Immediately as she engaged the movements to play, Wonka’s heartbeat increased and his blood began to rush through his veins. There was something underlying the energy that coursed between them, it started at the root core of attraction and blinded Wonka to anything but how lovely he thought this mare was. He couldn’t exactly call her his mare in his mind, but Winter was a mare of the Inlet and by Tarrant’s words it meant it was up to Wonka to protect her. He’d eventually learn the lesson that not all mares required protection but for now he’d painted himself a picturesque idea of what it meant to be a leader and he was striving to be it.

“Ew,” he commented out loud, making a face and steadying his green eyes on her. “I definitely don’t think my dad is handsome, I mean…that’s my dad!” It was his youth that climbed into his head and pushed away the thought that a mare he was intrigued by could easily push him aside to bat her lashes at Tarrant instead. In fact even her comment didn’t deter the rise of his intrigue and his need to get close to her as she drew away from him. Would Tarrant charm his son’s mares away? Would it come down to Wonka driving his father from the herd as a liability rather than help? Immediately he put the thought out of his head almost with a laugh. Naw, impossible!

“Plus he’s old. You want someone young like me,” he grinned charmingly and moved forward a step, pulling up his foreleg and digging it into the ground before his body. But his attempt to show off didn’t seem to sway her, for the bald-faced mare disappeared on him as she rushed into the shadowed woodlands. Wonka followed the bait quickly, his gait picking up as his hooves carried his body into the woods, ears perked and nostrils flared. Her voice drifted out behind him and his eyes narrowed, grin spreading across his lips.

Her voice came again from the opposite direction than where he’d been pointed and Wonka stopped, whipping his neck and moving his back legs to turn him the way he’d heard her and the soft thumps of her hooves on the ground. He chuckled and started forward, walking and twitching his ears about to try and catch any stray sound. “Not yet,” he said, “new face in town and all.” His ears twitched, his breathing nearly held in his throat as he listened to nothing but the sound of the forest around him and tried to catch anything out of the ordinary that might be a hint.

“The only one hiding is the one I aim to catch,” he said, his voice a low rumble as he turned about the trunk of a tree and started forward, hooves picking up a quicker gait as he neared the location he thought she might be at.