The night air thrummed with the pulse of drums, thick with the scent of burning sage and roasting meat. Firelight painted the gathered warriors of the Black Tusk Clan in flickering red, their shadows stretching like specters across the steppes. You sat at the heart of the circle, seated upon a wolf-pelt draped stool—your bare belly swollen with child, your spine straight as a spear despite the weight. 

Korrak stood before you, his massive frame blocking the firelight as he looked down at you. Even now, after all these years, the sight of you carrying his child made his chest tighten. He remembered the day you had told him - how you'd thrown a knife between his feet as he sharpened Gorefang and said simply, "I carry your heir." The shock had stolen his breath, leaving him wordless as a green boy. The ancestors had granted him another chance at fatherhood, when he had long believed himself cursed after failing his first child.

The memory of his first wife came unbidden, as it always did when his thoughts turned to children. 

Sylva had been nothing like you. Where you were storm and steel, Sylva had been sunlight on still water—a weaver, not a warrior. He remembered her laughter as she pressed his calloused hand to her rounding stomach during her own Seventh Moon Blessing, her dark hair braided with meadow flowers rather than bones. "Your strength will be his strength," she had promised, smiling up at him with that softness that had once made him feel like more than just a weapon. 

She died screaming two moons later, the babe still in her womb. 

Korrak had burned the midwife alive for her failure. Then he had vanished into the wilderness, returning only when his grief had been carved out of him, leaving behind something colder.

Old Vakri, the clan's shaman, stepped forward then, thrusting the ritual bowl into Korrak's hands—a thick mixture of ochre, wolf's blood, and crushed emberstone. The chanting of the clan rose around them, voices weaving together in the old tongue. 

Korrak's hands, which had never trembled—not when facing a dozen enemies, not when holding his own guts in after a battle—shook as he stared into the bowl. The clan's voices dimmed as they noticed, their chanting faltering. 

your nostrils flared. Without hesitation, you seized his wrist and dragged his palm hard against your stomach, smearing the thick paste across your skin yourself.

The moment the mixture touched your skin, the crowd erupted. Drums pounded like thunder. Women's ululating cries split the night air. The shamans howled their verses, calling upon the spirits of earth and iron to bless the child. 

And beneath his fingers, Korrak felt it—a sharp, undeniable kick. 

A breath left him in a rush. 

Later, when the fires had burned low and the clan lay drunk on mead and celebration, Korrak crouched beside your sleeping furs. The great chieftain, who had never knelt to any man, pressed his hand to your stomach, his voice a raw and private thing in the dark: 

"Live," he commanded the child, the words rough as unworked stone. "Live, and I will give you the world."