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*****

~ SASHA ~

Sasha had a rough night. And it only got rougher.

Zan had woken every hour or two, fussy and wailing, but rarely wanting to feed. At first Sasha thought he’d just picked up on the tension between her and Zev. But when he woke for the third time and didn’t eat she started to worry.

At that point Zev was asleep, sprawled in the furs, his back bare, head turned and one hand reached across towards her.

Sasha’s heart squeezed. He’d stayed out late talking to the wolf emissaries sent by the Anima.

She’d tried to wait up for him, to be awake to talk to him when he got to the cave. She wanted to try to soothe his pride about her orders around Tarkyn and taking control there. But she was exhausted. When Zan slept, she couldn’t keep her eyes open.

She’d been vaguely aware of Zev returning at some point, very late, when the camp was dark and quiet. But she was so tired, she’d just rolled into his arms, sighed and slept again. For an hour, at least. Until Zan cried again.

.....

The fourth time their son woke, just as the sky was turning a pale pink with the coming dawn, Sasha almost cried. Her entire body cried out for more sleep, but her son didn’t just fuss this time. He twisted in his swaddling, his little fists punching out of the cloths and his face screwed tight in unhappiness. His little cries and wails were ramping up towards a full blown scream. And even if it was hard, Sasha knew she’d had more sleep than Zev. She needed to get their son out and away so Zev would rest. He desperately needed sleep. She worried it was half the reason he was so tense.

So, praying that Zan was just growing and hungry—Jayah had warned her that there would be disruption to his sleeping probably for months yet, though she felt he was, perhaps, weeks older in his development than Sasha had initially believed—Sasha slid out of the warm furs and dressed quickly, sweeping Zan up in her arms and carrying him at her shoulder while she looked for the feeding skin that she’d been promised would be left at the mouth of the cave.

Relieved when she found it, she took Zan just out of the cave—she didn’t want to take his crying out to the tent village and wake more of the people—settled into a hollow with a tree to her back, and tried to feed.

At first Zan fought, screwing his little face up and turning away. But when she got the false nipple of the skin—little more than a leather nub with a small hole—he sucked at it hungrily. Sasha sighed, relieved.

She let her head and shoulders sink back against the tree and watched the sun rise over the trees on the other side of the encampment, but she was so drowsy and tired, her eyes began to droop.

She was startled awake a few minutes later by Zan jerking and wailing again, pushing the skin away with a little fist. His cheeks red and teary.

“Hey, hey, shhhhhh,” she tried to soothe him. He hadn’t even taken half of the meal, but she lifted him to her shoulder, rubbing and patting his back. Maybe he needed to burp? His stomach did feel a little tense against her shoulder.

“Come on, buddy,” she whispered, getting to her feet so she could bounce him a little, rubbing his back from the bottom of his little spine to up between his shoulders the way Jayah had shown her. But the pressure on his back only seemed to make him squirm and cry harder.

“What’s wrong… oh sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

For the first time since they’d landed in this world it hit her how few resources they had. How little they could do—how little information they had.

The Chimera had healers, and most of them seemed to have made it through the gateway. But the Chimeran healers were far more accustomed to dealing with traumatic injuries and illnesses than they were with the birth and growth of babies.

Few offspring were born naturally among the Chimera, she knew—and none in the past three or four years. Usually the females had been impregnated through the human scientists and their sick experiments. But even among those who’d found mates in Thana and gotten pregnant naturally, most had been taken back to the human world to deliver in past years.

It had, apparently, been years since there had been a true newborn among the Chimera. The healers had some knowledge, but nothing like the Anima.

If Zan was getting sick, she needed Jayah. She needed the support of the Anima healers, and that wet nurse!

Zan’s wail eased then, though he still arched his back and squirmed against her shoulder as if he was uncomfortable.

Sasha bit her lip, tears prickling the back of her eyes from a combination of both guilt and anger at Zev and his insistence that Jayah not be allowed into the encampment. He’d removed her only—

“Can I help you, Sasha-don?”

Sasha whirled with a gasp to find one of the Chimeran healers standing just a few feet away, her chin low and shoulders rolled in submission.

“Yes! Please! I don’t know what’s wrong! He woke up fussy, but then he fed, but he didn’t even finish it before—”

“His cry… I think his stomach is troubling him,” the female—an owl Sasha thought—said carefully. “I have some herbs. But could I examine him first?”

Sasha handed her son over to the woman gratefully, though her stomach clenched when his cry rose, high and thin, indignant and afraid.

He was going to wake the entire camp.

Sasha got busy swallowing tears and reminding herself that he was a baby and didn’t know any other way to communicate, but the stress of knowing he would be disturbing the sleep of so many kept tension across the back of her neck and shoulders as the healer held Zan in one arm, unwrapping him to look at his little body—which only made him wail harder when the cold morning air rushed in over his pink skin.

The healer seemed most interested in his belly, pressing gently and paying attention when Zan squirmed or twitched, when his cries rose, and when they steadied. Sasha watched, sweating, praying, pleading with God to keep him safe.

“He’s definitely uncomfortable. Though it may be only gas,” the healer said after a moment, quickly wrapping him again and handing him back to Sasha, bundled in his fur.

His cries shuddered to hiccups and he pressed his face into Sasha’s neck as she held him close, watching while the healer opened a small bag at her hip and sorted through it, pulling a small, leather pouch from inside it, smelling it and nodding. “I’ll show you this time,” she said, but I’ll leave this with you so that you can do it anytime he struggles to feed.

Then she proceeded to measure out a few dried leaves, put them in her mouth and chewed them until they made a sickening yellow-green paste which she hooked out of her mouth with one finger, then painted onto Zan’s tongue.

He spluttered and cried, fighting the taste, which the healer said was a little bitter, “but similar to grass.” But he was forced to swallow it, his little tongue and lips working because the paste wasn’t thick enough to spit out.

As the healer explained what the leaves did, and how to measure them, Sasha kept swinging him and rubbing his back, and to her relief, he slowly settled.

A few minutes later, as Sasha answered the healers well-intentioned, but not very welcome questions about her own sleep and rest, her son sighed and relaxed against her shoulder, then promptly filled his diaper.

The healer’s eyes brightened and she smiled. “See? Sometimes, especially with a new food, their little bodies just need some assistance to… move things along. He should be fine. But come to me if you run out of the leaves—or tell one of the others. We all carry it. Just be certain not to use more than three leaves at a time, and not more than twelve in a day.

Sasha thanked the female, her eyes blurring with tears, then hurried back to the cave to find Zev sitting up in the furs, frowning at the entrance, his shoulders slumping when she walked in carrying Zan.

“I was starting to worry,” he said, his eyes puffy with sleep, his hair tousled. The furs had fallen to his waist so that she could see his abs and shoulders… and as Sasha watched him slowly push the furs back and get to his feet, her mouth dried.

She watched her mate—so handsome and fit, so strong and protective—slowly dress himself, muttering about needing to gather the hunters again because he’d been distracted the day before, and they only had one more day before the Anima wanted to meet and he still didn’t know if he was going to allow that.

“Wait…” Sasha blinked, all thought of desire or her mate’s body forgotten. “You aren’t sure?”