Page 65 of His Unicorn Alpha
Simultaneously, Eric said, “Potentially.”
“How?” I asked.
Eric grinned, clearly happy to have a captive audience for a medical lecture. “Well, sex can induce labor due to a number of reasons, including the hormones released during orgasm, and the lipid compounds in semen can—”
“Aaargh,” Brandt interrupted, his fists gripping the sheets so tightly that his knuckles turned white, “could you perhaps focus on your patient, brother?”
“You’re grumpy when you’re in pain, Bee,” Eric’s reply was blithe.
Brandt growled. “I am going to shift and eat you.”
“Then who will deliver your babies?”
Brandt panted and whined, widening his stance. “M-Micah could do it,” he said with a confidence I definitely didn’t agree with. “He is my a-alp-fuck!”
Inside me, my horse whined and stamped his hooves uneasily. I was right there with him. Seeing our mate in so much discomfort was unbearable.
“He is my alpha,” Brandt continued, as if he hadn’t just been close to giving me an aneurism with how much pain he was in, “and instinct would guide —oh, Gods, fuck— I need to push.”
Eric smirked. “The magic words,” he declared, then dropped to his knees behind Brandt, who was still braced over the lowered hospital bed. He lowered it further still. “Let’s get this party started, hmm?”
“I am going to destroy you,” Brandt muttered at him.
“Yeah, well, before you do…could you move back a little and bend your knees. More of a squat…that’s it, good.” Eric looked up at me, as if sensing how completely useless I felt. “I need you to stay close in case you have to hand me supplies, but rub his back and hold his hands…whatever he needs you to do to get through this, okay?”
I just nodded.
My mate gripped my hand as soon as I offered it to him, and I used my other hand to continue to rub his back and his shoulders while he panted and whined. Eric told him to push when the next contraction crested, and he grunted and growled, squeezing my fingers as he followed the instruction.
“That’s it,” Eric encouraged him, positioned awkwardly where Brandt was squatting so he could keep an eye where it needed to be, “just like that on the next one, too.”
I was surprised when Brandt chose this as his preferred birthing position, having assumed it would be just like in the movies, with the laboring partner reclining on a hospital bed. But he had explained that this was preferable because gravitywould work with the babies, not against them, and with three to push out…well, it made more sense to take every advantage he could get.
Still, it didn’t look like the easiest position for Eric to be in, having to watch from an awkward, crouched position on the ground, with a mirror on the floor between Brandt’s spread feet for additional guidance.
Eric didn’t complain, though. For all that he and Brandt (and Sage, when he was around), argued and stirred each other up, they loved and supported each other. This was just another example of that. Eric encouraged Brandt and praised him for every contraction and every push, even while Brandt bitched at him to stop being so patronizing. He just chuckled and kept at it, and I backed him up.
“You’re doing so good, sugar,” I murmured, pressing a kiss to the top of Brandt’s sweaty head. “You’re so strong, and we’re going to meet our girls soon because of you.”
“Uuugggghh,” he groaned, “itburns. I cannot…oh God, it’s too much.”
“Baby One is crowning, Bee,” Eric said, “that’s why it’s burning. This is the hard part. Push as hard as you can on the next contraction, okay?”
Brandt let out a strangled sob and shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Youcan,” I insisted, squeezing his hand. “You’re a fuckingdragon, baby. You can do anything.”
He yowled, not having the time to offer any kind of argument to my words before the next contraction built and crested. “Push, Bran,” I urged. “You’ve got this, and I’ve got you.”
“Almost there,” Eric added. “The next one will do it.”
Brandt was shaking his head in denial, and it broke something inside me to see tears rolling down his cheeks. “It’s too much. Too—” He cut himself off with a sound that was somewherebetween a scream and a growl, then he slumped forward, his shoulders going lax.
At the same time, Eric declared, “Head’s out.” He looked up at me and smiled. “I think she looks like you.”
“Of course she does,” Brandt sighed. “I do all the work and she comes out looking like him.”
“She’s one of three,” I reminded him, glad that his humor seemed to be returning to him, “you might have the dominant genes in the other two.”
