Chapter 22: Three Cries

Bram's POV

She went into labor at two in the morning in the dead of winter, in a snowstorm, with the road to Marrow Creek closed.

I woke because she'd put her hand on my chest and said, very calmly, "Bram, I think you should call everyone."

I was out of bed before I understood the sentence.

"Is it time?"

"It's been time for an hour. I didn't want to wake you."

"An hour?"

"You were snoring." She breathed in through her nose and gripped the headboard. "Now would be good."

I called everyone.

Burke got the generator started.

Addie came up the back stairs in her bathrobe with a bag of towels and a thermos, swearing steadily in a low voice.

The healer arrived in ten minutes, snow in her hair, and shut the bedroom door in my face.

I opened it.

"Out," she said.

"No."

"Alpha, I have delivered four hundred pups, and not one of those fathers has been of any use."

"No," Linnea said, from the bed. "Let him stay. I want him where I can yell at him."

The healer looked at me for a long moment, and stepped aside.

The next five hours were the longest I've lived.

I held her shoulders and her hand and the cold cloth, and I took every insult she had.

"You did this," she said.