She'd like to say that she'd forgotten he was there, but that was hardly the case. Pleasantly, she could feel his gaze on her as she danced forward, and even though she would have much rather found some new schmuck to seduce in the Commons, she wasn't about to turn down the attention of the only male that could say he'd laid claim to her.

It does not take the powerful stallion long to catch up to her, and while she pins her ears and wrinkles her nose as he gets close, she doesn't strike out at him. This time the stallion keeps his distance and she turns her attention from him to the green jungle that spreads out before them, past the warm sandy beach. Vanya really wanted to hate it, wanted to dislike everything that she could, if because she felt so done with it all.

She hadn't admitted the fear she'd felt, and even now if asked would deny it with ever vehement fiber in her supple body. But underneath the bitchiness and the kicking, she had really just been afraid. The future she'd envisioned for herself had relied almost exclusively on her appearance. On letting boys look but never touch.

Instead, she had gotten herself pregnant before winter with no home to call her own. Pregnant with the spawn of a no-good homeless stallion. All because what? He was pretty? She'd been left with no stallion to protect from the dangers of winter or to watch over her while she tried to figure out how to handle a child. Vanya would not be been able to form those words, but the truth of them circled in her mind non-stop.

And, now? Now she had Rougaru, who apparently didn't mind any of that.

At his question she tips an elegant ear in his direction but makes a noncommital noise of affirmation. It wasn't bad. Not in the slightest, but it also felt like a trap.

Abruptly she turns to face him, tail lashing at her sides. She draws the elegant arch of her neck upward and lets her ears remain tilted back, a hard look in her eyes.

"Why?" She demands an answer, uncaring that it is vague. She wants to know why her, why him. Why had he taken in the mare that had spurned him when she was clearly pregnant with the child of the one she'd walked away with.