Redhawk Caldera you're out wasting

For puppies and/or Peregrine!

Approximately six or seven days had passed since Fox had pushed out four babes from her butt. Okay, not her butt, but close enough. This year, she was handling her postpartum emotions much better. She made sure to take a break from them each day, with Peregrine as a stand- lay-in while she went out and stretched her legs, got some water, and fed herself. He could keep them warm for an hour or two, and they could wait for feeding while she went off and had some quiet time.

Currently, she was nestled back in the den, watching as the brother pile squirmed from time to time, but was more or less quiet and content. Had she known what Wildfire had just gone through, Fox would have beat the ever-loving shit out of her daughter's assaulter. Thankfully, she had no notion of Wildfire's problems, and assumed the best of her mini-me.

Peregrine wasn't far off at the moment, having loped about a quarter mile away from the den to drop the world's nastiest deuce on a patch of dried winter grass. Once he was done kicking dirt over his handiwork, the Alpha male padded to a cache and nosed through its contents. He selected a lean hare, teeth closing around one of its stiff, cold legs. Awkwardly, he carried it back to the den.

He ducked his head inside, gently batting Fox with the carcass before dropping it beside her. His jade gaze then fell to the pups and... "No. No, no. Stop that." Peregrine gently pried Mashed away from Potato's belly, where he had been three seconds away from mistaking his brother's dong for a teat. "You know how I know you're gay?" he joked to the deaf youngsters, not bothering to answer himself as he settled beside Fox with a contented sigh, one foreleg crooked beneath his chest.

The hare slapped her (gently) in the head, and Fox gave Peregrine the briefest of stink-eye stares. She dove into the hare immediately. Feeding herself plus four hungry boys was no easy task, and she had taken to devouring anything and everything that Peregrine brought for her. In fact, she was pretty sure she was going to have to ask for more than one lean hare. Knowing that he'd just gotten in, though, she'd give it some time to let her stomach digest before asking for more.

"If he's gay," Fox said between bites, "what does that make you?" Peregrine was known to have male lovers, and yet he certainly wasn't gay. These four little stinkers were proof of that. "Maybe the apple doesn't fall far from the tree," she snickered.

"Takes one to know one," was his only answer, roundly finishing off the joke with a wink and watching in satisfaction as Fox polished off the kill. His gaze wandered to the week-old puppies then, watching as they began to squirm in earnest, likely in response to their mother's movement or, quite possibly, reacting to the smell of fresh meat and blood.

"I was thinking," he murmured, reaching out a broad paw to gently pin a writhing Potato to the ground, "maybe we could let NJ come see them?" It would be another week or two before they presented the pups to the rest of the pack but he knew how much it would mean to the yearling to let him get a sneak peek. "He's pissed off that he has to share them," he reported with a twitch of his lips and a roll of his shoulders. He didn't particularly want to reward Nightjar's attitude, yet he knew it might go a long way toward smoothing the troubled waters.

Want to fade this one?

"He can wait," Fox replied. "He's part of the pack, just like everybody else." Perhaps that was cruel and insensitive, but Fox had never claimed to be anything else. "He'll get his time when they're introduced." And if he huffed and puffed, that would be his own problem. Fox reached down and smoothed the hair on one of the child's head with her tongue.

Sure, I'll finish it off here. :)

When Fox told him their eldest son could wait, Peregrine merely nodded. He would not argue with his wife on this particular subject. For the first few weeks, even months, she had the final say when it came to their offspring. If she wasn't comfortable with Nightjar coming 'round before she was ready to introduce them in general, then Peregrine and Nightjar himself would both just have to live with that.

"Mom's the boss," he murmured, lips twitching slightly as he pressed his nose against her temple, then turned his attention to the wriggly, week-old pups. "Hear that?" he said to them, although they couldn't. He huffed a laugh, then stretched out with a satisfied sigh, simply content to stare at his little family for a while.