Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone;
I'll be waiting.
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There were things she had just come to know as time passed. To dig a den was one of them. She had needed help from Siobhan, but the girl had done well and Ryan now had a place to give birth to however many children waited inside. As the days went on, she knew she was getting closer. She wanted to avoid DaVinci until she could disguise this; when her abdomen would return to normal and there would be hardy any signs she had ever been pregnant. But that wouldn’t be the case. He knew.
Panting, Ryan pulled herself into the snug den, wishing that her mother could be there to coach her along. She breathed, closing her eyes as moisture began to stain the fur beneath them. Her mother wouldn’t be here and neither would her father. No one would ever really know of the children's existence except for DaVinci and those who had seen her before now. The thought made her want to cry. She was doing this alone. No one was there to help her and she had to wonder… was it her fault?
When it was over, she couldn’t believe what she was looking at. Two small bundles lay by her side, both rusty brown with a black stripe running down their fragile spines. Twins. Both girls. Through tears, she nudged the two, looking for life. A small squeak greeted her, and she smiled. She hadn’t thought of names, but something arose. She remembered a story she had heard once when Ryan and her mother had stopped along at a gypsy camp. This little girl would be Valkyrie, after the stories of these goddesses. The other didn’t respond when Ryan gently stroked its back. In fact, it remained rather still and didn’t squirm like her sister. Ryan didn’t need to investigate; she knew what it meant. Instead, she stroked the dead little girl and thought of a name it would never live to learn. Gabriella.