The Heartborn Mate

by D. Brumbley

  It was hours of pain before Aura’s body finally decided to cooperate and end the pain by giving birth, but every other wolf in attendance was worried. Most of the time when puppies were born a month in advance, it was too early for survival. Some pups born too soon were born dead. Many of them were born only to live a few hours and then to die simply because they weren’t equipped as they should have been. It wasn’t uncommon for a mother to lose a puppy or two even when they were born on time, and born healthy. Only Aura knew that the pups were actually more than a week late, instead of three weeks early.

  Lea was there to help as well, and even though she’d never been a mother herself, she was old enough to help despite the fact that Aura didn’t really need her there. After Ziem’s death and the respect he had gained afterward, there were plenty of people who wanted to make sure his legacy lived on through Aura’s pups. After the first one was born, Lea was the one to take and clean it off, even though in the wild, the mother would clean off the puppies herself. It had been a long time since the wolf was the dominant personality for any of them, and like humans, they needed more help even in their wolf than they wanted to admit.

  Lea looked down at the little puppy, a little boy, with dark brown fur. He wasn’t small like everyone had expected they would be, in fact, he looked to be a little heavier than most healthy, on-time pups.

  By the time it was all said and done, there were four healthy-looking puppies. Even the runt, a little girl with pitch-black fur, was a healthy size and weight. Four puppies, two with all black fur, two with dark brown, none with Aura’s light brown hair and certainly none blonde like their father. It was an interesting sight, but everyone was proud of how Aura had managed it, that all the puppies were alive and feeding quietly as their mother slept in exhaustion.

  Once all the commotion inside had died down, Lea stepped out to see Nick still standing there, obviously waiting for a report. “They’re all healthy. Four of them. Two boys, two girls.”

  Nick nodded quietly. “And Aura?”

  “She’s exhausted, of course. Sleeping soundly while the puppies take their fill.” Lea looked back at the house and then she shook her head. “Strong girl in there. I don’t know how she managed it, but those puppies are incredibly healthy. Bigger than most pups carried to term.”

  “Well, she is only a few weeks early, after all. And Ziem was a large wolf.” That was stretching the truth a bit, though Ziem was above average in his wolf, even if he was only normal height in his human form.

  “Do you want to go in there and see her?” She wasn’t sure if she should ask, but she knew he cared about her.

  He shook his head. “Not now. I’ll see her later on. But I’m glad they’re well.” Nick hadn’t spoken any more than necessary since the battle weeks before, and he had even spent the Fulness locked in his own house alone.

  She nodded and sighed as she looked back at the house. “Every Ironborn who died for us is wrapped up in that house right now, watching over her and those pups. They couldn’t have survived otherwise. We’ll get stronger. You’ll see.”

  “They’re doing what we’re all doing. Surviving.”

  Lea stepped up a little bit closer to him, though she didn’t touch him. “Go in there and see them. It’ll lift your spirits.”

  “My spirits.” He repeated numbly, but then turned and looked away from her, walking back toward the monument without saying anything further.

  She sighed as she watched him walk away, shaking her head. It would take a miracle to see him smile again, to see him actually find someone that made him happy and wasn’t using it against him. She saw him more closely than most. She knew he was broken beyond what most people could see. All she could do was hope that their gods, whichever ones had saved them, would help Nick find his miracle, or help his miracle find him.

  * * * * *

  The four pups were playing, as always, in the iron-lined playpen that Aura had made to hold them, like a childproof version of the steel sheet she had once shared with the man who had pretended to be their father. They seemed to know each other by touch and by smell, because the two black ones seemed to stay together, as did the two brown ones, though when they started playing with each other, there was no telling them apart in the midst of the tumble of brown and black fur. They had started to open their eyes, but only tentatively, and not for long enough that Aura could see which among them were the Ironborn she knew were there.

  Aura only left the house at night after all of them went to sleep to hunt for herself so that she could feed them, and even then she didn’t go far from the house. Other than that, she almost never left, except for a few times when she went to take the puppies to Ziem, to introduce them, even though she knew it was fairly morbid to do so.

  She reached down into the playpen in her human form, wrapped in a light sheet that she wore so that she could shift easily, since she did a lot of back and forth to keep herself strong and to keep them fed. Aura picked up her biggest puppy, the brown male, and she brought him up to her face so that she could kiss his little nose. None of them had names yet, and they wouldn’t until they opened their eyes, an event that she was more than a little impatient for.

  “Okay, You. I know you’ve been opening your eyes. You can’t hide it from mommy.”

  The boy licked her face a few times and whimpered a little, but resolutely just nuzzled her hand. A stubborn one. Though he could have gotten that trait from either one of the two men that might have been his father.

  She sighed and then hugged him to her body for a moment before she kissed the top of his head. “Fine. You keep your secrets. Wish you hadn’t picked up that particular habit from your mommy. What about your sister? Think she’ll give up her secrets?” She picked up the other brown puppy who was all too excited about being picked up, and licked Aura’s hand several times but didn’t open her eyes. “Aw, come on, guys.”

  When she looked down into the playpen again, though, the black male puppy was standing at a distance from her, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, and with his eyes wide open. Eyes that looked brown at first look. Then maybe green, maybe grey.

  Aura squeaked in excitement like the young mother that she was, all too eager to see progress from her babies. She put the two pups in her hand back down in the playpen and then she picked up her black-furred little boy and brought him closer to her face as she ran her heavily-ringed fingers over his tiny body. “Well, just look at you.”

  He licked her rings, not her fingers, seeming to enjoy the taste of the silver and gold like the little Ironborn he was, and gave a few whimpers whenever they were too far away for him to get to them.

  She grinned as she watched him react to her rings, her heart swelling with pride. “How about…Gallium? Think that name will work for you, my little ironbiter?” She kissed him several times all over his little furry head and then she looked into his tiny, amazing hazel eyes. It was wolf custom to only name puppies after they had opened their eyes, since so many usually didn’t make it that long. Puppies of elements different from their parents had a more difficult task of survival. “But I won’t make you wear it all the time. That’s quite a name. Lium. How about it?”

  He nipped at her hands a few times, just responding to her voice, and blinked his eyes open again to look up at her. They were dark, but they were hazel. So dark a brown and deep a green and grey that they looked like bronze and lead and burnished slate all mixed together. Surrounded by his short dark fur, his eyes looked almost black.

  Her smile faltered a little as she stared into his eyes a little longer, but she kissed him again to reassure him that his mother was nothing but happy and that she loved him. Just the flash of the memory that made her pause made her look away from Lium in her hands to the playpen.

  Two black. Two brown.

  None like her.

  That wasn’t possible. Right?

  She shook her head as she put her adorable little pup back down into the playpen, and he immediately ran to his
black-furred sister who was in the corner. When she looked over her pups again, she saw that the little brown-coated girl was rolling around with her brother, sitting on top of him and growling softly as she tried to get him to play. When Aura reached in to try and get her little girl to play nice, the little pup reacted by running to her hand and then looking up at her mother. Apparently the game of the day was open-eyes-for-mommy, and tiny little violet eyes stared back up at Aura.

  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. “And Mercuria. Curia for short.” She said as she pointed to her Fireborn daughter, whose blazing red eyes were quite a sight against her black fur.

  The two of them gave Nick pause, and he looked at them for a long time without looking back at Aura. When Lithia came up to the edge of the playpen closest to him, Nick didn’t reach out to pick her up as he knew the pup wanted him to. Her eyes evoked all manner of turmoil in his thoughts, so much that the little girl actually whimpered a little at the feeling she could already sense from him but couldn’t yet understand.

  “They all seem…very strong. Very healthy.” He was glad that after so much death having passed them over recently, the death of a newborn pup, so common among them, would not be added to the already-long list. But even as he was relieved at that fact, the eyes of Lithia and Curia bothered him in a way he didn’t want to give voice to.

  Ziem was a third-generation wolf. Aura was a seventh, like him. There was no way that they could have produced a Fireborn together. Let alone a Heartborn. And Nick knew it.

  “Yes, they are.” Aura responded as she put Lium back in the pen and then ran her fingers across the top of Lithia’s head to comfort her. “I’m lucky, I guess.”

  Nick just looked at them for a while longer before he finally pulled his eyes away from Lithia’s again to meet Aura’s. “They’ll be taken care of. No matter what happens now.”

  “Thank you, Nick.” She reached out to take Coby from him, even though Coby looked content in Nick’s hands. “I don’t deserve your kindness, but I’m grateful for it.”

  He gave up the pup and then stood up, taking a step back away from the playpen, no longer looking at the puppies, or at her. “I should’ve been out there with him. That was my place, in the midst of the fighting with the other Alphas.” It was more in one sentence than he’d said to anyone in weeks, mostly because it was what was on his mind. “Then he wouldn’t have had to face Coren alone. And he’d still be here to see your…his children.”

  She sighed as she kissed the top of Coby’s head and put him with his siblings. Aura watched the puppies all curl up together, since they were tired from being awake several hours, but they had a hard time sleeping unless they were all together.

  “Thinking about what could have happened, what should have happened…it doesn’t change what did happen. I miss him. Every day, every night.” She sighed again and then looked out the window. “I miss Orlando.” Aura bit her lip and she finally looked up at Nick and met his eyes instead of avoiding his gaze as she had so many other times. “I miss you too. But the past is what it is. We can’t change it with should’ve, would’ve, could’ve.”

  Having her pups, having four reasons to want to live, four lives that she loved with her entire heart and more, had changed the way she looked at the world.
It was impossible for her to stay as she was, and in a way, the four innocent pups had saved her life. “What we can change is the future.”

  He still didn’t make eye contact with her as he looked back at the pups, even more obviously different now that their fur was all mixed up together. “We thought we could change the future. And we did. Our own. That’s what we got into this to do, right?” He looked back over at her as he said so, no tears in his eyes, but sadness that had replaced the eternally optimistic, duty-bound man she had once loved.

  “We’re going to find Orlando wherever they’re keeping him, and this thing, whatever it is, is going to keep going. There’s no stopping that now. The other Alphas are already laying in plans over the graves of our dead.” He shook his head, trying to get rid of the heavy feeling over everything in the room. “But whatever happens, you’ll be safe. Whatever it takes.”

  “I guess what our parents always told us was true, then, right? We were meant to change the world.”

  “I don’t know anything about what we were meant to do.” He walked over towards her door. “I just know what we’re doing and what we have done. And there’s a lot of it I wish I could change.”

  She shook her head as she watched him walk to her door, and she walked up behind him to open the door and say goodbye. “I won’t let you give up on yourself, Nick.” She said as he stepped out the door. “I may be the bitch that broke your heart and subsequently sent you into the arms of a traitor, but I’m also the relentless bitch that will not let another great Ironborn be lost to himself. I won’t let you.”

  Nick looked up when he got through the door and looked across the mostly-empty compound at the small stone prison where the traitor in question was hanging onto the last shreds of life. She was visited every day by someone who had lost someone close to them in the conflict, just so she could have a breath or two of hatred to see her through another day, but otherwise she was left completely alone. It was only a matter of time before the thread of life snapped that kept her heart beating behind her violet eyes.