Months flew by. Markus watched the days go on and on, always stopping to take a deep breath when everything felt too crazy. He wanted to enjoy the life he had now before it all changed again.

The police investigation was still ongoing and would probably be going on for years yet as Pensacola tried to get its feet back under itself in the face of so much loss. Wolves were still in the hospital. The park where the fight between LF and SC had taken place was still closed down, being cleaned and restored. Security had tightened in stores and restaurants and museums everywhere, and would probably not relax again for a very long time. Funeral homes were overflowing with bodies, the directors working around the clock to prepare for the services each day. Churches were flooded with shifters who had never been religious before and who would never be religious again, putting aside their beliefs to say goodbye one last time.

Every single one of the wolves in Anubis’s pack was arrested, currently in jail without possibility of getting out on bail while awaiting their future trials. According to reports, Yak had already confessed everything. His brawn was no match for interrogation. The story he gave matched exactly with what Destiny theorized: he had joined up with Anubis’ group after getting out of jail and told them all about Pensacola. Lawyers were working out some kind of bargain, a lesser sentence in exchange for his cooperation.

Word was, the judge overseeing all of these cases was a hardass. He wouldn’t go for the deal. Markus was so glad about that he could have kissed the man.

For the first couple of months, everything was chaotic. Markus was busy from dawn to dusk, attending funerals, giving statements to the police, going to doctor’s visits, and everything else that daily life demanded from him.

Then, slowly, it all started to taper off. There were only so many times that the police could listen to the same testimonies before they didn’t need to hear anymore. The funerals petered out until they became a rare occurrence instead of an everyday thing.

Destiny bought a small house located more or less directly between the east and west ends of Pensacola. He put several other pack wolves in charge of the parking garage, though he continued to make near-daily trips there to help with what he could. However, the more pregnant Markus became, the more time Destiny spent at home. They decorated their house together, and the end result looked like shit compared to all the pictures in the decorating magazines, but it was theirs and that was all that mattered. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a kitchen with an actual counter island. There was just so much of it that Markus often had to stop and sit down and just admire it.

The only room which didn’t look terrible was the second, smaller bedroom. It was their nursery, decorated in an abundance of bright pink based on the sex of the baby during an ultrasound. Markus had been able to see nothing but a shifting gray mass of static. But it was his shifting gray mass, and he loved it so much.

He had never loved anything the way he loved his unborn child. It was different somehow from his love for Destiny, fiercer, more protective. It was a love so intense it made him ache. He would lie awake with his hands on his rounding stomach, feeling the little life underneath stirring around, and he would just ache with love and anticipation.

He already knew what she sounded like, having heard her rapid heartbeat during several doctor visits. He had seen her moving during the ultrasounds, even if he couldn’t really tell what parts of her were moving. He could feel her moving around inside him, discovering her limbs, testing her limits. He loved her so much. He couldn’t wait to meet her. The suspense was almost enough to kill him.

Not all of the pregnancy was equally as exciting. He ran into all the various difficulties a pregnancy brought, his body arriving at the milestones so efficiently that you could almost set a watch by it. There were days when he thought it would be better to die than to wake up again with swollen feet and a dry mouth and a sour stomach that rebelled against him unceasingly. He was tired and moody.

Sometimes Destiny would look at him and just start laughing, usually when Markus was in the middle of being moody for no reason. Sometimes this made Markus forget whatever had set him off so he could also laugh. Other times, it made him angry or want to cry.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” he snapped at Destiny one night near the end of his pregnancy. He sat in the armchair in their living room, his stomach bulging out so far that he didn’t have much of a lap left.

It’s going to be awful, shedding this weight.

Shifters didn’t really become overweight unless they really worked at it, whether intentionally or not. Once they had that extra weight, it was just as hard for them to get rid of it as it was for humans. The body tended to assume that it had those extra pounds for a reason and was reluctant to shed them lest it ended up needing them.

That was really what he was so angry about tonight, after having spent most of the day trying to find an outfit that still fit him. He hadn’t picked out many new clothes over the course of the past months, knowing that it was futile, that he had to admit that his body was changing, and still doing nothing about it.

Destiny came over to him, sliding in the armchair so Markus ended up on his lap. “Hey,” he murmured. His low voice was a soothing rumble. Even that was annoying sometimes. What right did he have to try to put a stop to something that he couldn’t even understand?

But tonight, Markus took comfort from it. He’d been feeling especially shitty all day, constantly on the verge of tears, and he wanted very much to feel better. Leaning his head on Destiny’s shoulder, relaxing in his warm arms, he listened.

Destiny didn’t say anything, however. He only held on tightly, his fingers sifting slowly upward through Markus’ hair.

That was dandy and all, just not what he wanted. He shifted around in Destiny’s lap and looked up at him. Destiny looked back down at him in return, his eyebrows gently furrowed.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“Any other time I’ve tried to say something, you act like you’re going to bite me.”

Markus frowned. He unwound his arms from where he’d wrapped them around Destiny, folding them across his chest. “Well, I want you to this time.”

“How’s this?” Destiny murmured. He leaned down, pressed his lips gently to Markus’. “You have the temperament of a wild animal, and I love you anyway.”

Markus scowled at him, then laughed. He hugged his arms around Destiny again, kissing him back. “I love you, too. You idiot.”

They went to bed not much later. Markus got in first, as he always did these days, and he piled pillows and blankets around and underneath himself until he managed to get into a comfortable position. The position probably wouldn’t stay comfortable for long, though. Neither he nor Destiny got much sleep anymore, what with Markus having to constantly rearrange himself.

Destiny climbed up after he was settled, adjusting his position around Markus’ so they could cuddle. He rested one hand on Markus’ stomach, very gently. “Good night, grumpy.”

“Good night, Dusty.”

Markus was suddenly very tired, and he dropped off to sleep as soon as he closed his eyes.

His eyes popped open again some hours later, with gray streamers of dawn light pouring into the bedroom from behind the drawn curtains. He panted, holding his stomach, not quite sure what it was that had awoken him until his insides gave a sudden heave. His stomach seemed to wrench underneath his hands, a spasm that nearly bent him in two. The pain was surreal. It unfurled outward through his body, leaving no part of him untouched. Even his teeth and toenails seemed to be throbbing from the agony.

If he said anything, he was deaf to it, but suddenly Destiny was awake, supporting him, shaking him.

“Muffin! Markus! Are you okay?”

Of course I’m not okay, he wanted to say. He couldn’t manage to find the energy to be irritable right now, so all he did was pant from between clenched teeth.

“Is it the baby?”

“Of course it’s the baby, you fucking moron,” he snarled. Suddenly, he was beyond irritable. He was just plain pissed and god, it felt so good to swear, to relieve some of the pressure building up inside him.

Incredibly, Destiny laughed. It was the laughter of a young boy who had woken up on his birthday after waiting for it all year, filled with the release of delight and anticipation. “Good! Let’s go!”

Throughout the following years, Markus would never quite be able to remember how he got from his bedroom all the way to the hospital. It was like the haziness that came after his concussion, a warped and dreamlike plain that was nothing like reality. If he focused very hard, he might be able to recall the sensation of being picked up by Destiny, supported by him, dressed by him, but words alone wouldn’t be enough to give the proper scale to these feelings. He had been so helpless, so lost in his own pain, wracked by spasms that struck against him like surf pounded to a foam against a cliff.

Then he was in a hospital bed in the maternity ward, everything filtering back into clarity. The room was decorated in pale, inoffensive greens and yellows, probably for the dual purpose of being more like an actual room to increase his comfort, while also being gender neutral to avoid the nonsensical wrath of mothers who wouldn’t want to give birth to their little boy in a pink palace.

As for himself, Markus didn’t care. He only noticed the room because the contrast of it, from his bedroom to this carefully-crafted chamber, was the first thing he was really able to focus on.

After that, he almost wished to be in that twilight area again because now it was all just too clear. It was the epitome of a pregnant person’s dilemma, never having what they wanted when they wanted it, always missing the train by a minute or two.

He felt like he could have counted the individual eyebrow hairs on his doctor’s face, whenever the man spoke to him. He could recall the names of all the nurses and would probably possess that skill even on his deathbed. He felt every single contraction that tore through him, coming in greater quantities and intensities until he felt like a bomb doomed to a limbo of eternal explosiveness. Again and again and again, the pain came.

Someone was screaming at some point, at a lot of points, and he knew it was him. Begging, pleading to get the baby out, threatening, bargaining, and finally knowing he would be stuck like this forever.

Then, through the clarity of the pain, a hazy voice murmured in his ear. “Push!”

He pushed, and the world splintered into dark shards.