Parvati was relentless in her determination to tie him to her side. Despite the small victory he felt at making her other boy toys look like inexperienced colts, still the painted stallion felt restless. A single image haunted him and caused the beast within to pace back and forth in agitation.

Though never a word had passed between them, and she had disappeared back into the woods before his spar with the inlet queen had ended, still the girl of smoke and white haunted his thoughts.

He didn’t know her name, but by the gods the scent of her plagued his dreams and left him yearning for more. She had been the first to understand his need for physical contact, to not need the banter of words when hooves and teeth spoke volumes. The fire between them had burned white hot and only her disappearance and Parvati’s prompt claim managed to tether it.

For days afterward, the silver painted stallion found himself pacing through the tall conifers of the forest, tracing the delectable aroma that she left in her wake. However Loupgaru had still been fairly new to Tinuvel then and despite his growing appreciation for the tundra and its harsh winters, he had not been prepared then. There was an extensive difference between tracking someone through thick jungles and following the traces of hoofprints in snow. The island itself seemed determined to keep her a ghost. Even her hoofprints disappeared on the carpet of pine needles that blankets the forest floor. Any other might have shrugged their shoulders and marked her up to a missed opportunity but not Loupgaru. Not with her. She had been the first female that he met that he claimed as his own and well he was not about to give that claim up so easily.

When the familiar scent of her reaches his keen senses, it stops him dead in his tracks. Small mahogany ears press forward amid the wind-knotted tangle of his cream and ivory mane. Immediately his thickly muscled neck snaps around, his ashen muzzle lifting to catch the breeze, testing it to be sure that it was not some figment of his imagination. Fresher still the scent wafted on the zephyrs, growing with intensity and setting his alabaster legs into motion. She would not escape him so easily this time. Like the lone wolf stalking its prey, he searches, his painted body tense. He was on the hunt.

She not easy to spot amid the shifting shadows that dappled the landscape. Cautious and careful she moves with one slow step after the next, her silver blue eyes searching and her body tense as though she expected danger to jump out at her from behind the next tree. A wolfish grin slides across his whiskered lips as he peers from beneath the thick veil of low hanging cedar limbs, his own body screaming to lunge at her heels and chase her into the merry game of cat and mouse that had been so rudely interrupted before. His breath is silent as it leaves his lips, ”Mine.” he growls, his thick baritones graveled from lack of use. Hunger wets his tongue, the sweetness of her scent intensified by the fall season. One step and then another, slow and calculated. A twig snaps beneath the weight of his frame and the smile broadens on his lips as his golden eyes wait for the moment the realization hits her. She is not alone.