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Disclaimer: The following story contains semi-consensual sex between anthropomophic adults. If you are too young to legally view such content, or if such content does not appeal to you, leave now.

The Hunter in Training

* * *

"You're sure you understand what to do?"

"Yes, Dad, you've told me a hundred times already."

"Then recite your instructions back to me."

"Again?"

"Yes, one last time."

Sophan looked away from his father and sighed, rolling his eyes. "I'm to wait behind this big rock until the antelope you're chasing gets close enough for me to pounce without breaking into a full sprint, keeping the rock between me and the herd until then. Once it's close enough, I jump out in front of it and don't let it past me, and you'll tackle it when it hesitates and shies away from me. Just like when we're hunting for food."

"But most importantly. . . ." his father prompted.

"No claws and no teeth." Sophan looked back up at his parent's face, envious as always of the extra height the older male still had over him. Sophan's ears only reached his father's neck when they were both standing straight; he'd grown a lot over the past year, but sometimes he didn't think he'd ever be as tall as his father. "We don't want to hurt the antelope," he hurried on when his father only smiled down at him expectantly, and he grinned as well at the next part, "but don't be afraid to knock it around a little if it tries to get away."

"Good." The older male nodded crisply, satisfied. "Are you ready?" When Sophan tried to peek around the rock they were crouched beside, his father stopped him with a firm paw on his shoulder. "Remember, if you can see them, they might be able to see you, too. Use your ears."

"Okay, okay, I know." Sophan sat back down in the dry soil behind the boulder, trying not to fidget. "I'm ready."

His father's smile grew on his round muzzle. "I'm proud of you, son," he said, even though Sophan hadn't done anything yet, then he slipped around the rock and was slinking through the tall grass between their hiding spot and the small herd of bipedal antelope.

Sophan crouched on all fours, facing the side of the boulder his father would chase the antelope toward. His young body was as tense as a fully drawn bowstring, his heart racing more than it had when he'd first helped his father bring down a four-legged zebra for dinner. It was all he could do to keep his paws away from the point of red flesh rising from his white sheath, the very thought of this hunt exciting him.

It wasn't long before he heard the antelopes' startled shouts of alarm and hundreds of hoof beats on the open grazing plain when they turned as one body and fled from his father. Impatience drove him to peek around his boulder despite his father's warning, though he kept enough presence of mind to flatten his ears against his head so that as little of his face as possible would be visible. There the other cheetah was, sprinting fearlessly into the back ranks of the herd, and sure enough, when they realized the predator was among them, a few of the antelopes broke away from their protective cluster. Sophan's father dashed after them, and when it was clear that he was chasing the one antelope fleeing straight toward Sophan's rock, the others scattered away from her, abandoning her to whatever fate the hunter had in mind.

The cub's heart was hammering in his chest as the unfortunate antelope drew closer to his hiding place. He couldn't pull his eyes away from the full, round breasts bouncing behind a strap of leather too narrow to properly contain them with each of her long, frantic strides, and it wasn't until he leapt out of hiding to intercept her that he realized he was fully unsheathed and erect. A stab of unexpected pain bit at the root of his engorged member when it tried to swing to match his thighs' movements, and he staggered, unable to keep the antelope between himself and his father when she veered away from him. When she saw him lose his balance, though, she tried to dash past him, and he leapt at her at just the right moment, bowling into her hips and sending her sprawling. He tried to keep his arms around her as they fell, but his momentum carried him through the high grass past her. By the time he rolled to a stop, his father had the prey pinned on her back, his hand holding her neck against the ground.

"You all right, son?" His father barely sounded out of breath.

"I'm fine," Sophan said, getting to his feet, but his breath caught in his throat when he laid eyes again on the female squirming under his father's paw. Her tan and white pelt rippled beautifully over her chest and stomach as she struggled, both hands grasping the older cheetah's wrist, and as Sophan's eyes traveled farther down her skinny body to the thin leather loin cloth barely covering the fur between her lithe thighs. . . .

He was kneeling beside her before he realized he'd moved, but as soon as he reached out to touch her, just to brush his finger pad against the fur beside her navel, his father said, "Wait a moment, son. Don't be impolite; you know better. Introduce yourself first."

Sophan pulled his paw back as though burned, wincing, then swallowed audibly and looked up at the antelope's face, barely able to tear his gaze past the large swells of her breasts. She was looking back at him, her eyes wide as saucers, and stopped her struggles when her gaze locked with his feline eyes, every bit as wide as her own. "M . . . my name's Sophan," he stammered, speaking the few words of antelope tongue his father had taught him. The female just blinked at him, breathing short, panicked breaths through her nose.

"There, that's better." Sophan's father gave him an approving nod. "Go ahead, then."

"But she hasn't told me her name yet." When Sophan looked up at his father, he was surprised for a moment to find an inch or two of red flesh rising from the older male's own plump sheath between his crouching thighs.

"That's all right, she's probably just a bit scared," his father said, showing no embarrassment for his exposed member. "Prey usually are. You've been polite for your part, though, so you can go ahead and enjoy her."

Sophan looked back down at the trembling and antelope and gulped. "W . . . what should I do?"

"Whatever you want, son, as long as you don't hurt her too much. Don't worry about her getting away; I'll keep her pinned until you're finished."

The cub reached out to touch the female's stomach as he had before, and swallowed again when his fingers brushed through her short fur and touched the skin underneath. Why was his mouth so dry all of a sudden? He watched her face to gauge her reaction while he tentatively pet her belly, but she just kept staring at him past his father's wrist, seemingly unaware of their contact. Sophan slowly dragged his paw up through her soft pelt until his thumb brushed against the lower curve of her breast where it peeked from behind her small top, but pulled his hand back when a whimper escaped her lips.

"Don't worry, son," his father said soothingly. "Remember, this is just a game. We hunters chase, the prey runs, and if we catch them, we win, and get to do whatever we like with them. Go ahead and take what you've won."

Sophan nodded, chewed on his lower lip, and closed his paw around the rim of the antelope's breast, squeezing it through the supple leather and watching its middle push up away from her chest with wide eyed fascination, ignoring her this time when she moaned. It felt like he was holding the softest fruit in the world beneath the fur and leather in his hand! He felt his penis twitch in appreciation and reached across her torso to take her other breast in his free paw, squeezing them both experimentally.

"Why does she wear this?" he asked, plucking at the upper edge of her top with a fingertip.

"To be honest, son, I've never been sure about that. Most prey cover their chests and crotches with pieces of leather or cloth like that. I think it's because they like to feel things touching them in those places. You can take it off, though, if you want."

Sophan nodded without ever pulling his eyes away from the antelope's chest, examining the strip of clothing curiously. It was just a solid band of leather, narrowing into a thinner strap on each side as it wrapped around her ribs and disappeared behind her. Unsure of how to remove it without tearing it with his claws, he grabbed the taut leather where it hung suspended between her breasts and gave it a firm pull. While his tug made her breasts jostle in a very satisfying way, the top didn't break free, so he just pulled it toward her chin until it slid past her bosom, dropping the leather against his father's hand once her breasts were uncovered.

Sophan stared for a moment at the large orbs of soft flesh he'd revealed to the warm savanna air, panting open mouthed in his excitement, then straddled the antelope's waist so he could fondle them more easily. He gasped when he sat on the female, her velvety fur caressing his young testicles, and squirmed while placing his palms over her breasts, rubbing his sack over her abdomen until a bead of pre rose from his urethra. With the heels of his hands pushing against her breasts' lower curves, his splayed fingers were only able to close around two thirds or so of the hills of soft flesh. Her fur was long enough to completely hide her nipples, but as he shifted her breasts up her ribs toward her chin, he could feel the stiff little nubs against the middle finger of each paw. He gave the breasts another squeeze, but dropped them hastily when the antelope gasped and screwed her eyes shut. "I didn't hurt her, did I?" he asked, looking up at his father, who only chuckled.

"You're actually being remarkably gentle, son. I think she's enjoying this as much as you are. Here. . . ." The older cheetah placed his free paw over the breast closest to him, even his big hand unable to completely cover it. He clenched his paw firmly around the breast, drawing a startled yelp from the antelope as her fur bunched up and bulged between his fingers. "It takes about this much force just to make it uncomfortable for her. You can even be a little rougher if you like to." He released the breast after an extra squeeze, and the antelope whimpered when it settled over her chest.

"I don't think she liked that very much," Sophan said.

"But I did, and that's what matters, since we caught her and won. If you prefer to be gentle, though, that's fine, too, as long as you're enjoying the prey as much as you can."

Sophan nodded and groped the female's breasts once more, squeezing around their curved edges with more confidence now, but he only gave them a few more moments of his attention before glancing up at his father's face again. "I want to see the rest of her," he said. The pressure in his erection was growing almost painful.

"Well, go ahead, then," his father said with a grin.

Sophan crawled backwards until he was crouching with his knees to either side of the antelope's shins and reached down to touch her leather loin cloth with a trembling paw, tracing the curve of her groin through the supple leather until his fingers brushed against the fur of her inner thighs. When he pressed his palm more firmly against that spot, she moaned and pushed her lap up into his hand, her legs parting slightly so that he could pull the strap of leather up from where it had been trapped between her thighs.

While her encouragement surprised him, the cub could spare little attention for whatever pleasure the female might have been feeling; as soon as he flipped the leather band up over her stomach, he had to tighten every muscle in his own belly to keep from erupting then and there, so overwhelming was the arousal that washed over him at the sight of her slit, her furred outer labia puffed into smooth curves by her own anticipation. His father watched him with an amused smile pulling at one corner of his muzzle while he struggled to regain control of himself. For her part, the antelope spread her legs as far as she could with Sophan's knees trapping her calves, and the walls of her slit parted ever so slightly to expose a glimpse of glistening pink flesh between them. Sophan had to clench his eyes shut, his entire body trembling as his balls tried to rise up beneath his swollen sheath.

Finally, his instincts overrode any control he'd had over himself. He fell on top of the antelope, her thighs parting further to make room for his hips, thrusting frantically against her mound until a chance lunge found its mark, and he plunged to his furry hilt into her, his youthful erection sliding easily through her tight, wet warmth. As soon as his testicles pressed against the fur around her tail hole, a spasm tore through them, and the greatest pleasure the cub had ever experienced crashed over him like a tidal wave, stealing away his senses. Sophan's first orgasm gushed into the antelope's loins, only a few spurts, but each a healthy stream of thick semen.

As quickly as the euphoria had overcome him, it fled, and he collapsed on top of the antelope, as exhausted as he could ever remember being. He felt like he'd just sprinted twenty miles, but being worn out had never felt so good. His arms circled around the female's ribs and hugged her up against him while he rubbed her breast with the side of his muzzle, his face plastering her mammary against her. He closed his eyes and smiled happily, his purring making her writhe beneath and around him as he pushed his pelvis against her own, enjoying her warmth around his softening phallus.

After Sophan had basked in his afterglow for a short while, he heard his father moaning and looked up to where his father had moved without him noticing. The older cheetah was crouching above the antelope's head, lowering his haunches until his rump almost touched the ground in the grass just past her ears, leaning forward with his hands in the grass to either side of his son's shoulders while the female's upturned muzzle nursed on his erection. From the pillow of her breast, all Sophan could see of the antelope's face was the underside of her jaw.

"Good girl," his father murmured while grasping the breast Sophan wasn't resting his head against. He squeezed around it and angled its furred tip toward the cub's face, who lapped at the hidden nipple appreciatively, pausing for only a moment when the antelope gasped around his father's penis. Sophan liked the taste of her pelt. "If you want, son, we can trade places."

"Huh uh, I like it right here," the young cheetah mumbled, and cuddled affectionately against the antelope to prove his point, his arms squeezing around her ribcage. Already his member was retreating into his sheath, trading the female's warmth for his own, but her body made the perfect bed for him, as tired as he suddenly was.

His father chuckled. "Fair enough. I suppose I'd like it well enough, too." His sentence turning into a groan at the end, he pushed his hips forward until Sophan could watch his erection's progress through the female's throat beneath the pale fur of her graceful neck. The antelope uttered a startled, feminine grunt, muffled by the cheetah's member, and clutched desperately at the older male's spotted thighs, the muscles in her throat visibly spasming, instinctively trying to swallow the girth between them.

"Father, I think you're hurting her." Sophan pushed himself up onto his elbows in alarm.

"Mmm, maybe just a little," his father groaned, pulling out of the female's throat before thrusting back in, more forcefully than the first gradual push. As he began a slow rhythm, the antelope grasped alternately at his legs and the ground beside Sophan's forearms, trying to escape.

The cub raised the rest of the way, trying his best not to step on the antelope while pushing up against his father's chest with his shoulder. "Stop it!"

Wincing and laughing at the same time, his father let Sophan push him back away from their prey. "All right, all right, if it means so much to you," he said, ruffling the young cheetah's head fur with one paw while comforting his glistening erection with the other. "I was just trying to teach her a lesson. This one's let me catch her four times now, and I've seen her run a lot faster than she did today. Still, never let it be said I scorned a female's vagina for her other pair of lips."

Striding around his son, the older feline hopped onto his knees between the antelope's thighs, who, having regained her breath, laughed in a deep, feminine voice that caught Sophan completely by surprise. After her whimpers earlier, he'd thought she would sound a whole lot younger than that.

"You've got half the females in my herd running as slowly as they can for you, cat," she said in that husky voice while Sophan's father grabbed her butt in both hands and lined her up with his tip. "Some of the males, too."

Sophan's father pulled her against him with a satisfied grunt, fully penetrating her with a single lunge and making her yelp. "There's no victory to be had when someone lets you win," he said, but his blissful smile belied the complaint.

"Don't pretend you don't appreciate it." The antelope was grinning down between her breasts at him, but bit her lip and turned her head to the side against the grass with a moan of pleasure as the cheetah began thrusting in and out of her. When she noticed Sophan still standing bewildered a step beyond her head, she reached up to caress his foot, smiling at him. "I like your kid," she said between pants and gasps. "If he stays as gentle as he was today, he'll have his own flock of slow runners in a year or two."

If Sophan's father heard her, he showed no sign of it, hammering at the antelope's mound with wild abandon, his brow creasing in a frown of effort. Sophan stepped back away from pair, feeling awkward and curious at the same time while watching the female wrap her legs around his father's hips. The coupling was extremely attractive, especially when he remembered being in his father's place a moment ago, but he was still completely spent after his recent orgasm, and remained sheathed even while rubbing at his balls. The rumbling in his stomach was more likely hunger than lust.

Sophan sat behind a veil of tall grass with his legs splayed out in front of him, pretending the mating adults didn't know he was still there, and waited for his father to finish. The mature cheetah had a great deal more stamina than the cub, as did the antelope, it seemed. When it came, though, her orgasm set off the feline's, and they both arched their backs, muscles straining beneath their pelts, until the cheetah tenderly lowered her to the ground, their loins parting. Sophan's father crawled over her body until he was straddling her face, angling his member down toward a muzzle with a paw.

The antelope needed no instruction. She engulfed the cheetah's penis hungrily, and Sophan's eyes widened when she willingly lifted her head until her lips were kissing his father's sheath, forcing the member as far down her throat as the male had before.

The cheetah gasped, his hands falling around the antelope's ears while she grabbed his butt to pull him forcefully against her. "I just wanted a cleaning, girl," he groaned, "but if you insist. . . ." Anything else he might have said came out as pants and moans, his eyes clenching shut while letting the female work him toward a second orgasm. He moved as if to sit on her chest, but hiked his rump back up when she scratched at the base of his tail.

Sophan blinked at the back of the antelope's head, his vision blurring oddly for a moment. Had her ears grown longer? Just his imagination fusing with an empty stomach and what was left of his warm afterglow, surely. But something else seemed out of place about the female nursing hungrily on his father's erection. He couldn't place it until he looked down from her strangely long ears to her shoulders. Had her fur always been that short?

The cub blinked again, but couldn't seem to focus on the mating pair. The sun was just so bright all of a sudden, making the savannah around them seem to shimmer. He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles harshly, and when he looked again, the female had no fur at all below her neck, and her face and much-too-long ears were now a pristine white. Sophan recognized a rabbit from his father's descriptions, but even though this was the first lapin he'd ever seen, she seemed hauntingly familiar.

"Father," he said, getting slowly to his feet. Why was he so sluggish all of a sudden? "I think something's wrong."

"I beg to differ, son." The older cheetah squeezed the roots of the rabbit's ears, his eyes never opening. Whatever transformation had come over the female, it evidently hadn't touched the inside of her mouth and throat.

Ignoring the cub as he tried and failed to make his legs carry him forward, the rabbit wrapped her fingers around his father's tail and squeezed, her other hand disappearing below it, and the male above her erupted into her short muzzle, a trickle of white overflowing from one corner of her lips and matting down the fur on her cheek. The rest she swallowed, then rolled them over so that she was kneeling with her head between the cheetah's knees.

When his back hit the ground, Sophan's father finally opened his eyes, and began scrabbling back away from the rabbit as soon as he saw her. "What . . . ?" he started to say, but broke off when the female reached for something on the ground beside her, something that hadn't been there before. The cub's father suddenly leapt to his feet, his ears plastering against his head in alarm. "Sophan, run!" he shouted, but Sophan was rooted to the spot, unable to move no matter how hard he tried. "I mean it, son, you have to run. Now!" The older cheetah followed his own advice, expecting his son to follow behind him, but the cub could do nothing except watch.

The rabbit got to her feet, large lapin foot pads now rather than hooves, and brought something up in front of her face, a long metal tube extending from a strange metal handle. Sophan's blood curdled at the sight of it, even though he didn't know what it was.

For a long time, the shaved rabbit pointed the device at his father, the older cheetah the only thing in the entire savannah moving, his silhouette growing smaller with every sprinting stride until he was only a speck on the horizon. Then, finally, while Sophan watched in horror, the rabbit pulled the mechanism's trigger, and a blast of thunder knocked the cub flailing through the air. Upside down, before he landed, he saw his father fall.

Then Sophan's body met hard, cold stone where soft grass had grown an instant before, and found himself crying as the rabbit approached, leveling the strange weapon down at him. "Do it," he sobbed without looking up. "Go ahead. Finish it!" The rabbit just looked impassively down at him; somehow he could see emotionless expression even while nothing above the white spikes of fur on her shins was visible in front of his eyes. "You killed my father, now kill me too!" he shouted, angry enough now to push himself to his feet, though his body ached terribly. "I don't know what to do without him!"

"I killed your father?" the rabbit asked in a voice so familiar it brought a fresh stream of tears to his eyes. "Sophan, I didn't kill anybody." When he looked up at her, she was holding her hands out to her sides, the weapon nowhere in sight. Then he looked down.

The gun was resting casually in his own hands, which were dripping warm, crimson blood onto the stone beneath him. His father lay crumpled a mere ten meters in front of him, a pool of that same blood growing beneath his unmoving form.

Ileni suddenly stood behind him, and he recognized her just as suddenly as he recognized the gun in his shaking hands, but because he was still a cub, she was able to whisper into his ear by barely stretching onto her toes. "You know who killed your father, Sophan," she said, her voice echoing inside his skull while it reverberated around the infinite cavern he found himself in. "If you feel the need to avenge him, go ahead." She stepped away from him, then, and in that single step, vanished, leaving him alone. Her voice, though, echoed again and again in the thick, dark air around him.

"Go ahead."

* * *

Sophan awoke with a start, and immediately regretted it, twin stabs of pain biting at his calf and buttock at the same time when he tried to bolt upright. For a long, confused moment, he looked around him, trying to figure out where he was. He was lying in a bed with his tail tucked uncomfortably between his legs, a thin sheet covering him up to his ribs. Beside him was another bed, but it was empty, its few sheets scattered on top of it in disarray, as though someone had just woken up and left it. On his other side, crouched on a stool with her forearms propped on her thighs and her head dangling between her knees, was a sleeping ferret girl. Sophan had to concentrate for a short while before he recognized her. Paps, he thought her name was. But if Paps was beside his bed, that meant that all the events in the arena really had happened, and weren't part of one of his numerous unsettling dreams.

The cheetah propped himself onto his elbows unsteadily, trying to gain control over his thoughts. Up until the point the antelope had begun transforming into Ileni, the dream of his first sexual experience had been pure memory. He hadn't realized how much he missed the savannah. Back home, the relationship between hunters and prey was one that the latter grew to enjoy as much as the former, or at least most prey seemed to. Here, though, on the other side of the ocean, everyone took sex so much more seriously. He couldn't blame the prey here for having such a dark outlook on being raped, since the encounter ended with them getting eaten as often as not. Everything was so much simpler in Kenijan.

He pushed himself further upright until, dragging his rump up the bed, another lance of sharp pain stabbed at him, and he groaned.

Immediately, Paps jolted to her feet. "You're up!" she squeaked, then was at the side of his bed, pushing against his shoulders, trying to get him to lie back down. "Oh! Cill and the Seer told me not to let you get up. You've lost too much blood, they said, and as long as you were out, I guess they must be right. Gosh, did it heart? Getting stabbed in the butt, I mean. Of course it hurt, that was a stupid question, wasn't it? Well, don't you worry, I won't let anything happen to you. Anything else, anyway. After all, I owe you, and Cill and the Seer, and the rebels, and especially Ileni, after botching everything up so badly back in that arena place, and. . . ."

"Ileni!" Sophan sat upright despite the complaints in his leg and the ferret leaning on his shoulders. "Is Ileni all right, then?"

"Sure, she's all right," Paps said, taking off again as though she hadn't been interrupted. "I mean, she's scratched up a little, but she must heal really fast, because she just has a bunch of scars now even though she was bloodier than you when we got here. You can really see her scars, too, since she doesn't have much fur left. Why do you think they shaved her, do you know? I asked some of the rebels, but they just got all quiet and looked at me funny, and after a while I stopped asking, because one weird horse started frowning at me real nastily, and I think the others must've thought I was trying to make fun of them, because they seemed so embarrassed. It doesn't make any sense to me, though. I mean, they have to be awfully cold at night. The day's probably not so bad, but even I get chilly up here when the sun goes down. . . ."

Sophan groaned while the ferret went on, rubbing at his temples and letting her babble blend into a senseless drone in the back of his head. He'd remembered her being a lot more cute than annoying when they'd first met, no matter how dire their circumstances had been, but then again, only his calf had been injured then, compared to his two wounds and pounding headache now.

"Oh!" she was saying, "I almost forgot. I'm supposed to go fetch Cill once you wake up, and after I make sure you stay in bed. You'll stay in bed while I'm gone, won't you? It'll only take a moment."

He didn't say anything until he realized that the sudden silence meant the ferret was actually waiting for an answer to one of her questions. After a focusing a moment, he remembered what that question was. "No," he said. "I'm getting up. Care to lend a hand?"

"Oh, huh uh, no sir. Not a chance. I already messed up once, big time, and I'm not going to do anything wrong again. They told me to keep you in bed, so in bed you stay."

"Good luck fetching Cill, then," he growled, his voice sounding a little more angry than he'd intended.

"Look, I'm just trying to get things right, okay? You can barely even sit up. If you let you out of bed, who's to say you won't faint and bleed to death on the floor. Do you know how much trouble I'd be in then? I won't take long; just stay here while I get Cill. Please?"

Please. That was one of Ileni's favorite words. Guilt stabbed at him for an instant more painfully than his injuries, until he shook his head and swept the ferret aside with one arm. He was still strong enough for that, at least. "I promise not to faint and bleed to death, Paps. You go ahead and find Cill. I can manage on my own."

When she saw that he couldn't be dissuaded, she said something under her breath in a harsh whisper that Sophan couldn't quite make out, then hurried out of the little room. A few seconds after she'd left, the room's door slammed shut, though no one had touched it.

Sophan sighed and swung his legs over the side of the bed, dragging the sheets with him and kicking them weakly onto the floor. His injured calf had fresh bandages wrapped around it, he saw, with a narrow stripe of brown staining the section covering his gunshot wound. There was a new bandage around his upper, thigh, too, and he could feel it covering his buttock tightly, two of its upper strips wrapped around his hips and waist at an angle, crossing just above the root of his tail.

When he tried to put weight on his legs, his head spun, and his injuries stabbed at him again. Maybe Paps was right, and he should stay put. He'd never been injured this badly before. But he had to see Ileni, to make sure she was as well as the ferret had said. He couldn't see how the rabbit could be healthy enough to be allowed up and about when he was close to bedridden, as poor a state as she had been in when he'd seen her last. He had been so certain that night that. . . .

Enough of that. Sophan stood, clenching his teeth against the pain, and took a trembling step toward the door, keeping a hand poised above the bed to catch himself in case he'd made a mistake.

Two half steps further, and his room's door opened, Cill stepping through and smiling at him. "Glad to see you're feeling so well, Sophan," the raccoon-wolf said. "For a while, there, we weren't sure if you were going to make it."

"For a while, there," he groaned, "neither did I." Cill made no move to help him, and he couldn't make himself ask for her assistance. "How did we get out of that mess?" he asked instead, taking a step that carried him a short distance from the bed's safety.

"The prey in the arena fought back," she said. "Eventually, at least, though it took them longer than I had hoped. In any case, once they recognized us as allies, we were able to carry you and Ileni out the front doors. The hunters were taken too much by surprise to stop us, thanks to Ileni. Most had fled as soon as they saw what she was capable of; those we fought were only the persistent stragglers.

"Is she really here, then? Paps told me, but I couldn't let myself believe her, Ileni was hurt so badly." He hated the desperation he heard in his voice, but wanted Cill's reassurance too much to stop. "Is she really okay?"

"She's fine. The Seer and I led everyone to his tower, and we've been sheltering here since the fight. You've been out for more than a full day, Sophan. It's almost dawn now."

The cheetah staggered another step forward, and would have fallen if Cill hadn't caught him in her arms. "I have to see her," he mumbled. His head was spinning, and his tongue didn't want to cooperate. "Can you take me to her?"

"Don't worry, Sophan," Cill murmured, patting his back comfortingly as she would a child. "You might be able to see her eventually."

"What do you mean might?" he said, his head clearing for a moment as she turned him and steered him back toward his bed.

"The Seer told me he had a chat with you before you left for the arena," she said, and he frowned, trying to see any relevance in what the winged fox had told him that night. "Do you remember the promise you made him then?"

Sophan had to force himself to concentrate. "I promised not to use anyone for sexual pleasure without their spoken consent," he finally answered, then his head snapped up to glare at the wolf-raccoon. "You don't think I mean to rape Ileni again? After everything that happened?"

Standing beside his bed, Cill pressed herself up against him, her hands smoothing the fur between his shoulder blades. "No, I don't think that was your intent, nor that you'd be able to if you tried," she said. "But the promise you made the Seer doesn't satisfy me, Sophan."

"What do you want from me, then?"

"Just an answer." She looked up at his face, meeting his frown with her usual, unshakeable, white-eyed calm. "Answer one question correctly, and I will take you straight to Ileni, or lead her back here, if you don't feel up to it."

"What's the question?" he asked irritably.

Cill stretched her neck up to whisper into the cheetah's ear. "What is the difference between love and need?"

Sophan's frown deepened, his forehead creasing as he tried to fathom what kind of answer the odd female was looking for. He tried again to put his foggy thoughts into some semblance of order, but his mind was swimming too much from the exertion of walking the length of his bed and back. From what little he knew about Cill, though, he suspected her question was a riddle of some kind. In the end, he assumed she was trying to trick him. "There isn't any," he answered.

"Sophan," was all she said before kissing him, locking her canine lips to his until the room spiraled around him. Then she backed away from him, and with both hands, shoved him forcefully back onto the bed.

"Answers don't come any more wrong than that."

The cheetah landed on his back, but the room didn't stop spinning. He wasn't even sure what Cill had said, and as the ceiling spiraled more quickly above him, he forgot what it was they'd been talking about in the first place. He couldn't shake the feeling, though, as he fell back into unconsciousness, that it had been something terribly important.