Chapter 30

Chapter 30

I see a spider…filaments of blue. Death. Light. Anarchy. Order. Screams. Peace. I can't untangle it. Two different timelines melded into one. It doesn't make any sense.

—Faith NightStar (Cardinal F-Psy, DarkRiver) to Anthony Kyriakus of the PsyClan NightStar (12 November 2083)

AUDEN WOKE WITH her brain fuzzy. Panic stuttered in the back of her mind. Was she regressing? Going back to who she'd been before the pregnancy? Had she lost more time? Who had she been—

My baby!

A deluge of memory, of pain, visceral and stabbing, that had turned into rolling waves of agony. Her child's fear, the scent of blood in the air, a leopard's gold-green eyes looking into hers as he growled at her that she had this, that her cub would be just fine.

She couldn't feel her baby inside her anymore, and when she managed to move her hand to her abdomen, it didn't feel right. Too small. Not hard enough.

A delicate psychic light, a bond unbreakable.

Her child was alive, but where? Had her family taken her? Please. Please.

Her breath coming in pants, she struggled to open her eyes.

"You're all right, sweetheart." The touch of a hand on hers that felt gentle.

An empath?

"There you go, your vital signs are stabilizing. Don't force it, just let yourself come out of it naturally. You didn't put yourself under so whatever you feel when you come out of that, this'll be different. You lost a lot of blood—your body shut down."

She'd understood all those words, she realized, and she wasn't fading into a heavier fuzziness but coming out into clarity. Her eyes opened on that thought—and she found herself looking into the face of a man with smile lines at the corners of his eyes and sandy hair that fell over his forehead.

"My baby." It came out a rasp at the same time that she remembered the man's name: Finn . His name was Finn, and he was one of Remi's people.

Remi, who'd promised her that no one would steal her baby.

"In the incubator," Finn said with a smile. "I'll wheel it over so you can see her. She's tiny but perfect. Strong little lungs, too. Just needs a bit of extra help keeping her body temperature stable—you can still give her cuddles, but we'll have to time it."

He vanished on that, but she soon heard the sound of wheels on a hard floor. Turning in that direction, she watched as the clear box of what appeared to be a state-of-the-art incubator neared her bed.

Her eyes teared up. Her little girl was so small, so fragile. "Is she—"

"Totally fine," the healer assured her. "Enough weeks on her that she was out of the danger zone as soon as I got her over the shock of the birth."

After locking the incubator's wheels, he helped Auden struggle up into a seated position, then—with infinite care—removed her baby from the incubator—and from the wires that went out from her tiny body. "Skin-to-skin contact is the best, especially as you won't be able to hold her for long until she graduates from the incubator."

Not caring about her modesty, only about her baby, she undid the strings of her loose hospital smock from around her neck, and lowered it off her arms and down her chest. Finn kept his eyes gently averted as he handed Auden her precious baby.

So small and fragile, her eyes closed and her skin delicate beyond bearing, her baby nonetheless curled her hands against her heart and Auden heard a whispered sigh in her mind. "I have you. I'm so sorry it took this long, my baby." Tears streaked down Auden's face. "I won't let anyone hurt you."

She was barely aware of Finn throwing a soft blanket or shawl around her shoulders that she tugged to wrap around herself and her child. "Mama will never ever let you go." She pressed the softest of kisses on her baby's head, which was covered in a tiny knitted cap. Under her hand, she wore a diaper of the same tiny proportions.

Auden didn't know what color her eyes were. Might be blue like her own, or brown like those of the male genetic donor. Her skin was far paler than Auden's, which wasn't a huge surprise. The paternal donor's skin had been on the other end of the spectrum to Auden's. But…She frowned, checked her baby's body, and saw not a single hint of the level of melanin in her own skin.

Her baby's skin was the color Auden's mother's had been—a creamy white.

Odd genetics , she told herself, thinking of an article she'd seen once where a set of twins had come out divided when it came to skin tones, one with skin of ebony, the other with skin of white. As if each parent's genes had chosen a child in the womb.

None of it mattered, Auden's love for her child a fierce beat in her soul.

She wanted to see if her girl had tiny black curls or if she'd been born with mere wisps, but she didn't want her head to get cold, so she left it for now. Something to discover another day.

Today, she just inhaled the sweet, innocent smell of this child she had no memory of conceiving and who she loved beyond compare, and she hugged her close and she listened to her near-imperceptible breathing— and her murmurings inside Auden's mind. Even so young, her voice was crystalline.

Her baby was a strong, very strong, telepath.

And she loved being cuddled by her mama.

Auden could feel that deep within.

Finn didn't disturb her as she rocked her baby, wishing she could keep her close always. But time passed all too soon, that tiny body and mind too young to be out of the womb, and she didn't argue when Finn came to put her back in the incubator.

"We can do another session later in the day," he told her, as she fixed up her smock. "I don't know about Psy, but changelings believe skin-to-skin contact to be critical for newborns."

Auden nodded. "Yes, even under Silence, physical contact with babies was deemed necessary." Apparently, her race had tried it the other way, and ended up with psychologically damaged children.

"See here." Finn pointed out a circular section on the clear case of the incubator, then pushed in. His hand went through. "It's so you can continue to stroke her while she's in there. It won't affect the warmth."

"Oh, I'm so glad. I don't want her to feel lonely." She used the backs of her hands to wipe her face. "Was she alone while—"

"No, sweetheart." A reassuring smile as he finished hooking her baby back to the tubes and wires and closed the door of the incubator. "Tammy—another healer—and I took turns placing her against your skin so she could feel your heartbeat. And I hope you don't mind, but we let Remi hold her a few times. Cub seems to calm when he's around—alphas often have that effect."

"No, I don't mind." Remi was the reason her baby was alive. "Thank you for everything, Finn." Her heart overflowed with emotion for this kind, gentle man who was very much a healer to the core. Not once in his presence had she felt embarrassed or ashamed or anything but cared for.

"Just doing my job," he said. "Talking of which, we stopped the bleeding and fixed the problem that was causing it. Unexpected but positive end result is that you're in far better shape than most women after childbirth—thanks to an injection of medical nanos. You might feel a little weak, but the actual physical damage from the birth is ninety percent fixed. A couple more days and the process will be complete."

Auden had been wondering about the lack of pain. But more importantly—"Medical nanotech is hard to acquire and extremely expensive." And RainFire was a young pack with limited resources; it was clear they had connections who could gain them access to the nanos, but the purchase must've blown their entire medical budget.

It also meant that whatever had happened to her body, it must've been close to catastrophic. Medical nanotech—the new-generation kind at least, the type that could achieve this level of healing—wasn't broken out for anything less. Nanos of this complexity also had to be programmed for the specific patient and injury, and med-nano programmers weren't exactly thick on the ground.

A soft shake of the head. "Don't worry about that, Auden. Just worry about regaining your strength."

Auden dropped the subject, but while there was no way she could repay RainFire for the precious gift of saving her child, she would ensure their medical supplies and budget were topped back up. No member of RainFire would suffer because the pack had a heart huge enough to help a stranger. "You're a miracle worker."

"Hardly." He laughed, eyes crinkling. "Had a whole team in here—including a Psy surgeon with an ego the size of Mars. Surgeons, right? I've got literal decades more experience in obstetrics, and he kept on poking in his nose with advice, but man did pass on a bit of cutting-edge knowledge and help source the nanos, so I can't complain too much."

Auden had so many questions—about the surgeon, about the teleporters, about how a tiny pack in the middle of nowhere had such powerful friends, but her heart was too awash in wonder that she'd birthed this baby so tiny and beautiful to ask any of them.

"Your milk hasn't come in yet," Finn continued. "Might take a few days to kick in—happens that way with premature births at times. If you'd prefer she use the bottle throughout, we're all set up for that, too. Whatever it takes to keep her healthy and happy."

Auden's heart filled and overflowed with hope and joy at the idea of nourishing her child in such a profound way. "It wasn't allowed under Silence," she whispered. "Too intimate, too high a chance of an emotional bond. In my family, mothers don't feed their children at all, regardless of how—that task is delegated to professional carers."

While other races had created drugs to help women who wished to breastfeed their baby but couldn't, the Psy had created a drug to stop the flow of milk. Dr.Verhoeven had told Auden about it, said it would be part of her post-natal care.

"No one here will force your choice either way," Finn said in that calm voice of his that was as peaceful as water lapping on a placid lake. "But don't be hard on yourself if you decide to breastfeed and your milk takes a while, or if your baby doesn't latch at once—every woman and every baby is different."

Auden nodded, the move jagged. "I'm just happy she's all right. If I get to experience that with her, it'd be wonderful, but I'm so full of joy right now that I can't imagine how I could want more."

Finn smiled. "Someone wants to see you. You feeling up to it?"

Her heart stuttered in a way it had no business doing. "Yes." Only after the healer had gone to the door did she realize her face was a wet mess.

It didn't matter.

Because her child was alive, and she slept with a tiny baby smile on her face right next to Auden's bed.

···

REMI wanted to strangle Finn when the other man finally opened the door and waved him in. At the same time, he wanted to hug Finn and never let go. Because keeping Remi out? That had been the act of a healer who put his patient first, above everything.

"She'll need time alone with her cub," he'd said in a stern tone when he'd alerted Remi that Auden's readings were looking like she might wake today. "Don't come lumbering in like you're a bear and not a cat. Give her that moment she didn't get at birth. Give her the privacy to just be with her child."

That was why Finn was such a damn good healer: when it came to his patients, he had zero fucks to give as to the opinions and desires of others—even when that other was his alpha. "How is she?" Remi asked, his leopard clawing at his skin.

"Good. Told you she was strong." Finn's expression was grim. "I haven't spoken to her about the other thing yet."

Remi clenched his beard-shadowed jaw. Finn had been caught between a rock and a hard place when he'd discovered something about Auden and her child during the scans after he stabilized her. Not all the scans and panels he'd run had been standard, but given the complex birth and Auden's history, Finn had decided it was better to go for overkill than not do enough.

He'd been stunned at what he'd discovered—and worried about the possible implications. In a changeling pack, the alpha was always told of any such situations, but Auden wasn't changeling, wasn't part of their pack. In a normal situation, Finn would've held her confidence and spoken to the person who had the authority to make medical decisions on her behalf.

But Auden didn't trust anyone in her family, her doctor, or Charisma Wai.

Which had left Finn only one choice: to default to Remi, as Auden fell under his protection while in RainFire territory.

"We wait," Remi said. "Let her have some time with her cub before we tell her."

Finn gave a nod, then stood aside so Remi could walk into the room.

Auden was sitting with her legs over the side of the bed, her hair a tumble of glossy curls down her shoulders. Saskia had asked a packmate who had similar curls what to do for her patient's hair to make sure she felt good when she emerged from her unconscious state, but Remi didn't think Auden had even noticed.

Her eyes were huge with happiness as she watched her baby, her hand inside the incubator through the little circle built for that, her finger gentle as she stroked her baby's fist. The cub flexed a tiny hand and closed it over Auden's finger—to her gasp.

"Did you see that?" she whispered, looking at him with a tearstained face that was painfully young and sweet.

It kicked him again, just how young Auden was in comparison to the women in the pack who'd given birth. Aden and Zaira had both mentioned that, per Psy cultural norms, she was nowhere near the age where fertilization and conception agreements were even considered much less authorized—especially in a family like the Scotts.

What did my mother want with me that she kept me alive?

Remi's hand threatened to go clawed.

"Yeah," he managed to say past his fury, "the kitten's got a strong grip."

That tiny hand had wrapped around his own finger when he'd held her, her fingers so fragile that it incited every protective instinct in his alpha heart. It seemed impossible that anything could be so small and fragile.

He'd reminded himself that he'd held a premature Jojo at birth, too—the first cub born into the pack had decided to arrive over a month before her due date, a wrinkled little bean who'd cried the thinnest cry Remi had ever heard, her little fists shaking in fury at being deprived of the warm haven of her mother's body.

He'd fallen in love at first sight, his leopard purring in welcome. It had purred for Auden's baby, too. Claiming it with the same possessiveness he'd claimed Jojo.

"Also, no patience," he muttered, growling in his chest over the incubator. "Had to rush to be born, didn't you, kitten?"

The indicator lights on the panel flickered.

"What does that mean?" Auden's voice was quick, her inhale rapid.

"That's what she does when Remi's around," a passing Finn said with a grin. "It's all good stuff, don't worry. She likes our growly leader for some reason."

Auden looked at Remi, then at her baby. "You're the reason she's alive." Her voice was choked up. "Thank you for getting me, getting us help."

Remi waved that off; he didn't want gratitude from Auden.

But she wasn't done. "I feel so stupid. I really didn't think I was putting her in danger…I wanted her out of it, was buying time to ask you to give her sanctuary."

Withdrawing her hand from the incubator as if she didn't dare risk her child feeling her anguish, she hugged her arms around herself. "All scans prior to my trip said the pregnancy was stable."

"It was," Remi answered, since Finn had just stepped outside. "Finn can give you the technical breakdown, but he and Tammy did a bit of research on Psy births after Dr.Bashir managed to get them into a Psy medical database, and it looks like you had a rare complication. Unpredictable. No way for you to have known."

She bit down on her lower lip, her arms still around her body.

Unable to stand it, he went over and pulled her into his embrace, nuzzling his chin on her hair. She was motionless for a moment before melting into him. "What's wrong with me?" A whisper. "I'm stronger than this. I have to be stronger than this for her sake."

He petted her with long strokes of her arm, his chin on the soft springiness of her curls. "You just gave birth two days ago. Cut yourself some slack." Physical healing was one thing—the shock of it all quite another.

"Two days!" She jerked out of his hold. "Did Charisma try to contact me?" She shook her head. "Oh, how would you know?"

"We hacked your phone," he said without compunction. "I remembered seeing it in the cabin, went back and grabbed it. It's over there, on Finn's desk.

"After we hacked it, we forged a message from you that said you didn't wish to be disturbed as you were practicing ‘meditative pain management' prior to the birth. A Psy contact told us the words to use. Charisma Wai replied in acknowledgment."

"Your contact was smart," she murmured. "Even Dr.Verhoeven recommended that to me—and I have been working on it. You know Psy don't react well to most narcotics and the like?"

"Yes." He ran his hand down her back and was gratified when she cuddled close to his chest again, one hand at his waist, the other on his chest. "As for Ms.Wai, I have a feeling she won't stay out of contact much longer."

"I'll be ready." Pulling back, Auden reached up to touch her hair, frowned. "It feels so soft." Grabbing a hank, she brought it to her nose. "And it smells beautiful."

Remi told her about Saskia. "Redhead," he said. "Her hair is her crowning glory and she believes all her patients should wake up looking salon ready." Actual words Sass had said to him once.

"Oh." Auden smelled her hair again. "That's a nice thing for her to do." She sounded like she didn't know how to take that.

Dropping her hair, she said, "I need to prepare to look more like myself—Charisma might call without notice."

"I like seeing your curls." His cat wanted to bat at them, play with them.

Hearing a tiny snuffle before he could give in to the feline urge, he reached over to place his hand flat on the top of the incubator, growling in his chest at the same time.

The monitoring lights danced.

"She's happy." Auden's voice was a whisper. "I feel her here." A soft punch to the heart. "No wonder my race has—had—all these rules around pregnancy.

"I don't understand how any Psy who carried a child to birth, who felt that child's mind come awake when it reached that stage of development, who sensed its emotions, could ever treat that child with anything but tenderness and joy and love."

Her bewilderment made his leopard growl in affectionate agreement.

The cub's monitoring lights lit up.

Auden smiled, startled and happy—and beautiful in a way it was difficult to describe. Happiness suited Remi's Auden.

"She really likes you."

"Cub knows charm when she hears it."

Her lips twitched, the woman in front of him as far from the Auden he'd first met as it was possible to get…and nothing at all like the cold and different creature he'd seen that one morning at the cabin.

A stone hand squeezed his heart at the reminder of the sword hanging over Auden's head.