Alien Healer’s Baby Read online

  Jess rubbed at her side again, careful to keep her grimace off her face. Even a hint of discomfort was enough to have her friends, the traitors, scurrying to summon Laarn. She was fed up with being wrapped in cotton wool. She was pregnant for heaven’s sake, not at death’s freaking door.

  “Well… Jane isn’t a good example, is she?” Jess winked. “She scares the shit out of half the warriors she and Karryl train, and she led him a right dance before she agreed to mate him. Not to mention, she blew F’Naar’s brains out. I think that’s why half of them are scared of claiming a human female now. They might get a Jane.”

  “Too fucking right. They should be scared. I’d eat half of them for breakfast.” Kenna grinned.

  “Yeah, but you’d rather eat a certain handsome general, wouldn’t you? Perhaps you should challenge and claim him rather than wait for him to do it.”

  Kenna blinked at her, her expression surprised for a moment, but within a heartbeat Jess could see the cogs working behind her eyes.

  “Now that’s an idea, isn’t it?” She smiled, leaning forward to put her empty plate down on the table between them. “So… when are you going to tell me you’re in labor?”

  2

  Come on then, old man… or has mating made you slow and fat?”

  Laarn hissed between his teeth at the taunt from his brother and blocked the obvious blow to his side.

  “No more than you, insolent pup,” he snarled and fired off two quick jabs at his litaan’s face. Tarrick laughed as he danced out of reach, wheeling around for another attack. Like any set of twins, the argument about age was as old as they were and often mentioned.

  Laarn kept his guard tight as he watched his brother. They were identical in height, build and combat ability, so he had to keep his wits about him when sparring with Tarrick. Even though he wasn’t a warrior in the traditional sense of the word, his healer’s oaths taking precedence, having his younger—by a few minutes—brother wipe the floor with him would do nothing for his male pride or standing in the clan.

  So he kept his guard close and his attention on his opponent even though the edge of the circle they fought in was ringed with warriors. It was always the same when the senior K’Vass warriors stepped into the ring. Other warriors thronged the hall to watch… some to marvel at the sheer speed and strength he and Tarrick traded blows, hits that would have incapacitated or even killed lesser warriors… but some came purely to watch the emperor’s nephews fight.

  Laarn, though, sparred to clear his mind.

  Fighting, pure combat, was a form of meditation. There was only the here and now. No worrying about the future, or the past. No second guessing, or hindsight. There was action and reaction, reaction to the reaction—a chain of events that were purely in the present. Each second was lived only to reach the next.

  Right now, promoted to the lord healer’s position, mated to his beautiful Jessica, and about to become the first father of a female Lathar in a generation… Laarn really needed the distraction.

  “Besides,” he threw back, nodding at the marks around Tarrick’s own wrists. “I’m not the only mated male here, am I?” He twisted and launched a series of lightning fast punches, most of which landed in his brother’s rib cage, and raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps we should look at your training schedule, or Karryl will have to take over as war commander.”

  Tarrick grunted and blocked the last blow in the series by dropping to the floor and sweeping a hard leg at both of Laarn’s. Used to that tactic, Laarn just laughed and jumped backward out of the way. Tarrick flipped back to his feet, an impressive display of strength and agility in such a large warrior.

  “Ah, now that’s where the lord healer is behind the times,” he teased. “Karryl does not need to challenge for my command. Daaynal has given him one of his own.”

  “Really? That’s excellent news!” Pleasure on behalf of his friend filled Laarn, until he almost missed the hard right hook coming at his face. He stopped talking for a second to pay attention to the fight. It wouldn’t do for the lord healer to turn up for his shift black and blue… and even worse for him to return home to Jess that way. Since she’d become pregnant, she’d become so protective of him. He suspected it had far more to do with the purist attack that had almost ended her life, that she was scared of something… anything… taking him away from her, or vice versa. Time though, was a great healer, and nothing would ever separate them again.

  “It is. One less cocky warrior with an eye on my sash. Just a thousand more in the clan to deal with.” Tarrick chuckled, the conversation between them flowing as they moved between combat combinations, landing blows that would have felled lesser males. He frowned midway through a side step and nodded to something behind Laarn. “Heads up. Incoming…”

  In a fight, Laarn normally wouldn’t have believed a word his litaan said, but the human phrase caught his attention and he turned to catch sight of Kenna in his peripheral vision. He dropped his guard instantly and turned toward her. Normally he’d have never turned his back on a warrior, not even his own brother, but the expression on her face almost stopped his heart in his chest.

  “Kenna? Is everything okay? Is Jessica okay?”

  She nodded once, briskly. “All good, but you’re gonna need to scrub up, doc. Oh, and bring your battle armor. She’s about to drop and she’s cussing up a fucking storm, threatening to remove certain parts of your anatomy… with a blunt spoon.”

  Giving birth was, as Jess was quickly discovering, definitely not a walk in the park. Nowhere near it. All through her pregnancy, she hadn’t worried about the part between being pregnant and not being pregnant anymore. Yeah, sure, she’d been aware that there would be pain involved and pushing, but…

  “I’m telling you,” she yelled at the surrounding healers. “I can’t push something the size of a freaking watermelon out a hole the size of a fucking lemon, comprende?”

  At the mere mention of her hoo-ha, several healers went white and backed off. Another hard band of pain wrapped around her stomach and she grunted, clinging to the side of the bed. Kenna had gotten her into the healer’s hall but had then abandoned her at a run to the tender mercies of a bunch of doctors who had never seen a pregnant woman of their own race, never mind a human one.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she snapped when the contraction had passed, hauling herself up onto the bed. “What do you do when the oonat are pregnant?”

  “The cattle?” A frown crossed one of the healers’ brows as he ventured forward and activated the diagnostic bed. She searched her memory for his name. Itaal. One of Laarn’s protégés.

  He shrugged, his attention focused on the readouts in a holographic arc over her barn-sized bump.

  “We have birthing pens set up at the back of the hall for them. Generally, they huddle and birth the young themselves. If there are any problems, we then intervene surgically.”

  “Ah,” she nodded. “We have C-sections on Earth as well. They’re quite common.”

  Itaal paled at her words, his hands still on the console in front of him. “On fertile females of your own kind? The death rates must be astronomical.”

  “Death rate?” She didn’t get what he meant for a moment but then her eyes widened. “You mean the female doesn’t survive surgical intervention to remove the baby?”

  Itaal’s long hair danced over his shoulders as he shook his head. “No. We wouldn’t put a Latharian child at risk to preserve the carrier’s life. There are plenty more oonat.”

  “Riiiight.” Jess’ mood took a nosedive as another contraction gripped her. She grasped the sides of the bed in a white-knuckled grip and tried to remember her breathing. Pretty fucking hard when it felt like she was being cut in two.

  “Birthing seems well established now,” Itaal added in a low voice.

  She nodded, lying back on the bed. She was like a damn upturned turtle like this. “How many centimeters am I dilated?”

  Itaal’s face turned gray, then green, and then white. “I d
on’t know…”

  “You don’t check…” she hissed as he backed up to join the other healers, all of whom looked at her as though she were their worst nightmare and impending horrific death combined. “No, you won’t check. Will you?”

  All the men shook their heads, several nudging Itaal, who seemed to have been nominated, unwillingly, as their spokesperson. “No. Lord Healer Laarn warned us all that no one was to look at or touch you… there.”

  “I’m gonna fucking kill him. How am I supposed to give birth if none of the doctors will fucking touch me?” she grunted, tensing as another wave of pain washed over her.

  The contractions were closer together and faster now, which meant she wasn’t far off from giving birth. Fuck… why hadn’t she insisted that Laarn go grab a midwife or seventeen from Earth? Hell, even an orderly would do if they’d seen the inside of a labor suite. Anything would be better than a handful of healers terrified of even looking her way because she was the lord healer’s mate.

  “Simple,” a deep voice answered from the doorway. “Because I will always be by your side to help you.”

  “Laarn!” she cried out in relief as the tall form of her handsome mate swept into the room, scattering the assembled healers like leaves on the wind. “Itaal, stay,” he ordered. “The rest of you… Don’t you have other patients to attend to?”

  The hard look he swept over the little crowd suggested that if they hadn’t, they’d better damn well find some, or he’d create patients from amongst their number. Jess chuckled as they stampeded for the door.

  “Hey girl, how you doing?” She opened her eyes to find Kenna at her side. She accepted the other woman’s help to sit up, smiling at the care the other woman took plumping the pillows behind her.

  “Not bad, apart from the fact I’m being ripped in two.”

  Kenna wrinkled her nose. “It feels like shit, but it’ll pass, and then you’ll have your baby and you’ll forget all about it. I promise.”

  “You’ve attended births before?” Laarn asked, moving around them and doing something to the bed. The screens over Jess changed to show enlarged views of her womb and… other areas.

  “Crap,” she breathed. “Is my ass that big?”

  “You’re pregnant.” Kenna chuckled. “So it’s allowed. And yes,” she directed at Laarn. “Four older sisters dropping brats with alarming regularity. I’d seen more births than the colony doctor before I was ten. Why do you think I went fleet?”

  “You’re drafted then.” Laarn nodded, shucking his jacket and stepping up to the bed. The feel of her mate’s large hands on her swollen stomach sent a wave of relief through her. He was here. Everything would be okay.

  “Yes, sir,” Kenna answered, military to the core even though Laarn wasn’t an officer, and they weren’t in Terran space anymore.

  Laarn shot her a small smile of thanks as he examined Jess. Itaal kept his distance and stayed at the control consoles at the head of the bed throughout the procedure. She grinned to herself. If he could have done his job with his eyes shut, he would have, but even so… she could sense the curiosity rolling from him in waves.

  “Laarn,” she said softly, getting her mate’s attention between contractions. They were getting harder and stronger each time, so she wasn’t sure how much time she had left to talk. “If your warriors will be bonding humans, more of us will be pregnant. Wouldn’t it make sense for your healers to be trained in childbirth?”

  Laarn’s expression set. She didn’t need to be a genius to guess at the internal battle between the healer who sought knowledge for the good of his race and a possessive mate who didn’t want any other male even seeing his mate in such a manner.

  “Yes… no!” he growled.

  Another contraction hit and Jess growled back through gritted teeth. “Then you’re a fucking idiot and babies will die! Is that what you want?”

  She grabbed for Kenna’s hand, gripping it with white knuckles as she pushed down the instinctive need to fight the pain and breathed through it.

  “In-in-oooout… in-in-oouuut. That’s it, girl. You got it. Easier than a route march, but these pussy men couldn’t do it, eh?” Kenna coached her through the crest of the wave, holding her hand and smoothing her wet hair back from her brow. Fuck, she was sweating buckets. When had that happened?

  She dropped her head back onto the pillows and closed her eyes. “How much longer?”

  “You’re not yet fully dilated,” Laarn said from the bottom of the bed. “It’ll be awhile yet, my love.”

  Kenna hissed between her teeth, shooting the tall healer a “look.” “Men,” she hissed under her breath. “Dumb whatever the species.” Raising her voice, she got his attention. “Doc… you might wanna give her something for the pain?”

  “I cannot advise it,” Itaal piped up from his station. “While humans and Lathar are genetically the same species, we are much more enhanced. Our pain responses are much altered, and therefore our medi--”

  “Save me the details, doc,” Jess hissed as another wave hit. “And get me some fucking drugs before I reach through that fucking screen and you’re the one who needs drugs.”

  Laarn, lord healer of the entire Latharian Empire, knew all there was to know about battle, about combat injuries and about every disease and ailment his people had ever come across. His knowledge was as expansive as the scars that marked his rank on his body were deep.

  But he knew absolutely nothing about childbirth.

  He’d read all the historical texts. He’d studied the words of previous lord healers and watched all the historical records. He’d even used the healing hall’s jury-rigged AIs to run simulations of childbirth scenarios. Which meant, he’d thought he was prepared, that Latharian medicine, being so much more advanced than humanity’s, meant that he didn’t need to pull in any human specialists.

  But faced with the reality of his mate being in labor, being in pain, he realized that was a load of draanth. While he’d been studying up on Latharian childbirth, human labor and childbirth was an entirely different thing.

  The pelvis is a lot smaller in humans, he subvocalized to Itaal, who was manning the monitoring station. If the baby was breech, we’d have to turn it before it entered the birth canal.

  Indeed, Itaal sent back over the link, nothing in his manner or expression to indicate he and Laarn were communicating silently. Laarn was grateful. Call it professional pride, but he didn’t want either woman knowing just how much he was… what was the human phrase… crapping himself that he didn’t know what the hell he was doing.

  Not breech though, fortunately. But the records said nothing about this level of pain, he sent, unable to keep the note of concern out of his mental voice. Everything he’d read indicated that childbirth was a calm and serene experience, the baby brought forth into a tranquil environment.

  Jess, her expression twisted with concentration and pain, looked anything but tranquil and serene.

  “Breathe through it, girl,” Kenna, still by Jess’ side, urged while clutching the mother-to-be’s hand in a tight grip. “You got this.”

  The sharp look she shot Laarn clearly stated that someone had to because he hadn’t. Shame filled him and when the next contraction had died down, he motioned to Itaal to take Kenna’s place and summoned the marine to join him outside with a jerk of his head.

  They’d barely gotten outside when the human woman rounded on him, her eyes alight with anger.

  “What the fuck are you doing in there?” she demanded. “Give her something for the fucking pain already. She’s tired and the longer she spends trying to fight the pain, the more exhausted she will get. And exhaustion? Let me tell you… that’s not good. Tired mothers struggle, and struggling in labor? That kills mothers and babies. You reading me?”

  “Loud and clear.” Laarn sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I’m out of my depth. Latharian labor is nothing like this. There’s no pain, no struggle, not as far back as I can go in the records. This… this is barbari
c. She’s in so much pain and I don’t know what to do...”

  “I’ll tell you what you’re gonna do.” Kenna’s expression was firm. “You’re gonna stop finny-fannying around. You’re gonna get back in there and do whatever you can to ease her pain. Use your fancy machines, hook her up and get that fucking baby out. Because if you don’t, she’s gonna be in trouble real fast. And let me tell you,” she stepped forward and jabbed him hard in the chest, “if you let either my friend or her baby die, I’ll show you what humans mean when they say the female of our species is way deadlier than the male.”

  Laarn nodded, a frown crossing his brow. “There might be a way…”

  He didn’t explain, simply strode back in the room to find Itaal comforting his laboring mate. For a moment, possessiveness wanted to rear its head, but then he noticed the pained look on the younger healer’s face.

  I think she might have crushed the bones in my hand, Itaal said mentally. How did the humans ever survive as a race if their women go through this to bear young?

  That I have no idea. Their females must be much stronger than even we thought.

  “Bring the units online,” he ordered aloud, striding over to the gauntlet station. He didn’t understand human childbirth, but he had to trust that Jess would do what she needed to do. That her instincts would kick in. But what he could do was ease some of her pain.

  “Right away, my lord.” Itaal relinquished his position by the bed, leaving Jess panting. Another ripple of pain crossed her face and Laarn knew another contraction was on the rise. “Do you want me in on the link, just in case?”

  Laarn shook his head but then stopped the movement and nodded instead. “Yes, but remain in the background unless you see something I have missed that requires immediate attention. Observe, learn… the more of our healers who understand the process of human childbirth the better.”

  “Understood, my lord.”

  “Just a little longer, my love,” Laarn leaned over Jess, brushing her sweat-soaked hair back from her brow to lay a gentle kiss there. “And the pain will be gone. I promise.”