Once Upon a Shifter (106 page)

"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."

Xavier was texting on his phone. "I already have a private investigator on it. The hospital has reported the kidnapping to the police."

"When did you notice the baby was gone?"

"When the alarm went off. She had been in the nursery for only a minute."

"And she, this Celeste, was just born, correct?"

"Yes," I confirmed, crying a little bit. I couldn't stop the tears from leaking from my eyes. "She was born less than 2 hours ago."

"Do you have anyone who would want to take the baby?"

"Jayce," Asher said like a curse word. "It had to have been Jayce."

"We played back the security tapes. It looks like it was a woman. Dark hair, looks a lot like her but older."

"My mom?" I said. My eyes widened. "Are you saying my mom stole my baby?"

"I'm not saying anything," the policeman said piously. "But we did make a printout."

He gave me a black and white still from the cameras. I felt everything drain from my face.

I turned over in bed and buried my face in my pillow.

"I guess that's a positive identification, then?"

"Yeah," Xavier said grimly. "I would say so."

The policeman must have picked up on the dangerous undercurrent in Xavier's voice. He was like a volcano about to explode, growling sub-vocally.

"We'll be in touch when we have more information."

They left us alone after Xavier growled at them.

I fell asleep. The birth and the kidnapped newborn were devastatingly tiring. I had a nightmare that my baby was gone, and I had to walk around an empty wasteland to find her. I went around and around and around, but I couldn't see her. I could hear her frantic screams. I knew she was there, and it hurt my heart to listen to her, knowing that she was being hurt, knowing that she was in pain. I eventually found her, like the Lindbergh baby, with a skull fracture. There was blood under her head, the precious, soft head that I had held in my arms for far too short of a time. I cried in my dream.

Crib

When I woke up, the first thing that I saw was a crib in my room. How could anybody be so cruel as to put a crib in my room when my baby was gone?

I heard a wail coming from inside of the crib.

"Oh!" I said. Little Celeste was in there, in a little onesie, under a precious pink blanket. She had a bow in her hair.

"How?"

I looked around, and Asher was dozing in a chair in the corner. His eyes came open.

"Oh, good! You're up."

"Where was the baby?"

He frowned. "It was your mom. Honestly, the security in the maternity ward is abysmal."

"My mom? I don't even talk to her."

"Yeah, I know. But Jayce knew that you were pregnant because he never saw you again."

"I thought that you guys were taking care of him after we found out what was in those pills."

Asher shook his head. "He said he had gotten them from someone else. While we had proof that the pills were to blame, we couldn't prove that he had made them or intended to hurt you."

"Oh. So he was still around."

"Was is the operative word."

"Did you kill him?"

I looked at Asher's eyes. He looked steadily back at me. “Oh." I knew the answer.

"The nurses let your mom in. She had your birth certificate and her ID to prove that she was your mom. No normal person would be that prepared, but she had been paid by Jayce to take the baby."

"Did she know that the baby was going to be killed?"

"No, he spun her a story that he had been in love with you and knocked you up. But then, apparently, the two of us stole you and trapped you in our house and this hospital."

"That's absurd. Don't you think that the nurses would notice if I had been kidnapped?”

"Your mom was too gullible. She wanted to believe him. He was throwing money at her, money to pay her rent and feed her alcoholism."

"Where's my mom? You didn't hurt her, did you?"

"She's in rehab. They're also putting her through grief counseling. She's not the first person to lose her spouse, you know."

I nodded. "I hope that we can have a relationship one day."

Asher sighed. "Maybe one day I can forgive her for nearly getting her granddaughter murdered."

He came to my bed.

"Kiss, please."

He kissed me, then he turned and put Celeste on my tummy.

I stared into her big eyes. "Are you hungry, precious? Mommy will feed you." I undid my gown so that she could latch. She sucked while staring into my eyes. I was happy to meet her when she was born, but I was even happier to have her back.

"No one will ever steal you again," I swore. "No one will ever hurt you."

Asher nodded. "She'll be the most protected child in Los Angeles. No, the world. We'll make sure that she is never harmed by anybody."

Home

The next day, the baby and I were in good enough condition to get out of the hospital. They insisted on wheeling me out, although I was perfectly capable of walking. I swore to myself that I would walk for an hour a day now. I had rolled around in bed so I didn't get bedsores, but it wasn't the same thing as being healthy and moving around.

The boys had set up a huge nursery for our baby. We had three nannies, one per 8-hour shift, but they barely had to lift a finger. I spent all my time with my baby, utterly entranced by her sweet little eyelashes and her rosebud mouth. While she was nursing, she needed me.

When she was 6 weeks old, I went back to work via telecommuting. I found that the managing director that the boys had found had completely run things in my absence. I turned everything over to her, and I relaxed completely. I spent my days playing with my little one. I was delighted when she was strong enough to roll over and hold her head up. She was a precocious little girl, getting stronger far faster than a human baby would.

One night, I woke up to a scream.

Terrified that someone had stolen her, I ran to the nursery. There was a baby bear cub in her crib.

I guessed that the boys hadn't told the nannies what kind of household this was.

"Shh, it's ok," I said. We were going to have to send her to counseling.

Xavier and Asher came in.

"Wow! This is early for this kind of thing." Asher picked up our little cub and cuddled her, rubbing her tummy. She snarled at him, showing her little teeth. Instead of the few teeth that she should have had as a human baby, she had a full set of teeth.

For the first time, I saw my bear-mates shift. It was instantaneous. One moment, they were hot men, billionaires in Zegna suits. The next, the suits were shredded, and there were two enormous bears in the nursery.

The nanny fainted quietly in the corner. We would be paying a lot for her therapy.

The little baby cub, now on the ground, scampered through the house. Someone had opened the door to our back patio, and she ran out there. If she were a human baby, I would be terrified for her on the stairs. She wasn't strong enough.

As a bear cub, she confidently trotted down the steps and headed for a swim in the outdoor pool, which was bigger than the indoor one.

My heart was in my mouth as I watched her paddle around in there, and her fathers joined her, splashing around, having fun. I knew they would keep her from drowning.

This was not the kind of family scene I had never imagined for myself, but I was happy. I had a healthy baby and two loving fathers. Our family was safe and secure.

THE END

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