Author's Note:

Two chapters in one day, this really doesn't happen very often. This one is mostly going through werewolf communication, as well as showing another aspect of their physiology. Thank you for your continued support and I hope you enjoy the chapter.

I own nothing.

The Language of Werewolves

Upon awakening, Raphael immediately noticed he was incredibly hungry.

This wasn't anything new after a full moon, once the moon set and his ridiculous amount of energy faded, he'd instantly fall asleep and not wake up for a whole day. With such a large gap between meals, it was natural for him to be really hungry. He'd just about managed to return to Jeralt and then to his room in the monastery before he collapsed on the bed to sleep.

The morning bells echoed through the windows, telling him it was time to get up and head to the dining hall, and he gave a massive yawn and stretch before standing, suddenly swaying as he was hit by a wave of light-headedness. He took a moment or two to steady himself, but the feeling didn't go away.

This was new, he'd never felt like this after a full moon.

His stomach growled ferociously, and he began moving for the door, only to halt briefly as he realised that he hadn't actually got his uniform on. When he transformed, he always removed his clothes except for what humans called 'small cloths' to stop them being destroyed, he hadn't bothered to put them back on again as he changed back since he was going to bed anyway.

He probably should put that on.

Still light-headed and starving, he roughly tugged his uniform on, not caring about it looking pristine, then resumed his exit and journey to the dining hall. Now fully driven by hunger, he ignored basically everyone as he went straight to breakfast (though he was unaware that it wasn't fully straight since he was staggering a little) only to find Lorenz waiting for him at the door.

The noble wasted no time in launching his lecture.

"Raphael, I feel I need to speak with you about your lack of focus on your studies. You cannot expect to adapt to Fόdlan's culture if you don't apply yourself…"

"Not now Lorenz."

Raphael growled out over his tirade, he was still very light-headed, and very hungry and he didn't want to waste time listening to Lorenz droning on. Rudely pushing past the aghast boy, he joined the line for breakfast. Beside him, Lorenz was still ranting on after following him in, but now he'd stopped moving, his light-headedness became more pronounced, and he heard little of what was being said. After what felt like an age (though was probably more like a minute or two), he dimly became aware of a plate being handed to him, however, as he went to take it, he felt even more faint, and actually stepped back as he swayed on the spot. The room seemed to spin around him, and his hunger reached its peak…

And he was gone.

The moment Claude saw him walk in, he felt something was off about Raphael.

Usually, the cub bounded into the dining hall like an excited puppy, all energetic and optimistic about the day. He'd only been even more energetic the last couple of days (except yesterday when he didn't turn up at all) and had barely stayed still long enough to eat before charging out to the Training Grounds to run riot in his wolf form before class. Byleth encouraged this routine (likely because she'd quickly realised that letting him burn off some energy helped him focus on classes later) and Claude had become a bit fond of this morning dose of exuberance.

This morning however, Raphael had more staggered in and seemed unsteady on his feet, sometimes holding his head, and swaying a little. Lorenz was prattling away at the cub, probably over some silly thing Raphael had done that wasn't 'proper', but that didn't seem to be the problem. In fact, Raphael seemed to barely notice that the noble was there.

Certain something was wrong, Claude made a beeline for the cub, worried there was more to his full-day absence than they'd thought, and realised that he was more unfocused and even more unsteady, almost as if he was about to faint. Speeding up, the house leader reached the werewolf's side, idly noticing the plate of food he was reaching for (that seemed like a very small portion) just in time for the cub to tip backwards, eyes rolling into the back of his head as he fully collapsed.

Claude was quick enough to catch him, but he gave a huge grunt of exertion as he took Raphael's full weight. He wouldn't consider himself a weakling, but the werewolf was big by human standards and carrying a not inconsiderable amount of muscle mass. Fortunately, Raphael's collapse had attracted everyone's attention, and soon his burden lightened considerably as Dimitri appeared to help.

The prince took most of the weight, seemingly unbothered by it, as he spoke quickly.

"Do we know what's wrong?"

Claude shook his head, "No idea, I saw how unsteady he was and thought something was up, but I couldn't tell you what."

Mercedes had also swooped in, starting her rudimentary checks which she'd learned studying to be a healer, "Well, he has no injuries, and no sign of a fever to indicate illness, perhaps some sort of exhaustion?"

Claude looked to Lorenz, apparently still in surprise at what happened.

"Hey Lorenz, stop standing there and go to the infirmary and let them know what happened. Better yet, find Professor Manuela as well, she's been reading up on werewolf physiology after all. Me and Dimitri can get him there."

Pulled out of his surprise and despite his rivalry with Claude, Lorenz hurried off as Claude and Dimitri followed after, carrying the unconscious Raphael between them.

"He fainted from hunger!?"

Manuela nodded in response to Seteth's question, "It seems that way. To be honest I was a bit baffled at first as to why he'd collapsed, but the most likely possibilities were hunger or tiredness. He couldn't be tired since he'd been sleeping the entire day before so that only left hunger. Sure enough, a little soup later, he woke up, ate a lot more and is now right as rain."

Seteth frowned worry permeating his words, "But how could he be so hungry as to faint!? He's been eating normally and one day isn't enough to make someone that hungry!?"

"Well, I did a little digging, and it seems he hasn't been 'eating normally', at least not for a werewolf."

"How do you mean?"

She explained quickly, "Well, we both know that werewolves require a lot more food than humans, because of their heightened physical abilities and transformations, they need far more energy. A cub like Raphael needs even more since he's still growing and developing."

Seteth nodded, "Yes of course, I told the kitchens as much when he arrived."

The physician glowered, "Well, it seems that some of the kitchen staff have been cutting down his portions, to even less than they give most people. His body has been slowly burning itself out because his food intake hasn't been keeping up with his energy use. Then with the full moon, he burned through a massive amount in a very short space of time, so his body had had enough."

Seteth's face, though seemingly calm, betrayed his fury through his eyes, "I see that I will need to speak with the kitchen staff about proper treatment of staff and students."

"Actually, the head cook has already beaten you to it. She wasn't aware of this portion cutting happening behind her back and wasn't happy when she found out. I'm certain there will be a request to speak to you about the culprits in the very near future." She smiled, "Provided they survive, she was threatening to chop them into steaks and turn their bones into soup when I left after my inquiries."

Seteth's face quirked into a smile, no doubt easily visualising their formidable head cook making those very threats, "I'll go and speak to her immediately, and ensure it doesn't happen again." He gave her a look of concern, "Where's Raphael now?"

Her smile broadened, "In the dining hall enjoy a veritable feast, he does have a lot of energy to replenish after all. I have to admit, it is a nice change to prescribe a patient 'lots of food' as medical advice, that's the kind of medicine I'd love to need."

Dorothea could only gaze in awe as Raphael demolished a near literal mountain of food, gladly supplied by the doting and apologetic head cook.

They'd all considered Ingrid to be a big eater, but Raphael left her in the dust when it came to food consumption, and it was even more impressive considering that it was actually what he needed to eat to be healthy. His plate was very meat heavy, but she guessed that was a werewolf thing, since he'd explained that they were mostly hunters. Yes, they could and did grow crops and vegetables to supplement their diet, but the majority of their food came from hunting wild animals.

In a way it made sense, they were werewolves after all, and wolves were carnivores by nature, so werewolves would be mostly carnivorous as well.

She wondered if being primarily carnivorous was one of the reasons people distrusted them so much? She'd heard others talk about werewolves hunting and eating people but had completely dismissed such rumours as hearsay and ignorance fuelled horror stories. She'd been absolutely shocked when Ingrid had straight out accused Raphael of his people doing exactly that, she'd then nearly slapped the girl herself because the cub had been clearly very disturbed and upset that someone would state such a thing so openly and with such confidence.

It did lead to an interesting conversation where he'd revealed that actually, human flesh would corrupt and drive a werewolf mad if consumed, at least according to the stories of his pack, and Claude theorised that maybe this led to the stories of berserk werewolves amongst humans. Of course, no werewolf had eaten human flesh in generations so there was no way to tell if the stories were true. However, it did swiftly silence Ingrid, and actually got Bernadetta to stop running away in fear from Raphael now she had confirmation that werewolves eating people was a complete fabrication.

Now, sitting across from him, she noticed how much happier he was now he was getting proper portion sizes.

She'd been there when Lorenz had initially told Raphael off for growling while eating, and the subsequent explanation that it was something all werewolves did. However, she'd also noticed that he growled at a lot of other times as well. In fact, he made a lot of noises without realising it and (as someone trained to identify tones and patterns as a singer) she'd started to work out what some of the noises meant.

He had his happy or contented growl that he usually used when eating. This one had become quieter and less noticeable over his time at the monastery and now, with hindsight, she realised it was because he wasn't getting big enough portions to satisfy him or was worried about other things.

He had his playful growls and barks, which he used when training. Likely because his training in wolf form consisted of similar things he did as play with his pack. These only got more pronounced during the few times someone actually agreed to properly wrestle with him, probably because that was the closest he got to doing something he'd often done with his fathers or other packmates.

Then there were the discontented growls, usually cropping up when he was studying. These seemed to indicate times he was confused, finding something difficult to understand or was getting frustrated. He also had sharper, slightly more aggressive ones that appeared when he was getting annoyed with something (usually someone like Lorenz lecturing him about why he was behaving 'inappropriately').

Finally, he also would whine a little if he was hurt in some way, or give slower, more mournful growls when upset. She'd only heard these during the perfume incident where he was in pain, and the times he was likely thinking of home and became homesick.

To many others, it seemed they heard the growls and either thought them inappropriate, annoying, or considered them all to be aggressive, which was ridiculous since she hadn't heard Raphael ever give a full 'back off or I'm going to hurt you' warning growl at all. However, she'd listened and learned that there was a lot of nuances to the noises he made without thinking and she was amazed at how much werewolves must be able to communicate without words at all. The fact that they didn't really think about it indicated how well developed their communication was, she could pick up the emotions behind said noises, but even amongst Raphael's 'happy' growls, there were differences that probably gave even more information than she could translate.

It made her wonder that, if werewolves didn't live in a human controlled country and had to learn human language to speak to them, would they have developed a language built solely on what humans would call 'animal noises', and not the words she knew. It was an interesting thought, and as someone trained to convey emotion through her words and voice, werewolf communication was incredible. Raphael had told her that his pack actually had howled song, and she now wanted to hear a werewolf choir in full flow, as a singer, she'd bet it was a magical sound.

Listening now, she heard the variations in his growls and noticed that they were far more contented than they had been. Likely it was because he now knew he was going to get full portions and probably as many snacks as he wanted because the head cook had declared him his favourite (and to apologise for not catching her staff cutting his portions down sooner).

She then frowned slightly, noticing something off about the growls.

Maybe not 'off', but different. There was Raphael's growls as he ate, but there seemed to be a different set of growls, at a different pitch. She listened closer, trying to work out if this was yet another layer to his, already complex, growls, but quickly realised that he wasn't producing them.

She was then surprised, if he wasn't making them, then who was? She glanced around to see if maybe one of the monastery dogs was nearby making the noise, but then pinpointed it to one person…

Dedue.

Dedue was, for want of a better word, standoffish. She knew it wasn't out of spite or hatred of people, but because being from Duscur, he was under as much, if not maybe more, suspicion and scrutiny than Raphael. He generally kept close to Dimitri, possibly due in part for protection (both his own and the prince's) since no one would try anything in Dimitri's presence, and in his role as retainer. He also tended to be wary of and for those who attempted to befriend him, trying to protect them from the possible problems caused by doing so or worried they would try something.

Raphael seemed to be an exception, in that Dedue had approached him first after the mock battle, and he would choose to seek the werewolf out. Since he arrived, the retainer had spent more time with Raphael than anyone else who wasn't Dimitri and understood him better than others. After yesterday, she'd assumed it was because his family had met and spent time with werewolves before, but now it seemed like there was more to it.

He'd joined Raphael at the table, eating his own meal alongside the werewolf, and now, Dorothea could hear that he was growling in a very similar way to the cub.

There were differences, pitch was one of them, which made sense since that varied between everyone, but there were others. Raphael's growls, when you actually listened, had a lot of complexity, they went higher and lower, slower and faster and so on. Dedue's however, were far simpler, being the same repeated growl over and over again. It had the same happy tone as Raphael's, but just the same noise every time.

The best way she could describe it was that it was like Raphael was saying 'this food is really tasty because…' and then explaining why in his growls, while Dedue was simply saying 'tasty, tasty, tasty' repeatedly. At least, that's what she guessed. It was almost as if Dedue was unknowingly using a very basic form of werewolf language.

Thinking back, she didn't think Dedue had ever growled like this during eating until now, not that anyone had noticed anyway, but she'd think someone would've commented on it if he had. Furthermore, he seemed to know a lot about werewolves, and he certainly understood Raphael better than most, plus he'd chosen to approach the cub himself. Then taking into account his unusual height and that werewolves were well-known to be bigger than humans, and adding in him now apparently using more simplified growls, it was starting to point to something else.

Some of these things could be passed off as him learning them from werewolves visiting, but the growls seemed unlikely, that was the sort of thing you had to live in for awhile to pick up, even as a child, especially to use them unknowingly. Even werewolves visiting added to her developing theory, while he'd made it sound like his family just gave hospitality to the ones that happened to be passing through, werewolves regularly travelling through a village more than a kingdom away from their home seemed unlikely. Unless they were visiting for a purpose, like seeing a fellow werewolf who'd settled down in Duscur with a human wife.

While she could be wrong, Dorothea was certain that Dedue's knowledge stemmed from having a werewolf father (since they were an all-male race, it had to be his father) and being half-werewolf himself. Of course, it could a stepfather, but she was swinging more towards it being his actual father, which left a lot of questions actually.

If he was half-werewolf, then that meant that humans and werewolves could have children, something she didn't realise was possible, or had never questioned if it was. Come to think of it, how did werewolves have children anyway? They were an all-male race, so how did they keep reproducing? Raphael called his parents his 'fathers' and he talks about what he inherited from both of them, so he is clearly related by blood.

Perhaps she should stop this line of thought, or maybe ask Raphael (if it wasn't a delicate topic) at some point. Actually, did he even know how they did it? They knew he was barely an adolescence by werewolf standards, so maybe he hadn't been given 'the talk' yet.

Regardless, she could see why Dedue wanted to keep it quiet if it were true, living in Faerghus as being both Duscan and a half-werewolf was not a good combination. With Ingrid proving that many thought werewolves to be violent man-eaters, and Duscur being blamed, hated, and butchered for the king's death, he was probably what many in the Kingdom would consider the worst you could be.

As such, she would keep her conclusions to herself, and since he only seemed to fall into his instinctive growling when with Raphael, most wouldn't hear him doing it since they couldn't identify the differences in the werewolf's growls, never mind separate Dedue's quieter, simpler ones out.

No one would hear it from her.

PS-I picked Dorothea for this one, since because she has been trained to use her voice to project more than just words, she'd pick up on the differences in werewolf growls easier than others. She also has worked out Dedue's secret, and yes, others have worked it out as well. Please let me know what you thought and I'll hopefully update soon (though not as soon as I did this time).