Page 16 of Her Tempting Protector

“What about you? Are your—”

Cullen stomped on the brake and swerved. He came within an inch of hitting something white and enormous. It didn’t flinch, except for swishing its tail.

“What is that thing? A yak? A water buffalo?” Cullen honked the horn. It still didn’t move.

“It’s a cow.”

“Nothing with horns that stick up like that is a cow. It’s an albino yak.” Cullen honked his horn again. He wasn’t sure, but he thought it might have rolled its eyes at him. Then two more of his brethren lumbered in front of the truck.

They didn’t have time for this shit. Cullen sprang out of the truck and pushed hard into the rough white hide of the ghost buffalo.

Nothing.

It didn’t move a single inch.

He shoved his shoulder into its flank, then it lifted its tail.

“Oh no, you are not—”

Raiden was going to set a record because Cullen heard him laughing again. Cullen jumped out of the way as the bleached bull almost took a dump on his boot.

“For fuck’s sake. You did that on purpose.”

The pasty bovine let out a loud fart.

Raiden’s laugh was just as loud.

“Enough! I’ve had enough!”

He took out his gun and shot into the ground a couple of feet away from the cows. Off they went.

Cullen got back into the truck.

“Don’t say a word,” he said as he pointed at Raiden.

His friend held up his hands. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Cullen found himself going even slower on the already bumpy road. Even with the brights on, he just knew that one of those damn ghost cows was bound to leap in front of the truck, and he couldn’t risk it.

“Raiden, what’s your gut saying? How do you think the doctor is?”

“Just get there as fast as you can but try to do it in one piece.”

Damn. Damn. Damn.

* * *

“He’s glorious.” Carys stared down at the baby in her arms. He was a miracle. An absolute miracle. She glanced up at his mother who was also a miracle.

“You’re wrong,” Faizah said. “They’re not the miracles, you are. They should not be alive. I have never seen anything like what you did here today.”

She currently had Shada on an IV with a liter of saline and a piggyback of prophylactic antibiotics. She’d already done a morphine push, hoping it would numb the next part.

Carys had already started the process of pushing down on Shada’s abdomen to make sure her uterus contracted. Shada looked at her with eyes filled with pain and accusation. Carys tried to explain why this was necessary, but the young mother didn’t understand, and Carys felt like a deplorable human being.

Typically, the mother and baby would bond with skin-to-skin contact, but that wasn’t possible. So Carys had her shirt unbuttoned and the little boy was only partly wrapped up in one of her clean shirts from her backpack so that he could cuddle against the bare flesh of her chest. After doing her painful duty with his mother and having her look at her like a monster, it felt good to hold the boy close.

“This little girl is not doing well,” Faizah said as she tried to calm the wailing toddler. They had found out from her older sister that she was two-and-a-half years old, but she looked only a year old. When Faizah had examined her, she found fingerprints around her abdomen.