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Chapter 6

It was the morning right after Littlepaws’ birthday in Howling Grove, and Darkhowl was gently shaking Anabelle awake.

“Wake, my angel-vanni!” he excitedly whispered to her; his big bushy tail wagging like crazy.

“Wh...what is it, Darkhowl?” groggily croaked out the still half-asleep white she-werewolf.

“Come, you must see this!”

The large muscular male took his comparatively smaller vanni-mate to the part of the den where their son lay asleep. Anabelle immediately understood why Darkhowl was so excited.

“Oh, my God, it happened!” she quickly, yet quietly exclaimed, gasping.

“It sure did!” proudly nodded the elated werebeast.

“Our tiny little pup has grown into a young lycca boy! Oh, he’s going to be so happy when he wakes up!”

“Well, what do you say? Should we wake him now?” asked Darkhowl, doing a terrible job of trying to hide his eagerness.

“Nah, I’d rather not interrupt his dreams. It just doesn’t feel right,” said Anabelle as she took the big male’s clawed hand in her own. “I say let’s just let him sleep and wake on his own.”

“Aw, well... I suppose I can wait a few more moments to see the massive burst of joy on his face when he realizes what has happened.”

“Heh, it looks like it’s our turn to be patient now, doesn’t it?” observed the white-coated she-werewolf with a warm smile on her lupine lips. “Come, I feel like giving my big lycca-mate a few pets to, y’know, help pass the time until Littlepaws wakes up. I mean, if you want to, that is.”

“I— I assure you, there is not a world in which I would turn down a chance to enjoy the wondrous feeling of your hands stroking my lyccan coat of fur, my lovely angel-vanni.”

“Then rest your head on my lap and let your ‘lovely angel-vanni’ give your thick werewolf fur lots and lots of attention.”

Anabelle didn’t have to say it twice, as a very happy Darkhowl promptly changed into his four-legged wolf form and lay beside his vanni-mate, resting his big lupine head on her furry lap, as she had suggested. The white she-werewolf then proceeded to run her fingers through his dark fur in long, slow strokes, quickly sending the giant canid beast to cloud nine.

“That’s a good boy.”

~*~

About two hours later, Littlepaws woke up. As soon as Darkhowl noticed him beginning to stir, he transformed back into his imposing bipedal form and approached the youngling.

“Rise and shine, my son,” he said. “Today’s lesson is one that will take us the whole day, so the sooner we start, the better.”

“Is it... more hunting, Father?” sleepily yawned Littlepaws, not yet opening his eyes.

“No. For today’s lesson, your mother and I shall both teach you how to walk.”

“...W-what?” gasped the confused wolf-boy, opening his eyes with a start.

Only then did Littlepaws notice that something didn’t feel quite right that morning. He immediately tried to stand on his four legs... except his own limbs promptly betrayed him in strange ways, and he fell flat on his wolfy face. The poor cub was beyond flabbergasted. He flailed his arms and legs about, wildly contorting himself like a fish out of water in an attempt to stand up, but nothing was working. It was like his own body was all wrong!

“Easy, easy, everything’s fine,” soothingly said Anabelle as she knelt down next to the little one and placed a motherly hand on his furry shoulder, almost instantly putting his agitation to rest. “Here, why don’t you take a look at your forepaw?” she oddly suggested, gently bringing the end of his forelimb closer to his face for him to see...

Blink-blink, blink-blink.

Before Littlepaws’ utterly confused eyes lay not a forepaw, but a five-fingered clawed hand. It looked much like that of his father’s, except smaller. But whose hand was it? Just when he was about to ask something to that effect, his eyes widened as the realization hit him.

“T-this— This is... mine?”

“It absolutely is!” triumphantly declared Darkhowl with a big toothy smile.

“Did I... transform?”

“You did! Your lyccan blood has fully awakened!”

Littlepaws’ gaze was glued to the clawed hand in front of him, slowly taking in the fact that it was his. The more he looked at it, the more it dawned on him that the day he had been longing for had finally arrived. Soon, his youthful amber eyes began to sparkle with overflowing joy as his confusion faded, giving way to an exuberant kind of elation unlike anything he had ever experienced before. The young lycca felt it bubbling up rapidly within him, filling every corner of his very being with its glowing effervescence. Eventually, his small body couldn’t contain any more joy, and it surged skywards in the form of a jubilant howl.

Once the excitement of those first few moments had passed, Anabelle and Darkhowl helped their son to stand on his two werewolf legs for the very first time. Although he couldn’t keep his balance on his own and had to be held, he was still ecstatic to see the world from his new and higher viewpoint.

“I... I am so tall now, Father, Mother!” he exclaimed, not caring that his legs wobbled precariously.

“You are!” said Darkhowl, still holding his hand securely along with Anabelle. “Now the question is: can you keep yourself from falling if we let go of you?”

“I, uh... I do not know. B-but I can try!”

“All right, do your best!”

Slowly, the two adult werewolves let go of Littlepaws’ hands. The young lycca thus found himself faced with his first grand challenge as a newly awakened bipedal werewolf: to stay on his two legs without any help! Ah, the pull of gravity proved to be an unexpected, yet most formidable nemesis indeed. Cruel and implacable, it seemed intent on making him fall no matter what. But Anabelle and Darkhowl’s son was determined to fight it tooth and nail! However, as valiant an effort Littlepaws had made, he was ultimately bested.

“T-this is hard, Father!” he said from the ground, humbled by the bitter taste of defeat.

“It might seem so at first, yes, but do not let it discourage you. As with any skill, practice makes perfect!” warmly spoke Darkhowl as he moved to help his son back up. “Let us give it another try, shall we?”

“Yes, Father.”

Again, his parents held one of his hands each, allowing him to stand on his two legs once more. His movements were clumsy, and his knees seemed to buckle too easily, but he still put on a serious face as he tried to find his balance.

“You’re doing well, sweetheart,” Anabelle assured him. “Just think that with every fall, you’ll be one step closer to mastering your new form.”

“Your mother is correct,” added Darkhowl. “In fact, be prepared to fall many more times today. However, I promise you that each one of those falls will teach you something about how a two-legged body works, Littlepaws. After all, sometimes, failing is indeed the only way of learning.”

“I... I understand, Father,” said the little lycca. “It is just that I, uh... I did not expect this to be so difficult. I mean, everyone else in Howling Grove has always made it look so easy!”

“Like I said before, practice makes perfect. It is only difficult now because you are not yet used to balancing your body in this manner; not to mention the very fact that your body itself has changed significantly. Most of your bones and muscles are quite different in this form, and thus must be used differently in order for you to shift your full weight onto two legs instead of four,” the big, fearsome werewolf kindheartedly explained. “But that is something you will have to get a feel for yourself, I am afraid. Now then, shall we let go of your hands again?”

“Y-yes, Father...”

This exercise was repeated a number of times. With each attempt, the young lycca was able to delay the inevitable fall just a few moments longer. Little by little, his bipedal posture grew firmer and firmer as he gained an understanding of how his transformed body worked. Eventually, the pull of gravity could no longer defeat him.

“I... I did it! Father! Mother! Look! I am standing on my two legs, all by myself!” he yipped excitedly.

“That’s my big lycca boy!” affectionately sang Anabelle as she knelt down before him and ruffled the fur in the back of his head, smiling proudly. “Now it’s time for step two: walking!”

And so, for the next couple of hours, both Anabelle and Darkhowl walked their son through his very first bipedal steps as a transformed werewolf. At first they held his hands as he experimented with this new manner of locomotion, slowly gaining a sense of how his weight shifted as he moved each leg in turn. Soon he began to stumble his way across very short distances, running clumsily back and forth between the two adult werewolves.

The more he did it, the less he tripped over his own two feet, and the more his confidence grew. Suddenly, standing and walking on two legs simply wasn’t that difficult anymore. Overjoyed with the progress he had made in his new form, Littlepaws laughed happily as he ran aimlessly around his parents. The sound of his laughter was so wholesome and pure, Anabelle could almost feel her son’s happiness making her own glow brighter than ever before.

“Look at our Littlepaws go, Darkhowl,” she said, feeling her own heart swelling with the kind of warmth only a loving mother may know. “Have you ever seen a lycca boy this happy before?”

“I do not think I have. And yet words cannot express how happy I am to see it myself, my snow-white angel-vanni,” responded the hulking werebeast while passing a muscular arm around Anabelle’s waist. “Still, none of this would have been possible without the wonderful lycca-vanni I am lucky to call my soma-bonded mate.”

“I could say the same about you, you know? None of this would have existed without the mighty werewolf savior whose powerful fangs brought the light of freedom into my life,” the white she-werewolf remarked as she returned Darkhowl’s embrace with her own. “I’d say we’ve both been equally blessed.”

“Yes, we have. First with one another, and then with the fruit of our union — a young, excitable lycca I could not be more proud of.”

Steadily growing more and more comfortable in his new form, Littlepaws was then given a quick lesson on the miraculous wonders of opposable thumbs and the whole new world of possibilities they opened up for him. Grabbing and manipulating things with something other than his jaws was like a revelation to him. At one point he was even sure he’d never again need to change back into his quadruped form.

“Hahahah, you say that because you are still smitten with the newness of it all,” spoke Darkhowl with a chuckle. “But there are things your four-legged form will always be better suited for, such as running for extended periods of time and covering great distances. In the end, you will find that adopting the right form in any given situation is a fundamental part of our lives as lycca wolves.”

The young boy-cub, of course, accepted his sire’s words of wisdom without question. “Still, I cannot wait to show Kicky and Klawy my new form!” he excitedly added afterwards; his fluffy tail wagging accordingly. “I am dying to see the faces they will make!”

~*~

In the evening, Littlepaws finally had his chance to impress the twins. While his mother, Marjorie, Rose, and Elise cheerfully talked about his reaching the first big milestone in a young lycca’s life, he basked in the veritable cavalcade of attention Kicky and Klawy gave him.

“Whoa... Look at how tall you are now!” admiringly said one of the twins as they walked circles around Littlepaws’ boyish werewolf legs; their wide-eyed gazes glued on him.

“Is it hard to stand like that?” asked the other one while sniffing at his friend’s fur curiously, perhaps to check that his scent hadn’t changed.

“Well, at first I fell a lot!” confessed Littlepaws. “But Mother and Father helped me understand that falling a lot is how you actually learn to walk on two legs!”

“Oooooh! I want to try it!”

“Me too! Me too!”

The twin cubs then tried standing on their hind legs, but of course could only hold that pose for a brief moment at a time. Still, they laughed and pranced about happily as they frolicked with their friend. Soon the three of them were chasing one another or playing hide-and-seek without a care in the world, like the kids they were.

“Look at them having a blast!” said Rose, smiling while taking a chunk out of an apple.

“Yeah, children are amazing in that they can have so much fun with the simplest things,” longingly observed Marjorie. “God bless their precious innocence.”

“You can say that again,” nodded Elise. “I know I could watch them play all day long.”

“I’m just glad I could give Littlepaws the carefree childhood I wished I could have myself,” spoke Anabelle. “Then again, just seeing him this happy somehow brings peace to the child I once was. Or at least that’s how I feel.”

“I hear you, girl,” said the big gray she-werewolf. “The laughter of children their age is so pure, there’s nothing it can’t cleanse.”

The four lycca-vanni spent a few more moments simply watching the younglings being younglings. Eventually, however, Marjorie seemed to suddenly remember something:

“Oh, that’s right! I almost forgot!” she exclaimed, turning towards Anabelle. “My fluffball told me that he’s finished translating the book you found in your mother’s safe, girl. If you want, you’re welcome to drop by our den tomorrow morning, so that he can tell you all about it himself.”

“Sure, I’ll do that.”

And so, the next morning, Anabelle showed up at Fleetpaw and Marjorie’s den a couple hours past sunrise. The robust lycca-vanni with the gray coat of fur welcomed the comparatively smaller snow-white one into her home, effusively offering her a freshly-made pitcher of pineapple juice to drink.

“I just had a couple pineapples lying around, and thought this was the perfect time to do something with them!” she explained while ushering Anabelle into the rustically furnished grotto she called her home. “Come on in, girl! My fluffball is waiting for you with your book in hand and a whole lot of interesting things to say about it!”

“Oh, um... A good day to you, A-Anabelle-vanni,” awkwardly said Fleetpaw with a bashful smile upon seeing the white she-werewolf.

“Morning, Fleetpaw. Margie here told me you finished the translation?”

“Ah, y-yes, indeed! Although I, uh... I hope you can forgive me for taking so long.”

“Oh, no, there’s nothing to forgive!” Anabelle quickly assured the socially shy lycca male. “If anything, I must thank you for taking the time to do this for me when you didn’t really have to.”

“N-no, it was my pleasure.” he said, shaking his head. “I— I mean, I am glad that my, uh... that my affinity for the written word in all of its forms c-could be of service to a vanni.”

“Alright then! Did you find anything interesting in there?”

“Ah, w-well, yes, I would say so,” began Fleetpaw as he absentmindedly flicked through a few pages of the book. “Still, I must say that most of what this person wrote here appears to be ramblings that do not seem to make any sense to me. T-then again, I am afraid that much of the writing has faded with the passage of time and, uh... and cannot be read anymore.”

“That’s perfectly understandable,” said Anabelle as she poured a glass of pineapple juice for herself. “I mean, we’re talking about a centuries-old manuscript here. It’s a miracle it didn’t just dissolve into a pile of dust, to be honest.”

“W-well, yes... A-although many pages did indeed crumble at the mere touch, regardless of how much care I, uh... I exercised. A-and for that I— I am woefully sorry,” he contritely said with his ears flattened against the sides of his lupine head.

“That’s fine, don’t worry about it. You did what you could, and that’s all that matters,” sincerely spoke the white she-werewolf while Marjorie petted Fleetpaw’s furry back to lift his spirits. “So then, what does it say?”

“Ah, uh, y-yes,” hurriedly stuttered the runtish lycca male as he produced a bundle of paper sheets. “H-here is the full transcript of the parts I was able to translate. Sh-should I begin, Anabelle-vanni?”

“Sure,” she nodded. “Go ahead.”

And thus, after clearing his throat, the bluish werewolf began to read the transcript aloud to his audience of two...

My soul is a chaotic whirlwind of light and darkness. I didn’t want to do it. I wasn’t the one who pushed the knife into the back of the elderly man who rescued me from the streets. The other me did it. That monster guided my hand, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. He said it was a necessary step towards our goal.

The gem compels us. We are not complete without it. Even when I close my eyes, we can see its purple glow guiding our thoughts. It wants us to take it for ourselves.

I don’t like this. I feel like I’m slowly losing control of myself. Who am I anymore? Which of my two selves is the real me? Am I the light, or am I the dark? Could the gem hold the answers I seek?

At last, the gates of Roud’s castle have opened for me. The gem is almost within my reach now, and no one suspects a thing. Not even the king himself does.

Emptiness. Emptiness. Emptiness.

This man... is different. His aura is different. Stronger. Brighter. The blood of past heroes must course through his veins. If I’m not careful, his righteous blade could disrupt my plans. I must keep an eye on him.

Now I know who he is, but he doesn’t know who I am. That gives me an advantage over him. Maybe, if I play my cards right, I can manipulate him into delivering the gem directly to me...

The gem is mine!

What? How did he return from the emptiness I had banished him to? Well, it doesn’t matter. As long as this gem is in my hands, there’s nothing he can do.

But he won’t give up. Not now that he’s learned the truth. I see he has allied himself with that female thief, and that strange gambler with the fencing foil.

Do my eyes deceive me? His aura shines even brighter when he’s walking among them!

I’ve never seen courage like his.

So brave. So indomitable. He will stop at nothing until justice is served. Men like him are born only once a millennium. Ah, I can’t help but admire his resplendent valor!

I want him. I need him by my side.

Why? Why must he keep raising his blade against me? Are we fated to be nothing but sworn enemies? Why can’t his heart belong to me? We could rule over all of Galia together! But no. He chooses to oppose me. I can’t take it. I need him to be mine. Never before had I wanted something so, so badly...

I must draw the full power of the gem. Maybe only then will his heart surrender to my sinful desires. I must go to the source. I have to find The Wyvern’s Tomb...

“...And that is it. That is all I could translate for you, Anabelle-vanni” humbly said Fleetpaw as he put down his notes.

“Oh, wow. That... That sure was something,” were the first words out of Anabelle’s mouth.

“Alright, this is crazy, but...” began Marjorie, “all that talk about ‘the gem,’ and especially that last line, makes me think this might have been written by the man who awakened The Wyvern seven centuries ago.”

“Ah, the dark sorcerer Rose mentioned before, right? But why would my father have that guy’s journal?” wondered a puzzled Anabelle, her white tail shifting to a side.

“I guess we’ll never know, girl,” sighed the gray she-werewolf. “All we can say for sure is that, somehow, that thing ended up in your dad’s hands seven centuries after it was originally written.”

“And then Mom kept it as a memento after he died in the war against Kreuzland.”

“Yeah, and now you have it!” exclaimed Marjorie. “We might not know how it exactly happened, but it seems like you’ve got a lost piece of Galian history in your hands, girl!”

“Huh. Then I guess I should consider handing it over to a museum or something, right?”

“That’s your call! After all, your mother gave it to you, so it’s yours now. Only you can decide what you want to do with it, girl.”

“I suppose so...” hummed the white she-werewolf as she studied the worn-out cover of that old journal. “Well, I guess I’m keeping it for now. If anything, that will save me from Rose chewing my ears off for even thinking about handing over something so valuable just like that.”

“Ah, yes, absolutely!” laughed the voluptuous lycca-vanni with the gray coat of fur.

“Anyway, it seems clear that the mystery of the bronze antique key will not be resolved today as we were hoping, kind of.”

“Oh, that’s right! There was no mention of it, was there?” said Marjorie, turning to her lycca-mate.

“N-none that I could find, my Margie-vanni,” stated Fleetpaw, shaking his head.

“It’s alright. I already got a lot more than I was expecting. I mean, who could have imagined this journal belonged to the crazed lunatic who almost doomed all of Galia? Not me, that’s for sure!” Anabelle exclaimed, flicking both her ears and her tail as she poured herself another glass of pineapple juice.

A few moments later, the young lycca-vanni decided to leave the mysterious journal in Fleetpaw’s care, as she figured a book person (or werewolf) like him could do a much better job at keeping it safe than she could. Later still, Rose and Elise joined them, and the four vanni then spent the next couple of hours sharing their thoughts and theories about that journal and its very particular contents.

~*~

Time continued to pass...

A few months afterwards, a young, destitute woman from St. Belaroix heard the call of the forest. Of course, it eventually led her to crossing paths with a vanniless lycca from the Howling Grove pack. Littlepaws couldn’t help but become deeply invested in their story, watching it unfold from afar with amber eyes full of longing.

“Someday, son,” Darkhowl had at one point said to him as he put a reassuring claw on his shoulder, knowing exactly what he was thinking. “Someday.”

Littlepaws simply nodded silently, but the longing couldn’t be so easily dispelled. Although he tried his best not to be a creep, he still continued to glance at the new couple whenever he was able to. ‘Yes. Someday that lycca will be me. And I will be a hero to a vanni like her. And then our somas would bond together, just like theirs...’ he thought to himself as a forlorn sigh escaped through his lips.

The young werewolf boy watched them tongue-bonding on various occasions. Indeed, every time it happened when he was nearby, Littlepaws observed with keen interest how the vanni seemed to melt in the arms of her male, her eyes rolling back into her head as the lycca’s tongue did who-knows-what inside her mouth. ‘W-when the time comes, will my fated vanni make that face too? Can I really give someone that kind of bliss with just my tongue? A-and how does it work anyway?’ he wondered.

A few days later, the new werewolf girl received her Moon Stone. The vanni from the previous two years helped her learn all the things she needed to know about the ways of the pack, forging strong sisterly bonds with her in the process. Then, once her Moon Stone started glowing, the ever-mysterious ivory gate opened before her, and she stepped into the Grand Alpha’s chamber for her Oneness Test.

About an hour later, she returned to the waiting arms of her lycca-mate, who promptly enveloped her in his loving embrace. As simply the act of returning from the Grand Alpha’s Chamber normally meant that the vanni had passed the test, she was thus officially declared the newest member of the Howling Grove werewolf pack, and a celebration was held in her honor that night.

‘They both look so, so happy. Their smiles are... something to behold. So bright. So full of life and joy. Ah, what I wouldn’t give to be in his place, with my fated vanni in hers, just losing ourselves in each other’s eyes like they are...’ Littlepaws longingly thought to himself as he daydreamed exactly that. In contrast, neither Kicky nor Klawy seemed to show much interest in the new couple, as they were still far too young to care about such things themselves.

Eventually, as the novelty wore off, Anabelle and Darkhowl’s son began to shift his attention away from that couple. Slowly, he went back to focusing on things more befitting of his age, such as chasing the twins and being chased by them. But in the back of his mind, the Littlepaws who yearned to be a hero to a vanni was always there, waiting for that promised someday to come...

Months came and went, until one day it was the twins’ turn to celebrate their very first birthday. Then, only a couple sunrises later, the ability to change into their bipedal forms awakened for both of them, almost mirroring Littlepaws’ experience about ten months prior.

“They grow so fast,” commented Elise one lazy afternoon as she watched Kicky and Klawy playing with their slightly older friend.

“They sure do!” replied Rose. “Better treasure these moments, Elise, because in a couple years or so, all three of them will have grown into big, mighty werewolves like their fathers, fully capable of fending for themselves and whatnot.”

“Well, no matter how big they get or how fast it happens, they will always be my furry little puppies to me!”

Two months later, Littlepaws celebrated his second birthday. By then, he had grown into the lyccan equivalent of a sixteen-year-old human boy. As such, he was no longer innocent in regard to what happens when a male and a female begin to kiss and fondle each other heavily in bed. He had seen male animals mounting their female counterparts in the wild too, as well as a few lyccan couples doing the same in their feral forms outdoors.

As his sexual awakening progressed, the nature of his daydreams began to change accordingly. In them, he was no longer ‘just’ a hero to a young human woman, but also her mate. One day, while sitting alone on a high branch, gazing at the sunset, the scenario he often liked to envision in his head didn’t stop at the point where his fated vanni thanked him profusely in his arms. Somehow, he felt as though a strange sort of ‘warmth’ pushed his mind into going just a little bit further...

Within the daydream, Littlepaws found himself compelled to touch the vanni he held in his embrace. Thus, his eyes followed his clawed hand as it began to caress her cheek, feeling the delectable softness of her skin on his lupine fingerpads. And then, slowly, that hand slid down her neck, resting on her shoulder for a moment before tracing the length of her arm. Of course, the longer he spent caressing that smooth skin of hers, the faster his heart beat...

As Littlepaws allowed himself to get fully drawn into his own daydream, he imagined his hands slowly starting to unbutton that woman’s vest. He imagined that her eyes were closed, simply allowing it to happen, as though she had just given herself to him. And then the vest fell. The young werewolf could feel his heart pounding inside his own chest as his clawed hands began to explore her bared chest, tracing the tantalizing form of her naked curves. Eventually, his roaming fingers settled on lightly pinching the sensitive nubs crowning her womanly globes of flesh.

A soft moan escaped the imaginary vanni’s lips when he began to boldly slide a hand between her thighs, slowly disappearing under her skirt. The heat was almost unbearable now, and Littlepaws felt his own face and chest practically burning with a primal sort of fire he couldn’t name. The vanni was putty in his hands, fully his to do whatever he wanted with, and he wanted nothing more than to see her squeal with pleasure. Finally, he pushed his fingers inside her sopping wet depths, eliciting her loudest moan yet.

In reality, his hand had found his own throbbing flesh, and was gripping it tightly as he vigorously stroked it up and down in a lust-fueled frenzy. Even so, he was only vaguely aware of what was going on, as his mind was still fully absorbed in what he was doing with the imaginary vanni of his dreams. In fact, his own eyes had been closed through it all, only seeing what his hormone-saturated mindscape was projecting for him so vividly.

And then, something strange happened. Some kind of tingling pressure he had never felt before began to build up deep within his loins. The pressure grew and grew, until it flooded his whole self, demanding release. Guided purely by raw instinct now, Littlepaws tightened his grip around the base of his engorged shaft, and held it there as though his life depended on it. For an instant suspended in time, he then froze as the surging pressure utterly seized his entire world. Whatever was happening, there simply was no stopping it no matter what.

At last, his whole body tensed up, forcing that mighty pressure outwards. As the muscles in his loins suddenly began to spasm to the primal beat of his own release, Littlepaws saw his wolf seed erupting in powerful spurts, majestically flying through the air in long, translucent ropes before being claimed by the earth below.

Once his seed was spent, the young werewolf simply sat there, panting. Slowly, it dawned on him that he had just experienced his very first orgasm. ‘That... that was my seed I spilled!’ he realized, gazing at his softening malehood in awe. ‘I had no idea it felt like this! It does not compare to anything I had ever imagined! Ah, but how much better will it feel once I have an actual vanni to share this with, and not just the one in my dreams?’

After spending a few more moments quietly pondering that question, Littlepaws jumped down from the branch he was sitting on and made his way back to Howling Grove. Of course, he already knew he would be repeating the experience again the next day, and maybe the day after that too. Maybe he’d just do it whenever he felt the urge to ‘summon’ his imaginary vanni again — the only one he could mate with for the time being.

Many more sunrises and sunsets followed one after the other as time went on. Slowly — or much too quickly, depending on how one viewed it — Kicky, Klawy, and Littlepaws grew taller and stronger, although the ten-month age gap separating the latter from the twins was, of course, always evident. Still, as Littlepaws’ lyccan growth rate naturally slowed down, both Kicky and Klawy began to catch up with him.

Eventually, another full year had passed in the forest of Lanea. The three younglings could hardly be called younglings anymore; especially Anabelle and Darkhowl’s son. By that point, all three of them had developed into healthy teenage werewolves, although Littlepaws in particular was already on the verge of adulthood. Indeed, his paws could hardly be called little anymore.

Before long, Elise’s twins had turned two years old. And only a couple months later, Anabelle’s werewolf boy finally found himself standing at the very threshold of the second most important milestone in the life of every lycca: his third birthday...

To be continued...