Thunder Dome full circle

it had been his mother's abuses which first planted the seed of anger and of rage into shardul's young heart -- he could not recall what she had done, for it had been repressed within him -- only that she had hurt him beyond measure. but his counterparts were not so; eventually, the silver cat had decided that the rage within him was warm with welcome, and so lay with it each night until it wound itself 'round his soul until the barbs bit deep.

teeth! fangs! they flashed and they cut him, they scored his muzzle and split his ear, razed his cheek. but like the wolf, he did not feel these wounds, nor how they dripped crimson into the dirt and churned it to mud beneath their dancing paws. shardul feinted, lunged again, aimed stabbing bites and crushing blows of his paws the pale wolf whom, after all this time, he had never ruined.