At seven o’clock sharp that evening, the birthday banquet officially began.
The grand hall blazed with light, a colossal crystal chandelier hanging from the center of the vaulted ceiling, scattering cascades of golden brilliance across the marble floor below.
Long tables draped in snow-white brocade stretched the length of the room, silverware and porcelain gleaming with a soft, warm luster beneath the glow.
A fire crackled cheerfully in the massive fireplace, and the air grew thick and heady, aged wine, roasting meat, the subtle perfumes of the elite mingling into a fragrance that belonged exclusively to gatherings of the powerful and privileged.
The guest list was a who’s who of influence and wealth: old-money aristocrats, newly risen rich people, celebrated scholars (like deans), and a handful of Mr.
Big’s most trusted friends from his early days.
Across all of Tundratown, among the many powerful families, only the Lynxley Family commanded a standing comparable to Mr.
Big’s.
The Strol Family, Kevin’s family by birth, barely registered in comparison.
Their original patriarch, the father of this body, had somehow survived his brush with death, but his vitality was a shadow of what it once had been.
So it fell to the second son, Hunter Strol, to represent the family at this gathering, the only surviving son besides Kevin.
Hunter was a coyote, his coat far thinner and less fluffy than Kevin’s.
Round and soft, he was the picture of a pampered rich man, thirty-six years old and comfortable in his prosperity.
He sat near the middle lower section of the long table, his family’s name carrying less weight here than a dozen others seated above him.
At the head of the table, Mr.
Big sat beside Grandmama and his wife.
His body was small, almost comically so, but his presence pressed down on the room like a physical weight.
Grandmama, her silver hair immaculately coiffed, beamed with warmth, her eyes crinkling at the corners.
Flanking them were the current mayor, a lion whose mane had been trimmed with meticulous precision, and an old white fox, a longtime business partner and the head of a deeply entrenched family.
The fox had been instrumental in Mr.
Big’s rise, their partnership stretching back decades.
It was this history that had earned foxes a lasting goodwill in Mr.
Big’s eyes.
—— Halfway through the banquet, Mr.
Big called Kevin forward with a small gesture of his paw.
Kevin lowered himself, leaning close.
“This is my adopted son, Kevin Strol,” Mr.
Big announced.
His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried with perfect clarity to every ear within range.
“As some of you know, he’s the child I found years ago.” Grandmama patted Kevin’s nose affectionately.
“A wonderful boy.
Obedient, and quite exceptional in his own right.” As her words faded, the gazes around the table drifted, almost as one, toward Hunter Strol, seated in the middle-lower section.
These families knew each other’s business intimately; a single glance was enough to read the undercurrents.
The only thing that truly surprised them was that Mr.
Big had let the adopted wolf keep his original surname.
That choice invited speculation.
Was the old godfather planning to use this “foundling” to absorb the Strol Family whole?
The conversation that followed was a predictable dance of compliments and pleasantries, effusive, warm on the surface, and entirely hollow beneath.
Kevin knew Mr.
Big was using this night to put a face to his name, to begin weaving him into the city’s web of power.
He smiled, nodded, and answered each inquiry with patient grace until finally, he was able to slip back into the side hall.
—— The side hall was a different world entirely.
This was where the children of the attending guests had gathered, a menagerie of bears, elephants, antelopes, and a dozen other species packed together like a living zoo.
The young children clustered in small knots, some murmuring in low tones, others laughing in casual chatter, and a few even swaying gently in corners to the distant strains of music.
The air vibrated with a particular restlessness, the excitement and awkwardness of youth dressed in formal finery.
Kevin’s reappearance drew a ripple of attention.
A few figures looked eager to approach, but he dismissed them with polite refusals before they could even speak.
Soon, however, his attention snagged on something across the room.
Pawbert was there, surrounded by a pair of snow leopard sisters, a coyote, and the mayor’s lion son, all of them teenagers.
The young lynx had a smile plastered across his face, but it was frozen stiff at the corners, his gaze darting nervously like a cornered animal trying to find an escape route.
Kevin gestured to the two polar bear guards behind him to hang back, then ambled over at a casual pace.
He stopped just close enough to hear, his ears swiveling forward like antennae, tuning in to the conversation.
It began with pleasantries, perfectly normal.
But the talk was steered, as if by some invisible hand, toward Pawbert’s older brother and sister.
Then came the real purpose: requests for contact information, questions about arranging meetings, inquiries wrapped in the thin tissue of social grace.
They were speaking to Pawbert, but their eyes never stayed on him for more than a few seconds.
He was a messenger, nothing more, a tool to be used and then set aside.
Kevin chose his moment.
He strode over with measured steps, raised a paw, and clamped it down firmly on Pawbert’s skull, knuckles tightening as he pulled the lynx toward him.
Pawbert flinched, it felt like that paw was trying to dig straight through to his brain.
“Hey, Pawbert,” Kevin said, his tone easy and natural.
He swept his gaze across the little group.
“These your friends?” Pawbert’s neck was bent low by the weight of Kevin’s grip.
“Y-yes,” he stammered.
Kevin smiled and extended his other paw toward the lion, open and composed.
“Nice to meet you all.
I’m Kevin Strol.” “You’re a Strol too?” The snow leopard sisters spoke almost in unison, one pointing at Kevin, the other gesturing toward the quiet coyote beside them.
Kevin followed their gaze.
The coyote was a head shorter than him, leaner, his coloring a close match to Hunter’s.
If he was also a Strol, he was likely Hunter’s son.
The lion tilted his head, chin resting on his palm.
“Wait, I think my dad mentioned you.
You’re Mr.
Big’s adopted kid, right?
Kevin Strol?
So you two might actually be related?” “You could say that,” Kevin replied, offering no elaboration.
Then, without warning, he tightened his grip on Pawbert’s head and tugged him clean out of the cluster of young children.
“Anyway, you know how it is, Pawbert and I don’t really do well in crowded places,” he said lightly.
“Getting a bit stuffy in here.
We’re gonna step out for some air.” “Hey, wait…” The lion raised a paw, but Kevin was already turning away, Pawbert in tow.
—— Stepping out of the side hall was like emerging from a steam bath into winter’s embrace.
The night air rushed in, cold and sharp, laced with the scent of snow, and the cloying heat that had clung to them dissolved instantly.
Because it was Grandmama’s birthday, the entire estate had been strung with lanterns.
Even the neglected corners of the grounds were dotted with warm pools of light, transforming the snow-covered landscape into something soft and almost magical.
Kevin walked ahead, glancing back occasionally at Pawbert, who trudged behind him with his head hanging low.
This lynx was still young, a far cry from the backstabber he would one day become.
A thought flickered through Kevin’s mind.
‘What if I pull him over to my side now?
Get him on my payroll before the Lynxley Family ever had a chance to turn him against me?
It could be useful down the road.’ a little fire lit from the inside.
And anyway, who knew what this world’s trajectory would be now that he’d arrived?
He’d already kicked over the first domino.
Judy and Nick might never even cross paths at this rate.
Just as he was mulling it over, Pawbert’s voice came from behind him, strained and quiet.
“Thank you.
For getting me out of there.” He paused, swallowing hard.
“And…
I want to apologize for my brother.
He didn’t mean it the way it sounded.
He’s usually kind, really.
He’s just…
tired.
Stressed.
That’s how he treats me and my sister.” At the end of this, Pawbert almost laughed at his own excuse, but he forced the words out anyway.
“I didn’t know you were applying to university next year.
That’s incredible.” “It’s nothing special,” Kevin said without turning around, waving a dismissive paw.
“Not like me,” Pawbert muttered, and his voice suddenly thickened, cracking at the seams.
“I can’t seem to do anything right…” And then it spilled out, a torrent of grievances dammed up for years, finally bursting through.
He recounted his childhood setbacks, his humiliations, his failures, each story more miserable than the last, piling up like snow in a drift until his voice wobbled and his eyes grew bright with unshed tears.
Kevin listened, stunned into silence, his ears flattening back involuntarily.
He tried covering them, but Pawbert just kept droning on behind him.
“Maybe because of my brother, you’ve got the wrong idea about lynxes, but…” Pawbert rambled on.
Finally, Kevin had had enough.
He spun on his heel, reached out, and clamped Pawbert’s mouth shut, squeezing those two endlessly chattering cat lips together between his fingers.
“Stop.
Just stop.
Don’t say another word.” He took a deep breath, his voice soaked in irritation.
“I don’t actually hate lynxes.
That was just talk.
I apologize, all right?
There.
Now please, just please shut up.
I’m begging you.” They stood frozen, wolf and lynx, staring at each other with wide eyes.
Then Kevin released him and wiped his paw fastidiously in the snow.
Pawbert quickly covered his own mouth, standing mute and motionless.
Satisfied that they were finally alone, Kevin shrugged off his jacket, tossed it aside, and flopped backward into the snowbank, arms and legs spread wide like a starfish sinking into white.
“Ahhh.
Cold.
And finally, quiet,” he sighed, closing his eyes in genuine contentment.
Pawbert stood there, baffled, watching this white wolf lie sprawled in the snow without a shred of dignity, his chest rising and falling peacefully.
The impeccable, polished young gentleman from the banquet hall had vanished entirely, replaced by something wild and unselfconscious.
‘He’s just like me,’ Pawbert thought, his heart clenching with sudden emotion.
‘He rescued me from that humiliation, and he listened to everything I said without judgment, and now he’s dropping all his masks right in front of me.
He must be crushed by his family too.
We’re the same, two victims trying to claw our way out.’ It was deeply moving.
Tragic, even.
They were kindred spirits.
Two of a kind.
So Pawbert imitated him.
He tugged off his own jacket, laid it carefully beside Kevin’s, and gingerly lowered himself into the snow, stretching out flat on his back.
The cold bit through his fur and sank into his skin, but something in his chest felt warm for the first time in years.
He gazed up at the deep blue vault of the night sky and softened his voice, like a man about to share a secret he’d held for far too long.
“You know something, Kevin?
We’re really the same.
I hate my family too.
In that house, I feel like I’m being stripped of everything that makes me who I am.
I can’t be myself.” He lowered his voice to a whisper.
“I still like yarn balls, you know?
And milk.
And scratching posts.
Just like you…
I want to drop the act too…” “Huh?” Kevin lifted his head, his expression a mask of pure bewilderment.
‘What the hell was this idiot talking about?’ Drop his act?
Just like him?
What kind of nonsense was this?
But Pawbert saw the reaction and took it as confirmation.
‘He’s definitely a tsundere,’ he decided.
‘Too proud to admit it.
I’ve read enough stories to know how to handle a tsundere, you just have to be sincere.
Break through the walls with genuine feeling.’ He rolled over, grabbed Kevin’s paw, and clutched it like a lifeline.
“We’re friends now, right, Kevin?” “Let go of me, damn it.” Kevin’s expression turned sour, dark as ink.
“Kevin, I know you’re shy about these things…” Kevin stared at Pawbert, who was now clinging to his arm with shining, desperate eyes.
‘What the hell happened to this guy?
Just moments ago he’d been a quivering mess, and now he was acting like they’d known each other for years?’ Then Kevin’s ears snapped upright.
They swiveled like radar dishes, scanning the darkness.
Footsteps.
Someone was coming.
“Let go.
Someone’s approaching,” he hissed, keeping his voice low and urgent.
“Just tell me first, are we friends?” Pawbert only gripped tighter.
“Let go!” “Just answer me.” “Fine!
Yes!
Now let go, for crying out loud!” Kevin shoved at Pawbert’s face, but the lynx clung like a burr.
He had no choice but to grit his teeth and concede.
“Fine!
We’re friends, okay?
Friends!
Now let go!” Pawbert’s face lit up with joy, and he released his grip in triumphant satisfaction.
The instant he let go, Kevin erupted from the snow like a spring, frantically brushing off the white powder, smoothing his fur, and snatching up his jacket.
Pawbert scrambled to his feet too, slapping at his clothes, but before he could even get his coat properly on, the voice came from the darkness.
“Over there, did someone fall?” The crunch of footsteps grew closer, slow and measured.
Kevin and Pawbert looked up to see, at the boundary between shadow and lantern light, Hunter and his son approaching.
Hunter’s round body cast a squat shadow across the snow, his eyes gleaming with curiosity as he ambled toward them.
The lazy smile he’d worn earlier vanished as he recognized the figure in the snow, replaced by what he clearly believed was a warm, brotherly expression, his mouth stretched wide, but his eyes remained flat and cold.
“So this is where you ran off to, Kevin,” he said, stepping into the snow, his belly jiggling with each step.
“I’m Hunter Strol.
Your big brother.” He paused, letting the words settle.
“You were lost when you were small.
I never thought I’d get the chance to see you again.” And then, to Kevin’s utter disgust, Hunter opened his round arms wide, beaming with counterfeit affection, ready to pull him into a suffocating embrace.
Kevin’s stomach lurched.
He could feel the banquet food rising in his throat.
‘You tried to kill me back then,’ he thought coldly.
‘And now you think a smile and a hug are enough to win over a twelve-year-old?’ “Wait.” Kevin raised a paw, palm out, and took two deliberate steps back, carving a clear line of distance between them.
“Who do you think you are?” “I’m your brother…” The second “brother” never made it out.
The smile was still frozen on Hunter’s face, but it had gone brittle, caught in a sudden frost.
His eyes flickered, the warmth draining away to reveal something sharp and calculating beneath.
(The Strol family aren’t just wolves, all animals of the canis species can be part of the Strol family.)