Sean pulled himself to consciousness as if from a long distance.

There’s something important I need to do.

But first I need to get this ... thing ... off my stomach. Is it a werewolf? Is there a werewolf sitting on my stomach?

Whatever it was pushed down as hard as it could, and Sean came completely awake, screaming.

“Hold him down,” he heard Carlotta command, and suddenly four Drelos guardsmen had his limbs in vice grips while a contraction wracked his body and Carlotta stood on the bed above him, weaving a spell that flared out from her hands in blue and red light.

“Mihai,” Sean screamed. “What’s going on?”

The next thing he knew, Mihai’s giant wolf form was on the bed, too, his legs splayed out so he could stand crouched over Sean, growling menacingly at Carlotta.

In a distant part of his mind, Sean noted that this stance meant Mihai’s enormous lupine testicles were dangling in front of Sean’s face, just tickling his chin.

I wonder what he’d do if I licked them? he thought idly, though he’d never actually considered having sex with Mihai’s wolf form. In his delirium, though, he almost giggled at the thought. Until another contraction ripped through him, and he had no more time for thought.

When he could think again, he heard Carlotta speaking calmly. “If you don’t move, I won’t be able to do my work, and your omega will die.”

Mihai gave another growl, but he moved.

Why is he in his wolf form, anyway?

Sean couldn’t even muster the energy to ask.

“He’s still awake,” one of the guards said, his tone horrified.

Carlotta moved up to stand by the head of the bed and spoke to him directly. “It looks like one of your babies is a shifter,” she said. “Or maybe more than one—we’re not sure—but anyway, a claw seems to have torn through part of your uterus.”

“I know when it happened.”

Carlotta nodded. “The shock seems to have sent you into early labor. It would’ve been easier if you’d merely had one or the other—either the early labor or the ruptured uterus. As it is, however, I’m trying to balance the problems that will come with your babies being born early against kinds of problems we are likely to run into if we tried to maintain the pregnancy and heal your uterus at the same time.”

“Can a ruptured uterus be healed?” Sean asked, gasping with pain.

“Magically, yes. Sometimes.”

“What happens if we try to maintain pregnancy?”

“Your uterus might heal, it might not. If get the babies out, we might be able to save your ability to have more children. If we keep them in, that becomes much less likely.”

Sean nodded, feeling much more sober and clearheaded than he had even a few moments before. “What are the dangers to the babies in both cases?”

“Trying to keep them in when you’re in labor is tricky. But they’re currently premature. If we let them be born now and we’re unlucky, one or more of them won’t have the lung capacity to breathe.”

Another contraction tore through him, and it was several moments before Sean could breathe easily again.

“Is there anything we can do magically to help the babies survive?” The question came from Mihai, who had shifted into his human form and stood naked beside Sean, his hand on his omega’s shoulder.

“There are benefits and drawbacks to all our options,” Carlotta said.

“Save Sean.” Mihai’s voice was definite, determined.

“But the babies,” Sean began.

“I’ll do my best to save them, too.” Carlotta was firm, but it was clear she agreed with Mihai.

Sean began crying, tears running silently down his cheeks. Mihai brushed the tears away. “I cannot lose you,” the alpha said.

“I don’t think I can lose our babies,” Sean said.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen.” Mihai squeezed Sean’s hand.

The next few hours were a blur of agony. Carlotta’s spells helped limit a little of the pain, but the spells were designed for regular childbirth, not for the agonizing rip through his uterus that happened every time a contraction hit.

“I had hoped to avoid this,” Carlotta muttered after several hours.

“Avoid what?” Mihai demanded immediately.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut the babies out. I really didn’t want this to happen. I was hoping you’d be able to have natural childbirth. But I’m afraid the baby who caused the tear in the first place is beginning to move toward the uterine wall again. I don’t want his claws to hook into the uterus again.”

She opened up a spell above Sean’s belly that showed the babies inside the womb. They were still largely a tumble of limbs and heads, but one of them stood out. He was already in Wolf form and he was, indeed, moving closer to the dark, bleeding area off to one side of the image.

“Do whatever you need to,” Mihai said, his tone more authoritative than Sean had ever heard it before.

That’s why my lover is the alpha.

***

WATCHING CARLOTTA CUT the babies out of Sean was perhaps the worst moment of Mihai’s life.

When he told Carlotta to do whatever was necessary to save Sean’s life, it felt like the right move — the alpha move.

But he hadn’t counted on how tiny the infants would be.

As Carlotta had predicted, there were four of them, three in human shape, and one in wolf form.

The thought flitted across Mihai’s mind that if Sean died, he didn’t know how he would ever forgive the baby for its role in the Omega’s death.

But he shoved that idea out of his mind.

He would do whatever he needed to in order to take care of whoever survived. And in the meantime, he would ignore the nausea that roiled up in him at the thought of any of them dying.

The midwife’s assistant, who had stayed with Sean and kept him alive while Mihai had gone to fetch Carlotta, quickly enlisted several housemates to help with the newborns.

Mihai watched for a moment as he cleared the nose and throat of each of the newborns and wrapped their tiny, premature bodies in blankets that had been warmed by the fire.

The assistant midwife didn’t have as much magic at his disposal as Carlotta, but he had learned some. He created tiny bubbles of air around the babies and set them pulsing. “It’ll keep their lungs going for a while,” he explained to Mihai. “Right now, warmth and air are the most important things we can offer. We’ll get to food soon. But for now, this will do.” He settled four housemaids down by the fire to watch over the babies. “Make sure they keep breathing. Call me if anything goes wrong.”

Part of Mihai felt he should stay close to the infants. But he couldn’t bring himself to leave Sean for long.

Carlotta had cast a spell to render the omega unconscious when she had sliced open his abdomen. “That’s a new spell,” she had said. “I’ve done this operation without it. Never again.”

Mihai saw why, too. The operation was bloody and would definitely be painful for the omega.

By the time Mihai got back over to the bed from checking on the infants, Carlotta was in the process of closing Sean back up. Her face was drawn and sweat rolled down either side. But her hands were steady as she directed the spell that followed along the wound behind the sutures.

“The magic works much like cauterizing the wound,” she explained. Mihai had figured out early on in the evening that Carlotta drew comfort from narrating her work. She was a natural-born teacher. Mihai had no real desire to learn the healer’s craft, but he was happy enough to listen if it helped her work.

“I think I have found all the torn blood vessels and closed them off. We managed to drain the fluid that had collected in your omega’s abdomen. It’s going to be a long, hard recovery, but I think he will not only live, but there’s a good chance he’ll be able to have more children eventually.”

Mihai wanted to throw his arms around her, but she was still finishing off the spell, so he contented himself with a simple, “Thank you.”

Carlotta nodded, but with a look that suggested she heard all the things he hadn’t said.

His mate was going to live.

And our children are all going to live, too, if I have anything to do with it, he thought fiercely.

Tears sprang into his eyes. And suddenly, the former alpha of Phaeron’s pack—the double alpha who had saved his pack from the evil vampire and won the right to free his people and woo his omega—sat down in the middle of the floral carpet with its drying, tacky bloodstain, wrapped his arms around his legs, put his forehead down on his knees, and wept.