Megara's cubs were doing quite well now. Now like many felines, these cubs were doing a lot of playing to sharpen their hunting instincts. As such, anything that moved was a target. And that included their parents' tails. And those little teeth and claws can be really sharp. And if their parents are any indication, they're going to grow up to be huge Animalians.
But things weren't as certain as they were now. Ligers are hybrid animals typically incapable of breeding. The genes of lions and tigers don't match up exactly so the uneven number of genes leaves them sterile. As such, the scientists at Horizon Labs were unsure if liger Animalians were capable of breeding. Heracle's sperm seemed viable when he was uplifted, but that wasn't a complete verification. It wasn't until Megara was impregnated that they knew that the Animalian virus had fixed the gene sequences to allow viable births. Still, lions and tigers were considered separate species from ligers and either more ligers had to be uplifted or people converted for the cubs' eventual mates.
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However, things weren't entirely confirmed until after the cubs' birth. It was one thing to conceive cubs, it was quite another to carry them to term. There was still a chance they could be born stillborn, though Meg made regular ultrasound appointments to check on her cubs' development. When it became time for her to go into labor, Meg was rushed to the hospital as fast as possible.
Heracles paced the floor in the waiting room. He was extremely anxious. Would he be a father or not? Was he ready to be a father? Would their current lifestyle be able to support a whole family? Why wasn't he hearing anything? To an outside, the sight of a gigantic liger man pacing around in nervousness would seem rather odd.
Eventually, Heracles was allowed into the delivery room. To his relief, Meg was currently nursing two healthy cubs. "We're finally a family," said Meg in a slightly tired voice.
"This is...a bigger relief than I expected," said Heracles.
"You're relieved?" asked Meg, "How do you think I feel?"
"Uh, right," said Heracles awkwardly, "So, what are we going to name our sons."
"It's a boy and a girl," said Meg, "And I'm actually having trouble with that."
"Why's that?" asked Heracles.
"Well, I looked up what the children of Heracles and Megara were named. And, well, they're just unworkable," said Meg.
"They couldn't be that bad," said Heracles. Meg passed Heracles the phone she had been using to look on the internet. Heracles read down and said, "Yeah, I don't think they'd appreciate having those names. Not sure if any of them are girl's names anyways."
"Agreed," said Meg, "So what do we call them?"
"Well, let's see what other children Heracles had," said Heracles before looking through more information, "Oh, here's Celtus, legendary progenitor of the Celts."
"Are ligers really a Celtic thing?" asked Meg.
"Are ligers any kind of thing?" countered Heracles.
"Hmm...I'm worried he may be misnamed Cletus," said Meg.
"Ok...how about Glenus? Glen for short," said Heracles.
"I can work with that," said Meg, "Did Heracles have any daughters?"
"Uh...yes. There's Manto. We can call her Mandy," said Heracles.
Meg smiled. She didn't mind changing her name after her conversion, but a part of her wished she kept it. This would be the perfect way. "Mandy would be fine," she said.
"Ok, though I think we'll be going with this theme again with our next cubs," said Heracles.
"What do you mean 'we'?" asked Meg flatly.
"Well, we need to keep propagating the species," said Heracles.
"Easy for you to say. You're not the one who has to carry them for 6 months and give birth," said Meg, "I'm not about to have more cubs until I want to."
"But-" started Heracles. Meg silenced with an impressive growl. "Ok, ok, we can wait."