She was losing consciousness fast. Still gripping at her freshly-punctured thigh, Hafsa writhed around the filthy floorboards, trying to inch closer to Desmond.

"Shit," The Jacob sheep spat and he reached for her shoulders. "We can't wait another two days. Please, please, stay with me, Hafsa."

Her eyes were dull but wild, as if ever passing second was a fight with her own body. Soon, the tranquilizer Priya had injected in her would seize her, and she would pass out. Suddenly, a fleeting thought.

"I-I…I got an idea."

"You do?"

"Mhm. But… you need to trust me."

Desmond nodded firmly. "Of course. I trust you."

The serval's eyes narrowed in thanks. "I think… I think if I drink some of your blood, I can stay awake."

"My… blood?" The ram gulped.

"Herbie blood… it's a stimulant for carnies. I heard… So, maybe…" Hafsa explained in an ever-weakening voice.

Desmond said nothing to this. He only looked at her with a strange expression, and silently took her hand in his. He guided the feline's larger hand and rested it atop his left forearm. Her palm more than covered the width of the ram's arm, cushioned on his wool.

"Dig in."

Hafsa was so startled she managed to jolt from her stupor for an instant.

"Des…"

"Take as much as you need."

Hafsa stroked the sheep's soft wool.

"Thank you."

Hafsa's claws shot out from their hiding, piercing through Desmond's fleece and skin and causing the sheep to wince in tremendous pain. They slowly crept down the forearm, leaving four vertical gashes in their wake through which brilliant red poured out of. Desmond moved his trembling arm closer to her mouth, offering it up.

The serval pressed her lips against the bleeding limb, her teeth still clamped shut as if fearing what would happen if she allowed the liquid to enter. Eventually, the pooling blood began to accumulate, and she hesitantly started lapping it up.

It was delicious. Far more delicious than anything Hafsa had ever tasted in her life. The warmth, the clash of sweetness and saltiness, the metallic tang… It ignited every atom in her body. Her initial hesitance abandoned, she hungrily licked at the lacerations. Desmond gasped at the feeling of her rough tongue on his damaged skin, but made no move to retreat his arm. After a while, the searing pain and the tiredness simply melted into warmth. Hafsa no longer knew where she ended and where Desmond began. It terrified her. It comforted her. It excited her.

The sensation was familiar to both. Yes, they had shared this feeling many months ago, alone in the student council office, the predator pinning the prey against the wall. They had become that creature of instinct, of fight and flight, of the food chain. Even now, it was always hiding inside of them, waiting to be reunited like this.

That ugly, shameful, hedonistic beast.


Hafsa awakes from her sleep with a start. Her expert eyes assess her surroundings. Without a doubt, she's in her bedroom, in her parent's house no less, the same place she had been cooped up in all week long. The late afternoon rays that shine through her window tinge the air with an orange hue and a feeling of anxiety.

No sooner do her conscious senses return than a wave of nausea crashes into her. Lurching upright, she fumbles around her sweaty tangled bedsheets for a way out. However, a solution in the form of a bucket is offered to her by a kind hand; no getting up required. She snatches the bucket and shoves her head inside it, finally allowing herself to vomit. The kind hand rubs her back during each heave, until her sick spell finally subsides. A final drop of viscous saliva drops from her chin onto the spew, and after a bit, the serval feels stable enough to lift her head back up. As a final gesture of kindness, the hand retrieves the bucket and places it on the bedside floor, to be emptied out later.

"Nothing like the vomit bucket." The hand's owner, a debonair caracal, chuckles. "It was a saving grace during my withdrawal."

"Nothing like puking from the convenience of my bed…" Hafsa lets out a miserable snicker.

"How are you feeling?" Solomon asks, offering a tissue.

"Like a million crappy bucks." Hafsa takes the tissue and wipes up her drooly mouth.

"Duly noted. You did manage to sleep for some hours, though. That means the worst of it is over."

"I did…?"

"Yes." Solomon's eyes betray a forlorn sorrow. "You seemed to be having a nightmare, but I didn't dare wake you."

"I… I can't even remember what I was dreaming about." Hafsa lies.

She remembers very well what had plagued her dreams. It's a memory she fears will never escape her. The worst part is she doesn't even understand why it's affected her so. Drinking the blood of her closest friend wasn't even in the top ten most traumatizing things she had underwent during the whole Kin of Luca fiasco (she had literally torn her captor's ear off not ten hours later). So why is that the memory her brain desperately clings to?

Perhaps because it is the cause of her current predicament. Though drinking Desmond's blood was imperative in their escape from the cult hideout, that singular act virtually changed her entire life. Because now she's tasted blood. And if she doesn't want to taste it again, which she doesn't, things are going to be much more difficult for her.

Especially for first-time predators, going into meat withdrawal is brutal and lengthy. She had endured most of the horrible symptoms in the hospital while simultaneously recovering from multiple other injuries, including the hideous gash across her right collarbone. With the help of the medical staff, and many, many painkillers, she managed to feel relatively unbothered by the lack of herbivore blood in her system. This all came crashing down once she left the hospital, now left on her own without the miracle of analgesic drugs.

Everything Hafsa had heard about meat withdrawal from SAD lectures were all true, and then some. Her body felt completely foreign to her, as if it were not hers at all. Instead, she was merely some parasite that the body desperately tried to expel at all costs. She probably would have been a goner were it not for Solomon. The male cat is, to her surprise, no stranger to her affliction. He admitted as much during one of his hospital visits.

"It seems both of us had to eat some unpleasant things in order to save you." He mused.

While he never specified the details of his meat-eating history (something told Hafsa not to pry), he let her know what she was in for, and even offered to care for her during the the fallout. While the thought of Solomon having some dark predator past unnerves her and confirms a lot of her worst fears, she's hardly in a position ta judge.

Solomon stayed by her side the entire time. During her bouts of fever and delirium, her panicked restlessness, her vomiting, her insomnia, he was there to wipe her sweat away, much to the relief and gratitude of Hafsa's parents, who had no clue on dealing with anything meat-related. The caracal was essentially taken in by the serval family, even sleeping on the couch in the downstairs living room. Despite Hafsa's insistence that he at least go home to sleep, he assured her no one would miss him at his house and he'd much rather be around her mother's brilliant cooking.

And so, a week trudged by, the longest one of Hafsa's life. Now she stands at the twilight of her recuperation period, and not a moment too soon. The following week she'd have to attend three separate burials and to top it off, she'd finally return to Noah's Arc, where she would have to lead an assembly regarding the gruesome events that transpired. Just thinking of the amount of energy she will need to commit to acting normal exhausts her.

The caracal's voice snaps her out of her pondering. "Dinner should be almost ready. Would you like me to bring you a plate?"

Hafsa shuddered. She would rather avoid the feeling of something in her mouth. "I'm not hungry."

The male nodded understandingly. "I see. I'll bring some apple slices if you change your mind. Please try to get some more rest."

He turns to leave, but his sleeve is caught by the female cat's fingers, prompting him to gaze down at her.

"I know I've said it before, but thank you so much for this. For everything. I don't know why you're so kind to me."

Solomon's eyes widen, then narrow into a smile. "You've actually thanked me at least seven times a day."

"It's the least I can do!" Hafsa whines. "I mean, you have to put up with me all day, puking and trembling… Ugh, I must look like a half-dead bat!"

Solomon traced a hand across the unkempt fur of Hafsa's cheek. "When I was in withdrawal, I looked much worse. Felt much worse. Even… before I visited you in the hospital, I was in such a state. And I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, let alone someone as dear as you. Nobody was there to take care of me. But I wished there was. So… you could say I'm paying it forwards."

"Solomon…"

"Besides. Did I not say, long ago, that I would prove myself a male you could rely on? To me, this is nothing."

Hafsa's face heats up, unrelated to her fever. "I… I think I'll take those apple slices."


Desmond silently gazes down at the newborn lamb cradled in his arm suckling away at her bottle. With each gulp, the milk inside the colorful plastic bottle shrank until only creamy bubbles remained. The ram places the bottle down on the adjacent coffee table and repositions the infant over his shoulder, giving gentle pats on her back until she belches proudly.

"Good one." Desmond notes, setting her down next to him on the couch. The baby flops on her side, content in lying still on the soft fluffy blanket the ram had prepared for her. She completely ignores the astonished pigeon sitting on an armchair across from her.

"Wow…" Brian whistles. "I'm impressed, Desmond."

"I feel like you didn't expect much of me to begin with." The Jacob sheep snarks.

"Well, when you asked me to come over to give advice on how to take care of a baby, I kinda expected you to be… bad at it?"

"Enan's always telling me I'm not doing it right."

"I think that's just an overprotective dad being an overprotective dad."

"Good luck trying to convince him that." Desmond huffs, but he clearly seems content with himself. "Anyways, if you see no problems with my technique, then we're good. Let me put her in the crib real quick."

He picks up the baby lamb and carefully walks off to a room deep within the apartment, returning to the couch a couple of seconds later with a pronounced sigh.

"So yeah, that's been my life ever since I got kicked out of my folks'."

"I'm proud of you, Uncle Desmond." Brian jokes. "And I'm glad your brother let you stay at his place until the school reopens."

"At the cost of becoming a full-time nanny, that is." Desmond interjects.

"Aww, you make a great nanny! Could babysit Cooper and May once in a while?"

"For a fee."

"Man, you're still the same ol' Desmond, all right!" Brian giggles, hopping up from the armchair to join his friend on the couch. "Your arm looks way better, by the way."

Desmond looks at his left forearm. Though his marred skin slightly distorted the piebald pattern of his wool, his scar had lost its redness. From a distance, one could hardly notice the injury.

"Yeah, it only hurts when I put pressure on it now." Desmond says. "I'm still doing physical therapy, though. I can't go back to ram fighting in this state."

"It's so cool that you're coming back, after all." Brian nudges the sheep's leg. "I wouldn't know what to do without my best bud around."

"I'm your best bud?"

"Of course!" He beams. "Well, so is Humbert. And Sol. And Hafsa, too. But yeah, you're all my best buds!"

"'Best' implies exclusivity, champ." The sheep flashes a grin and wrings his arm around the bird's neck playfully. "But I appreciate the thought."

"Hehehe…" Brian squeezes his eyes shut sheepishly. "Speaking of her, have you told the others the good news yet?"

"Uh, not yet. I'll probably let them know during the… burial."

The mere mention of next week's event instilled the air with gloom. Both males say nothing for a while.

"Y'know…" Brian is the first to break the silence, although hesitant. "As much as we'd all love you back in school, nobody would blame you for… leaving. I understand there's a lot of… bad memories there."

The ram averts his gaze. "I'm.. a little scared to go back, not gonna lie. But, even if there are bad memories…. There are still good ones, too. And I feel like leaving behind the good ones isn't worth running from the bad ones."

Brian pats Desmond's shoulder. "Next year, we'll make even better memories, then. How about it?"

"Sounds good."


AN: Thank you very much for reading. This is a continuation of Serval & Sheep: Sophomore Year. I highly recommend you read that first before starting this work, or else nothing will make sense.

Additionally, this isn't fanfic specifically related to the Beastars story of Paru Itagaki. If you're waiting for Legoshi or Haru to show up, I'd suggest reading another work. I suppose you could classify it as taking place in the same universe as the Beastars one, but in a different setting, with different characters, and some modifications to the world's lore. An AU, perhaps? I tagged this as "Beastars" mostly for convenience, as I'm not too sure what else it could be! That being said, all of the characters and the story itself are my own.

For future reference, I am planning to include more mature themes into this work, but I suppose if you came here looking for Beastars content, you should be mostly acquainted with the type of sensitive content that awaits. Nevertheless, I'll make sure to properly warn/tag before anything too serious.

I sincerely hope you enjoy more adventures of Hafsa, Desmond, and everyone else! Take it easy and stay safe.