As Bonnie left to fetch food for him, Nick turned his full attention to Judy. She looked entirely different asleep, her constant alertness and seemingly boundless energy and drive replaced with uncharacteristic peace, partially blocked from view by one of her ears flopped over her face. He gave into temptation and ran his free paw over her head, smiling as she responded by trying to burrow deeper into his arm.

"Judy," he murmured, poking gently at her cheek with his thumb. "Hey, Judy."

She groaned in protest, but an eye cracked open to search for the source of her torment. "Don't know why I bothered to get you your own room since it seems you're never in it..." Judy griped, still mostly asleep.

Nick smiled and glanced towards the doorway. "Lucky your mother just left, or you'd never hear the end of that one."

Judy's visible eye slid open further as she processed his words, then flew open all the way as realization hit her. "Nick, you're awake!" She lifted her head off his arm, and Nick stifled a groan as feeling began to return to his arm with a wave of sharp tingles.

"I am," he said with a smile. "And I hear that you're to thank for that."

Judy gave a half-smile, mostly proud but a little bashful. "Save your thanks for after you see how badly it's going to scar. My needlework wasn't very neat."

"Neat enough to keep my insides on the inside. That's what matters."

They smiled at each other for a quiet moment, and then Bonnie bustled back into the room with a bowl of soup and they looked away from each other.

Though he didn't regret his actions for a moment, Nick was filled with frustration in the days after awakening from his injury. He had had precious little time to enjoy his return to nearly-full fitness from his broken leg, and then he had gone and gotten a hole through his gut. Though Bonnie had released him from her care, she had told him in no uncertain terms that he was not to lift anything heavier than a cup of water, lest he tear his wound back open and he have to start healing all over again. So he was back on all fours again to take the weight off his abdominal muscles as much as possible.

However, while that irked him, it was more than made up for by the change in how the Hopps rabbits were treating him. Nick had thought he had already been fairly accepted among the rabbits. The most friendly treated him more warmly than any fox but his mother had back in his tribe, and even the most standoffish and suspicious of the rabbits had treated him with nothing worse than aloof, cautious disdain. By the standards of a fox used to being on the bottom of the pecking order, it was practically welcoming. But now, with the blood of the clan's enemies under his claws and the rescue of the clan's kits to his credit, he was learning of a whole new level of warmth and acceptance from the clan. Everywhere he looked he founds smiles and nods of recognition, and travelling through the warren towards the end of the day had turned into a gauntlet of invitations to join households for a meal and groups of bachelors for drinks. Judy had told him that his newfound celebrity would fade over time to some extent, but as a blooded member of the clan he would always be entitled to respect from his new clanmates.

Judy especially had refused to leave his side lately, as well as ruthlessly enforcing Bonnie's orders that he not strain himself. It took him days to convince her to go back to her duties guarding the clan, and only managed that by going to where she would have been standing guard anyway, and then promising that he wouldn't do anything more strenuous than taking a nap in the sun. The only time she had left his side was to meet with her father, regarding, Nick assumed, the defence of the clan against their newfound enemy, and even then she ordered a gang of kits to watch him carefully and pile atop him and pin him down should he try to do anything strenuous.

It was a week after he had awoken from his injuries that they found themselves reclining atop a boulder, which was itself atop a small hill overlooking one of the clan's wild grass fields. They both knew that the field was full of chickens feeding as well as the rabbits watching them, but the grasses easily swallowed that horde, and from their vantage point they seemed completely alone. The conversation had trailed off into comfortable silence, but Nick could tell that Judy had something on her mind. So when she took a breath and opened her mouth to speak, Nick lifted his head off his paws to give her his full attention.

"So," Judy started. "Clan Hopps, and my father's clan before it, don't really have a tradition of thrall taking in living memory, except for yourself, of course. If there are rituals associated with it, we've forgotten them. So I discussed it with my father and the rest of the Council, and, well..."

Judy got to her feet and took Nick's unresisting arm, and wrapped her paws around the rabbit-sized torc she had put on him as an armband what felt like a lifetime ago. She gave it a tug, then another, then put her full weight into it and managed to budge it, after which it slipped off him without resistance. She turned it over in her paws as Nick stared at her uncomprehendingly.

"Did you think you'd remain my thrall, with us so deeply in debt to you?" Judy smiled and shook her head. "You're no longer a thrall of Clan Hopps. You are free to make your own trail with our blessing, or remain with us as our guest. Though we were hoping- I was hoping- that you'd be willing to join Clan Hopps as a full member of our Clan."

Though Judy was outwardly calm, by this point Nick knew her well enough to recognize the nervousness behind it and the brittleness of her smile. It was enough to shake him free of his own shock, and he reached out, ignoring Judy's squeak of surprise, and pulled her into a hug. "Of course, Judy. I'd be honoured to join your Clan."

To Nick's surprise, nothing much changed. He ate the same food, he performed the same tasks, and he slept in the same room (after automatically accepting Judy's invitation to stay in her household). As far as he could see, the only thing that had changed for him was that he now had the freedom to say no to any of the above, but since he couldn't think of a single thing he wanted to do more than to spend his days accompanying Judy in her duties and crafting weapons surrounded by adoring and fascinated kits, what would he say no to?

So he whiled away the twilight days of autumn, letting his wounds heal and soaking up what little sunlight there was. The chickens spent almost every day in the fields, pecking away at the dying grass and scratching for bugs in the hardening soil, as their watchers tried their best to push back the day when they'd have to be fed from the clan's finite chickenfeed. His paws were always occupied since the battle with the Argente had cost the clan quite a few arrows and javelins. He had been surprised the first time that Judy had put a small pouch of silver trinkets - payment for a bundle of wood-fired javelin - but not as surprised as Judy had been when he handed them right back to her. He was still eating her food and living under her roof, after all. He told her they could renegotiate after she had made back what she had spent feeding and housing him.

The only real change came right on the onset of winter, when Victoria and the caravan finally returned from the trading trip to Clan Beveren, weighed down with silver, chickens, and a handful of smitten Beverens. The jubilant air was dampened slightly by Victoria being immediately whisked away to a council meeting - a council she hadn't known existed, let alone that she was made a member of in her absence, but the rest of the rabbits went on mostly undeterred in celebrating being reunited with the rabbits that had went with the caravan. Cotton in particular got a big hug from Judy before she had to race off to join the council, and to his surprise Nick found himself taken along as Judy's guest.

By the time Nick and Judy arrived at the council meeting, Victoria had been filled in on events in her absence and the other warriors had taken their places around the table in Stewart's private hall.

"The Beveren are prideful, of course," Victoria was saying as they entered. "And their war leader in particular has a dislike for us. But by sticking around - ostensibly for the sake of romance, since my escort found themselves very popular - I managed to wait them out. Winter creeping closer convinced them to take a solution now before the coming snows cut off their options. I managed to get a little more than the normal price, mostly in silver, and by the time I left they seemed much more well-disposed to us, especially since most of my escort either ended up staying behind or brought home left-pawed spouses. Of course, if I had known-"

"No way you could have," Bonnie interrupted. "You did the right thing."

Stewart nodded reluctantly. "As much as I would have wanted to attempt an alliance with Velveteen now rather than later, peace with Beveren is worth waiting until spring. Besides, the silver will be needed, should this feud escalate into all-out war."

There were nods of agreement all around. A thoughtful silence had barely begun to fall before Thomas broke it.

"Surely there must be a way-"

"We went over it in the last meeting," Stewart interrupted. "And several times in private since then. Don't think for a moment I'm any less eager than you to repay the Argente for what they tried to do, but I won't throw lives away needlessly. Rabbits do not raid in winter." The final sentence was said with the weight of a truism, and was met with more nods. Thomas settled back down into his chair, unhappy but mollified.

"Why not send a few volunteers to burn down an outbuilding or two?" To his surprise, it was Nick that had spoken up. Seeing he had the room's attention, he forged on. "It was what feuding families would do back in Tribe Wilde before things broke out into an all-out war.

"We're on the verge of winter," Victoria answered. "It's a surprise the first snow isn't already here. It's too late for a peaceful visit to our neighbours, let alone sending even a small band so far away."

"Do rabbits do that badly in the cold?" Nick scanned the faces at the table, surprised at the nods he got in return. "I mean, it's a bit uncomfortable, but a fox can shrug off anything short of a blizzard, and in a blizzard we can just bury ourselves in the snow and sleep through it." Nick looked around the table, suddenly uncomfortably aware of the number of eyes on him. "Why are you all looking at me like that?"

Stewart leaned forward in his chair, his eyes alight and a grim smile on his lips. "How would you like to do your clan a great service, Nicholas Hopps?"

A/N: Thus concludes the saga of the rabbit clan's thrall, Nicholas of Tribe Wilde. I'm not completely happy with this chapter, but I've been much more unhappy with the lack of chapter that has been the status quo for longer than I care to consider. And leaving a story that so many seem to enjoy unfinished has been a constant itch at the back of my brain.

However, while Nicholas of Tribe Wilde's story is over, Nicholas of Clan Hopps' story is just beginning. The part of my brain responsible for writing seems to be laying fallow at the moment, but should ARCF 2 start to grow, I'll add a new chapter to this story pointing the way towards it.

Thank you all for joining me on this journey. It's my hope that it won't be the last.