Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasure

Modesty was pissed. Gil had returned from his little jaunt with Grammy with a broken ankle, and with her sides heavy and pups due any day now she was more than freshly out of patience. She hated the way they squirmed inside her, feet finding her lungs and bladder at every opportunity. The back of her throat burned from endless reflux and even taking a short stroll was enough to leave her out of breath. All she wanted was for someone to take a damn knife and cut them out of her so she could breathe again. Was that really so much to ask?

The young wolf had no idea what the rippling waves of pain down her flanks signified, but she had an idea of what might take the pain away. It was stashed in a bundle inside the cavern, so she made her way there with gritted teeth and low grumbles about all the different ways she was going to turn her future husband into a blanket for their babies. Wetness pooling at the back of her legs was unpleasantly timed with a kick from inside and another sharp wave so she assumed she had simply finally progressed to pissing herself in public. How charming. When she finally made it home she’d be sure to sit on Gil first.

The next wave knocked her back legs out from beneath her and she stumbled, pure horror clear on her face as her first child was born, A dark child with flecks of colour just like hers. She panicked. What the fuck was she meant to do with it? It seemed to be struggling to breath through the sack that still surrounded it so with more care than she had ever shown another living being, she moved to break it open, and started to nudge at it with her nose and lick the wetness away from it’s body, curling around the small form reflexively to protect it from the cold winter breeze coming in through the opening of the cave. The next to come had a dark head, but the back half looked just like his father. She suppressed the indignant huff that wanted to leave her chest and cleaned that one off too, nuzzling it towards her chest just like the first. The third was white, grey and brown patches, the fourth as black as night, though once the small body saw daylight, the small hints of purple would shine through more evidently. The last was the largest of all, another patched child, with pink instead of tan. It wasn’t very fair so many of them came out looking like their father after she sacrificed her body to carry them.

She was exhausted, and now they were out of her they weren’t any less squirmy than they had been within. She groaned a frustrated groan, body aching and exhausted. When would it end?

“Speech.”