The Ridge felt hollow without its herd and its Guardians; without the bevy of children that ran laughing and shouting through its heart. And Hades— Hades felt that emptiness mirrored in the tightly-locked chambers of his heart.

Since the night that had come to define him, the young stallion had always been distant, detached. As if Cullen had not only marked his flesh but also severed something vital within him, leaving him incapable of forming connections with others of his kind. By all appearances, Rivaini’s son was nothing more or less than a shell of the child he’d been, but the truth was... the truth was, behind his barriers of impassable stone, Hades was still every bit the same fierce, frightened boy. And his emotions were no less powerful for the fact that he’d been left with no means of expressing them. If anything, they were more. If anything, the conflict of his need for physical contact and the terror that even the gentlest touch inspired was more than any single creature could bear.

Cornered now between the implacable threat of his grief and the impassable wall of his heart, Hades responded in the same way he’d done that fateful night: he went away inside himself.

The ebb of his fury and the flow of his fear were no gradual transformation such as with the tides, but abrupt. Unpredictable. Without a word or gesture of warning, the dark chestnut turned from the last remnants of the Ridge’s family and fled into the forest. And once there— once lost deep enough in the darkness that time and place held no meaning— he shut thought and emotion away. For the span of a couple days, the young prince simply existed. He drank to slake the burn of his thirst, slept when his bright eyes refused to stay open, and otherwise wandered without destination or purpose. But his wanderings inevitably carried him towards the sea. Because while the Ridge was home, the sea was the window through which he could peer at the rest of the world— a world that now held, somewhere in its mysterious reaches, many of the precious few he’d ever loved.

Neither Faolain nor Rivaini waited for him on the shore, but the sight of an unfamiliar stallion stirred something in the boy’s chest for the first time since he’d run. Stepping deftly out from the tangle of vines and fronds, Hades studied the stranger, feeling the dim spark of his interest flare into an ember of curiosity. Visitors to the Ridge were not a frequent occurrence, but those who came had always announced themselves. Without exception, they also arrived with a sense of purpose, even urgency. But this one— this one did not. This red male stood on the beach as if he’d be content to stand there forever; as if there was nothing else in the world that called to him.

And in a way that Hades could not have begun to express, even if he’d had the words to do so— it was the stranger’s very lack of purpose that called to him, and coaxed him forward with outstretched muzzle to exchange their kind’s ritual greeting.