Ankyra Sound Don't want to let you down, but I am Hell-bound.

@Lycaon, birthing thread for @Svalinn.
WARNING: this post may seem a bit dark re: Nyx killing her litter.

An overcast sky, dark and ominous, loomed over Grimnismal's land. With its blackened clouds came the promise of rain and thunder - a brewing storm that seemed to mimic the one in Nyx' weary mind. She lay there in the sand, a shell of who she'd once been, chin propped atop an outstretched forelimb and dull gaze staring lifelessly at the roll of ashen waves as they lapped at the shore. Her life was utterly miserable: she could not function beneath the sea witch's rule, and continued to struggle with the impossible notion of becoming a mother herself.

She'd never wanted a litter, and she sure as shit didn't want a bastard litter.

While Nyx and her siblings were born out of mateship themselves and had been loved without question by their pack-mates, the neglect of their grandfather had affected her in ways she hadn't really been aware of until the discovery of her pregnancy. There was a constant reminder of the way Cross would look down on them with disappointment, a sore realisation for such small children that their lives meant nothing to him. She understood his bitterness now: her mother's illicit mating could've endangered the family, and she'd pissed all over his authority with her actions. History was repeating itself as the bastard daughter of a Winterheart prepared to whelp bastards of her own.

She'd felt lost for weeks, but as the unfamiliar twinges of early labour tugged at the pit of her abdoment, Nyx knew exactly what she had to do.

Deep within the grotto, enveloped in the comfort of darkness, Nyx laboured long into the night until she bore her six cubs. Instinct drove her to clean each airway as they arrived and while an eager mother would feel the urge her to curl herself around her fretting babes, she found herself entirely unable. The newborns mewled and writhed among themselves on the cold floor, hungry and crying out for a comfort that would not come. The agouti Gamma, eager to distance herself as much as possible to the tiny foreign bodies that had come from within her, pressed herself to the slick wall of the cave and stared at them with wild yellow eyes, wide with panic as she struggled to figure out what she was supposed to do.

Finally, after gawking at them for a time that felt endless, Nyx tentatively made to close the distance between herself and her pups. Her eyes darted over them, curious and afraid, to look upon each ugly little ball of brown and cream fur. Mine, the initial swell of her heart called and she hovered her muzzle over her brood, but this fleeting pull for her to reach out was quick to dissipate. Her ears laced back and she recoiled with a hiss of annoyance when the whelps began to gravitate toward her, desperate to feed.

She didn't want them near her. Anger bubbled within her and she backed away, far enough that her rump collided with the den wall and she huddled up close to the cool stone again. Her tail swept between her hind limbs and Nyx hunched her body, hackles raised and lips twitching as she glowered at the disorientated puppies whose volume seemed to increase in her absence. "Shut up!" Nyx barked, unaware that they could not hear her, and snarled in her frustration when they did not obey.

Everything happened so fast. One moment, she was listening to her offspring's cries echo throughout the grotto and in the next, she saw red. Nyx did not recall her frenzy that ended each new life, nor could she understand the metallic taste on her tongue or chill that tightened her chest when she examined the scene of her crime with a flurry of emotions.

Silence hung around her but as she looked upon the first of her slaughtered cubs, felt the release of her anguish as she slumped to the ground in a bloodied, sobbing heap.