over to take her hand. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. Finn. RainFire healer. Remi briefed me on your ability—all the medical tools I’ve brought, only I or my nurses will have handled.”
Auden squeezed his hand, sobs tearing at her chest. “My baby.”
“I know, sweetheart. Let’s see what’s happening—and don’t you worry.” He thrust a thumb in Remi’s direction. “You want him here or out?”
Even in her panic, Auden knew this procedure was too intimate to ask Remi to stay…and yet she still met his eyes and said, “Please stay.”
“You couldn’t make me leave,” he growled out, then shifted so that he faced her fully, while giving Finn his back—and her some privacy as Finn quickly cut off the clothes on her lower body. “Finn,” he said out loud, “I have Dr. Bashir on the phone. He’s spoken to an obstetrician colleague since your last conversation and can confirm the process is the same physically. It’s the psychic that’s different.”
“Got it. I’ve delivered many a cub in my time, so this’ll be child’s play.” Words warm and calm that gave Auden confidence. “I’ll put this sheet over your thighs. There, that’s better, isn’t it?”
Auden appreciated this kind, gentle man so much. Tears hot in her eyes, she nodded.
Remi’s gaze held hers after he hung up on the doctor he’d mentioned. “You know what to do?”
Auden made herself breathe, think. “Yes. I have to calm the child on the psychic level.”
Which was when it hit her—her shields had become a formless and unbreakable black. “My shields. Who?” Who would she owe after this was all over?
“That friend of mine I mentioned,” Remi said, even as he made a second call and asked whoever it was to be on standby. “No one will get through that shield, little cat, so just worry about your baby.”
Auden knew favors were a currency and those in debt were always the losers, but today, all she cared about was her child. Sweat beaded on her brow, her abdomen rippling as another contraction hit on a wetness of rich iron. “I’m bleeding too much,” she whispered. “My baby is weak. Her mind is fighting but she’s so small, not yet ready to leave the womb.”
“Don’t think about that.” Finn’s voice was firm and comforting, something about him inspiring trust even though he was a stranger. “You just do your job, mama, and let me worry about the rest. Your cub’s had over eight months inside you. She’ll be fine. Now, I need you to push.”
So she did, her hand locked with Remi’s and her mind surrounded by a shield so deadly she should’ve been terrified. But her terror was reserved for her child’s fragile mind, so young, too young. Shoving aside her fear, Auden concentrated on enfolding the baby’s mind in psychic arms, comforting and calm.