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Nyunya lay panting under the afternoon sun, shaded by the sparse leaves of a tree, which did little to keep the heat waves from getting to her. Since she had become pregnant, the world had seemed to grow insufferably hot, and she did not appreciate it one bit. In fact, she was vastly annoyed. She had never been so uncomfortable in her life, and wondered how females managed to cope with this without going completely insane.

She was still in the Kusini'Mwezi lands, silly as that may seem, since she had avoided Taabu like the plague since she found out the truth. It didn't seem wise to her to travel when pregnant, and she'd been right. She couldn't travel all that far any more. Here, there was a pride, even if she wasn't part of it, officially or unofficially. There had to be some kind of protection for her in her delicate state. More protection than just Liza could provide, should it be needed. And if one of those pride members found her and asked her to leave, she could always say... Taabu had told her she was welcome...

Ah, Taabu. Her thoughts were highly confused when it came to him. She cared for him, that she could not deny, but she was so very angry with him, too. Look what he'd done to her! It was... it was... grr! There wasn't even a word she could think of suitable for it. With a light growl, partly from discomfort, partly from irritation, she huddled herself further into the grasses that hid most of her body, keeping her swollen belly from peeking eyes.

Those brilliantly bright orbs flicked up to him as he spoke, recognising the voice isntantly, but doubting her eyes the second they touched him. That was Taabu? He had a full, glossy mane, now! How could he have grown so much since she last saw him? her inner voice demanded of no one in particular. But then, hadn't she grown, too? Yes, she had, and it took a great effort of will to stop herself shooting a glance at her belly. She knew it was covered, but that cover was not infallible, and if he came much closer, the chances of him noticing grew. She didn't want him noticing just yet. She'd intended to have them, wait until she was strong again, and then...

Then what? Leave? No, in all honesty, that had never crossed her mind. In fact, she'd not really considered what she would do after they were born. But she doubted leaving him behind, not knowing about them, would have been an idea that was entertained for very long. Looking at him, she knew that leaving him at all was not an option. There was too much... feeling there.

But that didn't mean she wasn't still angry with him. She was, very much so, but though she'd love to take it all out on him, she'd much rather have him go away. It was just too much. Her hormones were raging, and now not only did she feel like she was going to explode with rage, she felt like she might burst into tears at any second just looking at him. Damn this pregnancy! It brought with it nothing but trouble!

"I've been around," she said, voice level (for now) but not sounding as though she was pleased with him. "Where have you been?" she demanded of him in turn. It may not make much sense - hell, it made no sense - but she was pregnant, and normal rules no longer applied to her.

Gods, Taabu was so irritating! She could see the feeling in his eyes, and it didn't help that she wanted to be angry with him! It made everything so much more complicated when he looked at her like that! And it made the first tears glitter in her eyes as she broke their locked gazes. These hormones were driving her crazy! She refused to do this ever, ever again!

But the most irritating thing about Taabu was that he was not irritating at all. What he'd been doing was responsible, brilliant, something he didn't have to do but did anyway, proving he was a reliable and dependable male who wasn't afraid to volunteer to do what was necessary. In a way, he was the one who had been making these lands safe for Nyunya, not the pride. She'd not realised that until now, and it made it harder to be angry with him. Not impossible for Nyunya, but definitely harder.

"Well... aren't you a good boy," she mumbled, head still down, unable to think of any way to condemn his statement. There was no way, and she didn't want to condemn it anyway. Sure, she could have accused him of looking after everyone but her, but this would be stupid since she had been the one avoiding him. She was allowed to not make sense only so much before she just started sounding crazy and irrational.

With those two little words, she knew he knew. She knew he had seen, and her head snapped back up to look at him. There was panic underneath the glistening sheen of tears, now. He wasn't supposed to find out, not yet! This wasn't how it was supposed to happen! She wasn't ready!

Awkwardly, she tried to heave herself to her feet. She was only a petite thing, and with four cubs growing inside of her, she was rather large. The grasses either side of her had protected quite a girth from sight, but now, as she tried valiantly to stand though it impeded her so, it was in plain view. She was determined to waddle away from him, even though she couldn't go very fast or very far. Somehow she would escape this situation. She couldn't deal with it.

She hadn't even gotten fully to her feet when a searing pain shot through her stomach. A pained groan escaped her as it dropped her back into the position she had been in before. What was that? She'd never experienced anything like it before. Was something wrong? Did she try to move too fast? Or... were the cubs coming now? No, they couldn't, she wasn't ready for that, either! But it seemed she had no choice. As a second pain hit her, not long after the first, causing a snarl to twist her pretty face and her now outstretched claws to scratch at the ground, instinct told her it was time and her body moved accordingly into a position that would make it easier for her.

Amidst her growling and snarling, she managed to get a breather long enough to glare at him, currently in no mood for his words and his tone. She was in pain, and instead of letting it make her cower in the face of it and pray for it go away, it made her angry, and the sheer amount made her spiteful, wishing to share the misery. And so she said, through gritted teeth, "Why would I tell you? It's nothing to do with you."

Oh, but that was so not the truth. It was so the opposite. Why did she not tell him? Truth of the matter was, she had been scared. She hadn't really known how he'd take the news. And so, she had not come to him to give him the news, deeming it better to decide to be alone than be forced into it. You could probably blame such a thing on her cubhood. All she'd seen growing up was her two mothers, single mothers both, truthfully, even though they had been together in love. There had been no male figure there, no father figure. Both fathers had not cared about the cubs. Having met her own, she was incredibly glad he'd taken no interest in raising her, but there was no excuse she could see for the father of her siblings. It was probably a psychological thing, making her believe that males simply had no interest in raising their cubs.

She could have just ignored his questions, angrier as they made her. The reason she didn't and said such a thing was that she really wanted him to leave. She could not deal with the fact that her - their - cubs were coming and he was here. It was unfair! These separate events she could deal with, but throw them together and it was all a big mess. It was so cruel that he was here when this begun. Fate was being so very unkind to her today.

Whether she wanted him to go or not before the first cub came, it suddenly didn't matter any more. She could feel it coming, and there was no stopping it. Digging her claws more fully into the ground beneath her paws, she growled as she pushed as hard as she could.

Instinct made her reach around behind her and gently pull the cub to her stomach where it could feed as she began to gently clean the blood from it. She knew not if she had a daughter or a son, but she was suddenly a mother. It hit her with powerful force, right then. She'd known she was having cubs, but she hadn't really looked into the fact that she was to be a mother. It hadn't sunk in... until now. With a soft sound that was a mix of a sob and a laugh, she looked back up at Taabu. Whatever harsh things she may have said didn't matter any more. Her eyes were the windows to her soul, never hiding what she was feeling, and right now, an almost ridiculous amount of love sparkled in their depths. If she hadn't loved him before (which she had, though had probably been too stubborn to say so), she did now. Oh-so-terribly much. She knew the truth; she knew what he'd given her, the greatest gift she could ever imagine. And she knew there were more to come, she could feel them. And while she knew it would be but a small reprieve until the pain started up again, it didn't matter now that her cub lay tucked at her side.

Nyunya's head nodded slowly. She truly was beautiful, this perfect, tiny thing curled against her side. It was almost impossible to believe something so wonderful had come from her, but here she was. It wasn't even an eyesore to her that the cub carried the colours both she and her father bore. Nyunya thought it about her own salmon fur occasionally, when she let herself think of it, but on her daughter no other colour would do. She was perfect and divine the way she was, with that colour on her, and to curse that colour simply because someone Nyunya hated also wore it would be to curse her daughter herself. And Nyunya would not do that, not for any reason. Only one had come into the world, and already Nyunya was devoted to her cubs.

"She is," Nyunya agreed softly, the tears of joy thick in her voice, though her eyes were surprisingly dry. She leaned her head forward then to let her tongue gently roll over her daughter's back, cleaning her as the cub squirmed under the new sensation and mewled quietly. The pain flared again as if the other cubs wanted attention back on them, but for the moment it could be ignored as she cleaned some of the dirt and blood from her daughter's mostly-white fur.

Eventually, though, the pain demanded and got all of her attention. It made her claws scratch at the earth again, added yet more furrows to the many lines stretched out in front of her. She noticed the nuzzle against her neck on a secondary level, and pressed her face into Taabu's mane in response as she growled once more, unable to help it as the pain returned to full force once again. All she could do was push again.

Once more, she reached 'round behind her and gently drew the new arrival to her and placed him carefully beside his sister. Black as night, but for some white on him, like the dots under his eyes, just like Nyunya had under her eyes, and a pink tuft on his head as well as at the end of his tail. That damned pink again, but it looked as perfect and beautiful on him as it did on his sister, in Nyunya's eyes. He would look much like her, she thought, if their colours were not slightly mixed up. Had his main body been white and those dots black, he would be a fair likeness of her. It made her smile.

"It's a boy," she said quietly, with a laugh, though it cut off abruptly as pain shot through her again. There would be no few moments of peace between these two.

This was really beginning to get on her nerves. Her cubs were beautiful, warm balls of perfection huddled against her side, but when the pain was ripping through her, feeling as though the remaining cubs were trying to claw their way out, she couldn't really focus on what a blessing they each were to her. In between the labour pains, she could almost forget how uncomfortable an ordeal like this was, but during, it was all she could do to stop herself lashing out at anyone near her with claws and streams of unladylike obscenities.

She was going from being alarmed at Taabu's presence to just being plain annoyed with it. It was his damned fault she was going through this right now, no matter what she'd told him. He was the reason her abdomen felt like it might split open at any second. When she's in this much pain, being near her and being the cause of it is not a good thing at all. And although she had a very powerful urge to hurt him in that moment, she knew the only way to get rid of this pain would be to bring her next cub into the world. So that was what she did.

It was tiredly this time that she reached back and pulled this very pale cub to lay with the other two, slumping against Taabu's large, warm form as it was getting to be really difficult to hold herself up and she just didn't want to do it any more. Her red eyes were on the newest addition to her litter, a little smile on her face. In this cub, she recognised Taabu. The cream of him was the same colour as Taabu's, streaking across his body in the same place as Taabu's black did. It was the first colour - along with this new boy's mane - to grace any of the cubs that couldn't be attributed to her, only Taabu. Of course, it could have come from another male, but the likelihood of her being with a male of that exact same shade was pretty low.

"Another boy," she murmured softly, sounding about as tired as she felt, her head resting tucked under Taabu's chin. "Another beautiful boy."