Chapter 45: Cubs
Her spouses are so proud of her, she went through everything with courage.
They clean her and redress her with clean clothes, use cotton to absorb the blood that will be coming out that night slowly.
Astri looks at her cubs feeling a whole different level of love. Wayde watches his cubs thrilled as they have their first breastfeeding.
"I’ll make some soup for you, Astri. If you want anything else let me know." Zin says, passing his hand on her head.
"OK. Thank you." She answers tiredly.
"I’ll help you, Zin. Rest, love." Cyprian says, then kisses her head.
Lee and Wayde stay with her. freёweɓnovel.com
"How lucky we are to have a female on the first litter." Lee speaks.
"It’s true. And a tigress. She will be beautiful." Wayde says.
"You can spoil her, but don’t make her turn like other females. Our children need to grow knowing that females need to respect males and males don’t need to act so needy for a female." Astri speaks.
"What are you saying? No male is allowed near my little girl." Lee says holding the female cub.
"I’ll kill any male who wants her. And my boys will grow to protect their sister and mother." Wayde speaks, playing with his boys’ tiny bellies.
Astri giggles watching those silly dads.
She ends up falling asleep and they let her rest, putting the cubs in their bed and letting them sleep.
Lee lets Wayde stay with Astri and then he goes to the kitchen, and sits relieved that everything went well.
"We need to prepare loads of clothes for the female. She will shift in a few days." Lee speaks.
"True.. Astri did great. I was worried she wouldn’t handle when the third came." Cyprian says.
"She’s amazing. She’s totally in love with the cubs too. She will be an amazing mom."
Astri wakes up later to breastfeed them again and have some soup.
She was still feeling sore, but feeling better. She thinks of Claud as she watches her cubs asleep, she wishes he was there too.
The cubs woke up only one time during the night for breastfeeding, Astri was at the edge of the bed so it was easy to take the cubs, either way her males wanted to help her somehow like making the breastfeeding position easy and more comfortable.
Next morning Shung and the doctor come to visit Astri after learning she had the cubs.
"A female! What a blessing!" The doctor says happily, examining the cubs.
"Congratulations, Astri. They look very healthy." Shung speaks, smiling happily.
"Thank you." She answers.
"You two better don’t spread the word now that we had a female cub. Even the cubs are not allowed near her." Lee says.
Shung and the doctor chuckle. They know Lee is very possessive towards Astri, now with a female cub he will be worse.
"What about you? Are you recovering well after having three cubs?" The doctor asks Astri.
"Yes. Yesterday I was very tired, now I’m feeling way better." She answers.
"Good. Tiger cubs are bigger than wolf cubs, that’s why normally females have one or two cubs. You had three and are up already. That shows how healthy and strong you are."
"Balanced meals help a lot. Examining the pregnant females in the tribe, most of them get big during the pregnancy and that makes things harder. Not saying that it’s easy not eating too much. But it helped me and the cubs at the end." Astri tells.
"I’ll start telling the females to follow what you did and watch how it will turn out. If we get less dead cubs and females, it’s already good."
Astri smiles and nods.
She’s happy they’re noticing the need of changing to have better results. She tells him exactly what she ate during pregnancy and he mindnotes everything.
After two days, Claud gets in contact with Astri again and learns she had the cubs and all of them are safe and sound.
He was impressed that she had three cubs and one of them is a female. Seeing in her memories, he’s sure that all of them will be strong and healthy.
Claud felt his heart jump when she said she wished he was there too when they were born.
He knows she doesn’t know that only spouses stay with their females during that moment, and only doctors are allowed to come when the female is having a hard time, but he’s happy either way because it shows she cares for him and wants him close. That’s enough for him.
Astri named the cubs.
The eldest is Elias, the girl is Yuki, and the third is Kai. Everyone liked their names.
Yuki shifts into a baby when she’s 10 days old, her fathers are beaming with huge smiles seeing how cute she is. She has white hair like Wayde and her eyes are grayish blue.
"She’s so beautiful. My little girl." Wayde holds her near his face and feels her smooth skin and little hands.
"Luckily she’s beautiful like Astri and doesn’t look like you." Lee jokes, they laugh.
Having a female baby takes more work as she dirties more clothes, so there’s always clothes to wash.
Normally female babies are only with blankets, but they’re not as clean as Yuki is and due to that Astri’s spouses noticed that Yuki doesn’t get sick as other female babies.
Day by day they’re seeing that being clean is an important matter for health.
"We should add keeping the environment clean as a law here. As we grow, things are getting dirtier inside the villages." Lee says.
"I totally agree. People would live longer and provide more too." Astri speaks as she puts Yuki on the bed with her brothers.
Normally the female babies are put in separate beds to avoid getting anything from their brothers, such as diseases or fleas.
But they keep the cubs always clean and Yuki too, so Astri doesn’t think that breaking this bond from them is good.
Yuki relaxes a lot with her brothers as they sleep around her, cuddling together.
"Another guard of Claud’s arrived and said that our tribe is getting well known. He brought a centaur tribe with 15 males and one female here, they were attacked by monsters and only those survived. Before he found this tribe, they were already coming to us to ask for aid." Lee tells.
"Centaurs are capable and strong. Good for farming." Cyprian says.
"I was thinking the same. We could give them Astri’s old plantation, tell them to widen it three times bigger to start and we will have medicine to sell and for the tribe’s use. We will have the clothing, salt and medicine income." Wayde speaks.
"It’s a great idea. Our city wall is almost done, soon more people will want to come and we need more ways to keep the quality indeed." Lee says.
"Attacks from monsters and ferals got easier to contain with the city walls. Just having these walls made more beastmen and other tribes want to join us." Cyprian speaks.
"I think that more people is good, but we need to be careful about who you accept to become members. There are people who just wants to become members to have the chance to overpower you when you less imagine." Astri says.
"It’s true. The centaurs are peaceful, I already knew them, but the rest we should put them through some test or something." Wayde speaks.
"A probation period. Put a long probation time, such as 90 days. They need to prove they will help the community, they will be useful and they will be watched by people you already trust. Only after probation time they can be considered members and will be allowed to live inside the walls. You can have another simpler walls, made from wood within the perimeter of the city halls, they will need to live between those walls until they proved they’re worthy and will keep the peace. They will be also watched and kept safe in front of the walls and watch towers." Astri explains.
"They will need to follow our laws before they come inside. It will also be proof they’re worthy of coming inside. Merchants will come inside only for deals, but if they have to spend the night they will be also outside. Merchants are the worse." Cyprian speaks.
"Those are great ideas. Besides keeping everything clean, we should add more laws to keep the order. Unmated males tend to live just anywhere, so they do their necessities outside. The unmated males will need to build their own cabins to live clean, even if they find their females and live somewhere else, this way we will always have new cabins for new females that will come." Lee says.
"If you tell them to imagine that having the best cabin will give them better chances of having a female, they will build good cabins. This way the quality will always be high." Zin speaks.
"True. Good thinking."
"I’m not saying that this should be a law, but females also need to have some rules." Astri says.
"What do you mean?" Wayde asks.
"Females are sometimes cruel. They use the male to do things, but don’t mate with them and then throw them away. Females will start using the cabins they built as a tool to get the bests. Soon they will be fighting and breaking cabins, putting other families around in danger. To avoid that, maybe we should put a rule to the females, her partners and their suitors. That she’s allowed to choose wherever to live with her males, but she can’t make them fight and destroy the cabins so she can have the best cabin and not giving the opportunity of the rejected males to have other suitors. Ana is one that if she could she would have asked to destroy this castle just to keep having the title of having the best cabing. Females like Ana are common." Astri tells.
"It’s true. The females often put the males to fight so the losing side don’t get the chance to have a better female." Cyprian says.
"I think it’s important to do that too. Or else will be too much work for nothing. We’re doing this to always have cabins. When there are no more space to build cabins, we will wide the city and create more walls. This way we will have layers of protection." Lee speaks.
"Tell them to not take wood from near areas, the city will be too hot or too cold having no trees. And the city must be pretty, right?" Astri says.
They keep discussing things together in the living room until it’s time again to change Yuki’s clothes and clean the boys.
The time goes quickly. 30 days passes and the male cubs are already walking and playing with each other.
Yuki is a baby who still has few movements, but she’s already smart looking everywhere and she’s learning to call when she wants to pee or poop.
Everyone learned the sounds and faces she makes when she wants to go to the sandbox, so taking care of her is becoming easier.
The boys also have their own sandbox and they’re learning to go there by themselves.
When Yuki wants to sleep, she wants to be with someone or her brothers. It’s cute seeing the cubs laying around her or with their heads on her tiny arms and legs.