Free The Valkyrie's Guardian by Moriah Densley Page A

his presence to his mother. He was weak. Dying.
    Observing the pitiful reaching and heartbreaking failure, the innocent confusion — Cassie wanted to claw her heart out. No! she clutched Lyssa, who folded in on herself, as though she could protect the baby with her will to shelter him.
    Cassie furiously scrubbed the tears from her eyes and ordered herself to think. Almost impossible to shift into doctor mode when she was desperate with panic. Think, Cassie! She delved again with her mind, searching, following the systems, looking for — There. A detached placenta. Hemorrhaging. The contractions distressed the baby’s heart rate, and Lyssa’s body thought it was in labor. That had to stop first, or else her body would reject the fetus.
    Cassie froze a moment. She had no idea how to stop labor. It was a natural process, not an injury or illness. She tried to repair the bleeding instead, ordering herself to calm. Every moment she worked, her heart sank lower. While she attempted one remedy another injury grew worse. The little boy seemed asleep, his mind resting. It was lack of oxygen. Suffocation.
    Lyssa quaked, her body seizing with searing pain that rode her nerves. Worse was the unearthly scream in her mind, anguish exploding in a burst of realization: It was too late.
    Cassie focused her effort on calming Lyssa. Helped her breathe, turned her onto her side. Not much else to do except repair ruptured blood vessels, smooth damaged tissue. At least it kept her from ripping out her hair and shrieking like a demon.
    Cassie had watched children die before, but it was nothing like this. They both knew when it happened. Like a candle blowing out, with a lingering trace of a curious, sleepy thought from the babe. And then blood, too much of it.
    With Lyssa’s mind open, Cassie felt everything , shared every jab of pain, every searing emotion. The two women cried out, dual howls of unearthly agony. Black emotion welled like a tidal wave, and Cassie wished it would swallow them both. Anything was better than the breath-robbing pain pounding in her chest.
    Cassie tried to keep Lyssa from thrashing but felt like doing the same. Lyssa’s hands formed claws, she ripped at the skin over her heart, making an inhuman sobbing sound. More like an animal keening. Cassie scrambled to keep her from hurting herself, but her fists slid off Lyssa’s wrists, both too slick with blood to grip.
    Thunder shook the walls. It was Kyros. He burst into the room, an aura of magnetic energy sizzling in a huge radius around him. A male roar drowned every other sound. Lyssa reached for Kyros with shaking hands, and he collapsed near her —
    Strong arms gripped Cassie, and before she opened her eyes, she was being carried down the hallway, away from the storm raging in the bedroom where Lyssa and Kyros grieved together.
    Jack. Kill me.
    He crushed her against his chest as he ran through the lightning storm radiating from the house, farther and farther from the static pull until the pulsing hum grew fainter. With blurry vision Cassie watched sparks and explosions, circuits and transformers overloaded with sympathetic voltage from Kyros’ outburst. Streetlights went dark. A low hum buzzed in her skull until the sound of crashing waves washed over her consciousness.
    Jack sank to the ground with Cassie balled in his lap. He tucked her head under his chin and banded his arms across her back. She could barely breathe under his iron grip, but it was what she needed. It kept her from flying apart. His embrace pushed back against the awful tide of despair clawing its way out of her chest.
    Never, Jack. I have never seen anything more … awful! He petted her head while she sobbed, communicating wordlessly what she had observed, showing him how the tiny baby had struggled. How he felt abandoned, then sleepy, then nothing. Why? That’s not supposed to happen. Not to them.
    That was the second time, Cass.
    What? Her heart stopped