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.