Aura gasped and stared at her daughter for a moment longer, hardly believing what she was seeing. It took incredibly deep descent to create a Heartborn, and while she knew Orlando, a Shadowborn, was made from a long line of wolves through one parent, she doubted his purity was quite enough, with the mixture of a turned parent and a pure, to make a Heartborn.
Aura whispered out the name she had picked out for her first daughter to open her eyes, and then she held the tiny furball between both of her hands. “Lithia.”
Nick had taken more than two weeks to get up the courage to actually visit. He had been hoping, almost, that someone would go and see her and spread the word about her children. It was always an exciting and yet an anxious time whenever a mother gave birth. Children of other breeds were almost always fostered with other packs so that they could be among their own kind, but every Ironborn birth was heavily celebrated.
He’d had no such luck with gossips, though, and he wanted to make certain she was alright. She was a part of his pack, after all, and she was a widow. As such, she was even more his responsibility.
He knew she would be able to feel his footsteps the moment he stepped on the porch, but he tapped on the metal of her front door anyway with the rings on his fingers, sending a discordant clang through the house that was, all the same, music to their ears.
She hadn’t really been given that much warning to dress in something other than a sheet, and she looked like a mess with her hair piled on her head. Visitors weren’t exactly what she wanted at the moment, but she answered the door anyway. Aura smiled weakly at Nick, but she only looked up at his eyes for a moment before she looked down toward his feet. “Hi.”
“Hi.” He said, not really knowing what else could be said at the moment. “May I come in?”
“Um, yeah, sure. I was just making some steak as a celebration.” She knew it was pretty pathetic to celebrate on her own, but even with everything that had happened, Aura didn’t have any friends. People didn’t hate her, but they weren’t really looking to spend time with her either. “I’ve got plenty if you want some.” She went back to her cooking as soon as she closed the door behind him. “I, um, I didn’t think I would ever see you around here.”
“I didn’t have a chance to check up on you after you went into labor.” Which was a complete lie, but it was the one he’d been telling himself as well. “I wanted to make sure you were alright.”
“Oh. Thanks. That’s really nice of you. Good Alphas always keep a watch over their people.” She put her meal on a plate and then she looked over at him before she looked toward the pen where he could hear tiny barks and growls. “Do you want to see them? They opened their eyes tonight, so they all have names now.”
“Did they?” He managed a slight smile, just at the echo of how exciting an occasion that always was. But it dimmed quickly. She should have had her family all around her, her friends celebrating with her. Ziem by her side to be proud of his children. But instead all she had was him. There as her Alpha or as her friend, he wasn’t even sure himself. “Sure. I’d be glad to meet them.”
He could see her eyes light up with genuine happiness as he walked with her over to the pen. She paused for a moment, wondering what she should do since she was fairly sure about the fathers of the puppies, but she just picked up her eldest son anyway and held him out for Nick to take. “This is my eldest. Cobalt. Coby, most likely.”
Nick smiled at the name as he took the little brown-furred boy in his hands. The pup squirmed a little at his touch, but as soon as he kicked against the steel bands around Nick’s wrists, he stopped, and started sniffing at Nick as the stranger he was. It was a few moments before he looked up at Nick with Nick’s own eyes, and his smile softened into something more real than it had been in some time. “Coby. Good name. Strong little one, isn’t he?”
Aura didn’t respond right away with words as she swallowed hard and nodded her head. After a moment of watching Coby with Nick, she reached in and picked up Lium. “Only to be rivaled by his brother. Gallium. Lium.”
Nick looked over Lium, and nodded at his obviously Ironborn eyes. The black fur set him back a little, though, since neither of the boys was particularly light-furred like their mother and father. But such things happened sometimes, he supposed. Aura’s mother had been dark-furred. Nick couldn’t remember anything about Ziem’s family. They had been too low a generation to matter to Nick’s parents, and therefore below Nick’s notice for most of his childhood. “Are they the only Ironborn of the bunch?”
She nodded and then pointed to her girls, who had huddled together in their brothers’ absence. Both were looking up, especially the little brown-furred girl, since she wanted to be held as well. “Lithia.” She pointed to her little Heartborn daughter.
