Chapter 205: Greymaw’s Bad Day

Over the rest of the day, Tera threw herself into helping the Dow clan recover.

The clan had already been working hard before she arrived. Fresh silk leaves were stacked in piles near the damaged shelters, and several males had already hiked deeper into the forest to strip more from the trees.

Three shelters had been re-roofed with new layers, though the work was rough and uneven compared to the original construction.

But they had done it without her.

Tera’s chest ached with pride as she watched them work. These were the same beasts who had stared at her blankly when she first told them to tie sticks together. Now they were sourcing materials, making repairs, and coordinating amongst themselves with a competence that would have been unthinkable months ago.

She jumped in beside them, directing the more complex repairs where the structural framing had buckled, showing them how to replace support beams without collapsing the roof overhead, and reinforcing the joints where the hail damage had been worst.

By the second evening, the settlement looked battered but functional and liveable, and that night, Tera kissed her cubs goodnight and peacefully slept with her mates.

When Tera returned to the wolf pack the following morning, she was surprised to see that the farm was intact and far better than when she left it.

The mounds had been firmly and neatly packed, and the seedlings that had been replanted were standing upright, their roots properly buried. Even the spacing was correct, measured out to the same distances she had demonstrated.

And the pen had been fixed and adjusted, which was surprising, as Tera hadn’t given them any other tool aside from the hoes, which meant they had likely used that as a makeshift hammer to adjust the fence.

The animals inside also looked clean, and they were chewing on freshly uprooted grass and leaves.

Several wolves noticed her arrival and perked up. A few waved, and one younger wolf jogged over with the eager energy of someone who had been waiting for this exact moment.

"Leader Tera! The farm is fixed! And we washed the animals again! Even though some of them bit us!"

"I can see that," Tera chuckled.

"Calis made us redo the pen wall three times," the wolf added, rubbing his arms with a hint of exhaustion. "He said it was not straight enough."

Another wolf behind him grumbled, "The first time was fine."

"It was NOT fine," a third wolf shot back. "There was a gap. You could see it."

"I could not see it!"

"Because you have bad eyes!"

Tera smiled and looked ahead to see Calis standing near the pen, inspecting it. When he noticed Tera looking, his lips lifted in a small smile.

[(¬‿¬)]

[The wolf leader wanted everything perfect for Host’s return]

"You were all very thorough." Her eyes swept through the wolves before landing on Calis who had already made his way to her.

"I wanted everything to work well." Calis nodded, looking proud of himself. "It needed proper structural integrity... as you would say."

Tera bit back a grin. Calis had bullied his own pack into perfection because he wanted to impress her, and watching him pretend it was purely about structural integrity was so endearing she wanted to flick his ear again.

"Thank you," she said instead, and meant it.

His crimson eyes held hers for a beat too long before he looked away, clearing his throat.

She was grateful, though her mood dampened when she saw the females still asleep.

She then noticed that the wolves still looked tired.

"Have you eaten?"

Tera was coming to the slow realisation that for them to have gotten all this work done, they would have been going for the whole night too.

They looked at Tera like she had spoken another language, while Calis nervously looked away.

’OMG!’

To her horror, they hadn’t.

Tera invited the whole pack to her clan, intending to treat them as thanks for their hard work and to at least provide them with food.

Tera was especially considerate of the females.

There were a lot of fruits that had dropped from the trees during the storm so the clan had baskets and piles of split and broken fruit that had already been rinsed and waiting to be consumed.

What followed was minutes of the wolves entering the Dow clan, while carrying their struggling animals through. Tera had asked for this since no wolf would be in the wolf territory watching over them.

Even the elders, curious and pulled by hunger, had no choice but to go along too.

When the portal closed behind them, the elders were startled by the noise.

The cubs from Tera’s clan were playing and running around, and a group of them had been chasing Puff Dumpling across the clearing when the procession of wolves and animals appeared.

While the beasts paused what they were doing to welcome the wolves.

The sight of so many new faces sent the cubs into an absolute frenzy of excitement.

"NEW ONES!"

"LOOK AT THEIR EARS!"

"Why are they all the same?"

"Can I touch that one?!"

"WHERE DID ALL THOSE ANIMALS COME FROM?!"

Three Dow clan cubs launched themselves at an alarmed Greymaw before anyone could intervene. The wolf went rigid, his eyes wide with terror as if the cubs’ very touch were death sentences.

One of them poked him in the eye.

"OW! MY EYE!"

Tera smirked.

Served him right.

’Do it again!’

To Tera’s surprise, the cub on the old man’s head, who had been trying to get his footing, pulled on Greymaw’s head, and when his little feet slipped off the side of the old man’s face, the big toe poked the elder’s eye.

"AH!"

’YES!’

Two adults immediately rushed to pull their cubs off the old wolf.

But it was the animals that caused the most immediate chaos.

The moment the livestock hit Dow clan soil, two wolves had been careless, and the animals in their grasp made a break for freedom. Seeing their comrades free, other animals burst out of their wolves’ grip.

The creatures bolted in different directions.

Calis glared at the wolves. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

The wolves immediately raced after the animals.

"CATCH THE BROWN ONE!"

"WHICH BROWN ONE?! THERE ARE THREE!"

"THE ONE HEADING FOR THE WATER!"

The Dow clan beasts decided to help the wolves, while Tera and her mates looked on in shock.

It took a few minutes to round up the escape, and by the end of it, both wolves and Dow clan members were panting, muddy, and united by the shared trauma of chasing livestock across unfamiliar territory.

The animals were eventually corralled into a temporary holding area with the Dow clan’s own pen. There, the two groups of livestock immediately began establishing a pecking order through a series of headbutts, squawks, and one spectacular display of dominance from a creature that left three of the brown ones cowering behind a post.

[( ˵ •̀ □ •́ ˵ )]

[I see what Host is doing?]

[Is this the point when Host rallies both clans to kill that corrupted beast?]

’No...’

Tera wanted to see what they were dealing with first.