Page 31 of Bone Collector’s Mate

Chapter Twenty-Two

Rook

I’d known my labor was coming for days, not because I had any physical signs yet, but because I had a compulsion to get the cabin spotless. I was not a messy person by nature, but no one would call me a clean freak, either, unless they saw me this week. I cleaned windows. I had my mate cleaning baseboards. I only opted for him to do them because I knew I’d not be able to get up off the floor again. I washed the baby’s clothes twice for no other reason than they’d been in the drawer for three weeks, and that felt like too long.

And still, the morning of my labor, I ignored every last hint that it was time, from the way my back hurt and the pulling in my stomach to the fact that I needed to stop after walking a few feet. All of those had been part of my labor with Benji. I overlooked every last one as I attempted to go about a normal day.

My mate had been called by some bones. This wasn’t uncommon. And, usually, he went and came back, but this time, he tried to ignore it, which made the call even more intense. Finally, this morning, I kicked him out of the house and told him not to come back without them. He was driving me bonkers as he tried to deny his nature. It was better to be gone for a while than to have him there a second longer.

That left Benji and me with Homer chores. He was very proud of his ability to help with the goat, but he was still a small child. Most of the time, the helping wasn’t helping at all.

“Homer’s really hungry today.”

“He told you this?”

“No, Papa. But, look at him. He’s pacing.”

He was pacing, but not out of hunger. He did this every time Noir was gone. It always made him nervous. He might be Benji’s bestie, but he had a connection to my mate as well. The silly goat probably didn’t care if he ever saw me again. The other two were his world.

We had the goat fed and watered pretty quickly. The stall would have to be cleaned out later. This late in my pregnancy, my mate forbade me doing any of that kind of work. He wasn’t controlling, but protective 100 percent.

“Benji, let’s take a nap.”

If I just told Benji it was naptime, he’d find a thousand reasons why he couldn’t take one. But Noir sat him down to have a man-to-man talk and told him straight up that sometimes I was tired. If I wanted to take a nap, he needed to do me a favor and pretend to take a nap too. Because it was “helping,” he agreed and as a shock to no one but himself, it always resulted in my little man falling asleep.

Today was no exception. He was sound asleep on the bed as I lay wide awake, squirming and rolling, trying to get comfortable enough to fall asleep. And that was when I first began to understand what was happening. I was in labor.

We’d seen a midwife throughout the pregnancy, but we decided to have a home birth with just us and Benji. Later, we added Orly to the mix after she offered to come and stay with Benji, so that if it became too much for him, he had someone to take him for a walk or something.

I called Orly to let her know it was go time. She said she’d be right over. I needed to make a decision about my mate. I didn’t want to interrupt him doing the work he needed to do, but I also wanted him there. Before I could make a decision, he walked in, bone bag in hand. He looked around for Benji, and I said, “Someone’s napping.”

He lifted the bag. “Someone’s kitten.” Situations like this showed me how important my mate’s work was. “I’ll put it in the studio, but I wanted to see you first.” Turning a small outbuilding into his personal studio had been one of our first projects, and it had been working out well.

“Dad, you’re home.” Benji came running out of the bedroom. “Orly’s coming over.” He hadn’t been asleep after all, since he’d heard my call.

“Does that mean…” he asked me.

“It does.”

He ran out of the house and came back in without the bag and straight into the bathroom to take a shower. He wanted to be cleaned up for baby.

“Is my brother coming soon?” Benji knew I was in labor, but despite us explaining it to him, he didn’t fully understand that it could be a very long process.

“Or sister.”

“Nope. It’s a brother.” He put his hands on my belly. “You’re my brother.”

We had decided not to find out the sex of our baby, but in hindsight, maybe we should have. Because Benji was very much set in the notion that it was a boy and if he was wrong…

“Wait, Papa. Does this mean I need to take a shower too?” Benji wasn’t a huge fan of showers. He was a bath kid, through and through.

“Were you out digging up bones?”

He shook his head.

“Then you should be fine as long as you wash your hands with soap. Can you do that when Dad’s out of the shower?”

He promised and then stood by the bathroom door.

Orly came ten minutes later and took Benji for a walk, promising to check in at regular intervals. That worked for us because we didn’t have the stress of figuring out if Benji was okay or lonely or hungry. That was all taken care of. All we had to do was worry about my labor.

As if my body had been waiting for my mate to be home, within ten minutes of his arrival, my labor kicked into high gear. It went from barely there to we are doing this now. It wasn’t hours oof pacing like I had with Benji or forty-five minutes pushing and wondering if I could handle this, which was the only experience I’d had before. We were on turbo speed.

Two hours later, with Orly and Benji in the room, my mate talked me through ten minutes of pushing, and we brought our beautiful son into the world.

“I knew I was having a brother,” Benji said, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Can we name him Homer, and he can be my bestie just like Homer?”

We vetoed that so fast. Instead, we ended up naming him Honor, which we considered close enough. Benji was on board, and it was a name both Noir and I had liked from the get-go.

Honor lay on my chest falling asleep, my mate on one side, Benji on the other. Orly was in the kitchen making soup, I couldn’t imagine any place I’d rather be than here in Whisper Grove with my family. Coming here might not have been my plan, but it was exactly where I needed to be.