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He was in his alpha’s arms, but nothing could distract Zach from the vise squeezing his middle so viciously. He couldn’t deal with the pain, had to get down on his knees, on all fours, try something, anything to ride the contractions.
His moans echoed as Val hurried through the house, Tate rushing before them to open the doors, Luke following. He thought Kai and Alex were behind them, too.
Zach was vaguely aware of them, of Val’s muscular arms under him, his alpha’s familiar scent soothing as another contraction gripped him.
“Val!” He squirmed in that strong hold, unable to hold still. “Put me down, I can’t... Ooh god!”
“Patience, my love. The car is close, and I’ll drive you to the birth center as fast as I can.”
“You don’t get it, there’s no... ah!” He clung with one arm around his alpha’s corded neck, had his other around his rock-hard belly, and his legs shook with the urge to push. “I won’t make it!”
“Of course you will. We’re getting you to the center where the docs will be monitoring you and make you comfortable and—”
“Ooh Val!” Zach tucked his chin into his chest as he bore down. “Baby’s coming...”
“What? No.”
“Yes, ooh!” The pressure down below was unbelievable. He groaned as he felt the baby move lower. “Ow!”
“What the hell do I do?” Valerian sounded frantic, and it would have been cute if Zach wasn’t in so much pain. “Can’t let you give birth here!”
“No choice,” Zach hissed.
“Valerian, put him down,” Tate said. “Here. Do it. We have to check him.”
They were in the airy entrance hall with the stately staircase going up to the first floor. Two velvet couches stood there, around a low coffee table.
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“My omega isn’t having his babies here, Tate. We’re going to the center.”
“Val!” Zach yelled.
With a grunt, Val walked over to one of the couches and lowered him down. “Fuck,” he whispered.
Zach felt the same way.
“What’s going on here?” Kai and Alex gathered around the couch, eyes wide. “We thought you were going to the birth center.”
“Babies are coming...” Zach squirmed on the sofa, pulling up his top to hold his tight belly, spreading his hands on it. “Oh, God...”
“I got the doctor on the line,” Luke said, passing the phone to Val. “Here you go.”
“Doc!” Val barked. “He says the babies are coming. What do I do?”
“Is he dilated?” the doctor’s tinny voice asked through the phone speaker.
“How the hell should I know?” Val yelled into the phone. “Do I look like an OB to you? It’s not like I’ve had birth lessons.”
“Let me check him,” Tate said. “I’ve had birth lessons, quite a few of them, actually.”
Oh.
“I’ll help,” Kai said, passing his fluted glass to his mate. “Here, hold this.”
It was all a background buzz as Zach labored. His panting breaths echoed strangely in his ears. He huffed when Tate and Kai pulled down his pants and soaked underwear and spread his legs. The urge to push was coming back and he tensed, grunting low in his throat as he struggled to figure out how to do it.
He barely felt the intrusion as Tate used his hand to feel at his opening, pushing a finger inside to check him.
“Has anyone checked him?” the doctor asked through the phone, sounding impatient.
Zach almost laughed. He was lying there, in his boyfriend’s—Mate’s!—house entrance hall, on the couch, naked with his legs spread and his mountain of a belly starting to contract again, and the doctor was losing his patience.
Good God.
“Ooh!” He grabbed the backrest with one hand, at Valerian’s arm with the other, and tried to sit up. The need to bear down was excruciating. “Oh shit!”
“He’s very dilated,” Tate said, somewhere in the middle of Zach moaning and yelling. “Not an expert, but I kind of think he’s right about the baby coming now.”
“No shit?” Zach fell back, panting, staring up at the high ceiling. “Oh! It’s starting again!”
“Help him on his knees,” Kai said, coming around to grab Zach’s arm.
“I’m on my way to you,” the doc said over the phone. “Let me know if the head begins to emerge. Check if—”
“Ooh hell!” On his knees, Zach struggled with the immense pressure below. It was so much more intense in this position. “I feel it! It’s too big, I can’t! Ah!”
“Can you see it?” Val had Zach’s other arm looped around his neck, supporting him as he leaned forward and spread his legs more. “Tate, can you see anything?”
“Aah! Oh God!” Zach ground his molars together as he finally pushed down. “God... damn... it.”
He never thought he’d be so vocal during birth, but he couldn’t stop moaning and wailing as he bore down, his body opening in slow degrees to allow the baby to emerge. The world beyond the couch, beyond his belly and his dilating opening had ceased to exist. Anything beyond the need to push the baby out and the painful pressure inside as he did so had faded away. Trusting his lover and his friend to support him, he bowed over his belly and gave in to his body’s instincts.
God, it burned.
He groaned, then cried out as the burn intensified. “Help me! Ow, ow...”
“I can see something,” Tate said quietly, then, “it’s the head. The baby’s head.”
“Doc, it’s coming,” Val said, his voice hushed.
“Good,” the doc said, the connection fizzling, then returning. “When the head is out, check around the neck, make sure that the cord isn’t looped around it. If it is, gently unloop it. Got it?”
“Got it,” Val said grimly.
How was this happening to Zach? He was supposed to be at the birth center with an epidural numbing the pain and doctors with ultrasounds and other instruments checking that his babies were okay as they made their way into the world.
Next thing Zach knew he was screaming, his hole impossibly full, burning like fire, his insides feeling like they were rubbed with sandpaper, and no way out but to bear down with all his strength.
“Come on, love, you can do it,” Val was saying. “Look at me. Look at me, you got this.”
He turned his head slightly, just enough to see his alpha’s face, his kind, beautiful amber eyes, that beautiful mouth pursed in concern, the love and warmth written all over that beloved face.
He groaned, then yelled as he birthed the baby’s head, whimpering when it was over.
“Checking the neck!” Tate informed them as Zach panted and moaned, feeling as if he was getting split apart. “All clear!”
“Ooh...” The baby was descending lower, and Zach was pushing again, closing his eyes and leaning into Val, his massive belly pressing into the couch as he bent over to bear down. “It’s coming, it’s coming out!”
“Almost there,” Tate called from behind him. “Push, Zach!”
“Push,” Kai was chanting from his other side, “push, push, push...”
Zach grunted, his legs trembling, as he pushed and pushed, his face growing hot, his pulse thumping in his ears. Then he wailed, pushing the baby out in Tate’s waiting hands.
“I got him, I got him!” Tate was saying. “Hi, baby, hi. Wanna cry for me? Is your mouth clear? Need to check the mouth...”
“Tate, is he okay?” Val asked, turning his head to see behind them. “Is the baby okay?”
“He’s not crying, let me see...” After a few agonizing moments, a thin baby cry filled the air and Zach sagged against his alpha. “There you are.”
A baby. He had a baby? Zach tried to see over his shoulder, but his belly was still hurting, and he didn’t want to think about his nether regions which burned like fire. “Let me see him...”
“One sec. I have to, um... clamp the cord? Somehow?” Tate sounded panicky.
“Never mind,” Zach hissed. “Ow.” He rocked his hips a little but the fullness down inside was returning. “Ow, I need to push again. Need to sit back. Help me.”
Carefully, Kai and Val guided him backward until he half sat, half lay against the couch, legs wide open—and there was the baby, lying on the sofa between his legs, filthy with streaks of blood and making weird faces at him and utterly beautiful.
Oh my God...
“Luke,” Val said, “bring the phone closer.”
And Luke approached—because Luke was also there, and Alex, and now that Zach looked, he could see more people at the back of the hall, and oh shit, they were all looking at him.
He would’ve died of embarrassment if the contractions hadn’t started again, demanding all his attention.
“Doc,” Val was saying into the phone that Luke held out for him, “are you still far out?”
“Calculating I’ll be there in half an hour or so. Why?”
“Just that it looks like the second baby is coming now, too.”
“Damn,” the doctor muttered.
“Right. Hey, doc?” Val said. “When you arrive, just walk right in. We’re in the entrance hall, waiting for you.”
Or rather, not waiting.
***
“Ooh, I can’t!” Zach was straining, one hand gripping the couch backrest, the other Val’s hand. “Ooh!”
“Just push, love. You can do this.” Val kissed his sweaty temple. “I know you can.”
“How can you know—? Aah, no! Can’t. I can’t!”
“Push, Zach. I can see the top of the head. Almost there.”
“No, I can’t—ungh...” It was almost an out of body sensation, the experience too intense to properly assimilate, as his body birthed another baby to join the first on the couch. First came to familiar burn, the sensation of impossible fullness, the ache and pressure—then the relief as the head emerged. Then more pain as he had to pant and not push while Tate checked the baby’s neck.
Then another wave of pain and burning and relief as he pushed and pushed and finally managed to get the shoulders out.
Gasping for breath, he looked down where Tate was holding the second baby. A thin wail pierced the air and the baby wiggled.
Zach whimpered, his hole throbbing, feeling as if he’d been scraped raw inside.
“You did it, love,” Val whispered, squeezing his hand. “You did it so well. So proud of you. Look at our babies. Just look at them.”
Zach was looking, and he was happy and relieved, but he wasn’t done yet. His belly was still big and swollen and it still ached. Weirdly, he felt like he needed to bear down again, too full, too heavy, as if he wasn’t done giving birth.
Which was impossible.
“Gosh, they’re so cute!” Kai gushed, letting go of Zach’s arm which flopped on the sofa, numb and shaking, to go look at the babies who were still attached to Zach through the cords.
So weird.
Weirder still... “Ooooh...”
“What is it?”
“I need to push. Oh... Oh, Val, I need to push!”
“What is this? Doc? Why does he need to push?”
“The afterbirth,” the doc said. “Has to be. It’s okay. Look, I’m almost there. It’s—”
The rest was lost in the static in Zach’s ears as something big, something suspiciously like a baby, moved down inside him, restarting the burn.
He moaned, letting his head fall back, reaching with one hand between his legs, needing to feel.
Feel his baby’s head as it crowned.
“Val! Val, look!” It was Kai, all excited.
“What is it?”
“He’s having another baby!”
“What? Oh, fucking hell! That’s awesome.”
Not so awesome right now, though, as Zach struggled to push, exhausted. Black spots swam in his eyes and his heart pounded as he bore down with a long groan.
“What’s going on?” the doc’s disembodied voice demanded to know.
“One more baby,” Val said, grinning like the wolf he was.
“A third baby? How did we miss that?”
“You tell us, doc. You’re the expert.”
“It’s never happened to me, although I know it happens sometimes. I’m entering the estate now, be there in a few minutes.”
A few minutes was the time it took Zach to yell and push with the last of his strength, then sob as the baby came out. There was the usual dance of checking the baby’s neck and encouraging words which he barely heard over the thrumming of blood rushing in his ears. Val settled behind him and help him up as he pushed again and it was a relief to lean into his alpha’s strength as he bore down, opening up once more.
Birthing the baby into Kai’s hands this time.
“I had wondered why your belly was so big,” his friend mused with a smile, cleaning the baby’s face with the hem of his shirt. “Three babies. Wow.”
The baby began to cry, probably voicing his agreement, and the other two babies, lying beside him, joined in.
A trio. Zach chuckled, his eyes closing. God, he was so tired. Another sob wracked him. Great, now he was laughing and crying and shaking like a leaf.
“Oh, babe...” Val kissed the top of his head. “They’re precious. And you’re just amazing. Rest now. Lean on me. You’ve done all the hard work.”
“But... the babies...”
“The babies are fine. The doc is coming to examine them and then you can hold them. Trust me. You need to catch your breath first.”
He did. His alpha understood him so well. With a sigh, he relaxed against Val’s chest. Tears ran down his cheeks, but everything was great. He could see their babies nestled between his legs, and could hardly believe they were out of him. He ached to hold them, but first, he had to get the shaking under control.
The door of the house banged open just then, and the doctor walked in, his hair windblown and a smile on his face. “Here I am, here I am!” he announced cheerily. “What did I miss? Kidding.”
Everyone groaned.
“All right. Great job, Zachary. And what a surprise you were hiding in that belly of yours. Right, right. Let’s check you all and cut these cords. Time to make these babies independent! How are you feeling?”
“He’s shaking,” Val answered for him. “I think he’s in shock.”
“Of course. Here.” He took off his coat and covered Zach. “Keep him warm while I check the babies, and then I’ll check him up.”
It all sounded good, and the warm coat took care of the shivers, so that Zach really relaxed for the first time since the pains had started that morning. “Glad you’re here, doc,” he whispered and dozed off, secure in his alpha’s arms.