Redback was born to be a father. It was his calling, truly, such were his thoughts the first time Masquerade had left him to watch over the pups. She had been protective over them, even to him, staying with them night and day, sleeping very little, always nursing, prodding, checking their little bodies for breathing and beating and life. But now all four had opened their eyes and begun to walk about, curious and happy and breathtakingly alive. And Masquerade was tired, he knew, from herding them around all day, from feeding and prodding and living with them. He had all but begged her for this.
He was almost obsessed with these pups, his own, he had declared, when they were still wet with amniotic fluid. His own pups. The blood that ran through their veins was his own. Even Banshee, the eldest, looked a touch like him, with her dark gray coat. Masquerade had smiled at that, somewhere between pleased and sad, and allowed him to nestle up against her and their pups. It was a lie, but a happy one, and for all it was worth, he was their father. The matter of their creator was resolved; Redback had torn him to shreds himself.
Redback was good with the pups. All four of them adored him, crowing for their dad in their shrill pup-voices every time he padded into the camp. He would bring them meat and stories that were perhaps a bit exaggerated, but a puphood was not a puphood without tales of bears and unicorns and fairies. Banshee cried loudest for him, a fact which surprised exactly nobody, crawling atop her father the moment he sat down. It was his duty to admonish this behavior; a young wolf should not get in the habit of invading another's space like this, and yet he could not bring himself to.
If Redback was ever happy, it was as he was in that moment on a brisk fall day; surrounded by pups who were his by blood if not by his own, with his mate's chin resting on his shoulder, the sounds of his pack bustling around him.
Pupsitter 
Pupsitter