The auburn lass lay curled amongst her two newborn daughters, quietly gulping in air to appease her screaming lungs; she hadn’t ever known such physical pain. Despite never having lain with a male, she had fallen pregnant and birthed these two. She knew it must have been a foul trick of nature, a self-fertilization.
She needed to name the pups; she would do at least that much for them. Grace, she thought, looking at the first girl, for the grace I’ll never get in life. And the second . . . Aurelie, a beautiful name worthy of a pure-hearted queen.
Tears leaked through Solara’s fur, a mother heavy with the knowledge that she was going to screw this up. She was a broken thing. She was incapable of raising pups, incapable when she was like this . . . and she always was, an outcast bastard daughter who was constantly lonely. Too easily taken advantage of. Too isolated, alone, unsure of herself.
How am I going to raise them?

“No shortage of sordid, no protest from me.”