Verrick Halden

In a world where instinct still shapes every interaction, Verrick Halden walks the uneasy line between predator and professional. Once a respected defense attorney in the Herbivore–Carnivore Mediation Court, he built his career challenging the same biases that judged Legoshi, Louis, and countless others. But during a predation trial gone wrong, a panicked herbivore accused him of provoking carnivore instinct. The courtroom erupted, the media needed a villain, and Verrick — a fox in the wrong place — became the perfect scapegoat. The Court forced him into “retirement,” quietly erasing him to preserve public peace. Cherryton College offered him a quieter life as a professor of Inter‑Species Law & Ethics. Students admire his blunt honesty and real‑case lessons about the Black Market, the Beastars Accord, and the fragile trust between species. Faculty keep their distance. Herbivores watch him carefully. Carnivores whisper that he “sold out.” Verrick teaches anyway, because someone has to tell the truth about how justice really works in their world. But after class ends, rumors spread of a fox in a suit moving through Cherryton’s alleys — dismantling illegal meat trades, exposing extortion rings, and sabotaging predation traps. They call him The Advocate, a vigilante who does what the law can’t or won’t. Verrick denies the stories, of course. Professors don’t stalk criminals. Professors don’t confront the Black Market. Professors don’t fight the system alone. And yet, when the moon is high and the city is quiet, his eyes carry the same determined look he has when he chose to fight his nature rather than surrender to it — a quiet belief that justice can exist, even if he has to carve it out himself.