Just read the most recent build and I have to say that you've made a lot of progress! James's lifestyle is described more consistently and you show how his injury from the fight with Cyro influences his life. I also like how you share a little more about the other countries without saying too much at a time. This is already much better than listing them all at once. The art is impressive as well, especially for the fight scenes.
There are three points of improvement I still have:
As others have already pointed out, it's weird that James does not warn anyone about Fernando's plot. He might have been able to warn Dylus, but he had the perfect opportunity to mention it to William, and he also had three more weeks to approach someone else. I'm not sure how to address/fix this, but you could try making Fernando's conversation in the alley less explicit. You already do this pretty well when he says the line about such a big wolf being scared of blood, and you could do a similar thing with the priest by just having him say something like "I'll have a chat with the priest later". That way, it is not immediately obvious what he's talking about at the time, but becomes clear when you find out what's happening. The point is that the bad intentions behind this conversations should not be immediately obvious.
Another thing is that James's views on violence don't always match. He seems to have been taught values of turning the other cheek by his father, yet engages in virtually every fight he can. I think it's a good thing that James is willing to fight to protect his friends and himself, but his views on violence are never explored. Maybe this is something you could delve into in a future chapter, since he's exhausted and lost now anyway and thus has more time to think about such things. It doesn't have to be long, but some kind conversation would be nice. He could talk to someone about how he doesn't want to fight, but seems to be forced to. Or, alternatively, that he notices how he has some violent tendencies (since he does seem to enjoy fighting) and needs to make sure it doesn't get out of control. Or you can come up with something else, of course. The point I'm trying to make is that James's willingness to fight is an important part of his character, and should be explored a little more. There are two questions here that you should answer in this story: 1. why does James fight (probably to defend himself and stand up for the weak)? 2. how does he justify his violence, and especially his enjoyment of it, when he generally stands for peace and tolerance? How you do it is up to you, but I would recommend you to write a scene on this is in a future chapter.
And lastly, it's a small thing but aren't felines and boars on opposite sides of the continent? In terms of military alliances, this one does not sound particularly likely. If they had attacked the wolves separately, this wouldn't be a problem, but they did it together. Maybe there is a reason and then you can forget I even wrote this part, but as it stands there seems to be little reasoning behind this alliance in particular. From a writer's perspective it might have made more sense to have the boars ally with one of the species closer to the wolves. You probably have plans for all the species already so there's no need to change it around now, but for the future you should keep these things in mind and pick a combination that would make the most sense. Or maybe they're actually much closer to the wolves than I think, but then the criticism would be that the map is not that clear in terms of borders, so that I don't know if they are direct neighbors to the wolves or not.
Since you also asked if people had any theories, I'll give a few of mine here:
- Benignus doesn't want to talk about his parents and experiences prejudice first hand from Harobes. My guess would be that his parents were also discriminated against for being a mixed/hybrid couple.
- Fernando feels like the king does not do enough for foxes in the kingdom, or at least for the foxes where he came from. The king also tries to hide James's presence despite him being allegedly very important. It seems to me that the king also has his own interests and isn't just trying to serve the kingdom and fight the evil. I expect that he either overcomes this flaw at some point in the future, or becomes somewhat of an enemy.
- Dilefor has attempted to convince James that he's alone and that the others don't care about him etc.. He also wants to use James in his conquest somehow, so he's probably trying to tempt him. I believe Dilefor will probably try to gain James's favor by offering him a way to go home, essentially tempting him towards evil.
- James's arrival is part of a prophecy of some sort. In this case it probably means that a human would arrive, and that it just happened to be James. He's clearly an important person for both sides in the coming conflict, so that leaves the question of who/what brought him here. James already felt some evil presence before stepping into the portal, so my bet would be that Dilefor or some other villain is responsible for it.
- Dilefor must have some plan for conquering the world. If I had to guess, I'd say he'll start by corrupting/invading some of the southern countries. The boars and avians control a lot of mines, so he could cut off the supply of important raw materials to the rest of the continent by attacking them first. Also, the sheep are powerful and wealthy and those are found in the north so he might not be able to take them on without building up his strength elsewhere first.