Page 61 of Truth or Lie

As we’d dreamed, the forest outside echoed with the sound of youngsters at play. Matthew and Kristen had been born four years ago, only a couple of months after we’d finalized the purchase of the property and moved in. Kristen had Flynn’s unmistakable looks, as well as his stubbornness. Matthew had Alex’s green eyes and a hint of red highlights in his dark brown hair. Between them, they’d filled our lives with love and hope for the future.

The overwhelming need to push washed through me, even as my muscles screamed in exhausted protest. I squeezed my eyes shut and bore down, an undignified, high-pitched shriek escaping my throat as things down below stretched past their limits.

I knew that feeling. It was happening—I was pushing the first of our new arrivals out into the world.

“Looking good, Leona,” said the midwife. “Just one more push.”

Shaking, I clung to the hands holding mine and leaned against Alex’s steady strength.

“Almost there,ma cocotte,” she whispered.

I rallied for a final push, feeling the weight of our new pup slip free, into the midwife’s waiting hands. A weak cry came a moment later, followed by a momentary pause, and then a much stronger wail.

“It’s a girl,” the midwife reported wryly. “And I’m happy to report that she apparently has lungs.”

Kam kissed my temple and let go of my hand, taking the little girl in his arms so the midwife could cut the cord. I blinked sweat out of my eyes and looked down at the tiny, scrunched face with something like awe.

“She’s beautiful, Pumpkin,” my mother crooned, reaching down with her free hand to stroke the downy head. “Do you have a name picked out?”

“Natasha,” I said. “She looks like a Natasha, don’t you think?”

A single, damp golden curl proclaimed her likely sire.

“Jax will be thrilled,” Kam said. “I wonder if she got the blue eyes, too?”

I started to answer, but broke off with a groan when a new contraction hit.

“Here we go again,” said the midwife. “Be glad you’re not a purebred, or you might have ended up with two or three more left in the chute.”

“Have I mentioned that I hate everyone in this room except my mom and my new daughter?” I managed, before the business of delivering Natasha’s littermate demanded my full attention.

* * *

Thirty minutes later, I lay exhausted in a nest of cushions, with baby Dana cradled in my arms. I had two tiny new girl pups, and the contented hum of the pack-bond thrummed in my mind.

Kam sat next to me with his back propped against the front of the overstuffed sectional sofa that surrounded the sunken nest. He’d unbuttoned his shirt, and was trying to get Natasha latched onto a nipple. Dana was already suckling greedily at my left breast.

“There you go, little one,” he said, as Natasha finally stopped fussing and started feeding. “Good to know all that time spent in the lactation consultant’s office wasn’t totally wasted.”

Kam had spent the last six months on a hormone and galactagogue regimen to induce lactation, and he had quite a bit to say on the subject of breast pumps these days. He’d been on omega hormone replacement therapy for almost five years now, his body restored to as close to what it might have been as modern medicine could manage.

The beard he’d been so proud of was long gone, and some of the muscle definition he’d worked so hard to maintain was now hidden under a sleek layer of fat. After a considerable amount of research and discussion, he’d opted not to seek reconstructive surgery on his scarred and sealed birthing passage, choosing instead to maintain his existing sexual function, such as it was. The hormones helped, and so did the huge reduction of stress in our lives since the new civil rights laws had gone into effect. The near-constant dark circles were gone from beneath Kam’s soulful brown eyes, and his shoulders were no longer knotted with long-held tension.

His presence had ghosted its way into the mating bond a few weeks after he started the hormone regimen. Gone were the days when his connection with us faded following my heat cycles. The five of us were together as we were meant to be—bound in mind, body, and soul.

I’d been the one to prod Kam into seeing the lactation consultant. Even male betas could produce milk with the help of the right drugs. It was considerably more straightforward for an omega. I figured there was no reason why Kam couldn’t share the burden of nursing twins this time around. I’d still have to do the bulk of the feeding for the first couple of weeks, since I was the only one producing colostrum. But after that, it would free me up to return to work without the need to rely so heavily on bottles.

It was purely practical, obviously—and had nothing to do with my desire to see Kam with a pup to his chest and love shining from his eyes like a beacon. Nothing at all.

Alex was busy guarding the nest from threats that didn’t exist, her green eyes intermittently straying to us with the same dazed,how-is-this-reallook that I saw on the others’ faces from time to time. I could relate. The world beyond our little oasis of peace was far from perfect, or even safe. There were still vocal proponents for beta supremacy and alphomic suppression—the difference was, they were the illegal ones now... not us.

Our cozy pack house in the woods had security cameras and tall fences surrounding it. I still woke sometimes in the middle of the night, convinced that a SWAT team was at the door. But none of us were willing to let the past overshadow the present... or the future. We were mated. We had beautiful pups. We’d helped shaped a world that was better than it had been five years ago.

It was enough. Better than enough, it was more than any of us had dared dream.

I felt Jax and Flynn’s approach through the bond, and sent a pulse of wordless welcome. The door to the nest creaked open, and our other two mates slipped in, with Krissy and Matt clinging to them like limpets. My father followed a second later.

“Hello,” I said. “Come and meet the new family members.”

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