Page 60 of The Pregnant Wolf Omega Next Door
“Sweetheart?” he squeaked.
“I’ll be fine,” Emre panted.
How many contractions had it been? How long since the last one? Zenith wrung his hands. “What do I do?”
“Stop Abbie if she tries to climb on my belly.”
“I can do that.”
The next contraction came right after. Zenith caught Abbie in one hand, just so he had something to hold onto. “You’re doing great, Emre. Not too much longer.”
He hoped.
He kept checking their heartbeats. It was difficult, with all four of them in the same room and his own thundering heart drowning them out.
When he could no longer bear to sit around, Zenith began rubbing Emre’s paws. He rubbed Emre’s forelegs and hind legs, then down his back, holding Emre whenever he tensed and shuddered.
“Do I need to check on the pup or something?” Zenith said, looking warily at Emre’s tail end.
“Feels like my first birth,” Emre panted. “Pup’s on the way. Think we’re fine.”
“Oh gods,” Zenith breathed. “I don’t feel prepared at all.”
“Welcome to parenthood.”
Zenith gritted his teeth and stared at Emre’s belly, trying not to shake apart. There was a baby on the way. A whole new fragile life, small and vulnerable.
Emre began to heave.
“Is this the part where I shut up instead of telling you to push?”
Emre bared his teeth. “Tell me to push, and I will smack your face with my paw.”
That sounded adorable, but Zenith didn’t think Emre wanted to be adorable right now.
Emre heaved. He kept heaving for so long, panting and heaving and trying again, that Zenith had to remind himself to breathe. He rubbed Emre’s back.
Only then did he remember that the internet existed on his phone. He was scrolling through endless pages of search results the next moment.
“It says here that if I rub an egg yolk all over your hole—”
“What the hell are you reading?” Emre groaned.
“Some advice column!”
“Tell them to shove it up their ass!”
Zenith was on another site now. “So you mean it won’t work if I sprinkled some rainwater from the full moon—”
“No!”
“What about waving a smoking branch from the screeching haunted tree—”
“What the hell, Zenith!”
“I’m trying!” Zenith clicked into a fourth site. “This page says that if I put some mashed up pumpkin guts into your h—”
Emre snarled with so much rage that the pup slid out of him.
