An Heir for the Billionaire Werebears(15)

My werebears stood on either side of me as I swept around the unit, dodging women in wheelchairs, anxious fathers, busy nurses, and extra-busy doctors.

I followed the purple stripe around and around. The men were absolutely patient about it.

On the millionth round, my nurse looked at us and frowned.

"How fast are your contractions coming?"

"I don't feel anything."

"If you don't give birth naturally, we're going to have to induce labor. The risk of infection is too high. Let's hook you up and see what's going on in there."

I followed her back to my suite, and she had me lean back before she checked me.

"You're fully dilated," she said, confused. She hooked me up to a machine that counted my contractions. It spiked like crazy, as if my tummy was having a heart attack.

"Oh my god!" She rang some kind of emergency bell that brought nurses and doctors into my room on the double. "She's having a baby! Right now!"

There was a mad scramble around me to get everything in place. The doctor stood by. I didn't really feel anything still.

"Push," the doctor told me.

"Push," the nurse said.

"Push," everyone everywhere said. I pushed.

"The baby's crowning."

Xavier and Asher's faces were completely white.

With another hard push, the baby came out, covered in placenta. The nurse whisked my baby away to clean her up, and the doctor tested her Apgar score.

From the volume coming from her lungs, I knew that she was healthy.

I rested in my bed. The nurse brought my baby back into the room, and she put the baby at my breast. I had seen enough videos on how to nurse that I could help my baby latch on to me. The baby sucked at me until her little eyes drooped. While she nursed, the nurse asked me for the name. We had already agreed to put Asher’s name on the birth certificate. He was far more likely to be patient if he got called in the middle of a school day to pick up our little Celeste. She fell asleep quickly. I took her off of me and handed her to Asher.

"Look at her."

"She's the most perfect thing in the world," Asher said. There were tears on his cheeks. "She is so beautiful, just like her mother."

"Tiny, too." Xavier took the baby from Asher. "She's the size of my hand, almost. I'm going to take her to the nursery." He brought her to the nursery, where the nurses would take care of her in a little warm crib.

When the baby was gone, I cried. They were happy tears, because my newborn baby was the light of my life. But I was also terribly sad, because this meant that I wouldn't see Asher and Xavier every day anymore. I hadn't spent a full year in their house. I wouldn't be their live-in lover anymore. I was just the mother of their child, seeing them on alternate weekends. Xavier came back into my room.

"I guess I have to move out now," I said softly. "Most of my stuff is in here, but I still have some of my things in your house."

"Move out?" Asher asked, absolutely horrified.

"You're not moving out," Xavier said with absolute conviction. "No way."


"You can see the baby anytime you like," I offered. "You said that you would buy me my own house. That was part of the bargain. I was going back to school, remember?"

"No," Xavier said. "We have a new bargain. You live with us. You stay with us. From the first moment Asher met you, he knew you were our mate. And I knew it, too. I could smell it."

Asher was looking sheepish. "We knew you were pregnant again before you did."

"You did?" I blinked up at him. "Oh. You could smell it. Why didn't you tell me?"

"We wanted you to find out on your own. We weren't sure how you would react."

I felt like there was a sun rising behind my breastbone. "So you don't need me to move out?"

"No. Definitely not." Xavier kissed me. "You should be with us forever."

I liked the sound of that.

But then I heard an alarm go off.





Kidnapping





"What is it?"

Asher was out the door before I finished my sentence. I could hear his footsteps as he ran down the hallway. He was back in my room in a half minute, breathing hard from sprinting.

"Someone took a baby."

There was a terrible sense of foreboding in my chest. I knew which baby it would be.

"Son of a!" Xavier said. I was trying to break him of swearing before the baby came.

"I think it's Celeste," I said, crying.

"No," Xavier said. "It can't be, right? Where's the security in this place?"

Asher went out of the room. In another minute, he walked back into the room slowly. "Celeste is gone."

Xavier punched the wall.

"You're hurting your hand." I said numbly. "We have to find my baby."

"Our baby," Xavier said grimly. "Ours."

We knew who had taken her, but we had no idea where she had been taken. She was so helpless and vulnerable. Our baby had been safe and secure, but now she was taken by a shepherd to a hill where the wolves would eat her. Or bears.

"Find our baby," I said. "You have to find her."