Chapter 140: Happy Feast

The settlement had never looked so alive.

Every fire pit in the clearing had been lit, and the warm, flickering glow pushed back the evening shadows until the entire settlement seemed to pulse with light.

The meat rack that Tera had built months ago was completely filled for the first time since its creation, and a fresh plume of light smoke drifted lazily into the sky from the strips of meat dripping fat into the slow bed of flames and coals beneath.

The wolves had turned out to be terrifyingly efficient hunters.

After the initial awkwardness of their arrival had faded, Calis had quietly offered to join the Dow clan males in their hunt that morning. And the result was a surplus of meat that both parties had never seen before.

The wolves’ precise coordination during the hunt had impressed Xavi a lot.

Now the results were everywhere. Sticks of roasting meat were propped over multiple fires, the sizzle and pop of cooking fat filling the air alongside the rich, smoky scent.

The Dow clan members moved between the fires excitedly, turning sticks, adjusting angles, and bickering over whose portion was cooking faster while the cubs caused chaos.

They tore through the settlement in shrieking, tumbling packs, their small bodies fuelled by the smell of roasting meat and the intoxicating glee of a night that felt like a celebration. The older cubs chased two younger ones between the shelters while two males rushed to stop them from accidentally running into the fires.

The other cubs sat in clusters near the fires, their eyes huge and their mouths already shiny with anticipation as they watched the adults roasting their next meal after the gluttonous milk fest they had enjoyed earlier.

One particular group of cubs were especially lively and were being monitored by Ermin while Bessier and two other females tended to the meat at their fire pit.

Nadia was shrieking and chasing another male in circles while Althea was busy with Puff Dumpling, her tiny pink ears flat with focus as she tried to stack pebbles on the creature’s back.

Puff Dumpling bore this indignity, having fully accepted his new role as the panther cub’s interactive toy.

Meanwhile, the wolves themselves stood at the edges of the activity, their expressions caught between wonder and unease. The fires, which their elders had taught them to fear, were everywhere.

Their ears kept swivelling toward the crackle of flames, and more than one wolf flinched when a log shifted and sent up a spray of embers.

But they couldn’t look away from the meat.

The aroma of roasting flesh had every wolf’s nose pointed in varying directions, and their tails were doing things their owners clearly wished they could control.

What baffled the wolves the most was how the beasts moved around them with the casual ease of creatures who had long since accepted that fire was a tool, not a death sentence.

One of Calis’s wolves leaned toward him, his voice low. "There is so much fire."

"I can see that."

"And no one is running."

"No one is running."

"Did they all hit their heads?"

"Stop disturbing Calis!" Faelynn snapped from her spot, cradling Luth to her chest as she side-eyed the wolves who had now shut up.

Calis wasn’t even paying attention. His crimson eyes were fixed on the female at the centre of it all.

Tera had just walked out of the storage shelter, taking the scenery in with a wide smile.

She had rested well, eaten properly and was enjoying herself.

Her mates had woken her up later during the night to feed her, and Tera had blissfully gone back to sleep until she had woken up refreshed this morning. She had wanted to spend the day having some special ’bonding’ time with her two husbands, which would work as the perfect stress reliever, but she had been bummed to learn nearly all the males had gone out to hunt.

But she had been more than happy to play with her cubs and the others in the nursery.

Though when the males had returned with so much meat, Tera discovered she had never gotten around to using the pot.

And now here she was with it.

Every head turned.

The pot was large, and it took Tera a strenuous effort to lift, even though another female was helping her carry it on the other end.

The nearest males rushed to help, and Tera quickly advised them to be careful, her pulse nearly spiking as she directed them to where it would be placed.

Making this thing had been a passive barbed wire dildo in her ass.

If they broke it, Tera was convinced she would develop a heart attack and die.

Tera had never taken a pottery class in her modern life. Neither had she even considered it despite how much her friends had hyped it up.

She’d had enough of digging into mud at work to take it on as a hobby.

But the process of creating this thing had been one of the most frustrating experiences of her life in either world.

How was this anyone’s hobby?!

The clay had fought her at every stage. It was too wet, then too dry, then too wet again. She had shaped it with flat stones and a makeshift spatula, and the thing had collapsed multiple times during the forming process.

She didn’t even have that rotating thing that would have made it easier. Not like she even knew how to use that either in the first place.

And she had to be particular about what she had done at that stage due to the limited amount of clay she had. She could not afford to have it crack during the drying process.

The system had helped immensely to make sure it came out good enough even though it looked a bit ugly.

But despite its appearance, it was uniform and even... in calculations.

Regardless, the massive pot was here, and it was about to make history.

"What is THAT?" one of the wolves asked, eyeing the massive vessel as Tera set it down near the fire that looked different from the others.

Stones were arranged in a tight circle, creating a platform wide enough to support the pot’s thick base and high enough for a fire to burn steadily beneath it.

Tera smiled, planting her hands on her hips as she admired her work.

"This," Tera announced, adjusting it with the help of another beast. "is a pot. And tonight, I am going to prepare your meat in a way none of you have ever experienced."

The clan members who had watched her struggle with this thing for weeks exchanged glances. They had been curious when she first mentioned preparing meat a "different way," and they hadn’t understood why it had taken her so long to make and dry a round thing out of mud.

But they had learned by now that when Tera said she was going to do something new, the results were always worth the confusion.

Bessier was practically vibrating. "Will it be better than roasted meat?"

"Different."

"But will it be BETTER?"

Tera smirked. "You will have to see and find out."