Chapter 317: Hospital Sass and Flying Hedgehogs

Vivian’s POV

"Let me push!"

"Miss, you really need to wait until "

"I am open! Believe me, I am wide open. Let. Me. Push!"

"Honey, breathe... just breathe "

"This is entirely your fault, you and your weak-ass pull-out ga "

"Okay, okay," I interjected, trying my absolute best not to laugh out loud as I stood right beside Hannah. She looked like she was approximately two moments away from either passing out from exhaustion or outright murdering someone in the room. Maybe both at the exact same time. Her thick blonde hair was a tangled mess piled on top of her head, and she was practically glowing in that pale pink hospital gown if glowing also included sweating buckets and snarling at anyone who dared to speak to her.

Honestly? She looked kind of gorgeous powerful and utterly terrifying in the exact same breath.

If this is what simple contractions do to her, imagine what the actual birth is going to look like.

My inner wolf’s tone was somewhere between deeply impressed and thoroughly disturbed.

I could never tell if she was being sarcastic or not. With her? It was always an unpredictable toss-up.

Hannah whipped her head directly toward me, her eyes blazing with fierce light and her canines partially bared. And let me be very clear about one thing there was not an ounce of Luna pride or pack dominance in me that wanted to challenge her in that specific moment. I would have gladly let her launch herself right off that hospital bed and pin me straight to the floor if that was what she needed to get through the pain. She was in active labor. She had every right in the world to be a nightmare.

"And it takes exactly one foot up your ass to "

"Okay! Okay!" I backed off quickly, raising my hands high in the air like a white flag. My timing could not have been better or worse because another massive contraction crashed into her like a violent tidal wave. She dropped right back onto the pillows, groaning through tightly clenched teeth as her entire body went rigid.

We had been stuck inside that delivery room for five chaotic, loud, and hilarious hours. And honestly? I had not laughed that much in weeks. Between Hannah’s aggressive labor sass, Johnson’s pure, unadulterated panic, and the exhausted nurse who looked like she was either dead inside or had seen it all and simply did not care anymore, I was wildly entertained.

Also present in the room was Mark Hannah’s brother who had spent at least half the time grumbling about how "unfair" it was that he could not be the one to physically pull the baby out himself.

I swear, I have never seen Hannah turn deathly pale and flush bright red so fast in my whole life.

Her exact words to him?

"You are going nowhere near my lower body, and you are definitely not pulling anything out of me just to comment on how ugly it looks!"

I had to bite my tongue until it bled not to laugh out loud at the look on Mark’s face. He looked like a disappointed kid whose grand science experiment had just been rejected.

Honestly, this might go down as one of my absolute favorite five-hour stretches of all time. No exaggeration whatsoever. On top of everything else, I even got the chance to meet Hannah’s and Johnson’s parents.

...No words.

Just zero words.

The exact moment Geneve and Andy walked through the hospital room doors, I understood everything about Hannah and Johnson in a single flash. They were literal carbon copies of their parents. Blonde, extremely loud, and completely full of strong opinions especially about who was going to hold the new baby first. The second the two mothers locked eyes, it turned into an intense, competitive showdown. Honestly, I was just waiting for someone to pull out a real stopwatch.

"Oh Moon, what did I do to deserve this punishment?" Hannah groaned, her breath heaving heavily. "Why couldn’t the baby just arrive like an Amazon package? Or get emailed straight to me? Like, I don’t know a living PDF I could just print out?!"

Mark shot a look of genuine alarm toward the nurse, who, to her immense professional credit, remained impressively calm. Then his gaze drifted slowly down to the hand Hannah had latched onto with an iron grip. His eyes widened like he had just realized something crucial about werewolf strength.

Yeah... I had a strong feeling he was about to discover the full joys of werewolf healing powers tomorrow morning. Because the way Hannah was squeezing his fingers right now? That man was certainly not walking away with all his hand bones unbroken.

I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms over my chest, simply letting the lovely chaos unfold all around me. This... this was true pack life. Messy, loud, overwhelming, and absolutely full of genuine heart.

I really did not want to leave, not when Hannah looked like she could either give birth or commit murder at any given second. But I had to move my dinner plans were looming back at the pack house, and I was already cutting the time ridiculously close. Still, something in her tired, glazed eyes a look a little too close to "get out before I bite you" told me she was secretly a bit relieved to see people leave. I could not blame her. If I were in her shoes, belly swollen, body aching, and strangers hovering, I would want some peace and quiet, too.

Before slipping out the door, I promised her I would be back first thing in the morning. With any luck, I would make it back in time for the grand entrance of her little parasite sorry, bundle of joy. Though, judging by the way the kid was clinging to her inside like it paid monthly rent, that baby had zero plans to move out just yet.

As I stepped outside into the cool evening air, ready to take a deep breath, a sudden blur of spiky fur shot right past my feet.

"Frank?!"

He moved far too fast. One second the front hospital door opened, and the next, he was sprinting down the steps and across the lawn like a rodent possessed by demons.

I did not even think I just shifted my weight and launched myself forward. In one single burst of supernatural werewolf speed, I had him firmly in my hands, my claws extending just beneath the surface of my skin. He wriggled wildly in my grip, his tiny spiky legs still running fast in the air like he had not yet realized the ground beneath him had vanished.

"Nice try, traitor," I muttered, lifting him directly up to eye level.

For a split second, I swore I saw pure, unadulterated smugness in those tiny, beady black eyes. Then his gaze met mine, and the smugness instantly melted into pure, uncalculated horror.

"You little shit," I hissed at him. "You were just waiting for me to slip up so you could bolt, huh?"

He let out a high-pitched squeak that could have easily passed for a sarcastic duh.

I narrowed my eyes at his face. "Oh, pulling the curl-up-and-hide act now? Go ahead. Try it. I haven’t played baseball in a while and you are just the right size for a fastball."

At that blunt threat, he stopped squirming entirely... and went completely still in my hands.

Far too still.