Bearclaw Valley You, of course, should always chant when you wash your hands

Now came the Bruin-jaw, feeling at once the same as he always had, and entirely different, too. Under a warming morning sun, he experimented with a swagger that mimicked his sire's but didn't achieve the same comfortable command. He switched to a measured, intimidating prowl in an effort to match his dam, and felt unsatisfied with that, too. Both his parents conveyed their places in Ursus effortlessly.

Shadow-forged as he was, how was Aventus to match up to them? He slipped back into a familiar smooth lope and hugged the stream on his right side, moving jauntily into the lower forest. Nothing about him suggested that anything had changed except the way he held his ears pricked forward and the way his tail bounced above his hips.