I told you this one would be fluffy. I keep my promises.

"Alright," Charlotte said, tearing a sheet of paper out of her notebook and handing it to Will. "There's your list of things to work on and we can talk about how you're doing with that next week."

Will took the paper from her and folded it in half. "Actually, I won't be able to come next week."

"That's alright. We can talk about it the week after. Can I ask why?"

"Jem and I are going to Sheffield to see a litter of puppies."

"Oh?" Charlotte said with a knowing smile. "You're looking for a pet, I presume?"

Will smiled. "I guess, if the service dog training doesn't work out. The breeder hasn't had a puppy wash out in the last three litters though so I think it'll go well."

"And can I ask what brought this about? The last time we discussed service dogs you didn't seem very open to the idea."

"I did some research on them," Will said. "There were also a few things that happened that probably could have been better or avoided completely with a service dog."

"Good, good. I have a few patients who've gotten service dogs and they all say it's the best decision they ever made. They also say that it makes therapy easier because the dog can help mitigate any emotions that therapy brings up. I assume you're going the owner training route if you're looking at puppies?"

"Yeah, I thought that would be the better option. That way I can train the dog the way I want to and bond with it more. I also don't have to worry about any organization taking the dog back when it retires or if something happens to me. We are going to hire a trainer but she's just going to come one day a week and teach me how to train the dog."

Charlotte smiled, probably imagining what he would look like with a tiny puppy. "I hope everything goes well and I can't wait to meet this puppy. I don't know if they're old enough to come home yet but when they are and they're fully vaccinated and safe to be around others your assignment is to bring them here so I can meet them."

"I think I can arrange that."

. .

Will was really starting to regret this decision. They needed to be at the breeder's house by 9:00 in the morning and Jem had had a very important rehearsal that he couldn't miss the day before, so now it was 4:00 AM and Jem had resorted to trying to drag Will out of bed. It was hard enough to wake up that early, even harder when nightmares kept him up most of the night and made him very tired, and extremely hard when he was having a very nice dream about puppies.

"Just go without me," Will said into his pillow. It was extremely muffled, but Jem seemed to understand what he had said.

"I am not going without you because this is your dog." Will felt a pair of jeans land on his head in a not very subtle suggestion to get up and get dressed, then felt Jem lean down right by his ear and whisper, "Don't you want to see all the cute little puppies?"

Will responded by pulling the covers up over his head.

"William Owen Herondale, if you do not get out of bed right this minute I am not buying you a chocolate shake from McDonald's."

That did the trick, but not as well as Jem would have liked because Will was still half asleep and he ended up having to wrestle Will into his shirt like he was dressing a toddler. Will soon found himself sitting on the end of the bed with a hot, but not too hot, cup of coffee in his hand while Jem sped off with a "I'm going to get your pills but you don't have to take them yet so just drink that and then brush your teeth."

By the time Jem got back with a plastic pill container tucked away in his jacket pocket, because of course he already had his shoes and jacket on, Will had almost finished his coffee and now had socks on because his feet had apparently gotten cold while Jem was gone.

"Okay," Jem said, looking at his watch. "It's 4:10 now and we need to leave by 4:30 at the latest so whenever you're ready we'll go."

"You're too…" Will waved his hand in Jem's direction, trying to think of the right word. "Peppy. It's too early to be this peppy."

"I'm sorry, who told you to go to bed extra early to get enough sleep even with the nightmares?"

"I was busy, okay? I had a very important task."

"Oh, yes, you were very busy watching Bake Off. I know bread week takes precedence over everything."

Will scowled and stood up. "I don't like you. I'm brushing my teeth."

"You don't like me, you loooooove me," was the last thing he heard before he slammed the bathroom door.

Despite Will's protests, they were out of the flat and in the car by 4:25. Will started dozing off almost immediately but was woken up when he heard Jem say, "He's asleep so I guess I get this chocolate shake all to myself" and had to save his precious treat from certain doom. He stayed awake long enough to finish the shake, then fell asleep again.

This time, he didn't get woken up by Jem threatening to drink his shake. Instead, he was woken up when he sat up from his slouched position and reached out for Thomas, who was right in front of him, just inches away, and if he could just pull him away before the bullet got there first-

The only thing in front of him was the dashboard of the car and the M1. It had been almost 6:00 when he fell asleep, and now it was just past 8:00. Two hours with just one nightmare was pretty good, but he would rather have as many hours as he wanted with no nightmares.

"All good?" Jem asked from the driver's seat.

"Yeah, it wasn't a bad one," Will said. However, his version of "not bad" was basically the equivalent of a regular person having the worst and most terrifying nightmare of their life, so it was still pretty bad.

"We have about half an hour left so we're going to be a bit early. I called to let them know and they said that was perfectly fine."

"What about breakfast?"

"They also insisted on feeding us after you meet the puppies so I guess we don't need to stop."

The breeder they were going to see had been breeding German Shepherds to be service dogs for almost twenty years. They did train the dogs themselves, but they did breed very carefully to make sure that the majority of the dogs they bred had the right temperament and were very healthy. Most of the puppies made it through the training and those who didn't, usually because they were too playful or just not interested in being service dogs, were very well-trained family pets. When Will had been researching both breeders and organizations who did all the training and then matched people with service dogs, these breeders had been recommended multiple times. He'd found a lot of people who'd done owner training with dogs from these breeders and even a few organizations had trained dogs from them.

Half an hour later, they were pulling up in front of a brick house out in the country. It was pretty clear that they were in the right place because there was a fenced yard on the side of the house with a group of German Shepherds watching them and a woman standing on the porch with another dog sitting next to her.

"Welcome!" she said after they had parked and were getting out of the car. "Will Herondale, I assume?"

"Exactly," Will said. "This is Jem. He's the one who called you when we were on our way."

She smiled and shook both of their hands. "I'm Elizabeth. It's very nice to meet you both. This is Ada, by the way," she said, gesturing to the dog next to her. "She's the mother of the litter you're going to be meeting today. The father, Telamon, is in the yard over there. He's the one currently relieving himself on a fence post."

"Aren't German Shepherds usually a bit less… fluffy?" Will asked.

"Well, follow me and I'll explain a bit more about what we do," Elizabeth said. They followed her inside and she continued, "So there's German Shepherds, but there's also long-coated German Shepherds. They're a bit less well-known but in my personal opinion, I think they're much cuter. It's not really a trait that you can selectively breed for and it's sometimes seen as a defect in some countries. That's because it's not really the standard for the breed and many of them don't have an undercoat. We, however, try to breed long-coated dogs together to maximize the chances of having long-coated puppies. It's never 100%, but we usually get around 50-75% long coated puppies. We can usually tell by the fur behind their ears but we've been wrong in the past so there's no guarantee. We also breed them to be both long-coated and have undercoats so you don't have to worry about them getting cold in the winter. We've also been pretty selective in the past so the puppies we breed turn out to be a bit bigger than average German Shepherds so they're better for mobility work. We keep very good track of all litters and we've never had an instance of inbreeding once in the twenty years we've been doing this. We do a lot of medical testing and observation to make sure we're only breeding the healthiest and most well-behaved dogs."

"That sounds like a lot of work," Jem said as they stopped in front of a closed door.

"It's certainly worth it when you get to play with dogs and puppies all day," she said. "Now, are you ready to meet the puppies?"

Will nodded. "I'm always ready for puppies."

Elizabeth smiled and opened the door. Before it was even open all the way, Ada had pushed her way through and disappeared into the room. Inside was a large pen with a wriggling mass of fluff gathered around where Ada was leaning over a lower part of the fence, probably made so she could get in and out without the puppies getting out. There were blankets and toys scattered all around to keep them entertained, but they currently seemed to be more focused on their mother and the new people that had just entered the room.

"I've found that the best strategy is to just get in the pen and sit down on the floor. They'll all come over at first, but the ones who aren't interested won't stay long. You'll know which ones are interested pretty quickly."

So Will did just that. The minute he was sitting down, he was attacked by 7 very tiny and extremely fluffy puppies. They were all sniffing him, knawing on his hands, and trying to climb up in his lap. Unfortunately for them, their legs were too short and they ended up falling backwards every time. Most of them only tried once or twice but gave up pretty quickly. Just as quickly as they had descended upon him, they were all distracted by toys or their siblings and couldn't care less about him anymore.

All except for one.

Where all the other puppies had given up, this one was persistent. Despite falling on his fluffy little bum every time, he kept getting back up and trying to climb up on Will's lap again. After his seventh try, Will took pity on him and just picked him up and plopped him down in his lap, expecting him to just climb out and join his siblings. Instead, he licked Will's fingers and made himself comfortable on his lap.

"I think you made a friend," Jem said from behind him.

"Still think I look cute with a puppy?"

"Absolutely adorable."

"He certainly seems to like you," Elizabeth said. "There's a few tests we like to do, though, just to make sure. This is a big decision and we don't want to get it wrong."

"What kind of tests?" Will asked.

"We can start by having Jem hold him for a little while," she said as she climbed into the pen. "Just to keep him out of the way."

Will reluctantly handed the puppy, who was so soft that it felt like he was holding a cloud, up to Jem. The puppy immediately started whining and wriggling to be set free, so Jem distracted him with a toy that Elizabeth handed him.

"Alright, I'm just going to put the other ones in your lap just to see what they do," she said. She started with one who was so engrossed in the toy he was playing with that he just refused to let go and brought it with him. Within seconds of her putting him down, he had climbed off to get back to his very important task of ripping the head off of the stuffed squirrel.

It went very similarly with all the other puppies. It was hard to keep track of which ones they'd tested and which ones they hadn't because they just never stopped moving, but eventually they'd gotten to them all and had seen no interest from any of the other puppies.

"One last test," Elizabeth said. "Jem, could you please put him down in the pen as far away as you can from Will?"

Will wasn't sure what this was supposed to test, but he figured it out as soon as Jem put the puppy down and he immediately made a beeline towards him and started trying to climb up in his lap again.

"I think that proves it," Elizabeth said. "You're very lucky. Don't tell the other puppies, but I think he's the cutest."

Will buried his hand in the soft fur on the puppy's back and asked, "Does he have a name?"

"No, we try not to give them names so the owner can decide and they don't have to worry about getting them to recognize a new name. We just have different colored collars on them so we can tell them apart."

Sure enough, there was a very tiny red collar hidden under the puppy's fur. Will hadn't noticed it before, but all of the puppies were very fluffy and he'd been distracted by how cute they all were.

"Although if you do think of a name between now and when you come back to pick him up, you can just let us know and we'll start calling him by that name so by the time you come back he'll be starting to recognize it," Elizabeth said. "They're six weeks old right now and they'll be ready to go at eight weeks so you have two weeks to go. Many people don't like to name them until they've been home for a few days, though, so don't worry if you haven't figured one out."

Ada had jumped into the pen while they were talking and came padding over to make sure that Will wasn't hurting her puppy. She sniffed at the little fuzzball in his lap, sniffed him, licked him right across the mouth, and then walked away.

"Thank you so much," Will said, wiping the slobber off of his face with his sleeve. "That's very kind of you."

"I think that means she likes you," Jem laughed. "You might have to get used to that."

As if on cue, the puppy jumped up on his chest as high as he could and tried to lick his face. Like mother, like son.

. .

After some more puppy playtime and a very nice breakfast with Elizabeth and her husband John, Will and Jem had made arrangements to come back in two weeks to pick up the puppy and then left for London. They would have stayed longer, but Jem had another rehearsal to get to and Will had some preparation to do. He had a very long list that John had given him of everything he needed to buy to prepare for a puppy and a training book that Elizabeth had recommended that he needed to read. He also had almost 100 pictures on his phone of the whole litter, the puppy by himself, Jem holding the puppy, Will holding the puppy, and more. That would keep him satisfied until the puppy was eight weeks old and he could come home.

Will was currently sitting at the kitchen table with a laptop, a notebook, and a pen. He'd gone through at least four different lists titled "Best names for male German Shepherds," written down his favorites, and then crossed off every single one the more he looked at the pictures of the puppy. He wasn't a Bruno, or a Dieter, or a Hans, or any of the other names he'd seen so far. Most of the names were German, which made sense, but none of them seemed to work. There were a lot of female names he liked, but he couldn't name a male dog Sadie.

That kind of gave him an idea, though. Just a few lines under Sadie was the name Athena. It was obviously a girl's name, but it got him thinking about the origins of the name. The puppy's father was named Telamon, if he remembered correctly. He typed that into Google and clicked on the Wikipedia page for it.

Telamon was a character from Greek mythology, the son of King Aeacus of Aegina and Endeïs, a mountain nymph. There was nothing that really stood out to him while he read through the page, until he got to where it listed Telamon's children. He'd had two sons, and one was portrayed as a courageous warrior and the strongest of all Archaeans. The more he looked at the name and then at the pictures of the puppy, the more it seemed to fit. After only a few minutes, he couldn't imagine the puppy having any other name.

Will closed the now unneeded lists of names and opened a new email to Elizabeth to let her know. "I thought I should let you know that the puppy has a name," he wrote. "I was looking up the name Telamon means and I found the perfect one."