In a more middle class home, relatively close to downtown Glendale, a pair of orange furred paws carried a rather common looking teapot out of the kitchen and into a fairly large dining area where two other she wolves sat.
"Don't you have coffee, Miley?" a Pink she-wolf asked.
"Sorry Mara, Frank wolfed it all down before he left for work," the orange she wolf, Miley, answered.
"Tea isn't that bad, Mara," a magenta colored she-wolf told her pink neighbor, with a slight southern accent to her voice, "the British drink it all the time."
"Then let them," the Pink she-wolf, Mara, replied, "You know I can't get going in the morning without a cup of coffee, Rachael."
The Magenta lupman, Rachael accepted the cup before putting in sugar and a little cream.
"Have either of you heard from our musketeers?" Rachael then asked, "I haven't heard anything from Robyn."
The three friends were oblivious to the recent events involving the curse, and their daughters, Robyn, Maxine, and Millie had neglected to call them.
"I haven't heard from Millie in a few days," Miley answered, "I'm beginning to worry."
"I wonder why you named your daughter "Millie", it's so close to your OWN name," Mara snickered.
"I had been watching Seven Brides for Seven Brothers during the pregnancy," Miley sighed, "the name "Millie" just stuck with me... have you heard anything from Maxine?"
"No," Mara sighed, "Not so much as a telephone call. I'm beginning to regret agreeing to let her stay at the manor. The place is over crowded and we need to spread out."
"I understand," Rachael nodded, "but Robyn spotted Ulysses headed there one day, and you known our musketeers."
"We know them all too well," Mara sighed, "where one goes, the other two are sure to follow. We were the same way at their age."
"Like that's a bad thing?" Miley questioned, "and there are times when I think we're still the same way."
"Yeah, but we grew up," Mara answered, "we don't spend ALL our time together."
The other two nodded, and an awkward silence followed for a few moments.
"I think we ought to go and bring our musketeers home," Mara then thought a loud, "they want to participate in Pack activities and be educated there, that's fine. As we participate in pack activities too, but they don't have to live there."
"Maybe we ought to move back," Miley countered, "I mean we all only moved out because we thought it was crowded... which it probably is, but it isn't unbearable."
Her friends only sighed.
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Meanwhile at one of Glendale's fast food restaurants a purple male wolf quietly went about sweeping up after the first breakfast rush had gone through. He wasn't paid all that much and his shifts were long ones to mostly clean up after people after they'd eaten, but for Martin, his goal was well within sight. He and his wife, Roberta (no relation to Robert) had felt the estate was becoming rapidly overcrowded and decided to strike out on his own.
It was his hope that they could save up enough money to buy more land for the Pack and establish a second "branch" there. But things hadn't gone entirely as Martin had planned. The Pack for years had had to fight off advances by developers wanting to get rid of the forest that the Pack had maintained and replace it with suburban dwellings... Now in some cases, the rich neighbors of the Pack sided with the Pack fearing their estates being carved up as well, but when the developers shifted their attention to the northern most edge of the Pack's hunting grounds, all support for defending those lands vanished, and the Pack was left alone. The Pack members that had studied Law, of which Kaylee was the latest, had so far successfully defended the Pack's rights to its land, and the Pride had even voiced their support...
Finding a new place to start a new area for the Pack to live in had been tough. They ended up having to settle for a rather rundown piece of property on the southern edge of town, and only having a high school education, Martin and Roberta were forced to accept rather low paying jobs. It was partially why they asked then Alpha Patrick to take their son, Ulysses, in when he was born. It was not that they didn't love him. Quite the contrary, Martin and Roberta loved their son very much, and tried to see him whenever they could. But Martin was trying to do something that would insure the Pack wasn't trapped in an overcrowded estate and had room to spread out. He he had to complete his mission, and endure any difficulty...
He also honestly hoped that Ulysses once he could grow up, and hopefully even get a college education would be able to dramatically help in that regard, as so far, Martin knew he was still a few years away from having enough money saved to buy the land to construct a new manor on.
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In downtown Glendale, a dark blue male lupman, named Colbert, though most who were friendly with him called him Colby came into his post at a bank in Glendale. He walked with a slight limp, as the result of a failed hunting attempt back in his own teen years. He had gone after a healthy Gold Deer buck, Jack's father, but not the Prime Buck of the herd at the time, and the hunt didn't go well. He took one bite at one of the buck's rear legs, and missed. The buck then kicked, and while Colbert managed to dodge the worst of it,the maneuver took him away from the buck and sent him skidding down a small ravine, and he broke a leg on a rather large rock.
The wound healed, but Colbert was left with a limp as a result. Although it hadn't really deterred the powder blue she-wolf, Geraldine from marrying him. It did mean that he wouldn't super effective at hunting, and so, he and Geraldine moved away from Wolf Manor. He had found work as an administrator within one of Glendale's oldest banks. He didn't make too much, but enough to be comfortable and allowed him to visit the manor with Geraldine when he could.
And it was at these visits that his teenage daughter, Caroline, had met Opal, the son of a pair of lupman that were practically "hippies", which Colbert likely agreed with for giving a male a girl's name. Opal was a feminine name, but the boy bore it remarkably well and seemed to be a hard worker and very responsible. Colbert couldn't hate the boy, though he could hate his parents as after meeting Caroline, they had wandered off, leaving Opal behind. And this struck Colbert as the most irresponsible thing to do. And what made it worse was that six other lupman pups were technically abandoned when their parents then went after Opal's parents with the intention of bringing them back. Opal's parents had not been seen since, and Tourmaline, Coral, Garnett, Amber, Emerald, and Ruby's parents were seen only occasionally (Colbert had thought them to be Hippie's too, for naming their pups after gemstones, and would probably have a heart-attack if he ever heard about "Cobalt"). Opal had seemed to deal with it in stride, and so did the other gem colored teens.
And Caroline had rather quickly fallen in love with him, despite the fact that they were only teens. As Opal and the other gem colored teens were pretty much adopted by the pack as a whole, Caroline begged her father to let her stay close to him. Colbert, who did respect Opal's responsibility and work ethic, and would probably be living at the estate anyway if it weren't for his limp allowed it, on the condition that he heard wedding bells before he heard the cries of grand-pups. Caroline agreed... though he wished he'd still hear from her more.