Meadow

Give me up for dead already, my queen? She didn't have to turn to know what stallion spoke, but the sound of his voice made her fluted ears pin against the slender arch of her neck. "Dead might be better," she offered coldly, despite the way the sound of his voice sent pleasurable ripples racing down her spine.

She should have known.

Rougaru had always been the one to pursue her. Even when she'd been round as a blimp, carrying a child that was not his own. Even after she'd betrayed him and slipped away from Paradise under the Peak's protection. And even when the renewal of her affection had come with the price of a crown. Rougaru had always been there, lurking and waiting for her to return with the absolute, unwavering certainty that she would come back to him. He'd always been there to chase her... right up until he hadn't been.

"Thanks to you, I have nothing to be a queen of," she hissed angrily and lifted her proud head to glare back at the handsome silver stallion. The sight of him after being apart for so long made her nostrils flare with a ragged breath of longing but she forced herself to take a step backward with a loud crack of her dark tail.

She knew how persuasive he could be - especially when the very season itself was trying to undermine her self-control. It didn't help that Rougaru was objectively handsome - a wall of rippling muscle, wrapped in delectable chocolate and accentuated with a mane and tail of pale flaxen. It was no wonder that even the mares he'd kept captive in Paradise had come to seek out his affection eventually. Even now, his proximity had set her nerves to tingling with the desire to wrap her body sinuously against his, to lay claim to him in every way that she knew how, even though she had no authority to do anything with him, and even though she had no intention of bearing another squalling child into this world without some true payoff.

I have been searching for you, he murmured huskily, and her eyes narrowed in response. She had spent weeks caged in Paradise at Drogon's insistence while they all waited for their Wolf King to return. It was only after there was absolutely no hope of him returning to claim what had once been theirs that she had given up on him entirely and slipped away from her old life like a caterpillar shedding it's old cocoon. Rougaru had allowed her to prove herself as a queen, and she had no intention of ever returning to anything less.

"Mmm," she hummed dismissively, an indifferent smile curling on her delicate pink lips. "Did you start on the moon, then? You most certainly did not look where you left me."

She was not eager to believe him. After all, he had betrayed her trust and she was not a creature easily given to forgiveness. Then again, the part of her that still loved him - fickle and volatile though that love was - wanted to accept his story. To believe, even for a moment, that things could return back to normal and that Rougaru would retake his rightful throne in Paradise and restore her to her proper place at his side. It was a foolish, naive hope and she knew it... but Rougaru had often subverted her expectations. What if she was wrong about him now?

"And yet here I am," she murmured, matching the same husky, lust-filled tone he'd used. "Still waiting on you."

Which... while not true, was probably not something he could disprove. He hadn't rescued her in the Commons when the spotted bitch had tried to kill her, and she wore no other stallion's scent on her coat. She wasn't yet certain that she would trust him, but she figured there wasn't much harm in toying with him until she made up her mind with how to proceed.

Tilting her own head in a mimicry of his feigned inquisitiveness, she stepped carefully to the side and kept her lithe figure just beyond his reach unless he moved. She sauntered slowly around him as she spoke, occasionally lashing the dark tendrils of her tail across them both. "Yet now that you're here," she murmured in thoughtful exaggeration, "I'm not sure there's any reason I should stay with you."

Every atom of her being ached to curl against him but she forced herself to hold back, allowing herself only a brief trail of her pale lips along his shoulder, if he allowed it. What she had meant as a teasing, taunting gesture, shifted drastically the moment she scented the spotted witch on his coat and she immediately recoiled, her expression shifting to open hatred. Lip curled in a snarl, Vanya danced away from him with her eyes glittering with hatred.

"You went to her first." It was not phrased as a question, but she waited stiffly for an answer all the same.