Northstar Vale For I'm too busy committing sins

Screaming, crying, she felt like a disgusting wretch curled up in the den she had only dug a week prior. It was some distance from Montagne's settlement, isolated and quiet enough for her to express this horrific pain without shame.

Pala felt nothing but regret now, hatred for herself and what she had agreed to. If she had not been impatient, if she had waited for the right man, she would have had someone to help her through this. These children would not be her own, they would be Chaudry's. De Cigue wolves. She knew the second that he left on the night they laid together, ordering her to stay behind as though she was something to be ashamed of.

The puppies arrived over several hours, and only three. All that pain and those months of carrying for only three.

The first was a boy, unremarkable and healthy. She licked him clean and pulled him close, her own wails drowning out his squeaks with ease.

Next was another son, fat as a leech and painful. Dark coated and squealing, he was perfectly healthy and wanted to let everyone know it. He was here, and he was fine.

The anxiety had set in by the time the third arrived. If there was no daughter, then this would have no purpose; and yet it seemed the gods had heard her pleas for the third was a little girl, healthy and hungry.

The birth was over, finished with, and yet as Pala looked down upon her litter, healthy and pristine while she was exhausted and weepy, she felt a twinge of resentment. They were not hers, not really.

For now all she could do was wait, wait for Chaudry to arrive and claim his children.

It is done. He can tell from the wailing that comes from the whelping den he discovered some time ago. Only when the screaming ceases does he approach; he is not looking to comfort, only to collect.

He enters the den with his nose wrinkled; the smell is horrible, the sight before him worse. She lays with three children, unmoving as Chaudry approaches. Two boys, and a single girl. It was exactly what he hoped for.

For the first, the name @Ludovicus Osman de Cigue is awarded. The most unremarkable of the trio, he is given the middle name of Pala's father as was agreed. It had to go to one of them.

Next is a large, dark-coated boy. Chaudry has an eye for warriors, he knows this one will grow to be one. He names him @Ignace Njall de Cigue, his middle name after Chaudry's own father.

And finally, a little girl whose very existence brings Chaudry pride. He names her Julienne Aude de Cigue, his @Julia. Her middle name comes from his aunt, a strong woman who Chaudry once learned from.

He leaves without a word to Pala. She will learn the name's in time.

Blood of dog and wolf alike, eaching sullying the other's purity. Born from a plea for approval rather than love, and yet the stars had aligned for little Ludovicus nonetheless. Healthy and clean, he suckled from his mother unaware of the circumstances he had been born into.

With time his mother may learn to love, his father may learn to live for himself. But for Ludo, life would move on whether they did or not. He had too much to look forward to, too much life to live for it to be wasted. Snuggled in with his littermates, taking their first breaths together, life moved on.

Julienne Aude de Cigue, born under the yoke of so many expectations, remained blissfully oblivious in these first minutes. She was only a child, only a daughter unclaimed by her mother and saddled too young with a father's gilded plans. Just Julia, taking in the newness of life and overwhelmed by it all even without the sights and sounds and smells that would assail her in weeks to come.

But she was alive; the oldest, the most common, the most beautiful kind of miracle.

Ignace entered the world as stubborn as he is. Screaming and crying, quieting only when a nib to suckle on was offered. His plump figure incidentally pushing his siblings aside. For the warmth of his mother, under the watch of his father.

A complete family, a temporary bliss.