Hmmm... There's a lot in there, so I'll start with the easy part.

The reason I gave the King a shapeshifting ability, rather than just sticking with the elemental abilities of the Pack, was more than just to give him the intelligence needed to begin his quest. His symbolic journey into enlightenment is going to be mirrored by a developing understanding of his ability to shapeshift. A human form will be midway through his "journey", because he will understand it well enough to recognize that his form is mostly at his whim, but he'll believe that being in a human form would somehow help him understand the world better, rather than recognizing that he had to come to his own terms with his new understandings. At least, that would be the reason he changed at first. Staying in that form would probably have a lot more to do with Kir-Kon.

Haha.. I kinda forgot about the "pet" part. I guess it kinda depends on what we mean by pet. If he is a pet simply for the fact that he gets pet a lot, then I see no reason that he would have a problem with it. If it means he is expected to do Kir-Kon's work for him, which I'm not expecting but it has to be mentioned, then it probably won't go over so well. But before any of that can really happen he needs to get smaller again, I think. Otherwise the villagers wouldn't really let him in, whether he was with Kir-Kon or not. And that may take a little while. But I don't think it would be a bad idea to have Kir-Kon and his relationship take a little bit longer. The King is used to being leader of the pack, it'll take a bit of time for him to accept being an equal. He's got to stop seeing Kir-Kon as a pup first.

I guess I'm also trying to figure out a reason to keep the King close to the village until he and Kir-Kon have a reason to bond. He's kind of realized that trying to get to the center of the ward is a bad idea, and he's not one to stay still for very long.

Hmm... Kir-Kon's got injuries on him, right? If the King sees him as a pup right now, he'd be inclined to protect the pup. And his feelers would certainly find the wounds.