As Tesseract had suggested, Alana had moved her den near to that that the alpha couple shared, on the far side of the same hill. She had seen no sign of the male that had caused her pregnancy, not since that moment when she caught his scent in Glorall. Perhaps he had moved on and she was safe. She still hadn’t been able to fully let her guard down, though. She didn’t know who he was or what company he kept. Who is to say that he was not close to one or several of the new Glorall wolves?


The constant threat of him showing up kept Alana on edge. She slept poorly, awakening with every gust of wind for fear it may be him. She would feel better once she had more of her lessons in self defense from Tesseract. She’d opted not to start until after she gave birth. Her waist had grown slightly large, though it would not have impacted her mobility by much at all. Something told her to rest as often as she could, though. Despite the circumstances of her child or children’s conception, the last thing she wanted to do was to lose a pup.


She was lying outside the den, instinct telling her to stay close today. It wasn’t a conscious decision, to stay near. She had simply emerged and found the sunlight outside to be particularly pleasing and had stretched out underneath it. She had been drifting, half asleep, her eyes barely open, when suddenly her stomach tightened. Her eyes flew open at the foreign sensation. Adrenaline tinted with fear coursed through her. Was this it? When the tightening sensation appeared again, she felt her fear increase. She didn’t know how to do this! She had never even seen another female give birth and now here she was, forced to do it alone. Still, she stood carefully and retreated into her den.


After retreating, she lost all sense of time. There was only pushing, standing to shift position, and more pushing. Finally, the contractions reaching an almost unbearable point, she gave one final push and she felt a pup slide out of her. The pressure finally eased, she released the breath she hadn’t even known she’d been holding, a whimper sounding. Even as she reached for the puppy – her son – the fear that had been suppressed during her contractions returned. She picked him up gently, cleaning him off. He looked frighteningly close to the wolf that had attacked her, but as his fur began to really get clean, she could see the greys and blacks from her coat in his.


She nudged him toward her stomach, encouraging him to nurse. She rested her head down, but fought the temptation to sleep. She was sure that the scent of her birthing had reached the air outside of the den. Hopefully it would be either Tesseract or Caligula that noticed, although she did not seem to be bleeding much at all. Perhaps she did not even need a healer. But there was still the risk that her attacker would be the one to notice. Surely he would have known that it would be about time for her to deliver. That fear battled exhaustion and lost, as Alana drifted into a light sleep, still fighting to be alert should any show up. As she drifted off, she realized that her son had no name. Grendal. She would call him Grendal.





“speaks like this”

Alana
. female . six years . 29 inches 85 pounds . no mate . no life . Glorall .

. mother of Grendal .