Page 145 of The Reluctant Alpha

"I haven't," I admitted, taking the plate anyway. "Danny wakes up every two hours to pee, which means I wake up every two hours to help him get out of bed, which means neither of us sleeps."

"Welcome to parenthood," Phoenix said with the smug satisfaction of a man who had already done it once before and whose own mate was only a month along and keeping it secret for the time being.

"Thanks. Very helpful."

"I'm serious, though." Phoenix's voice dropped, losing its teasing edge. "You look good, Bayer. Both of you. This—" He gestured at the room, at the celebration, at the impossible tapestry of wolves and bears and silver-skins sharing cinnamon rolls. "This is what a pack looks like. A real one."

I swallowed hard against the sudden tightness in my throat. "It doesn't feel real sometimes."

"It's real." Phoenix clapped my shoulder, his grip firm and grounding. "And you built it. Don't forget that."

Before I could respond, a shriek of laughter drew our attention to where Gemma was trying to wrestle a confetti cannon away from Tia, who had discovered that if she held it at the right angle, she could shoot paper directly into people's hair. Her current target was Dimitri, who sat perfectly still with pink and blue confetti settling on his shoulders like the world's most festive dandruff, his expression suggesting he was seriously reconsidering the diplomatic merits of attending baby showers.

"Should I...?" I started.

"Absolutely not," Phoenix said. "This is the most entertainment I've had in months."

Tia fired again. A burst of confetti caught Dimitri square in the face. He blinked once, slowly, then reached up and removed a piece of pink paper from his left eyebrow with the dignity of a king removing his crown.

"The child has excellent aim," he observed to no one in particular.

Rhys, who was sitting nearby, made a sound that might have been a laugh if you were feeling generous. Ben, perched beside him, didn't bother hiding his grin.

I turned back to Danny just in time to see him trying to stand up. Again. For the fourth time in the last hour. I was already moving to intercept him when he gripped the arm of the chair, levered himself upright with a grunt that spoke of genuine effort, and then froze.

The expression on his face changed so completely that my bear surged to the surface before my brain caught up. It wasn't pain, exactly—it was surprise. Total, absolute, deer-in-headlights surprise, his blue-gray eyes going wide and his lips parting around a word that never made it out.

Then I saw the darkening stain on his leggings.

The room didn't go quiet all at once. It happened in waves—the people closest to Danny noticed first, their conversations dying mid-sentence, and then the silence spread outward like ripples in a pond until even Tia stopped firing her confetti cannon and stared.

Danny looked down at the small puddle spreading beneath him, then looked up at me with an expression that cycled through shock, terror, and something that might have been hysterical amusement in the space of a single heartbeat.

I was beside him in three strides, my hands on his arms, my bear roaring so loudly inside my skull I could barely think. "Danny—"

"My water just broke," he said, and now his voice was shaking, the composure cracking at the edges. "Bayer, my water just broke. It's too early. It's too—we have two weeks, we were supposed to have two more weeks—"

"Okay," I said, because someone had to be calm and it clearly wasn't going to be him. "Okay. It's going to be okay."

"It's absolutely not okay!" His fingers dug into my forearms hard enough to bruise.

"Early but viable," Simeon said, and I hadn't even heard him move, but he was suddenly right there, his hands steady, his voice carrying the unshakable authority of someone who'd delivered more babies than I could count. "Danny, look at me. Look at me. You're past the critical window. The cubs have a good chance."

"A good chance isn't a guarantee," Danny whispered, and the fear in his voice split me open.

"Nothing ever is," Simeon said gently. "But I need you to breathe for me, and Bayer, he needs to be somewhere private."

Chapter thirty-five

Danny

The next few minutes were a blur of organized chaos that I experienced from somewhere outside my own body, watching myself be guided, supported, and fussed over like a particularly fragile piece of china that had developed a crack.

"Breathe," Bayer kept saying, his arm locked around my waist as he half-carried me toward the downstairs guest room. "Just breathe."

"I am breathing," I snapped. "If I weren't breathing, I'd be dead, and then you'd really have a problem."

"On the bed," Emery ordered, already pulling back the covers. "On your left side if you can."