Eternal Beasts

Chapter 25: A Dangerous Journey

Early morning flowed into midday, which then moved into late afternoon. As the triple suns swung towards the western horizon, Jared frowned as he looked up through the thick overhanging branches.

He had been thinking about it the entire time they pushed north. The vision he had while unconscious from what Nikeera said was the Ritual trying to stop them from truly being husband and wife with their intimacy and love. A vision about the other woman in this twisted magical triangle.

Sioned moaned and rolled heavily over in her large bed, her swollen belly making even that act difficult. As the bedside the three village midwives that had been summoned to help her, wrung their hands in consternation. Even with their constant proximity to Bartholemew's magic, they were unsettled by the kind of magic that had swollen their mistress's belly with child in two days. A magic that felt so ancient, yet so vibrantly alive that they were afraid to come near the struggling young woman in case something burst forth from her belly to fall on them and consume them in its fury!

Again the beautiful woman groaned, a heavy bead of perspiration oozing down her pale face to touch the pillow and disappear. Despite that, the midwives merely wrung their hands, shifting from foot to foot in their nervousness. Then suddenly Sioned's back arched in pain as her fists clenched against the first contraction.

"Jared! I need you, my love!" she cried out in pain in need before slowly sinking back into the bed, her fine brow knotted with the fire in her muscles. She twisted and shifted, trying to find comfort. But none was to be found. Again her back arched and she gasped.

"No, masters of the Dawn Council. Please, don't hurt him!" Again she subsided to the bed, the sheets about her soaked with perspiration. The emerald green eyes opened to behold the canopy of her bed. But she was unseeing. In her mind's eye, fuelled by the nearness of the magical birth of her child, Sioned could see a tuathan wizard trying to sever Jared's connection to the Ritual of Completion with magic powerful enough, it was making the ground shake. They were in some distant northern forest. And every time she cast, the wizard made Jared, her whole life and love, twist in pain.

No! It mustn't happen. If there was a caring Maker, it wouldn't happen. Jared, the father of her child and the mate of her soul, couldn't die. Yet, as she watched with apprehension, she could sense his life force ebbing yet again. Her eyes abruptly clouded with pain then closed. It was near now, so very near.

For a moment she was rigid with pain as muscles that had never been used before, were magically forced back into action, pushing her child from her belly and out. Pushing, clenching, spasming ...

"Please," Sioned whispered. "Please, stop. For Jared's sake ..." She stopped there as her breath came unevenly with the shortening intervals between contractions. The thick, white nightgown that she wore was now a second skin, clinging to her convulsing body in its dampness. A twist of her body caused the opening at the neck to come apart. And, for the briefest of moments, the essence ring she had fashioned from Jared's hair, hanging on its heavy gold chain, was visible before Sioned's hand closed over it. With her fingers swelling with her quickly advancing pregnancy, she was forced to hang the ring on the chain or risk injuring her finger.

Clutching the ring with its two encircling griffons, her lover's power strongly filling it, Sioned sought comfort from the familiar thrill it gave her at the thought of the big man who so recently filled her heart with his love. But tonight, that comfort was fleeting as her need for her Jared to be with her in the midst of her labor far outstripped what comfort the ring could give her.

"Oh my sweetest love, how I long for you to be here with me!" she moaned then her mouth fell open in a silent scream as another contraction knotted the lower muscles of her body. Blood stained the white sheets as the contraction seemed to last forever, cutting off the breath to her lungs. It had started. Soon they would be here!