Page 50 of Targeted By Love

“No, the baby is coming right now. I’m in labor.” Rhodes was panting, mimicking the omegas we’d watched on birthing videos.

“Oh my gods, we have to get you out.” I made to scoop up my mate, but he pushed me away, saying it was too late.

Labor was supposed to take hours, and Rhodes had chosen a playlist and I was supposed to feed him ice chips. That was the plan. I didn’t like it when the plan was upended. In my world, that was when things went ass up.

“We’re staying back here,” Boaz announced.

“Yeah, we’ll offer encouragement from this angle,” Ezra agreed.

“But Rhodes might want us to hold his hand.” Lake was teary.

“I’m good, guys.” My mate managed a half grin. “Maynard will help bring the baby into the world.”

For a second I wondered who the amazing guy was who was helping Rhodes with his labor. And thending ding dingit hit me; I was the guy, my mate’s mate. I had to alpha up.

I removed the blanket and shimmied off Rhodes’s pants and underwear. He raised his knees and told me he had to push.

“We’ll help,” my brothers said. “Push, Rhodes, push.”

They were all overachievers and my mate hadn’t pushed yet.

“Now,” Rhodes shouted, his head raised as he squeezed both of my hands.

“Push,” me and my siblings’ voices echoed around the theater as a huge dinosaur swallowed a guy on the screen.

My mate fell back, his chest heaving. “And again.”

More pushing, my brothers screaming at Rhodes to push the baby into the world, while I watched as our little one’s hair appeared.

“He has hair like his omega dad,” I announced.

“How do you know?” Riggs asked and peered over the back of my mate’s chair.

“Trust me.”

The pushing and accompanying shouting went on longer than I expected. Gods, I admired my mate pushing a baby into the world. But finally, the head emerged and then more pushing andthe shoulders appeared, and I caught our child in the blanket I hadn’t used, having ripped it from its plastic bag moments earlier.

“She’s a girl.”

I placed our daughter in my mate’s arms and kneeled beside him as we gazed at our newborn.

“One girl in a family of all boys,” Thiago said.

“She’s going to rule the roost,” Rhodes whispered

EPILOGUE

RHODES

I'm on my way home. Do you need anything?

Maynard made it a habit of always checking to see if I needed him to pick something up on the way home. I rarely did, but I appreciated the consideration. Running to the store to get a gallon of milk for my coffee with a fussy toddler wasn’t anyone’s idea of a good time. Not that she was a fussy kiddo. On the contrary. Luna was one of the happiest children I’d ever met, but that didn’t mean some days her teething wasn’t painful or she was tired.

I snapped a quick picture of Luna and sent it to him.

Ooh, the lip. I'll be home soon.

By the lip, he meant the face she made when she wanted her papa. At first, we thought she was sad—that she just missed him terribly because he’d been out for work all day, and she wouldn’t stop making it until he came home. And while there was some truth to her missing him, she was a papa’s girl, that wasn’t what she was doing, it just took us a while to figure it out.