“Keep the bond open, Sally,” Costin growled at her.

She didn’t answer him because she couldn’t make that promise. If things got bad and he was stuck on the other side of the world with no way to help her, it would be cruel to make him just listen in when he had no way of helping.

Jacque attempted to count the oncoming contractions, but it was hard to focus with a squawking Jen and gaping Sally. She'd been having the contractions all day, but they weren't uncomfortable or close together. Well, that had changed in the last hour.

"Sally, quit looking like you've never delivered a baby and get moving," Jen snapped.

Jacque laughed as Sally responded.

"But I haven't ever delivered a baby."

Jen rolled her eyes. "Yeah well, Mozart had never written a piece of music before his first piece and look how it turned out for him?"

"I want to say that's a good analogy but really it's not even in the same ballpark," Jacque spoke up.

"No one asked you, Red. Your job is to have a baby not run your trap. Now—" Jen jumped into four-star general mode and started doing what she did best under pressure—barking orders. "Jacque start walking around slowly. It will help the labor progress. Sally go see if you can find any water, clean preferably, and blankets or cloth of some sort, also preferably clean. Take two swords with you and for the love of healthy placentas everywhere, don't get yourself killed."

"Oh, okay," Sally said sounding just a tad hysterical. "I'll just snap my fingers and make that happen."

Jen paused. "Wait, is that a new gypsy thing you learned while off on your 'there and back again' hobbit mission? Could you have been snapping your fingers and making stuff appear and things happen all this time and didn't tell us? Wait," she said again.

"I'm not going anywhere," Sally said but Jen didn't acknowledge her.

"Could you have gotten me chocolate at the snap of a finger and you didn't?"

"Jen!" Sally pinched the bridge of her nose as she cut her friend off. "I was being sarcastic."

Jen frowned. "Oh, I knew that." She looked from Sally to Jacque and then back to Sally. "Why are you still standing there? Red’s, going to pop out a furbaby any second and you're just standing there."

"You told me to wait!" Sally stomped her foot.

Jacque snorted and then grimaced as another contraction started.

"I swear, Jennifer, one of these days," Sally muttered under her breath as she headed off in search of the things Jen had requested.

Jacque would have laughed at her usually subdued friend but she was in too much pain. She bent over at the waist, holding onto the wall in order to remain upright.

"How you doing?" Jen asked her as she rubbed Jacque’s lower back.

"Hurts like hell, but that feels good. Will she be okay?" Jacque asked nodding in the direction Sally had just gone.

"Dude, you're about to have a baby, in a vampire dungeon I might add. Way to go on joining me in the all-time freakiest places to give birth club," she added and then continued. "The only person you need to worry about is you, well you and that pup you're carrying."

"For the record I really wasn't trying to join your freaky birth place club."

Jen shrugged. "We're married to werewolves. Did you really expect us to give birth in a normal place, like a bed? Noooo," she sang. "We give birth in creepy, filthy, vomit-worthy places. Go us."

"You're not helping right now," Jacque said and then groaned again. The damn contractions weren't playing around anymore. Her stomach tightened and she was pretty sure it was trying to make her have a trajectory birth.

"Do you know how far apart they are?" Jen asked.

"I think roughly three minutes."

"Okay, so you're getting close. You should probably try and contact your mate. He might just want to be here for the birth of his first child."

Jacque knew Jen was right but she was also afraid that if she tried to use their bond he would get distracted while he was possibly fighting vampires. Just as she finished that thought she felt the bond open.

"You're in labor?" Fane practically yelled in her mind.

Jacque glared at Jen. "Dec?" she asked.

Jen nodded and smiled unapologetically. "You're as stubborn as an ass. I knew you wouldn't contact him. So I bombarded Dec with some pretty strong emotions until he finally opened up."

"It's stubborn as a mule, you dip wad, not stubborn as an ass."

"Probably, but you're being an ass right now so I'll stick with my first description, Alec."

Jacque rolled her eyes and then remembered that Fane was waiting on her response.

"Yes, sorry I was berating Jen. I'm in labor. Surprise!" she ended lamely.

"Are you okay? Are you in pain?"

"You did hear the part about me being in labor, right?"

Fane broke out in a string of Romanian and she almost smiled because she knew he was cussing up a storm, and she had caused it, which always made her want to smile.

"I'm on my way to you," he told her and she felt him pour love and reassurance through their bond.

"I'll be waiting," Jacque told him, and then screamed.

"Shit!" Jen hissed. "Shit, shit, shit, and shit some more."

Jacque’s scream reverberated off the stone walls and pierced Jen's ears but that wasn't what had suddenly limited her vocabulary to one, four lettered word. It was the gush of blood that now soaked Jacques jeans.

"Take them off," Jen ordered as she began helping her friend unbutton, unzip, and then remove the jeans and then underwear. Jen hurried to take off the jacket she'd been wearing and help Jacque remove hers, laying them both on the ground.

"Down," she pointed to the makeshift bed as she helped ease Jacque to the floor.

"Jennifer," Decebel’s voice filled her head.

"Not now, B," she practically snarled. She was trying to keep herself together but there was just so much blood—too much blood. Jen looked up at Jacque’s face and nearly gasped at how white she had become.

"Okay, okay, we got this," she said under her breath as she helped Jacque bend her legs at the knees and open them wide. "I have to admit, Red, I'm really glad we're best friends because I don’t think I could look at a stranger’s girly bits and not be critical." She heard a small, breathy laugh come from her friend, which is what she'd wanted to hear, as she jerked her shirt over her head and attempted to clean away some of the blood.