Dawson's POV:
In the dark, I lost the shape of an ordinary wolf. I became the great black beast again, curled in the deepest heart of my territory. My fur bristled stiff and sharp along my spine, and my deep green eyes burned cold in the night. But between my front paws I sheltered something impossibly soft. A pup, barely formed. Its coat was the same pure midnight black as my own. Its eyes were still closed as it pressed weakly against my belly, drawing on the Alpha power pouring off me on instinct alone.
In the old laws of our kind, the more powerful a pup's bloodline, the more perilous its time in the womb. Such young couldn't survive on the mother's sustenance alone. Through pregnancy they had to keep drawing on the sire's essence in order to be born safely. As my energy poured into
