Winter's Dawn (2 page)

“Forget the human,” Douglas snapped, the hopeful look gone, replaced by one Max knew so well, that of grim duty and responsibility as he swept his sister up in his arms. He didn’t even flinch at her weight as he walked across the entryway with her. “Maxwell, come.”

Max jumped off the windowsill and followed obediently. His father was moving fast now, almost too fast to be perceived as normal, but Max kept at his heels easily. As Douglas made his way towards the master bedroom with his sister in his arms, he called out to the servants and others who remained at the house. They had many friends and family members staying with them. Max’s birthday had been the day before and most guests lingered to celebrate.

He wasn’t truly paying attention to what his father was yelling. He learned long ago to block out that particular tone, but he heard the buzz of excitement as they made the long trek to his bedroom while others came running after them, popping out of rooms and adjoining hallways.

“Maxwell, come here, my sweet.” Aunt Emma swept him into her arms. She followed after Max’s father, then passed him and started walking backward up the grand staircase with Max still in her arms. “Bless you, Susan, if you deliver this puppy on the Solstice I will love you forever.”

“How is she suppose to deliver her on time when you are in my way, Emma?” Douglas took two stairs at a time. “Good Gods, you are going to drop my son before we can bring his queen into the world. Mind Maxwell. Leave Susan to me. Call the doctors. Get them here.”

“Oh, Doug, he should be there, don’t you think?” Emma said as Douglas finally succeeded in walking past her when they made it to the top of the stairs. “He will be right by her side from the very beginning. That is how the old ones did it. The first breath she takes should be mingled with the air he breathes.”

“Fine.” He used his boot to kick at his bedroom door so forcefully the wood splintered. “Get the bed ready.”

Aunt Emma wasn’t in charge of that. They had maids to strip his father’s bed of the fine silk sheets and then place layer after layer of bedding down on the huge mattress. Their hands shook as his father boomed commands at them, but he didn’t seem to notice. Others filled the bedroom, all the friends and family who had lingered after Max’s party. The excitement was palpable.

“You’ve only got two hours until the Solstice.” Cousin Adam checked his watch as Douglas laid Susan down on the bed. “Two hours and seven minutes.”

Douglas groaned. “Maxwell’s mother took twenty-eight hours to bring him into the world—and then she died.”

Aunt Emma covered Max’s ears, but still he heard her shriek, “Doug, he heard that!”

“Sorry. I’m sorry.” He sat on the bed, the mattress dipping deep. “I’m just nervous.”

“You’re nervous?” Susan settled herself back against the pillows the maids were piling behind her. “I’ve got to deliver this puppy on a time limit and you’re talking about Max’s mother dying. Not to mention my poor husband—”

“Love, she was human,” Emma said as she sat on the other side of the bed with Max still in her arms. “You’ll deliver her on time and you’ll be fine.”

“What about James?” Susan gasped, clutching at her stomach. “You just left my husband downstairs.”

Emma frowned, looking at Douglas. “Husband?”

“I think she means the human.” Douglas rolled his eyes. “Why are you so enamored with him?”

“He is the father of your queen,” Susan rasped. “And unlike you, I care about the human I chose.”

“Fine by me.” Emma set Max down next to her on the bed. “As long as I don’t have to choose one. Gods help me, when you told me this puppy was going to be born in January, missing the Solstice all together, I could have killed you. What luck the three of us had to be predicted to bring forth the new monarchy? I can’t think of anything more dreadful than being with a human.”

Douglas reached across Susan to hold Emma’s hand as he whispered, “Would it have been so bad to provide my son with his mate?”

“Is it so bad that I don’t have to leave you for a human?” Emma countered. “We can finally be truly mated now. That prophecy has been plaguing us since puppyhood.”

Douglas nodded. “True, and it seems the Gods want Maxwell’s queen to come from Susan. This is such a blessing I can hardly fathom it.”

Susan threw up her hands, breaking Emma and Douglas’ hold on each other. “Don’t count your blessing yet. You still have to help me deliver her.”

“In two hours and five minutes,” Adam threw in, reminding the three siblings that they had a rather large crowd of spectators.

“Right.” Douglas stood. “You lot need to clear out. She can’t afford distractions.”

“Two hours and four minutes,” Adam said as he approached the bed and kissed Susan’s cheek. Then he placed a hand on top of Max’s head. “May we have an alpha pair to celebrate tonight. God’s blessings on your winter queen.”

“Over a hundred years, Maxwell.” Another cousin placed a hand on Max’s head. “We have waited for you to restore balance for a long time.”

“May your queen be as beautiful as you.” Someone else kissed Max’s forehead. “Out of winter comes the birth of new hope. Gods’ blessings for you to be fruitful and restore our monarchy with all the seasons.”

Max lost track of who was kissing him and hugging him, but they all left blessings to Max and this new queen. Many promised to make lavish offerings to the Gods in thanks. Their people weren’t able to have offspring. Max and this baby were the only young ones in a long time and they were all desperate for the balance to be restored.

When the room was finally empty, save two maids, his father and two aunts, Max lay down on the bed next to his Aunt Susan and rested his hand on her large stomach.

“Is there really a queen?” he asked and then placed his cheek next to his hand on her stomach. He closed his eyes as a strange sort of warmth rolled over him. He felt her, first in the low hum of magic that surround his aunt and then more forcefully from the thump against his cheek. “Oh, she’s there!”

Max’s excitement waned when his aunt gave a painful yell. “Gods, Doug, they’re getting harder.”

“She felt him.” Emma gasped, the excitement tangible in her voice. “Maxwell, do it again.”

He was hesitant at first, but fear of his aunt’s yelling faded next to the call of warmth that surrounded him when he reached out and touched her rounded belly again. The strange call resonated clear down to his soul and he couldn’t resist pressing his cheek against her stomach again. His eyes drifted closed as he felt another kick against his palm. He simply blocked out his aunt’s scream this time, content to just rest his face there and feel the magic he didn’t care to understand.

“Douglas, get Maxwell off!” she screamed as she writhed on the bed. “He’s really hurting me!”

“Gods.” Douglas made no move to force Max from the bed. “They’re really connected. She feels him, Susan. She’s trying to get to him. I wasn’t certain it would work. All the old ones shared parents. Many were twins. I’ve never heard of cousins being an alpha pair, have you?”

Susan gasped, gently pushing at Max’s forehead to move him. “He’s making my contractions worse. This puppy is going to come before the Solstice if you don’t move him.”

“Oh, fine.” Douglas came around the bed and picked up Max. “Emma, do something with him.”

“No!” Max screamed and reached out to his aunt. “I want my queen.”

“Not right now, Maxwell.” His father handed Max to Emma. “Soon. Your queen will be here very soon.”

He curled into Aunt Emma. “I want her now.”

“I know, my sweet.” She went over to the corner and sat in the rocking chair she always used to rock him when he was distraught. “Our sweet Maxwell. He’s going to be such a good king.”

He wiped his tears as he rested his head on Aunt Emma’s shoulder and stared at Aunt Susan. “I want her.”

“Soon,” Aunt Emma hummed, rocking him.

He never took his gaze off of Aunt Susan, not when the maids helped her change into a thin nightgown, nor when his father sat at the foot of the bed, checking her, he said, to see how things were progressing.

Max went from being sad, to something else, a fury he had never experienced before welled inside him as he glared at his aunt, who was thrashing and screaming now. He cared little for her pain, which was strange for Max, because he was usually a tender-hearted wolf and he liked Aunt Susan. True, he wasn’t as close to her as he was with Aunt Emma, who lived with them and shared his father’s bed, but she was always kind to him.

Somehow Aunt Susan became something else, a barrier of sorts that was blocking him from that hum of happiness that was stronger than anything he had experienced before. It was there in his father’s room Maxwell first experienced what would happen to those who tried to separate him from her, that unseen queen his aunt was laboring so hard with.

The storm that had threatened before, when Max stared sadly out the window, angry about being kept out of the snow, now swirled around the estate. It changed quickly from a simple snow flurry to something sinister and deadly. An ice storm more powerful than anything that had hit the coast in more than a decade descended upon them. The crack of tree limbs breaking under the ice blended with his aunt’s screams.

“Light some lamps.” Douglas looked up from what seemed to be his permanent spot at the foot of the bed to bark at the maids waiting nervously against the wall. “We’re going to lose power. What a time for an ice storm. The doctors will never make it in all this.”

“Look, it’s dreadful out there.” Emma stood with Max to stare out the window. “Everything’s frozen. I’ve never seen so much ice.”

“Queen,” Max wailed, his gaze still trained on Aunt Susan. He reached out to her, desperate to fill the gap Aunt Emma had made with her journey to the window.

The wind swirled as Max cried, rattling the windows with the force of it and somehow everyone in the room seemed to figure it out at once. “Maxwell!” his father shouted. “Stop it!”

“Queen.” He stared defiantly at his father with icy eyes that the maids would claim later had glowed like blue fire when more tree limbs cracked and the room went dark. “Now,” he whispered into the darkness.

“Emma, Gods help me, put him next to Susan before the roof collapses,” Douglas said and then went back to the task at hand. “I need light.”

Max settled next to Aunt Susan. He laid his hand against her stomach and then his face, closer now that she was bare. The nightgown had long since been tossed aside, not that anyone in the room cared, save maybe the maids who were human but still accustomed to them, because his people were comfortable naked—most animals were.

Susan screamed louder than ever as Max nestled in against her side, at peace once more. No one noticed that the storm had passed as quickly as it had started. They were too consumed with the chaos of Susan’s labor.

“I’m dying!” Susan screamed. “Get her out, Doug! Get her out now! She’s killing me!”

“Susan, don’t say that.” Douglas placed one bloody hand against her thigh and squeezed it. “You’re not human. You are stronger than that.”

“I’m not strong enough. I’m not an alpha. She’s taking all my strength,” she gasped. “She’s been taking it all along.”

“You come from alphas.” His voice was panicked. “It’s in your blood.”

“No, Doug.” She sobbed. “It isn’t. It hasn’t been, not for a long time.”

“Emma, I need to know the time!”

“Forget the time! I’m dying!”

“Five minutes.” Emma leaned over to squeeze Susan’s hand. “Just five more minutes, Love.”

“Oh, no,” Susan wailed as she dropped her head back against the pillow. “I can’t wait that long.”

“You
can
do it.” Emma brushed sweat-drenched hair away from Susan’s face and neck. “I know you can. Five minutes and we’ll have a queen. Our people will finally have an alpha pair. Your sweet puppy and Maxwell are going to restore peace.”

Susan nodded, taking a deep breath. “Okay, but I want to push, Doug. I need to push.”

“Wait just a bit, darling. She’ll come fast once you push. You need to wait.”

Max heard all this; the crying, the desperation, but he was tired of waiting. He wanted to see this queen, the one who would help him end the disorder he didn’t understand.

“Little queen,” he whispered, tapping his fingers against his aunt’s fevered skin as though he was knocking. “Come to play with Max.”

Susan’s shriek hurt Max’s sensitive hearing. Her back arched off the bed as she pushed.

“Susan, no!” Douglas yelled, but it was too late. “No, no!”

Max turned to look, deciding that it was an extremely unpleasant sight as his father caught the tiny creature.

Douglas was still screaming in denial even as he stared at the newborn in his hands. Just as quickly, within the same breath, more noise bombarded them. Pounding on the door, so rapid and desperate they all looked.

“Did she make it?” Cousin Adam hollered. “The moment has only passed. Is she here? She must be here if she is truly the Winter Queen.”

Douglas looked from the baby to Emma, his jaw falling open in stunned disbelief. “Your watch was wrong?”

“I—“ Emma shook her head, stunned.

Douglas was still gaping, but just then another sound broke the silence, that of a gurgling scream as the forgotten baby in his hands struggled to breathe. He gathered his senses at once and aided the baby, cleaning her passageway to make way for a louder, healthier scream.