Raashh Decisions (Xxan War Book 3) (24 page)

Fuck!
Visions of losing his young and Sandy as well pushed him toward madness. “We’re nearly there,” he whispered. There was still time to save them.

Sandy’s hand loosened against his, and Arren stroked her face, calling her name. There was no reply.

“She’s doing fine,” Tim assured him.

“Fine? This is fine?” he practically roared.

“She’s stable,” he corrected himself.

Arren didn’t reply to that.

“Landing now,”
Raashh announced.

The engines wound down, and his
seir
rushed past them, working the exterior door with dexterity that surprised many humans.

“Lift her on three,”
Tim instructed.
“Raashh, you’ll have to take the
IV
bags.”

The door swung wide, and Raashh turned back to them with a grumble of agreement.

“One. Two.”

At “three,” Arren and Tim slid to their feet, Tim holding the medicated pad to the bleeding. They maneuvered her out of the shuttle together, Raashh extending one long arm fully to take the rear position down the too-narrow ramp.

“Run.”

Arren didn’t need to be told twice. He sprinted for the emergency wing Rayn had pointed out to them on an earlier visit, Tim barely keeping up with his pace.

Just when he was starting to wonder where Rayn’s people were, a swarm of them descended from every side. An emergency cart slipped into place between them, and Arren lowered Sandy onto it and slowed his pace to allow them to work while the move continued.

One doctor slid a scan plate low on Sandy’s abdomen. Another tapped keys on a control board, pressing shoulder-to-shoulder with Tim to accomplish it. Readings were shouted out, most likely to comms in the walls Rayn was monitoring, as well as to the staff members directly preparing her for what would come next.

“Op One,”
Rayn’s voice barked over a speaker they were passing. His voice echoed from others further down the line.

The staff members turned the gurney left at the next intersection, and Arren turned with it. No matter what Rayn said—conscious of his presence or not—Arren wasn’t leaving Sandy’s side.

No one asked him to. The entire team trooped through a fine spray and into the operating room. Dripping the foul-smelling antimicrobial liquid should have been uncomfortable, but it wasn’t. Only Sandy mattered.

Sandy and our young.

Snips of conversation made it through the haze of his own desperation.

“—started en route. I’ve slowed it but—”

“How long has she been unconscious?”

“Ten milliliters. STAT.”

“—distress.”

“We will not lose her, Rayn.”
His
seir
warned.

“Doing my best, Raashh. Now let us work, or I’ll have your hulking ass removed.”

Arren shot a look at his
seir
, anticipating an explosion that didn’t materialize. His
seir
snorted his disgust and paced the far end of the room, well out of the way of the medical team working on Sandy.

Fairly certain he wasn’t going to be tasked with talking—or taking—his
seir
down while Rayn’s team worked, Arren focused on his mate’s pale, still face. Machines flashed warnings, and medical personnel stripped away Sandy’s ruined
S’suuhhea
and covered her with sheets, top and bottom.

All of it likely took heartbeats, but it felt like hours to Arren. It was the worst torture a Xxanian male could suffer, he decided. His mate and young were at risk, and there was nothing Arren could do to save them.

“Arren? Arren!”

He snapped his head around to stare at Rayn.

“We need you to move.”

His ridge plates rose in warning, and he bared his hunting teeth.

“Sparks has to make the incision. Just to the opposite side, but move. Now.”

Incision?
He rushed to follow Rayn’s orders. If they were resorting to surgery, there wasn’t a moment to lose.

There was no pretense at trying to hide the proceedings from him. Before Arren was situated across her body from his previous position, the slight human woman was making a precision laser cut.

Blood mixed with Xxanian amniot rolled down her abdomen. No effort was made to collect it for purification and return to her body. This was slash surgery, at its finest.

As if in answer to his fears of her losing too much blood, Tim strung up bags of blood, most likely synthesized from blood samples Sandy had given weeks earlier. He had them hooked into the IV and replacing what she’d lost in the blink of an eye.

A thin cry caught Arren’s attention, and he whipped his head toward it. The first of his babies was halfway through the incision and already ramping up to a furious squall.

His
seir
appeared at Arren’s back, rumbling the Xxanian welcome song. Arren joined in; Rayn and Tim did likewise without pausing in their work.

The young one was out and disappeared into the hands of a second female in a rush. Spark’s hands were back in the incision before Arren could protest his child being whisked away from him that way.

They have to run tests,
he reminded himself.
Let them.

“Female,” someone announced. “One point six kilos. She’s coming in at a six. Strong responses to stimuli.”

Arren watched his younger babe emerge in Sparks’s grip. The young one was silent, and Arren’s heart pounded in terror hard enough to make his head spin.

Breathe. For your
Hauaa’s
sake, breathe!

Sparks handed the miniature babe to yet another female, then went to work with her flesh-knitting tools. “Second out,” she informed Rayn.

He didn’t look up from his own work, and he nodded grimly.

Breathe.
The idea of going home without any of his family was inconceivable to him. It was horrific.

“Female,” someone behind Sparks shouted. “One point one kilo. Three. Breathing but sluggish. I could use the
seir’s
help.”

It took a moment for Arren to latch onto the truth that
he
was the
seir
in question, not Raashh. He turned and slammed headlong into his
seir’s
broad chest.

Raashh pushed Arren past the milling humans.
“Go. Care for your young. I will protect your mate.”

“I thank the brother warrior.”
It was out before Arren could think twice about the presumption of a Subdominant uttering the phrase.

He’d hardly caught his breath to question what the women tending to his young needed from him when one turned on him and stroked a stinging gel over the musk ducts on his chest. Arren’s ridge plates stirred to life as his musk started to flow.

In unison, the two women turned, each holding a tiny daughter wrapped in silk-lined flannel. They pressed the babes to him, faces nestled to his stimulated ducts.

“Cup your arms under them,” one of them ordered.

Arren complied, confused by the command, and two squirming bodies were entrusted into his care. The humans scanned the med-disks attached to his daughters’ chests.

“Six up to eight,” one reported smartly.

“Three up to six,” the other followed in her wake.

“Told you the
seir’s
musk was the key,” Tim gloated.

“Record it all,” Rayn directed them. “I imagine
Doctor
Carew will need as much data as possible for his thesis conclusions.” There was a hint of a smile in his tone.

“Ready to move to the nursery nest?” one of the attendants asked.

Arren looked toward Sandy, whispering her name, torn between his duty to his mate and the same toward his daughters.

“She won’t wake for hours,” Rayn replied. He looked over his shoulder at Arren, his expression solemn. “But she
will
wake. Sandy is strong and fighting.”

“Marie was strong,” Raashh countered.

“Marie wasn’t here and in our care at the critical moments.”

Raashh was still for a moment. “True. I cannot argue it.”

And he blames himself for that.

Arren nodded to his
seir
and accompanied the women to the half-finished nest area. Already, they’d infused Raashh nest’s scent into the medical nest.

Good.
That decreased the chance of a tragedy like his own.
At least they are female. There can be no loss of a Dominant in this case.

In a daze, Arren followed the commands of the medics surrounding him, learning how to care for his premature young.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Sandy took a deep breath, trying to right her senses before she opened her eyes. Throbbing aches in her abdomen had her reaching for her distended womb.

The mound of babies wasn’t there. Memories of labor starting in the bathing pool rolled into ones of the thick, green amniot…and then blood coursing down her thighs.

I lost them.
Sandy didn’t question it. The room was too still and silent for babies to be within earshot.
As still as a centuries-old tomb.

That was too much for her, and she started sobbing.

“Sandy?”

She opened her eyes, gazing up at Daveed. Her mind made unwanted connections.
I lost the babies, and Arren is in a killing rage.
Visions of him locked in a cell were searing, and she broke down in tears.

“Sandy? Are you in pain?” Daveed asked urgently.

Excruciating pain, and only Arren can understand it.

In the distance, a door slid open, and footsteps rushed toward the bed. Sandy turned her head toward the newcomer.

Dr. Rayn.

He scanned his gaze over the readouts on the screen above the bed, then focused on Sandy. “You’re in pain?”

A hundred questions and statements fought their way toward her lips. At last, one emerged in a rush of sound and air. “I want to hold them. To…see them.”

“The babies?”

It’s bad.
She nodded solemnly.

Rayn checked the readouts again. “We’d intended to move you into the nest when you woke, but if you’re in pain—”

“What?” Nothing he was saying made sense.

“Are. You. In. Pain?” There was a demand for information couched in that.

“A…a little, I guess.”

He sighed in seeming relief. “Why were you so panicked when you woke?”

Sandy pressed a hand to the soft patch of her abdomen, tears causing a lump in her throat.

To her surprise, Rayn smiled. “You have two beautiful daughters in the nest with Arren. We had to move them to the nest for the healing scents and sounds. Would you like to see them now?”

Catching her breath long enough to offer a verbal response beyond her, Sandy nodded.

Rayn tipped his head to Daveed, and Sandy looked that direction just in time to see her brother-in-law untucking the blankets and sheet on his side of the bed. Whispers of movement announced Rayn doing the same behind her. Her face burning in embarrassment, Sandy resigned herself to the fact that being carried from place to place was still a part of her life.

Daveed tucked the covers around her carefully and lifted Sandy into his arms. Rayn led the way out of her room and down the corridor.

The door to the nursery nest they’d constructed slid open, and the lush smells of plants and clove filled her lungs. Sandy sucked in a deep breath, starved for the nest she’d only recently become a part of.

As if she’d asked a question, Daveed offered information. “We hadn’t finished the nest yet. Raashh has been bringing plants up from the far corners, and allies have had scentless plants sent to aid us. More arrive every hour. The nest will be complete in days, at the most.”

“Why are allies sending plants?”
And what are scentless plants?
“Is it a Xxanian tradition when a baby is born?” If it was, she’d never heard of it.

His smile was grim. “Word is spreading that Raashh’s nest has two young females in need of a stable, healing nest. None of them dare send their scents into the healing nest for infants, but none will chance us remembering a failure to aid us when…” He shot a narrow-eyed look at her that said he’d be blushing, were he capable of it. “When Arren considers males to sate your daughters’ quickening.”

That concept made the independent human woman in her balk. The idea of anyone choosing a sexual partner for her daughters wasn’t something she could accept without a fight.
Arren and I will have to discuss that later.

Daveed turned a corner on the winding path, and Arren was there, dozing on a dreaming mat, two blanket-wrapped babies on his chest. The breath caught in her throat at the sight of them.

Her brother-in-law settled her to the dreaming mat next to Arren. He stirred and opened his eyes, then extended his hand to stroke his fingertips along her cheek.

“How do you feel?” he whispered, seemingly intent on not waking their daughters.

“Sore.”

Arren winced.

“But okay now that I’ve seen the three of you.”

Sandy reached out and drew a fingertip along one tiny hand. Her daughter turned her hand and grasped on. Hard! Tears stinging her eyes, Sandy laughed.

Arren smiled widely. “I know the names we talked about, but the final decision is yours. If you don’t think the names fit—”

She motioned to them with her free hand. “Which one was born first?”

“The one holding your hand. She’s slightly larger than her twin, but the younger…” He chuckled. “She’s our little fighter.”

“Then the little fighter is Marie…Marie Janelle, for both of our mothers.” Raashh had told her what a fighter Marie was. They’d originally intended to name each girl after a grandmother, but this seemed more appropriate to her.

“This one…” Sandy smiled as her daughter’s grip tightened again. “…is Noelle Joy.”

Daveed gasped. “Joy will be honored.”

“Noelle for your brother?” Arren asked.

“Yes.” Would that upset him?