Chapter Twenty-Two

Sheldon

Ten minutes later, we all stared at the screen again. The baby didn’t look any different than before, but somehow, he’d twisted himself around to be upside down.

“Is that normal?” I asked, trying not to shout because Travis’s trembling hands covered my ears.

“For a baby wanting to be born, yes, very normal,” Dara nodded.

“Isn’t it too soon?” Travis asked.

“I’m not going to lie. This is sooner than I expected. He’s a bit smaller than the average pup, but he’s developed enough that he’d be okay, technically.”

The examination room door swung open, but instead of seeing one of Travis’s dads in the doorway, it was my mother. My heart leapt into my throat. If Dara told someone to call her this was a bigger emergency than I thought. My heart skipped a beat and lodged itself up into my throat. She glanced at me but cut across the room to the monitor. She stared at it for a long time. Her thoughts danced across our family link in a long line of numbers calculating themselves in circles. Her scent turned from concern to relief in under a minute.

“May I ask what you see?” Dara asked, careful to keep his tone level.

“This has happened before,” Mom said. “We have a few vampires in the coven who have true-mates who are shifters. It’s a well-kept secret. Most of them are alphas with omega shifters for mates, but it’s not always that way. Our babies aren’t huge. We have enough elf in our genetics that sometimes our babies are the sort you can safely tuck away while you in theory hunt through the trees. It’s more common when the carrier is an omega of our line.”

“So, no emergency, just ignorance on the part of the doctor?” Dara asked, flashing the room a half-smile.

“Not ignorance. You can’t know what we’ve never told anyone,” Mom said, still looking at the screen.

“I didn’t even know the shifter part of the equation,” I said, glancing up at Travis.

His hands stopped trembling and he leaned down to kiss my forehead.

“Not everyone does,” Mom said. “It doesn’t happen often these days.”

“So, we prepare the delivery room?” Dara asked.

“That would be best,” Mom nodded. “It’s nearly time. Also, bloodshakes.”

***

Labor was nothing like I expected it to be or maybe I didn’t remember much of it in hindsight. I climbed into a warm bathtub with Travis and drank a lot of blood from him and shakes. I might’ve bitten Dara once too, but I’m choosing to say that part was blurry. Days and nights might’ve passed while I was in the birthing pool with the lights dimmed and everyone focused on me.

“Have you guys discussed a name?” Mom asked somewhere along the way.

“Some,” I grunted at her as she poked at my mouth with a straw trying to get me to drink a bloodshake. “But I think we should name him Trident.”

“Huh?” Travis asked from behind me.

“If Cardian can name his baby after a shield, why can’t I name ours after something too. It sorta sounds like our names put together,” I said, my voice pitching up as another wave of pain crashed into me.

“What about Traldon?” Mom offered and Travis sighed in relief.

“Traldon,” I rolled the name around my tongue before taking another sip of the banana flavored bloodshake.

“I like it,” Travis whispered from behind me.

Traldon it was, but I put Trident in the back of my mind for our next kid. I wasn’t a mermaid but there was something about the name that stuck with me.

“Maybe we can get a dog and name him Trident,” Travis offered, picking up my thoughts over our mating link.

“Okay, but if we get a dog, I want a really big one,” I grunted.

Then the pain swept me away. Dara and my mom talked about centimeters and ounces of blood. I bit Duke because he sat on the side of the tub and smelled like food. I expected his mate to run through and tell me to leave him alone, but no one complained.

“We don’t want a repeat of what Terrick did for Scott,” Duke said. “He kept giving and staying tired.”

“Thanks, Duke,” Terrick said, leaning his chin on his cousin’s shoulder for a microsecond.

Then I lost the world again and sometime later a squall broke through the fog of pain and pushing.

“Traldon!” I panted and Dara placed our tiny little baby in my arms a second later.

He had a mop of red hair and big brown eyes.

“He’s a ginger like you,” someone said from across the room.

Somewhere along the way, Travis’s parents had arrived too. Everyone was there, but I only had eyes for the tiny baby boy in my arms with his red hair and pointed ears. Travis still had his big strong arms wrapped around me.

“Traldon,” I whispered his name to him and counted all his fingers and toes before placing a soft kiss on his tiny forehead.

“He’s perfect,” Travis whispered behind me. “He’s so perfect and you did so well. I’ve never seen a baby so small.”

“I have,” my mom said, leaning over for a look at him. “I’d take a photo to show everyone back at the stronghold but he doesn’t have his day eyes yet.”

“How can one tell?” Dara asked.

“He’s squinting. He’ll need a few weeks to adjust and gain them. He will, because his parents are night sleepers, but it’ll just take a bit of time.”

“Can I take him home now?” I asked, trying to stand up only to find my legs jelly.

“We need him here a bit longer,” Dara chuckled, but Travis helped me stand up anyway.

“Careful,” Mom said. “You’re still riding out the happy hormones, Sheddy.”

“We can get them cleaned up and give him something once we get him in bed.”

“I want to ride these hormones forever then,” I said, cradling Traldon to my chest. “He’s perfect.”

“I love you,” Travis said, “but maybe we should get you a wheelchair. He’s so tiny.”

“Okay, push me around,” I laughed, “but first I want a kiss.”

“He’s blood drunk, guys,” Duke laughed.

“No, I’m love drunk,” I smirked, “and I wasn’t asking you for a kiss, by the way.”

A moment later, I was in a wheelchair still holding our baby. Travis kissed my forehead. Blood drunk or love drunk or high on my own brain chemicals, it didn’t matter. I was the happiest vampire to ever live even if the clinic was one of the noisiest places I was ever forced to stay at.

Read on to find out who else Travis’s mysterious worry is taking a toll on.

Hello!

I wanted to drop a note here, first, to thank you all for reading this book and the previous ones in the series and maybe my other series too. I feel so lucky that I get to write stories and share worlds with every reader who picks up one of my books. Each one opens up a little more of the Hemlock Universe and I always look forward to finding out what’s out there. Sometimes I know exactly what I’ll find, but other things surprise even me.

I also want to extend a special thank you to everyone who has continued to support me since my father passed away on 3/3/24. Day-to-day life is slowly getting back to normal, but some days are still surreal.

Some housekeeping notes:

1)Yes, everyone will in a few books (give or take) find out who Travis is worried about.

2)No, we haven’t heard the last about the spirit animals in Heartville.

3)Sergei’s parents will have a resolution at some point. I know their call to action for sure and this is probably coming very soon-ish.

4)This one was new to me, but a few readers have asked questions that I’d love to answer in slice of life stories. I’m happy to say that two of these are now live on Amazon (Fall with Me and The Impossible Week). The next two or three of these will probably be released over the summer.

5)We have family trees! Really – trees in the plural! Thanks to the awesome Riley Morgan! Thank you so much!

6)So many of you have asked what I’m going to do about (if anything) some of Xenos’s and Barry’s kids – especially the ones bound to be shamans and the like. Honestly, I have a whole series that stars one of them at the heart – that I could write. Hell, I might even actually write it at some point, but I can only write one series at a time. I’ve tried alternating before and it ended with The Hemlock Fairytales Series ending just because I couldn’t keep a hold on both strings for long. I don’t want to do that again. I also just follow the characters. So, I can’t really make a promise it’ll be the next series I write either. I’m sure more of their kids will wind in and out of this series, but I’m just not willing to promise anything I’m not sure of.

7)I’m getting questions about the Starscales! I want to and I think I know how I will do this. This is probably coming soon-ish too.

8)Someone recently asked me why I hyphenated true-mate. When I first started writing my first book, I thought the words true and mate just looked a little separated and needed tied together because of what their joint meaning was. So it became the way everyone in the Hemlock Universe wrote it.

Happy Reading Loads of Love!!

XOXO

~Maggie