Jonni screamed, high and shrill. She couldn't help it. She wanted to be brave, but this pain was more intense, more powerful, more intimate than anything she had ever known. Another contraction ran through the shuddering swell of her belly. Jonni threw her head back, teeth clenched, trying to repress another howl of agony. It emerged as a low, hissing grunt. It felt like someone was trying to drive a Mack truck through a mousehole, except the mousehole was her pussy. The contractions were so close together there was almost no respite from the pain. She was pushing now, straining the muscles in her belly, thighs, and pelvis, her infrequently practiced breathing techniques forgotten. Her face felt hot and red. Worse, there was another heat, down there, a sizzling itch as the distended lips of her vagina bloomed open to pass the crown of the baby's head.
Tears ran freely from Jonni's eyes and she gasped for air, gathering breath for another scream. Screaming was the only thing that seemed to help. It was an expression not just of her physical torment, but also of the greater prolonged torture that was everything DeMorrell had done to her since he got his hands on the stone. She felt that she could let out some of the pain, mental and physical, as long as she could let out the noise, the pressure in her womb forcing out the screams building up pressure in her lungs, a sort of natural escape valve.
There was a final, overwhelming urge to push. Jonni could barely hear the doctor's encouragement over the roaring in her ears and briefly prayed that she didn't rupture anything upstairs nor down below from the incredible strain. It felt like her pussy was being torn apart. She was shitting a huge roiling fireball and then, suddenly, there was relief. The pressure and pain lessened in a squirt of fluid. Jonni sensed rather than felt she had ejected something from her weary body directly into the doctor's hands.
"It's a girl!" the doctor cried out and Jonni's answer was an inarticulate noise, half laugh, half sob. So it came about that Lucius would not be present for the birth of his newest inheritor and Jonni realized she was somehow relieved.
She had done it. It seemed almost unreal. Gasping for breath, belly still shuddering, Jonni managed to say it, though it was little more than a ragged whisper, "I did it!"
She could rest now. Head lolling againt the pillow, eyes vacantly staring ahead at the wailing, blood-streaked bundle the doctor held aloft like an offering to the gods, Jonni's entire body sagged in momentary relief. Lucia appeared, helping to clean off the squalling newborn and clear her nostrils. She briefly flashed Jonni a shy, rueful smile as if to say she was proud her mistress had performed her onerous duty so well. Had Lucia been here the whole time? Poor Jonni felt a distinct, but mercifully distant, stab of embarassment.
Lucia was one of the few who knew who and what Jonni used to be. It was something they both shared. DeMorrell had used the stone to trap them both in their new forms, changing both his own son and the son of his worst enemy into women. The difference was DeMorrell had used Jonni to provide himself with a new heir. She had just given birth to what would have been Lucia's half-sister if DeMorrell had not reduced his former son to the life of a female domestic.
Jonni felt as if she wanted to blush, but she was too tired to even look away. Her body still ached and tembled. A minor contraction hit her like the aftershock of an earthquake and the new mother let out a yelp. Lucia nodded sympathetically and quietly nestled Jonni's daughter in a nerby basinet prepared to receive her. Coming to Jonni's side, Lucia took her hand, gave a small squeeze, then looked expectantly at the doctor. Confused, Jonni picked up her head, looked from maid to doctor and back. It took her a moment to remember.
She had thought the ordeal over. She was wrong.
Twins.
The thought slammed into her mind even as a newer, more powerful contraction slammed her head back into the pillow like a driver plowed into from behind at an stop sign.
"Nooooooooohhh!" The single word spiralled up into a soprano howl of useless denial as her uterus clenched once more, harder than ever it seemed.
The second infant moved into the birth canal and the painful process began once again. But Jonni knew what to expect this time. She was ready for the pain and remembered her breathing, even if she could only control it half the time. Her battered vagina had already stretched to allow the passage of one baby. This one would be easier, Jonni promised herself. Setting her features into a fierce snarl, she closed her eyes and rode each contraction out like a professional bullrider. Lucia squeezed her hand and Jonni squeezed back with uncaring, almost bone-breaking force. Lucia, mute as always, made no noise of complaint nor would she have even if she were capable of it.
After several more minutes, Jonni threw her head back and howled. The second baby was crowning. Then, like a tiny, angry echo, there was an answering cry. The doctor held the baby up and laughed, "Another girl, Mrs. DeMorrell! Congratulations!"
Lucia gave Jonni a kiss on the cheek and a quick pat on the shoulder before moving to help the doctor clean up the newest arrival. Jonni realized she was crying, but she wasn't entirely sure why. It could have been relief. Yet another precondition of DeMorrell's many wishes had been met. She had given birth to his children twice. It if was going to be possible for her to escape this was just something she had to do. Of course, it could have been grief. DeMorrell had wished that Jonni stay with him to help raise their offspring, ostensibly for the children's sake. Jonni knew it was just another means of keeping her enslaved to the captor that called himself her husband. The birth of her twins represented the first day in a potential eighteen year period of indentured servitude.
Jonni drew a ragged breath and regretted it. Her entire body ached and she was dead tired, but there was still more to do. The afterbirth was coming. She wanted to be revolted, but couldn't muster the energy. To have been through so much and still be disgusted by a little blood just seemed ridiculous. Tears still flowing from her eyes, Jonni smiled a bitter smile. She was a mommy now, and Jonni finally understood why her own mother had always said women were stronger than men.
The doctor laid one of the twins between her breasts. Jonni weakly cradled the newborn, staring into the tiny face, amazed that this living thing had come from inside her. It occurred to her that she had never given a single thought to what she would call them. She supposed their names, like so many other things in her new life, would be Lucius's decision. The first child was exchanged for the second, Jonni briefly examining this one as well. It seemed more awake than the other, the clear gray eyes seeming to look back into her own.
She was so tired. Lucia saw her mistress slump and made to take the baby. Jonni gladly released the child to her. She was never quite sure if she delivered the placenta before or after she passed into merciful dreamless oblivion, but in either case it definitely wasn't before she heard the sound of a door opening. Looking up, Jonni's eyes filled with confusion. There was a figure standing in the doorway which communicated into her husband's private study, a figure Jonni recognized...
