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“Hi.” Bella smoothed her hand over his skull trim. “Hi . . .”

“Hi . . .” Before he broke down and made an ass of himself, he glanced around her to see who else was in the PT suite. Wrath was talking to Rhage in the corner next to the whirlpool bath, and Qhuinn, John, and Blay were standing in front of the banks of steel-and-glass cabinetry.

Witnesses. Shit. He needed to pull it together.

As he blinked hard, the details of the room came into clear focus, and he thought of the last time he’d been in it.

The birth.

“Shhh . . .” Bella murmured, clearly mistaking the reason for his wince. “Just close your eyes and relax.”

He did as he was told, because he was back on the brink, and not because of how badly his leg and his hands were hurting.

God, that night when Nalla had been born . . . when he’d nearly lost his shellan . . .

Z squeezed his lids shut, not wanting to relive the past . . . or look too closely at the present. He was in danger of losing Bella. Again.

“I love you . . .” he whispered. “Please don’t leave me.”

“I’m right here.”

Yeah, but for how long.

The panic he felt now took him back to the night of the birth . . . he’d been out in the field with Vishous, investigating a civilian abduction downtown. When the call had come from Doc Jane, he’d dumped V like a bad habit and dematerialized to the mansion’s courtyard, plowing through the foyer and into the tunnel. Everyone, shellans and doggens and Wrath alike, had gotten the hell out of his way to avoid becoming bowling pins.

Down in the training center, in this very room, he’d found Bella stretched out on the gurney he now lay upon. He’d come in right in the middle of a contraction and had had to watch as Bella’s body became locked into place as if a giant hand were crushing her around the middle. When the pain eased off she’d taken a deep inhale, then looked at him and offered him a weak smile. As she reached out for him, he’d peeled his weapons off, dropping them on the linoleum.

“Hands,” Doc Jane barked. “You wash your hands before you come over here.”

He’d nodded and gone directly to the deep bucket sinks with the foot pedals. He’d worked a lather all the way up his arms until his skin glowed Barbie pink then he’d dried with a blue surgical cloth and rushed to Bella’s side.

Their palms had just made contact when the next contraction came roaring through. Bella had squeezed his hand until it was crushed in her grip, but he didn’t care. Holding her stare as she’d strained, he would have done anything to take the pain from her . . . and at that moment he would have cheerfully cut his own balls off. He couldn’t believe he’d put her through that kind of suffering.

It got worse. The labor was like a locomotive gathering speed, and its tracks were all over Bella’s body. Harder, longer, faster. Harder, longer, faster. He didn’t know how she could stand it. And then she couldn’t.

She’d crashed, all her vital signs dropping—heart rate, blood pressure, everything going into the shitter. He’d known how serious it was by how fast Doc Jane had moved. He remembered the drugs going into the IV, and Vishous coming forward with . . . shit, surgical tools and a fetal incubator.

Doc Jane snapped on a fresh pair of latex gloves, looking first at Bella, then at him. “We’re going to have to go in and get the baby, okay? She’s in distress as well.”

Nodding. He’d done some nodding at that point on both his and Bella’s parts. The Betadine had been a rusty orange as V had rubbed it all over Bella’s swollen abdomen.

“Is she going to be okay?” Bella mumbled desperately. “Is our young going to be—”

Doc Jane had leaned down. “Look at me.”

The two females had locked eyes. “I’m going to do everything I can to get both of you through this. I want you to calm yourself, that’s your job. Calm yourself and let me do what I’m best at it. Deep breath now.”

Zsadist had taken one along with his shellan . . . and then he’d watched as Bella’s eyelids suddenly flared and her stare focused on the ceiling with an odd fixation. Before he could ask her what she was looking at,