“One of the women carrying the lamia babies has gone into labor. She’s early, too, just like Marta was.”
“That’s the woman who carried Serena?”
“Yes. But Evangeline has three babies—she’s carrying triplets.”
My stomach clenched at the thought of those infants coming into the world just as the werewolves were planning to attack. “Give me a minute,” I said. “I need to call my father.”
Tomás listened to me talking to Dad, his expression turning grim. When I hung up, he asked, “Are there any particular additional dangers involved in a lamia birth?”
I shrugged. “No one knows. The lamias had their babies without any other shifters’ help. No one was ever around, no one ever assisted.”
Tomás frowned. “Then how are you sure the babies are early?”
We weren’t, actually. As with everything else, the timeline for their birth was guesswork.
I opened my mouth to answer when my phone rang again. I glanced down. The readout said it was Shane Wills.
I held up a finger as I answered the phone, indicating to Tomás that I would get back to him in just a minute. “Shane,” I said, and continued without waiting for a response. “Now is not a really good time.”
“Your father told me,” he replied. “I want to be there. I think I could help with the infants.”
I shook my head. I was willing to acknowledge that my father might have been right about Shane’s helpfulness in our fight with the werewolves earlier. But Dad and I were going to have to have a talk about his determination to tell his favorite graduate student all about me. This was a new habit, one that he certainly hadn’t had when I was growing up and everything had to be kept a deep dark secret.
“I don’t know,” I said to Shane. “I think it might not be safe around me right now—”
“I don’t care,” Shane broke in. “This is quite probably the most important moment of my life—as a herpetologist and possibly as a person. I want to be there to help. Even if I end up doing nothing more helpful than changing diapers, I need to be there.” His voice turned almost desperate. “If for no other reason than to represent the human scientific community. Someday, your people are going to come out, I’m sure of it, and I want to have been a part of whatever you’re learning about yourselves now.”
I blinked. He was certainly passionate, at least. I sighed. “You know where we’re going? Don’t say it aloud—just meet us there, okay? I’ll call Kade and see what I can find out, what we can arrange.”
“Absolutely. See you there.” I could hear the grin in his voice.
Hanging up, I handed the phone back to Tomás. “I’m sorry,” I said. “What were we discussing?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Tomás said. “We’ve got plenty of other issues to worry about right now.”
Yes, we do.
I gave Brian the final directions to the hospital, leading him to a side entrance almost no one but staff ever used.
“Leave the car here with the keys under the mat. I’ll get Kade to have someone come move it,” I said, and sent a text to let Kade know we were there. Swinging out of the car and moving through the entrance, I led the men down a long-tiled hallway.
Portraits of doctors lined the wall, interspersed with plants designed to be soothing—but nothing could hide the sterile hospital smell of it all.
We emerged in one of the central seating areas, an open space decorated with plants and soft, cushioned furniture. None of it helped soothe me as I paced back and forth, not far from the elevators, waiting for Kade to contact me.
It took everything I had to keep from dialing Kade again to demand an update.
I knew he’d show up as soon as he could, but I continue to worry about Evangeline and the infants, and the lack of news was driving me insane.
As it turned out, everyone converged on the waiting room at once: Kade, Shane, Janice, and several Council members—and, to everyone’s surprise, the werewolves we had fled the Shifter Shield office to avoid.
Chapter 26
KINDRED WAS SMALL, as hospitals go, but the lobby had sweeping ceilings up to the skylights and tile floors that echoed with the clip-clop of heels crossing them.
Kade hadn’t said anything to me, not by phone or in text, since he’d first called with the message for me to come to the hospital.
The volunteer working the front desk knew me—both because I dated Kade and because I’d been up at the hospital every day while Serena was still in the NICU. But she hadn’t heard anything from Kade, either, not since Evangeline had been taken into the delivery room.
And despite all the usual people who were allowed in delivery rooms, the doctors had declared Evangeline’s room off-limits—I assumed because they wanted to limit the number of people who might see a human woman give birth to three live snakes.
So there I was, pacing, when everyone arrived.
The first person I heard was Janice. Her low, sensible heels didn’t clack the same way the high heels of the woman coming in with a group of men across the room did. Janice’s shoes sounded real and solid as she came up to stand next to me.
From the entrance on the other side of the lobby, the werewolves approached with a group of men in suits and one woman. They look like a bunch of high-powered lawyers.
When they all converged on me at the elevators, I had taken several steps away, toward the chairs, placing myself in the most open area of the room so I could be ready to drop into my serpent form on short notice if necessary.
Somehow I wasn’t surprised when Kade stepped off the elevators and moved up behind me. Shane hung back from the rest of the group but listened in from where he leaned against a nearby wall. After a few moments, I realized that Tomás and Brian had taken spots equidistant around us and had posed as if they weren’t connected to us at all.
Janice had brought a small group with her, too—several of the other officers from the North Texas Council.
They were all Council members who had voted to allow me in.
I stood up straight, prepared to meet the werewolves head-on. But Janice smoothly stepped in front of me, murmuring over her shoulder, “Let me deal with this.”
I nodded, secretly glad that she was willing to take care of it. I moved back one step, still leaving enough room to shift if I needed to, but staying close enough to jump into the fray, if necessary.
“Hello, Frank,” Janice said.
“Janice.” The leader of the werewolf group nodded coolly.
“How can I help you?” Janice stood calmly, her weight shifted slightly onto one foot, her arms hanging down with her hands clasped loosely in front of her. She looked open and friendly.
However, I had seen her eyes when she spoke to me—in her fully human form, they were a bright blue. They were also the first thing to change when she began to shift into her animal form as a badger.
And when she had glanced at me, her eyes had been completely brown.
She might look relaxed right now, but she was ready for a fight.
I couldn’t tell as much about the wolves from their appearance. As with other shifters, I wasn’t certain I would’ve been able to even tell they were wolves and I not been told beforehand. But now that I knew, something about the way they moved together as a pack, in the almost lupine stances they took, in the way their heads hung down as they looked at me—at all of us—gave it away.