Y--Y-ou can do this, R-Reika. You can d-do this! Even though Reika wasn't saying the words, she stuttered in her thoughts because of the pain. Just...h-hold on. Two down, one to go!

Whelping had never been this hard for her. She'd had many, many pups in her seven years, and pretty much all of these had been born without problems, but this time, it was hard.

She'd given birth to two pups already, but wasn't really paying much attention to them. Not yet.

"Are you okay there?" Her mate, Blaze, was sitting on the other side of the small field, his back pointed towards her. Wolf laws forbade any male being present at a whelping, so, technically, he shouldn't even be there.

But Reika wasn't the youngest anymore. Seven human years was pretty old for a Lone One. Blaze was worried that something might happen to his mate, so he decided to sit close, but not watch, just in case something happened.

Her age wasn't the only reason why giving birth was so hard at the moment, though. The early spring season had brought little prey, or, at least, less than expected, so there wasn't much food, and, since Blaze and Reika were Lone Ones, there were no other females around to help out with the whelping process, as in packs. Reika had to do it all by herself.

"Y...yes!" Reika stammered, but then she gritted her teeth, and groaned deeply. The last pup came.

"Reika!" Blaze's call from the other side of the minuscule clearing came to her, but it sounded very far away.

She panted. It was done.

Reika shoved her little ones gently to her belly with her fluffy tail. The pups immediately started seeking their way to her warm milk.

"You can...come, Blaze," Reika whispered, still looking at the pups. The three of them looked more like fluffy worms than wolves. Their dark puppy coats made it impossible to tell what they were going to look like later, but Reika was sure that they would all be perfect--looking and healthy wolves by the time they'd grown up.

Blaze approached his mate carefully. He didn't want to come too near because he knew from experience that Reika could be snappy so shortly after birth.

He stared at the pups with his amber eyes and smiled. "They're beautiful, all of them," he said gently, and he licked Reika's muzzle. "Well done."

Reika smiled faintly. "It's two females and a male," she panted.

Blaze nodded, pleased. "Shall we think of names already? Their Mazah is tomorrow."

The she-wolf shook her head. It was tradition that the pups were named after the Mazah, a special ceremony that took place a day after the birth of the pups where the father of the litter would present the pups to Shinwa, and the Creator would accept them. Reika'd been raised knowing that the ceremony was for all wolves, but in the later years some Lone Ones had made a darker tradition off of it: they would leave the deformed or unhealthy pups in the forest to die. Blaze happened to be one of those wolves.

Reika shook her head. "No, not yet."

Blaze shrugged it off. "Shall I get you some prey? You look weakened by the whelping."

Reika's hackles rose. "I'm just as strong as I've always been! I can take care of myself!"

Blaze was used to the rough temperament of his mate. "But you can't hunt with suckling pups," he reminded her patiently.

The reddish-brown she-wolf nodded. "You're right," she admitted reluctantly.

Her mate stared at her for a second, smiled, and then bolted off into the woods.