"Tiffany," Nana answered. Her voice was rich and warm, reminding me of a garden on a sunny day. "How is the blessed one?"
I felt the wrinkle form at the upper ridge of my nose. Without a clear definition, the term felt more like a catch-all for things they didn't understand. We'd already established the details that had linked the others, making it possible for them to produce life, weren't consistent in Jazz.
Nothing about Jazz's pregnancy had mimicked anything like what had happened to the others.
"Is the blessed one there?" Nana asked like she already knew the answer.
Jazz leaned over the table closer to the phone. "I'm here."
"Hello, dear one, and your alpha? Is he there?" she asked with such an edge, I was only glad I was there.
"I'm here…ma'am."
"Elder Walker is fine," Nana replied.
My lips flexed into a near smile. "Of course, Elder Walker."
Dr. Tiff leaned forward. "Nana, another ring has appeared, this one gold. They are appearing in alternating colors, as I thought. And besides the first ring, which appeared around his belly button, the others have started from the outer circumference of his stomach and have appeared going inward." She rattled off a series of numbers that I realized were measurements. Each ring was the same width with the same distance between the outer ring and the two that had grown inside of it.
While Nana listened, other voices floated through. She either had company or was at someone's house and had stepped out when she got the call. "It's an interesting theory. But tree rings tell us how a tree grew, not how it will grow. Still, the timing is too consistent to be ignored. Since the rings have been appearing so steadily, how long before the outer rings reach the inner?"
Dr. Tiff frowned, but it was a clever sort of expression instead of a frustrated one. She did say she liked mysteries. "Let me do the math." She bent over the paper, the very tip of her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth as her pen scratched. Then her pen stopped. She exhaled sharply.
"What?" Nana, Jazz, and I asked simultaneously.
"The rings should reach the center…I mean…if my math is right…" Dr. Tiff's face was flushed. She kept looking down at her math like she was trying to make the numbers change. "One more week. Two weeks in total from the first ring to when the last should form."
"Two weeks?" Nana breathed. If something had shocked this woman, it seemed like a pretty good fucking cause for concern. I didn't know her well, but I knew shifters as old as Nana didn't live that long out of stupidity. Left to natural causes, a shifter's lifespan was near double that of a human—but that meant a shifter had to leave it up to natural causes, which didn't happen as often as one might think.
"That's impossible," Jazz breathed, but even as he spoke, I watched his wheels turn.
All of this was impossible. Turning into wolves, making illusions with just your hands, a body transforming without notice to support life...
Which meant a two-week gestation may have been impossible, but that didn't mean it wasn't what would happen.
One more week wasn't enough time. Jazz was still very much a human. I would know; I scented him from head to toe every morning. His individual smell had changed since arriving. The manic, sharp flavor he'd carried had dissipated, leaving only mellow lemon, rosemary, and vanilla. Potent and pure, that was what Jazz smelled like when he was happiest, with nothing bothering him. But there was nothing animal about his smell.
I'd been relying on at least a month to get the nursery ready. I'd started clearing out the adjoining room next to ours, but it still needed repairs, paint, and all the supplies moved in. We needed to decorate, get a shit-ton more of diapers and formula. I had the emergency protocols and drills to update so they included the child, not to mention baby-proofing an entire hotel. Shifters didn't go crazy locking every cabinet, door, or window in their house. Shifter children had more senses to detect danger with, after all. But we lived in a hotel that had been teetering on the brink of ruin when we got it. In that time, we'd managed to make it teeter less, but it was a work in progress. Most importantly, while I was rushing to prepare, Jazz would have a baby after two weeks.
"Maybe I'm wrong," Dr. Tiff suggested hopefully. "I know my math is correct, but maybe the rings will slow or double up. The only thing we know for sure is that we should prepare for this possible outcome." Her voice cut out, but she coughed, clearing the uncertainty. "And we will be, Jazz. I promise. We might not know exactly what is going to happen, but we will be there, ready to intervene when it does." She reached over the table for Jazz's hand.
"And I will hurry the care package plans," Nana said serenely.
My initial instinct was to growl at her peacefulness. At first glance it looked too much like indifference. Then I caught Jazz's face, the slight change in his tense jaw. He didn't need me to prove how worried I could become. He especially didn't need me letting it show. I'd never been this scared before. I'd rather face a heavily armed guerrilla army naked than sit idly by while my omega suffered.
"And I'll get the others started on the baby's room," I said, fashioning my voice to sound more like Nana.
On cue, the hammers started pounding upstairs. The others were listening. The snippets of sound I heard over the hammers told me it was the twins upstairs, their already rapid heartbeats going in double time now. They were worried.
"And I'll…" Jazz looked around himself, absently searching for the thing he would do to make himself feel better in an otherwise uncontrollable situation. "I'll… read up on how to care for a baby, I guess." He shrugged, since there really wasn't a lot he could do at that moment in addition to what he was already doing.
With a ticking—or, rather, shimmering—clock over our heads, no one could just sit and wait. No matter if it was a week, six more weeks, or longer, this baby would come, and when it did, we would be ready.
***
On the eve of the two-week mark, all eight of us—Dog included—eventually found ourselves in the operations room.
Dinner had been a subdued affair. The twins and Diesel had gone out to hunt, too keyed up to stay inside while we ate and watched Jazz for the slightest sign of discomfort. The remainder of the rings had formed around his tummy, just as Dr. Tiff had hypothesized. Jazz hadn't grown nearly as large as other pregnant women I'd seen—I'd never actually seen a pregnant man, just the aftermath of children—which was the only example I had to go off.
After dinner, no one wanted to separate. Jazz said he wanted to do research before bed, so I took him in the operations room and watched as the others slowly joined us.
The clock on the table said it was eleven fifty-five, nearly midnight and past time for pregnant omegas to be in bed. Jazz had fallen asleep about an hour ago in his daybed. Dr. Tiff sat in a chair next to him reading a medical journal. Her mug of tea had long since stopped steaming, but that didn't stop her from taking small sips.
We didn't know what would happen, what to expect. Jazz wasn't a wolf. His scent was nothing like a shifter, and other than an unerringly accurate ability to pinpoint where the others were while in the hotel, he didn't have the enhanced senses of a shifter either. But while none of us knew what would happen next, we knew something might happen and weren't willing to part. I sensed distress in the others but didn't really need my senses to see it. The guys got up several times, drifting Jazz's direction so they could discreetly scent him. The action soothed the men more than it did anything else, and Jazz had already said he didn't mind it.