It was perhaps nature that had been the tying bond between them, a mare beneath the protection of a stallion coming to foster notions about what might become of them beyond protection. Motherhood had been proven, prowess had been acknowledged. It didn’t need the flowers and the poetry that had become so much more common in the Isles. There was a carnal, instinctual, biological drive that they answered in each other by simply coexisting in his lands alone, much less her motherhood and the adoption of his son. The fact that his scent, his body, called out to her was much to do with what came to be in the six legged shadow they cast onto the walls of the cave.

What was better was that it was not only that. It was not only the swell of his muscles, the build of his crest, the feathers of his hooves, the aura of his testosterone. He may have looked all man, all too satisfying to her female self, but it was his nature that had bid her seek him out. She had watched him practice at challenges, had seen him patrolling, and still what she remembered best was the love for his son, the pride in his multiple sons, his tender care with Vulcan (a stranger’s blood, but loved because Vulcan was her own). It was his sadness too, the knowledge that she might soothe the pains of his recent losses. The fact that those losses would not cost him the hope of further fatherhood, by her womb and the life he’d implant there.

His heat leaving her back, her own puff of exertion falls from her lips - and not much later than that, she begs him to stay. Remain. Be with her, whether or not it was to cover her again, to be doubly, triply, certain of his legacy… or perhaps also to implant her own eagerness to match him in their lives. A mother to more than her boys, to their boys, to their children. A mother, perhaps, far more encompassing. She is babbling, she knows, but it had always been a heady thing, to be under the swell of heat and the eagerness to find it’s resolution beneath another equine body.

His nuzzling pressure makes her eyes flutter closed, a sigh gifted to him for the words he expends to settle her into the knowledge that she was indeed woman enough to keep him, to stay him from his wandering and spending such attention on another, at least for this moment. A body to match his, to not fear the bending or breaking. A mind that wasn’t frivolous or easily shaken in the face of danger or loss. His explanation of her purpose compounded past what she had thought is enough that it brought her ears full front and her head tucks beneath his, leaving a small rake of teeth over the swell of his chest on the opposite side of him.

The attention of a man like Cain was enough to wake in her the desire to covet not only the man but all that was his along with him. She does not think too long or too hard on that desire, the darkness in his tone too enticing for her to think outside of that place, that moment. She shifts her shoulder into him, sliding the thickness of her side against the front of him until the hook of his neck was across her back. "And when I join your herd, it is every bit about being yours. A stallion will always be man enough for many - a mare is only woman enough for one a season. I may not be the most well known beauty of the Isles, but the idea of your fighting to keep me is no small enticement." Out of the corner of her eye she looks him up and down.

"I don’t know what it was that made you so lax," she says quietly, "but you needn’t be with me." It makes her bold, nevertheless, that he gives her room to make the choice for herself to be had or to do the having. She flicks her tail so that it falls long across his back, suddenly dancing to one side with a snort and swinging her haunches away so that she might nab a lock of mane between her teeth and tug. Her ears flick in different directions, unsure in her flirtation but eager to engage his enthusiasm. The boys would mind themselves or she would know why. For now, she was going to be a mare her own age instead of the ancient souled creature that would have suffered in silence before meeting Cain of the Desert.