Mountain Birth Rite

Mountain Birth Rite
Ayla
I should have been terrified.
I was bleeding, weeks too early, half buried beneath a mountain with my body already doing something I had never done before. Every contraction seemed to find a new place to hurt, and Mikhail had made it very clear that none of this was happening the way it should have.
But I remembered the meadow.
I remembered warm grass beneath my knees and two tiny wolves climbing into my lap as though they had always known where they belonged.
“Thane.” I tightened my hand around his as another contraction gathered low in my back and began working its way forward. “I saw them.”
His attention had barely left my face since I woke. Dirt and blood covered him, and every few seconds the bond gave me another glimpse of Ronan moving through his fear right alongside him. Thane bent closer until his forehead touched mine.
“I know, tell me about it.”
“One black,” I managed. The pressure deepened enough that I had to wait before I could finish. “One white.”
His eyes changed, but the contraction took the rest of my attention before I could read what was there.
My body tightened so hard that I curled toward him. Thane steadied my shoulders while Mikhail stayed between my legs, his healing still warm inside me and his voice irritatingly calm.
“Don’t fight the contraction, sweetheart.”
“I’m not trying to fight it.”
“I know. Let it move through you instead of tightening against it.”
That sounded like excellent advice from someone who was not currently being split open from the inside.
I tried anyway.
Thane breathed with me because apparently I had married a male willing to sit half naked in the rubble of a mountain and demonstrate breathing while I considered biting him.
“In,” he murmured. “Slow. Now out.”
“If you tell me to breathe one more time—”
His mouth twitched.
There he was.
The contraction eased enough that I could breathe without wanting to kill anyone, and from somewhere beyond Mikhail came the unmistakable sound of Cyrus gagging.
“I have bathed in blood,” he announced hoarsely. “I have slept next to corpses. I have removed organs with my bare hands. Somehow none of that prepared me for this.”
I couldn't see him without lifting my head, and I wasn't wasting the effort.
“Cyrus…”
“Oh, no. Luna, you concentrate on what you’re doing. We do not need eye contact right now.”
Thane's head turned slightly. “If you vomit anywhere near my mate, I will remove your head.”
“That is completely fair. I should have stayed in the woods.”
Rhonda snorted from somewhere nearby. “You eat hearts, but childbirth is where you find your delicate sensibilities?”
“I contain multitudes.”
“You contain bullshit.”
I laughed and immediately broke into a groan as another contraction began. “Everyone shut up,” I gasped.
For once, they did.
I could feel Mikhail's golden power strengthen me as he checked again. His concentration hadn't wavered, but the tension around his mouth had eased slightly since he had slowed the bleeding.
“The healing helped stabilize all three of you,” he said. “The pups are early, but their heartbeats are strong.”
“Strong enough?”
He looked at me. I hated that I had to ask. “Strong enough to fight,” he said. “That is what I can promise you right now.”
I nodded and held tighter to Thane.
The next contraction was stronger than the last. Pressure bore down through my pelvis with enough force that my body reacted before Mikhail gave me any instruction. I pushed instinctively and cried out when the pressure changed.
Mikhail immediately shifted closer.
“That’s it. Your body knows what it’s doing.”
The pressure kept building.
I had thought labor would feel like pain arriving and leaving in recognizable waves. This felt like my entire body had narrowed around one purpose. My hips ached. My back burned. There was so much pressure between my legs that I could no longer tell where one sensation ended and another began.
I heard Mikhail telling someone behind him what he needed, heard Raven answer and move without hesitation, but I couldn't follow the details. The rest of the pack disappeared around the edges of my awareness.
Thane stayed. His hand stayed in mine. The bond stayed open. Ronan was wrapped around us with the same fierce attention I remembered feeling through the stone.
Another contraction began before I had completely recovered. Mikhail looked at me. “This one is bringing it down quickly.”
Thane went completely still beside me. The meadow came back so vividly that I almost saw grass instead of stone.
Black fur.
Tiny paws planted wide.
That impatient little face looking at me as though I had taken far too long to recognize her.
“She’s first,” I whispered.
Thane looked at me. “You know.”
“I told you.”
Then the contraction took me.
There was no graceful way through it. I cried out and clung to Thane while my body pushed, pressure becoming a burning stretch that made every instinct in me demand that I stop and bear down harder at the same time.
“I can see her,” Mikhail said. His voice stayed steady. “Ayla, listen to me. I need one controlled push.”
“I don’t know what controlled means anymore.”
“It means don’t try to launch my granddaughter across the mountain.”
A strangled laugh came from Raven.
Even Thane made a broken sound that might have been amusement.
“Dad!”
“Push, sweetheart.”
I pushed.
The burn became almost unbearable, and then the pressure changed.
Something slipped free.
For half a second I heard nothing except my own breathing.
Then my daughter screamed.
It was a tiny, furious sound, high enough to cut straight through every voice around us.
I started crying before I even saw her.
Mikhail worked quickly, clearing her airway and checking her before bringing her up against me. She was slick and warm and unbelievably small, her skin flushed beneath a full head of wet black hair.
“Oh, Fates.”
I touched her face with one shaking finger.
She opened her mouth and screamed again.
Thane laughed.
Actually laughed.
It broke halfway through and became something rougher as he bent over both of us.
“She’s loud.”
“She gets that from you.”
His eyes were wet when he looked at me.
“I do not believe anyone has ever accused me of being loud.”
“You're enormous. It counts.”
Our daughter rooted against my chest, furious with the entire experience of being born.
I knew her. The certainty was irrational and absolute.
“I saw you,” I whispered into her damp black hair. “You climbed right into my lap.”
Thane kissed my temple.
“You were right.”
I wanted to stay there.
I wanted one minute to look at her and understand that we had made her, that she had survived the blood and stone and everything I had done before she ever got the chance to breathe.
My son had other plans.
Pressure gathered again before I had finished catching my breath.
I groaned.
“Mikhail.”
“I know.”
“Tell him to wait.”
“I’m afraid he has already inherited the family problem with instructions.”
Thane looked offended. “From her.”
“Excuse me?”
Another contraction cut off the argument.
Thane took our daughter while Mikhail helped reposition me. I hated giving her up even that far, but she stayed against her father's bare chest, wrapped immediately in the cleanest cloth someone had managed to produce in the middle of this disaster.
The sight nearly undid me.
Thane held her as if someone had handed him the entire world and forgotten to explain what he was supposed to do with it.
Then my body demanded my attention again.
The second birth moved faster.
There was less confusion this time because I understood the pressure now, but understanding did nothing to make it hurt less. Mikhail guided me through the contraction while Thane stayed close enough that I could grip his wrist.
“Push with it,” Mikhail said.
I did.
Pain whitened the edges of my vision. I screamed, pushed again when he told me to, and felt the pressure suddenly release.
My son's cry came almost immediately.
It was lower than his sister's and just as angry.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Mikhail stared down at him.
I knew why before he said anything.
White hair lay wet against my son's head.
Pure white.
The wolves around us reacted with one low collective sound, like dozens of people had forgotten to breathe and remembered all at once.
I barely noticed them.
“My pup.”
Mikhail placed him against me beside his sister.
His skin was warm. His little face was scrunched with outrage, and the white hair covering his head looked almost unreal against the blood and dirt surrounding us.
One black.
One white.
Exactly as I had seen them.
I laughed through tears that I couldn't stop. Thane's gaze moved from our daughter to our son and then back to me. “You did.”
I touched our son's cheek. The faintest familiar hum answered beneath my fingers. My breath caught. Aramana stirred warmly inside me. I didn't need her to explain.
He was here.
Thane leaned over us and put one hand carefully across both pups, his fingers so large against them that our daughter's entire body barely seemed longer than his palm.
None of us spoke.
We had two pups.
Somehow, after everything, we had two pups.
Mikhail broke the moment because Mikhail was still Mikhail.
“Thane, I need you.”
Thane looked up sharply.
“What?”
“The cord.”
Thane looked down and then back at him with an expression I would have appreciated considerably more if I weren't exhausted enough to dissolve into the ground.
“Tell me what to do.”
“You may cut them.”
“With what?”
Mikhail looked pointedly at his hands.
Thane flexed his fingers.
Understanding crossed his face.
“Oh.”
Cyrus made the mistake of looking. “Oh, good, a Lycan with his own murder scissors. No jealousy here.”
Thane ignored him. I felt the change through our bond. The tips of two fingers shifted, his nails lengthening carefully into dark claws without the rest of him changing.
“When did you learn to do that?”
His eyes remained on what Mikhail was showing him. “Apparently tonight.”
“I missed a lot.”
“You were busy.”
Mikhail positioned Thane's hand and showed him exactly where to cut.
“Steady. One clean motion.”
Thane's hand trembled once. The same male who had apparently moved pieces of mountain with his bare hands looked terrified of touching the cord connecting him to our daughter.
I loved him so much it hurt somewhere the labor hadn't already reached.
He steadied his hand and cut.
The cord parted cleanly.
Mikhail immediately dealt with the remaining end, golden light moving beneath his fingers while Thane stared at our daughter as though he expected her to protest.
She yawned.
Cyrus made a strangled sound.
Thane glared at him.
“I didn't say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was going to say she has your judgmental face.”
“She was born minutes ago.”
“And already excellent instincts.”
Our son was next. Thane's hand was steadier this time. When the second cord parted, his shoulders dropped by a fraction.
“I did it.”
The wonder in his voice was so unguarded that I smiled.
Mikhail glanced at him. “You did.”
The moment lasted until another contraction tightened through me.
I stared at my father. “No.”
“Yes.”
“I've produced the required children.” Raven laughed somewhere near my shoulder.
Mikhail looked almost apologetic. “The placenta still needs to be delivered.”
The final contraction was shorter, although I refused to call it easy. Mikhail worked quietly while I held my pups against my chest and Thane held me.
When it was over, my father spent long enough checking everything that I began to worry again.
Then he nodded. “We're clear. No retained tissue. The bleeding is controlled, and the abruption is no longer actively worsening.”
Mikhail's healing power moved through me again, gentler now. The sharpest pain began receding, leaving exhaustion behind so profound that lifting my hand felt unreasonable.
Thane touched his forehead to mine. His entire body was trembling.
I hadn't noticed until then. “We have them,” he whispered.
I opened my eyes. Our daughter had finally stopped yelling and lay tucked against me, one tiny hand near her face. Her brother was pressed along her side, white hair bright against her dark head.
One black.
One white.
The meadow had given me enough to come back for them.
Now they were here.
Alive.
Thane's thumb moved carefully over my cheek.
“You're safe.”
I looked at him, then at the two pups breathing against my chest.
For the first time since the mountain came down, I could almost believe him.