Page 66 of His Unicorn Alpha
“Come watch,” Eric told me, and I was torn between holding Brandt’s hand and comforting him, and watching our firstborn enter the world.
Compromising, I kept hold of Brandt’s hand, but tugged it across the narrow, plastic mattress so I could lean around and— “Oh my god.” I was equal parts horrified and enraptured. It was a surreal sight to see a tiny head emerging from my mate’s body. Especially when it was out of an orifice which hadn’t existed until a couple of hours earlier.
I couldn’t tear my gaze away, squeezing Brandt’s hand as Eric coached him through delivering her shoulders. Then, all of a sudden, she was out, in Eric’s hands, taking her first breaths as she let out a warbling cry.
“Oh my god,” I repeated, hearing my own voice wobble. She was so tiny. Smaller than even Lena and Brandi’s babies had been. Like a delicate, porcelain doll…covered in blood and vernix and who knew what the hell else. But she was perfect.
“Congrats, guys, your eldest daughter is here,” Eric said, more for Brandt’s benefit than mine. “Micah, take off your shirt. Skin-to-skin contact is encouraged right now. Sit on the bed and hold her.”
He passed her to me after I was shirtless and helped me position her tiny frame in my far-too-gangly arms. I was convinced I would squish her or drop her.
“Say hi to Papa,” I heard myself say, turning my body and tilting forward so Brandt could see the perfection he had brought into the world. “You made this, sugar,” I told him as he rolled onto his side and reached out a hand to stroke over her soft newborn skin.
Tears blurred my vision watching him and I blinked, not knowing when I had started to cry.
“You’ve only got to do that twice more,” Eric told him, and he turned to level a scowl at his brother.
“You could not let me enjoy the reprieve from the contractions for even a minute, could you?”
Eric just rolled his eyes.
I snickered to myself and silently wondered if this girl in my arms would have the same kind of relationship with her sisters.
The first of the support nurses arrived midway through Brandt birthing our second daughter. The redhaired, human woman blinked in shocked surprise before she beamed brightly at us and scrubbed in, stepping to Eric’s side to help with the birth.
She earned major points for that, as far as I was concerned. Even though she scented as human, and seeing a man giving birth in the middle of rural Iowa must have thrown her for a loop, her professionalism and obvious joy to be a part of the moment instantly made her trustworthy to my alpha.
“And here’s Baby Two,” Eric beamed up at me, supporting our second daughter in his arms. She looked bigger than ourfirstborn, slightly plumper in the cheeks and belly, though still a scrawny-looking preemie, which was to be expected. The tuft of hair on her head was thicker and darker than the hair on the baby I was still cradling against my chest, and I smirked and leaned forward to kiss Brandt’s cheek.
“Baby Two is all you, sugar,” I told him. “So I told you so.”
My exhausted mate snorted and rolled onto his side again to watch as Eric transferred the baby to my other arm. As with our eldest, Brandt reached up and stroked his index finger down her flailing arm in greeting.
“Hello, precious,” he murmured, and I lost myself to tears again.
“Oh, that’s just too sweet,” the feminine voice startled both me and Brandt, and we looked to the nurse who cringed and held her hands in surrender. “Sorry. I’m so sorry. You’re just such a gorgeous family, you know?”
Brandt raised an eyebrow and looked at me in askance. I shrugged.
Eric chuckled. “You must be Tammy, right? Thanks for just jumping in.”
“It’s my pleasure,” she nodded. “And I am. Tammy, I mean. Hi.”
Her awkward wave and friendly smile only made her seem more endearing. She looked to be roughly my age, with thick red hair like Sage’s tied in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were bright blue, and she had a perfect hourglass figure. I imagined a number of the women in the town might feel threatened by her, if not for her easy smile and genuinely friendly personality. Or maybe even more so because of those things.
“If this is not the most awkward way to meet someone, I do not know what is,” Brandt muttered, then grimaced. “And I believe break time is over.”
Our third daughter came into the world far more quickly than her elder sisters. She was tiny —smaller than the others— and Eric and Tammy seemed to speed up as they worked to get her into an incubator before either Brandt or I could hold her.
My heart broke a little to see our tiny girl with oxygen tubes and a heart rate monitor and various other wires and tubes attached to her frail-looking body, but I knew that this was what was best for her.
With wobbly legs, Brandt climbed onto the bed and Eric guided him through passing the afterbirth while Tammy took our two other daughters and checked their oxygen levels and heart rates, then took their measurements, noting everything down before she smiled apologetically in my direction.
At the same time, with Brandt's labor ending, whatever magic had closed off the bond eased away, and I was able to feel his emotions again. I forced myself to pay attention to Tammy first.
“Their oxygen isn’t quite where it should be, so I think we should get them in their incubators as well. But I’ll defer to you, Doctor Weldman,” she added in Eric’s direction, and he shook his head.
“I trust your judgement on this. I don’t have as much neonatal experience.”
