Chapter 576: In The Delivery
Gilbert was already with them when they entered the room. After a brief examination, Viola was laid down while he checked her condition, but before he could finish his assessment, she let out a strained breath and gripped the edge of the bed.
Sebastian immediately moved closer.
"What’s wrong, honey?"
Viola squeezed her eyes shut as the contraction seized her stomach. "It hurts," she managed to whisper, her fingers curling around the sheets.
The sight of her discomfort made Sebastian’s heart clench. He reached for her hand, only to realize that he was gripping it almost as tightly as she was holding his.
Gilbert glanced at Sebastian before turning his attention back to Viola, realizing that the couple hadn’t attended the prenatal classes meant to prepare expectant parents for this moment. With the pack having been in turmoil for so long, they hadn’t had much time to prepare for the arrival of their pups.
"She’s having a contraction, Supreme Alpha. It’s all right. Just stay close to her and help her control her breathing. She needs to relax as much as possible between contractions."
Sebastian nodded, listening intently to every instruction as though Gilbert were giving him the most important orders of his life.
"Look at me, amor." He leaned closer to Viola, brushing the hair away from her damp forehead. "Breathe slowly. Come on, follow my breathing."
Viola tried to do as he asked, but the pain made it difficult to concentrate. Her brows drew together, and her grip on his hand tightened until his knuckles ached. Sebastian didn’t complain. If anything, he wished she would squeeze harder if it meant she could take even a little of her pain out on him.
He stayed beside her, helping her breathe through the contraction and watching the clock whenever Gilbert instructed him to time the intervals between them. He had never imagined that he would spend a day counting the minutes between his wife’s pains, yet there he was, doing it with the utmost seriousness, as though knowing when the next contraction would come might somehow help him protect her from it.
When the pain finally subsided, Viola released a long, shaky breath and relaxed against the pillows.
Sebastian leaned down to kiss her forehead.
"You’re doing so well, love."
She managed a tired smile at him, and the sight eased some of the tension in his chest. He had been so worried about her that he had almost forgotten how strong his wife was. Still, knowing Viola could endure pain didn’t mean he had to like watching her suffer.
Gilbert returned to the bedside a short while later.
"Let’s see how things are progressing," he said gently. "Luna, I need to examine you again. Try to relax as much as you can, and let me know if another contraction starts. This is an unusual situation for me too, as we weren’t expecting the babies to arrive this early."
Sebastian straightened, preparing to move away so Gilbert could do his job, but the doctor glanced at him.
"You can stay right there, Supreme Alpha. She might need you."
Sebastian didn’t need to be told twice.
He remained beside his wife holding her hand while Gilbert examined her. There was something strangely humbling about standing there, realizing that the woman he loved was doing something so extraordinary while he could do little more than hold her hand and offer her whatever comfort he could.
"She’s getting closer," Gilbert announced.
Between contractions, Viola turned her head on the pillow, her eyes glassy and wet. "They’re too early, Seb," she whispered, her voice cracking on the last word. "What if they’re too small? What if It was because of my fight with Elizabeth, and..."
"No." He said it firmly, bringing her hand to his lips. "You did nothing wrong. Whatever happens in this room, it isn’t your fault, do you hear me?" He kept his voice steady for her, even though his own heart was hammering hard enough to hurt.
Another contraction began.
Her fingers closed around Sebastian’s hand so suddenly that he turned to her at once. The change in her expression frightened him more than he wanted to admit. Her eyes squeezed shut, her lips parted on a strained breath, and her body tensed as the pain grew stronger, and she screamed out, almost twisting on the sheet.
After several more contractions, Viola’s cries grew louder, and she began struggling to catch her breath between them. Gilbert examined her again, his expression turning serious as he realized how quickly things were progressing.
"We can’t wait any longer. She’s ready to be moved to the delivery room," he instructed the other healers.
Sebastian barely had time to react before they began preparing Viola to be wheeled away.
It was a struggle to keep him out, and had Laila not arrived at that moment, he would have burst into the room himself.
"Laila, help me keep him out, please." Gilbert requested of the she-wolf as he went in with the other healers, and the door slid shut behind him.
"He’s fucking keeping me out from my wife, she needs me in there!" Came Sebastian’s explosive anger, and Laila kept her distance as he began to pace the hallway like a restless caged beast, his aura flaring around him and suffocating the workers in the building and even Laila herself.
"Y-you should calm down, Supreme Alpha. You can’t help her by being in there, you will only slow things down..." She shut her mouth when he shot her a dark look that sent shivers down her spine and made her silently sit down. She knew she was no longer as close to the Alpha as she once thought she was, and she didn’t want him to think she was still trying to act close to him.
In no time, his grandma arrived along with his step-aunts, and they didn’t dare approach him to ask how the delivery was going. Instead they asked Laila, while being wary of him.
Sebastian began to count down time. The first hour passed in pacing. The second passed in listening. Every muffled sound from behind the door made him stop mid-step, his head snapping toward it, and every time it fell quiet again, the silence was worse than the noise. Once he thought he heard Viola scream, and he was at the door with his hand on the handle before Laila said his name softly, as though speaking too loudly might break him.
Eleanor had settled on the bench along the wall, restlessly looking at the door. Beth and Becky whispered to each other and went quiet whenever his gaze swept past them.
It was taking far longer than he recalled it taking his mother to give birth to Zoe, so long that his heart began to grip as though invisible fingers were clawing at it, and he couldn’t breathe. He looked down at his wristwatch for the fifth time in ten minutes. It had been almost three hours.
He was a moment away from breaking into the room when the door finally clicked open and Gilbert walked out. But rather than a smile on his face or a look of congratulations, the doctor looked disturbed and seriously solemn, so much that Sebastian felt his heart drop.
"Supreme Alpha, we have a very big problem you need to know of." Came Gilbert’s words, and as he spoke, some omegas working there wheeled something into the delivery room past Sebastian, who demanded,
"Is my wife all right?!"
"Come in and see for yourself. I don’t know how this happened, but it has."
’No, no, no, don’t tell me something happened to my wife or I will fucking have your head.’ Sebastian thought as he brushed past the doctor into the room, leaving his grandma and the others wondering what must have happened in there.