Page 148 of The Reluctant Alpha

Coughran's mouth twitched.

"You think that’s sassy, you should hear him at the grocery store," Bayer said, and the fact that he could joke right now, that he could give me something normal to hold onto while my body tried to turn itself inside out—I loved him so much in this moment that it actually hurt worse than the contraction.

"Now," Coughran said.

I pushed. The pressure was different this time—lower, more intense, grinding against my spine in a way that made me see white. Bayer's arms tightened around me, and I heard his bear rumbling beneath his skin, a sound that should have been frightening but was instead the most comforting thing in the world. My bear. My mate. The man who had let a monster beat him bloody rather than risk our children.

"Come on, baby," I cried out, not sure if I was talking to the cub or to myself. "Come on. Your brother and sister are waiting. They've got opinions already, and trust me, you're going to want to get in on the ground floor."

"Good," Coughran encouraged. "I can see the head. Simeon, support there—yes, exactly. Danny, again."

I bore down with a sound that was somewhere between a war cry and a prayer. Everything narrowed to a single point—the impossible pressure, Bayer's heartbeat against my back, the soft cries of my first two babies in their bassinets, and the overwhelming, desperate need to bring this last one safely into the world.

"Almost—almost—one more, Danny, give me one more—"

I gave it everything. Every last scrap of strength, every ounce of stubbornness that had driven me out of that cave, off that porch, through every terrible decision and every beautiful one that had led me here, to this moment, in this room full of people who loved me.

The pressure released.

Silence.

One heartbeat. Two.

Then a cry—not the immediate, furious wail of the first two, but a softer sound that built slowly, like a creature testing its voice for the first time. It wavered, dipped, and then surged into a full-throated howl that rattled the windows and made both babies in the bassinet startle awake and join in.

"Boy," Coughran announced, and he was grinning—actually grinning, this man who'd seen hundreds of births—as he lifted the smallest of my three children into the light. "Congratulations. You've got yourself a full set."

Two boys and a girl. Just like the stuffed bears in the gold boxes.

Simeon, his hands steady but his eyes suspiciously bright, placed my third baby—my last baby, my smallest, my little howler—on my chest. He was tinier than his siblings, his skin slightly translucent, his fingers so small they couldn't even wrap around my pinky. But he was warm, and he was breathing, and when I cupped him against me, he turned his face into my skin and went quiet, like he'd found exactly where he was supposed to be.

"Three for three," Simeon said softly, peeling off his gloves. "All breathing independently. All good color." He paused, and something flickered across his face—pride, maybe, or maybe the particular satisfaction of honoring a legacy. "My mom would've liked this one. He came out dramatic. Her favorite kind."

Emery appeared at Simeon's side and, without a word, pressed a kiss to his cheek. Simeon went bright red. "Don't make it weird," he muttered.

"You just delivered triplets in a guest bedroom during a baby shower," Emery said. "It's already weird, and this is Danny, so it was a foregone conclusion really."

I laughed—or tried to. What came out was closer to a hiccup wrapped in a sob, my body too wrung out to decide which emotion deserved priority. All three of my babies were crying now, a discordant symphony of tiny voices that was simultaneously the most beautiful and the most overwhelming sound I'd ever heard.

Bayer hadn't moved. He was still curled around me, one arm bracing my back, the other hand resting feather-light on our youngest son's back. I could feel him shaking—not with fear, not anymore, but with something too big to contain. His bear was so close to the surface that his skin was fever-hot against mine, and when I tilted my head to look at him, his amber eyes were glowing like embers.

"Hey," I whispered. "You okay?"

He shook his head slowly, not in denial but in disbelief. "We have three cubs," he said, his voice barely audible. "Danny, we have three children, and they're all...they're..."

"Loud," I supplied. "Tiny. Probably hungry. Definitely ours."

His laugh came out shattered, and he buried his face in my hair. I felt his tears, hot and unashamed, soaking into my scalp, and I let him have the moment because some things needed to be felt before they could be spoken.

Dr. Coughran was doing his thing—checking, measuring, murmuring medical observations to Esther, who wrote everything down with the focus of someone cataloguing sacred texts. Simeon had stepped back to give us space, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed and a quiet smile that transformed his usually serious face into something almost boyish.

"Can I—" Bayer's voice caught. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Can I hold one?" Bayer shifted to the side, gently laid me back on the pillows, then Mom lifted our firstborn from the bassinet and placed him in Bayer's arms with the kind of care usually reserved for handling live explosives. Bayer took him like he was made of spun glass—this massive man, this six-foot-four wall of muscle who could shift into a bear the size of a small car, cradling a four-pound infant against his chest with hands that trembled like leaves.

The baby stopped crying. Just like that—mid-wail, he went silent, blinking up at his father with unfocused dark eyes. One tiny fist uncurled and pressed against Bayer's collarbone, and I watched my mate's entire soul rearrange itself around that single point of contact.

"He knows you," I said softly. "He's been listening to your voice for months."

Bayer's jaw worked. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. "I'm going to be better," he said finally, the words rough-edged and raw, directed at the baby but meant for all of us. "I'm going to be everything my father wasn't. I swear it."