Bear Necessities (Bad Boy Alphas): A Post-Apocalyptic Bear Shifter Romance by Selena Kitt Page B

her.
     
    “Laina?” Sibyl reached down, scooping the baby up in her arms in hopes of comforting and quieting it, at least for the moment, turning the woman toward her with her other hand.
     
    That’s when she saw the blood on the sheet and all over the mattress. Laina was bleeding, and badly. Sibyl felt the oppressive cold of the mountain overtake her. She’d watched women bleed to death in childbirth. Every woman she’d ever known who had become heavy with child was terrified of dying during the process.
     
    “Laina! Wake up!”
     
    Sibyl shook the woman, hard. If she could keep her awake, it would help mitigate the blood loss. How much could one person lose before they died? Sibyl wondered. She’d watched her father’s men bleed from injuries before and had helped the healer on more than one occasion. One man had lost a leg to the tusk of a boar and she had watched the healer tie it off with his belt and save the man. But how could you ebb this flow of blood? She couldn’t cinch the poor woman in the middle! She tried to remember the births she’d attended with the healer, looking to jog her memory. She’d tended births with the healer on more than one occasion before her mother found out and put a stop to the whole thing.
     
    “Shh, shhhhh.” Sibyl hefted the baby up on her shoulder, pulling the sheet back, seeing blood pooling between the woman’s bare legs. “It’s all right, little one. Let’s take care of your mama so you can eat, hungry baby.”
     
    She talked to herself, pressing the woman’s abdomen, watching more blood seep out between her thighs. This was bad. Very bad.
     
    “What’re ye doin’?” Raife’s voice startled her and Sibyl gasped, whirling to see him standing in the doorway. “I saw ye leave yer room.”
     
    Saw her? Where had he been, she wondered, that he saw her leave? She hadn’t seen him in the darkness. Of course, she couldn’t see in the dark and had simply followed the sound of the baby crying. Could wulvers see in the dark? She wondered, meeting those bright blue eyes.
     
    “I heard the baby,” she explained. “It wouldn’t stop crying. I thought… I wondered… I think… I think she needs help. She’s bleeding and I can’t wake her.”
     
    “Laina?” Raife frowned, stepping into the room, unmindful of the woman’s nude body or any modicum of modesty. Sibyl noticed, for the first time, the woman had an intricate marking, covering her thigh and hip. It looked as if someone had drawn on the woman in ink. “Where’s Darrow?”
     
    “I do not—”
     
    “Laina, I brought the—” Darrow stopped in the doorway, seeing his brother standing over his wife’s bleeding form, Sibyl holding his child. The tall man snarled at her and Sibyl shrank back. “Get outta here!”
     
    “She’s hurt, brother.” Raife took a step between Sibyl and Darrow, one hand on his brother’s chest, keeping the man away from Sibyl’s trembling form.
     
    “I fetched Kirstin.” Darrow frowned, looking down in concern at Laina’s inert form. “I woke and she was bleedin’. I—”
     
    “I need more t’stop this!” Kirstin was already on her knees, using the bloody sheet between the woman’s legs. “Darrow! More cloth, or she’ll die!”
     
    “Tis so much blood.” Raife’s eyes were wide with fear and Sibyl didn’t blame him. Birthing was bloody, dangerous business.
     
    “It happens, sometimes,” Sibyl said softly, hoping Darrow didn’t hear her.
     
    “I’ve never seen a wolf bleed like this after a birth!” Kirstin protested, grabbing the cloth Darrow brought, trying to stem the blood flow, but it was useless.
     
    “Women do,” Sibyl countered. “Women die in childbirth all the time.”
     
    “But wulvers do’na, ya ken?” Kirstin snapped. She was afraid too—terrified. Sibyl was surprised by their reaction. In her world, everyone knew this could happen. “I’ve never seen this. Get Beitris, Darrow! Quick now!”
     
    Darrow ran. The