He is unaware and untouched by the silent fury of his quarry’s bonded. He does not anticipate their actions a possible dilemma, a consequence in waiting behind the guise of a passionate moment. He has never sired a child before (to his knowledge); he has never entertained the possibility. The grey-eye’d man is one of focus and treacherous schemes, of hot, boiling piss and a walking urge to be sated. He is not a creature to even consider the chance, however slight, of bearing offspring. He does not know what it would mean to be a father. He does not care for that, yet.

Here and now, as he dances with a blue-eye’d, hot-blooded whore in the snowfall, it is nothing more than the mixing of their beading sweat and hot breath. They are left to their own devices in the far, lonely north (for master had said to beat it). It is a moment, and pure, isolated moment in the middle of nowhere, a memory in the making (that she may look back on with sweetness); when they part, they will be parted, and he will have naught to do with her (except, perhaps, a round two, three, four, if they happen upon each other’s path).

He decides that likes this mare; he likes the way she pulls against his teeth (a futile effort, yet delicious all the same), how her hoof comes as if from nowhere to pound against his side. She has fight in her, and drive. She is no stranger to the fight, and just as well, for she had told him to put her in her place and it seems as though she intends to make him work for such a victory. He welcomes this challenge, this break from monotony of a mundane, infuriating herd life—and wishes, only, that she had found her way down to the blessed heat of the desert, and that they would fuck there instead of the frozen, impersonal north.

He groans deeply as her hoof connects with skin. His teeth release her, but he continues to throw himself against her, shoulder to shoulder, side to side, for he knows now that she cannot match against this raw bulk. He side-steps into her; he draws back his neck, and his lips grope for her wither, even as the sharp edges of his fangs teeth lay hidden behind the black folds. He aims for her wither—he dips down, and aims for her elbow and the thin, sensitive stretch of skin there; he dips further down and grasps for the back of her knee, for he has decided that she will kneel to him, after all, and that she will bow to her in more ways than one before the night is over.

”Watch for Circe.”