She did not speak of the first changes, the tightening of muscles, the loosening of tendon. Her nails grow fast. There are deeper shades of onyx to her eye, and softness to her breast.
More strangeness happens. Dreams are vivid. Her heart beats slower; a new calmness palls her anxiety. She is no longer a crying wind daughter but a saatsine woman.
Her babies start to be, announcing their life in little flutterings. Iglux̂ is so connected with them. She feels the stir of the beast that rests within her, ready to protect. She feels the deep center of warmth that encloses her babies with love, and reaches often for access to Cen.
They cannot see their father in the dark. They stir inside, but sometimes remain so perfectly still, until she begins to grow concerned and they wriggle around just to placate the silver.
Cen's babies become her obsession. They have taken over her body, the driver of all movement. She can no longer hide a growing fullness in her belly.
The sun clan falls quiet. Meleys is distant. Ïkikta is self-sufficient. Nutuyikruk and Aivar are missing. There is a wish to confide in Isolde and Fa'liya, but worry hesitates. She thinks often of Euphemia, wishing she could see her friend again and wondering if such a time had also found her in dawnbreak.
Waxwings are in the evergreen canopies, trilling. Iglux̂ rests her back against the hull of a tree and repeats the song softly to her babies.

The caribou shelter within the Briar's Veil, so the Saastine do the same. They are better for it to be here than the Winter Scar. The tall trees sheltered them from the cruel winter that raged across the northern lands. In the absence of the lake's water, lapping at the confines of its basin, Caan's solace was spent in the company of creaking boughs and birdsong.

It is hard to believe that he almost died in this place. The clouds hung low and poisoned, pressing the life out of those that sheltered among the trees. Unnatural, purple snow piled high... None of that remained. Life moved through the wood again. Perhaps less than what it once was, but the Veil had seemingly healed. Turning the haunting dreams of his suffering into nothing more but cruel recollections.

So he lives with his clan mates. A haunted whisper of the past twisting around in the back of his skull.

As much as he missed the shores of the lake, the quiet, semi-secluded life he had continued here. Yes, it was broken up more frequently now that he was tasked with Aiman, but he was also visited less frequently. Cen scarcely had time to spare his son outside of the hunt, and Fa'liya was often ill. That left only two wolves that checked up on him.

The moon girl had slipped off, Aivar on her tail. Her absence stung greater than it should. His father's captive was the closest thing Caan ever had to a friend.

So in truth, there was only one wolf that remained, and she too had only recently returned following an absence. Her voice floats through the trees. Soft and steady. It does not take him long to find her once he followed it.

At first it is Cen’s eye, and she drinks in the way daylight tempers it. Then another emerges, and stillness casts the silver face gazing back.
The intensity of her relationship with Caan will be exasperated by the arrival of these cubs. Iglux̂ does not expect her babies to repair the damage. She’d spent three weeks brooding over this change in her life, but she had not considered what Caan’s involvement would be.
Still, there is no use in anticipating recoil. The boy is his own, and he would make his own decision. The spirit in her flesh is content as she receives him, black eyes blinking softly up, unguarded in the way her belly gently swells.

The crying wind woman did not greet him, not with words. She regarded him softly and did nothing to provoke the boy. No comment on his leg, no pressing about his future. She simply acknowledged him.

He preferred this.

Walking over, he took a seat beside her. Eyes lifting upward to the trees and the waxwings the flitted about. It was easier than looking at her.

Iglux̂ was different. Her scent had changed, what he glimpsed of her eyes was soft. Not the sharpness that the obsidian eyes typically held. And her belly started to round.

This he did not think about. Did not know how to think about it, if he was even allowed to.

What did he know about being a brother? The early months he should have shared with his litter mates had been tarnished in the fight between his parents.

What did it mean for him and Fa'liya? Was their father happy now? Now that he could expect children with a Lanzadoii woman. Children that may not be broken like his elder son and daughter.

He stays. He sits. Iglux̂ is stunned.
She keeps them in quiet for some time, hearing the birds; her breath, and Caan’s beside.
“They are beginning to move, a little.” Her voice is embarrassingly wobbly with an absurd flood of emotion. She stares down at her belly. At her babies.
There is a longer pause.
The silver feels it best to limit the pressure placed on him. Caan is being uncharacteristically close, but his nature is so much more complex. Suddenly she understands something; that she fears pushing him away. Dark eyes life to take in his quiet face.
“Caan, I would like for you to be as involved with them as you wish to be.”