hospital, she balked. She wasn’t going to the hospital. They’d know she was a vampire and lock her and the baby in a cage somewhere and do experiments on them.”
Allie shook her head. “I think I just stood there staring at her for a full two minutes when she said that. It had never occurred to me that she couldn’t go to the hospital. I mean, when I talked about getting a bag ready for the hospital and such before she admitted what she was to me, she’d nodded and agreed and assured me she’d handle it. Turns out she just did that because she couldn’t say she wasn’t going without explaining why. And we hadn’t talked about the trip to the hospital since the revelation because I was too busy asking stupid questions.”
Allie pushed the hair back from her face at the memory. “Liam was born in my living room on a mattress I dragged down from the guest bedroom. It was the scariest, most disgusting, most painful yet most beautiful experience of my life.”
“Painful?” Magnus asked uncertainly. “You mean for Stella?”
“Hell, no,” Allie said on a laugh. “I mean, sure, she was in terrible pain, but at one point, in that pain, she gouged grooves of skin out of my arms and I can’t count the number of times I had to warn her to let go of my hand or wrist because she was about to break the bone.” She shook her head at the memory. “I should have read up on childbirth. I had no idea it could be so gross. I mean, it wasn’t just the baby that came out, and when the pain was at its worst she started vomiting blood.”
Tricia was smiling wryly at this news, but Sam paled and whispered, “Oh, my.”
It made Allie suspect the woman hadn’t had children yet and she completely understood her distress. That experience had been enough to make her kind of glad she hadn’t had children herself and that she had Liam. Not that she still couldn’t have them, physically, but constantly being on the run with Liam wasn’t likely to lead to her meeting anyone she might want to have children of her own with.
“Liam was the most beautiful baby I’d ever seen when he finally showed up.” Allie smiled. “I insisted Stella stay with me for a while so that I could help look after him while she healed from the birth. She was seriously exhausted and pale by the time it was over. She was also incredibly cranky and basically ordered me to take the baby and leave her alone. I just thought that was the crankiness until she said I smelled like dinner to her and unless that’s what I wanted to be I should leave at once.” She grimaced at the memory. “Since her fangs were out, I took her at her word, scooped up little Liam, and hurried upstairs and then just paced around rocking him. It was probably fifteen minutes later that I heard the front door open and close. It was Stella leaving. I couldn’t believe she was up and about already, but she obviously needed blood, so I just continued to rock Liam. Stella returned a couple hours later and, I swear, looking at her, you wouldn’t believe she’d just been through what she had. She looked completely fine, her old self. Well, except that her stomach was completely flat again, and I know that wouldn’t happen with a mortal,” she added wryly.
“Immortals heal much more quickly than mortals,” Magnus explained solemnly.
Allie merely nodded. “Stella stayed with me for the next week, and then returned to the town house across the street so that I could work without Liam’s crying to distract me, which I appreciated. We still spent a lot of time together, and I watched Liam for her while she went out in search of a blood donor most nights, but by the start of the second week of February I was in a crunch with work. I had two deadlines for the fifteenth and was stressed out, so she insisted on taking Liam with her on her nightly outings for the next week, which I thought was just crazy. You can’t take a baby to a bar,” she pointed out. “But she said she’d go to one of the coffee shops that were open all night or something and insisted it would be fine and I could look after Liam for her again once