Blacktail Deer Plateau beguiling

On hunting, he thought to himself, deciding that this must be what Catori meant for the kids to be learning. "A bit, here and there," he replied. "They're just about big enough to start going out on hunting trips. We'll have to do something special."

He mused on this for a moment, only to whip his head toward the vanilla shewolf when she expressed her intentions to stay slim through the winter. His heartbeat sped up as he remembered his first disasterous summer in the area, and then the terrible storm that'd killed off so much life during the winter that followed.

"Everyone gets fat and lazy for winter," he replied, his tone coming out a bit more defensively than he'd realized. His gaze was hawkish upon her, but if she looked close, she'd probably see a deeply-seated anxiety behind the sternness.