As the saying goes; "It's not an AlextheCatte piece without a piss version."

Commission for Dymios3

Snow fell from the bright white and cloudy sky down onto the woody tundra; like dandruff from the head of someone who refused to acknowledge the existence of Head & Shoulders. In clumps, flakes, and an abundance of shapes, the snow covered the ground in a fluffy white that sucked the color entirely out of mother nature. The trees had lost all their leaves and the ground froze so deep that digging an inch-deep hole with a shovel would take three men three hours at the very least. In summer, when it rained, the ground was soft and squishy, but winter wasn’t kind to the northern territories; with ground harder than concrete, crops couldn’t grow, and with the local fauna in hibernation, meat was scarcer, too.

Among the vast white and blue of snow and ice, crouched two tigers around a small woodfire; one male and one female. Both of them had white body paint on their face and body to help aid with camouflage in the snow. The body paint that was meant to help keep the orange cats a little more hidden in their environment ranged from simple lines and dots that carried no more meaning than the superstitious belief around the wishbone in a chicken to symbols and written text excerpts that the feline tribe believed helped provide protection, strength, or fortune. The elders believed that one was only allowed to have one sacred symbol on their body at a time, but the younger generations, who were already slightly skeptical over whether a finger-painted symbol could do anything at all, believed that if they were real, that they could be stacked on top of each other. The male tiger and his female companion were both skeptics when it came to their tribe’s beliefs, thus they had the trifecta of symbols all over their bodies, most notably on their arms, legs, hands, and feet. If the symbols were poppycock, then there was no harm in having them on their fur. If they were real, then the only logical thing was that they were stackable. Plus, anything they could do to cause panic in the elders was a treat; a couple of deaths by natural causes meant fresh faces on the council, which meant no more barbaric and outdated traditions like arranged marriages.

The male tiger wore nothing more than a loincloth tied to a leather belt around his waist that sheathed his dagger. Although it was winter, tigers very rarely needed much in terms of extra clothing as their coats thickened enough to keep them warm. Plus, being a hunter, it was a lot easier to keep quiet and stalk prey without the sound of friction created by fur and fabrics. He had a spear with three freshwater salmon skewered onto it and was holding it over the fire. The fish sizzled and popped as it cooked over the orange flame that melted the snow on the ground around it. The tigress, who looked like a female version of the male tiger, wore mostly the same getup, with an added wrapping around her chest to keep her breasts neat, tidy, and out of the way. Instead of a dagger, she had a hatchet, and a quiver for arrows built into her chest bindings. She had a spear in her hand, too, but instead of being lined with fish, it was covered in blood. She had her hatchet in her other hand and was sharpening the dulled dip of her spear just close enough to the flame to feed its wood shavings to it. With her hatchet held at a slight angle, the tigress sharpened her spear and removed the bloodstains from it in the process. The fire cracked hungrily as the wood shavings burned into ash and kept the fire going just as strong as it did when the male tiger first lit it. Normally, setting a fire up during the day in such an open and vulnerable spot was a no-go, visible smoke, the smell of fish grilling over an open flame? Enemies, especially canines would be able to smell them from miles away. But the felines and canines had a peace treaty and were allowed in each other’s territory, within reason.

The three fish on the spear sizzled louder the longer they spent over the fire, steam and the smell of salmon wafted through the air, and the male tiger who rotated the spear to keep the fish evenly cooked, licked his lips every few seconds as his nose took in the sweet, sweet smell of one of his favorite foods.

“Man, that smells good...” The male tiger said with a chuckle as he licked his lips involuntarily multiple times. His ears flickered to the sizzles and pops and he watched as the fish skin’s skin crisp and brown. He glanced over at his female hunting companion who was still sharpening her spear, seemingly not even paying attention to him trying to spark up a conversation between them.

‘Qwwwrck! Qwwwck! Qwwwwck!’ the tigress was focused, as one should be when handling sharp weaponry. She continued to sharpen her spear with her hatchet until it was so sharp that just looking at it made the tigress fear for the safety of her eyes. With the last wood shaving fed into the fire in front of her, the tigress slid her hatchet into the leather holster on her hip and pointed the blunt end of the spear down onto the frozen ground to use it as a crutch as she turned her attention to the cooking fish and her male companion with a slightly annoyed look on her face. “You act like we’re in famine, brother.” The tigress rolled her eyes and shook her head, the bone-white hoops that were looped in with the two locks of her hair that weren’t tied up in her ponytail clinked as she made her disappointment known.

“What’s gotten you in such a sour mood? Planning to use that ultra-sharp spear on someone?” The male tiger joked as he looked at his sister, who had the look of a bitter old woman three times her age spread across her face; a frown, furrowed brows, and a scrunched-up nose that was putting a strain on her facial muscles was a look that the tiger had seen on his sister before, and it was never when she was feeling good and never when she was out on a hunt.

“I plan on using it on the elder who came up with this whole game that we have to play with the canine tribe every fucking winter,” Alex grumbled and she stared into the fire as it cracked and popped. “It’s a waste of time and incredibly insulting that we have to let them win.” The tigress rolled her eyes and flicked the fingers of her right hand against the half-melted snow that was on the ground underneath her. Her flicking turned into her drawing as she stared into the blue base of the fire and took in the scent of the salmon. She drew a circle, some lines, and little squiggly lines on the outside of the circle like how a child would draw a sun. She stopped when her brother pulled his spear of fish from the flames and placed it down on a clean tree stump. Axel removed the fresh-water salmon from the spear, pulled his dagger out from his belt, and started to cut up the fish into more manageable pieces that he and his sister could enjoy.

“Why are you worried about that? It helps us maintain good relations with those dogs, which if we didn’t have, we wouldn’t be sitting here right now enjoying salmon from the Wolf River, with enough to take back home, which we also hunted in their territory.”

Alex rolled her eyes at her brother and watched as he sliced the salmon into fillets and removed as many of the bones from them as he possibly could. Any normal tiger would just take bites out of the fish raw and just call it a day, but not Axel; he knew how to cook. It was no wonder why he was so popular with the women of the tribe; he knew how to handle his meat. Alex had no idea what else they saw in him, although her view of her brother might have been skewed by the “ew” factor that came when you thought about your siblings in that manner.

“I’m worried about it because I’m in the reaping this year,” the tigress grumbled and pulled her hand that she had been drawing in the snow with up to her knee. Axel didn’t react much to his sister’s words at first, but after a few seconds of processing and once he had sliced up the third salmon into a few fillets, he raised his brows and shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, relax, there’s like a hundred other people in the reaping with you and they’re only picking one. You aren’t that unlucky.” The tiger chuckled as he turned to look at his sister and waited for the fish fillets that he had just cut up to cool down enough for them to start eating them. While he waited, crouched, he reached his right hand down underneath his loincloth to scratch an itch that very inconveniently appeared on his balls. His fingers combed through the delicate fur on his orbs and he curled his fingers around them in between each scratch and tugged at them. After scratching his nuts, he brought his hand out from behind his loincloth and quickly swiped it under his nose, disguising his obvious sniff as a rub of his wet winter runny nose. “And if you are picked, maybe we’ll win, and war will spark between our tribes, and it will go down in history as the greatest thing to ever happen. All you have to do is hide for 48 hours. I think you’re good at that. Hell, I think your little boy toy Jacob, who you’re avoiding for no good reason, would agree.”

Alex grabbed a handful of snow and threw it at her brother. The snow hit him right on the cheek and he almost lost his balance. He wobbled left and right as he turned to glare at his sister. “Ow! What was that for?”

Alex gave her brother a disappointed look that said “Really?” without her having to say it aloud. Even with how thick he could be sometimes, surely the tigress didn’t have to explain to him why she threw snow at him. After Axel’s balance was restored, he grabbed some snow from the ground and used it to wash his hands as best he could before he raised his hands in his sister’s direction for inspection. Alex’s disappointed look grew without her having to move a muscle in her face; it was all in her eyes.

Axel hated that Alex had their mother’s eyes; whenever she looked disappointingly at him, it reminded him of her looking at him in the same way. Growing up (and even into adulthood) he was a momma’s boy, who knew that it would work out so well in Alex’s favor. The disappointed look on his sister’s face was enough to get the tiger to stand up and walk away toward the small creek behind them where there was flowing water to wash his ballsack-tainted hands properly.

“Since when have I ever been lucky?” the tigress grumbled to herself and dropped her right hand back down to the symbol she had been drawing in the snow as her brother brushed by her. After adding a few final touches to it, she pulled her hand away and stared at it.

The symbol that she drew looked a lot like a sun with a couple of lines drawn diagonally through it. The feline tribe were quite big fans of the sun (practically worshipping it) and used it plenty in their hieroglyphics, the one that Alex crudely drew in the snow was thought by her ancestors and elders to bring forth luck and good fortune. The longer she stared at the symbol, the less lucky she felt about the reaping. With a reluctant sigh, she placed her hand down on the symbol, closed her eyes, and prayed.

“O Radiant Sun, eternal giver of light and warmth,
I prowl beneath your golden embrace,
My heart fierce, my spirit strong.
You who rise with the dawn, painting the sky with hues of hope,
Guide my steps, illuminate my path,
Bless my hunt with your unwavering presence.
O Mighty Sun, source of life and strength,
Shower me with your boundless energy,
Grant me the luck I seek, the fortune I desire.
Let your rays banish the shadows of doubt,
Fill my endeavors with your brilliant light,
May your eternal flame ignite my soul with courage and wisdom.
I honor you, O Sun, with my roars and strides,
May your blessing be upon me,
Today, tomorrow, and forevermore.”

As much as she and most of the tribesfolk of her generation mocked the elders and their beliefs, in that moment, she hoped that they were the ones who were right.

---

15 hours into being hunted.

All it took was the sound of a snapping twig to wake the tigress. She wasn’t normally a light sleeper, but being part of the Hunt and hiding from the canines that were looking for her had turned her into one.

‘Crck.’

Alex’s eyes shot open and she instantly tightened her grip around her hatchet that had loosened from her falling asleep. She rolled to her left onto her stomach and looked through a small peephole-sized gap in between the two boulders that she had been using as part of her DIY shelter. She kept herself as quiet as possible while also trying her best to shake that post-wakeup grogginess that pulled on her eyelids. It took her a few seconds to adjust to the darkness, and once she did, she saw a canine carefully walking around, looking up into the trees and sniffing the air; sniffing her out, a thing that canines were unfortunately very good at. Alex wasn’t sure what specific type of canine he was, but his tall stature, dark brown fur, large sheath, and slightly pendulous balls that hung from between his legs reminded her of the ones that called themselves “shepherds”, although his tail resembled those of arctic foxes that she had seen once or twice when she was out hunting in canine territory. From what she could tell, he was alone; which meant that his four fellow canines were either spread out looking for her elsewhere, or they were hiding and trying to lure her out using “a lone canine” that she could probably take on in a 1v1. It was one of the oldest tricks in the book, and Alex wasn’t going to fall for that.

The canine, adorned in red paint over various parts of his fur, tried his best to be stealthy and quiet. But with big canine paws and non-retractable claws came louder footsteps; crunches from frozen leaves, snow, and twigs cut through the dead-silent winter night and gave away his position to anyone with even a semblance of good hearing. None of that mattered though as he was also holding a torch to help him see in the pitch black of the forest. The fire from the torch shined an orange glow over the canine as he stepped closer and closer to where the tigress was hiding. He stepped on another branch that cracked so loud that even the dog himself got scared. His ears flickered and he turned his head left and right frantically. He held his torch out in front of him and glanced down at his feet where he saw the culprit of the loud sound. He let out a chuckle and shook his head at himself almost disappointingly. He lifted his foot off of the snapped branch, shook the snow and loose leaves off of his paw, and continued walking forward. He got closer and closer to the boulder where Alex was, which made her hold her breath.

“…..” the tigress was one of her tribe’s strongest swimmers and was able to hold her breath for an impressive amount of time underwater, but when it came to just holding her breath on land here, it seemed a lot more difficult.

When she couldn’t see the canine through the gap between the rocks anymore, she quietly got onto her feet and crouch-walked along the side of the boulder as the canine came closer and closer to being able to see behind the big rock where she had been snoozing. Alex was incredibly quiet, even as her paws stepped onto the crunchy snow, leaves, and twigs, she barely made a sound. She continued to hold her breath and slowly vanished around the boulder as the canine with the torch came to a stop behind the rock where he saw signs that someone had been there just recently. Pawprints, a small patch of ground cleared of snow, and a tall pile of leaves that made a pillow. “Hah, gotcha,” the canine smirked and crouched down to inspect the traces and tracks that the tiger left behind a little more closely. He placed his fingers into a paw indent in the snow, dragged his digits around it for a few seconds, and brought his fingers up to his big dog nose to sniff them.

‘Snff. Snff. Snff.’

The dog’s sniffs were loud and got louder each time as he took in a fresher reference of the tigress’s scent. By the end of the third sniff, the dog’s eyes were closed and he savored the scent of the tigress’s sweat that was fresher than any of the scents he had been clinging to and trying to find her with. The sweet and slightly salty smell was so strong that she couldn’t have been very far. The canine took another sniff of his fingers and let out a chuckle as he opened his eyes. With her fresh scent in his system, tracking her down was no longer a matter of how, but when. His lips pursed into a grin in a way that could only be described as sinister and he had a glow to his eyes that was a little more than the orange and red flames from his torch that reflected off of his retinas. His nose wiggled as he tried to sniff out the tigress, he turned left and right to fan out and find the direction where her scent was strongest. He did this for a mere two seconds before he stopped, turned on his heels, and followed the scent to the other side of the boulder where he hadn’t checked yet. His large paws crunched the snow, leaves, and twigs beneath them loudly, as he was no longer mindful of where or what he was stepping on.

‘Crnch.’

Alex kept as still and as silent as she possibly could.

‘Clnch.’

She was still holding her breath, which ironically made it feel like a balloon was swelling up in her chest. Her heart beat so fast that she felt like an unfortunate wall that a child decided to throw its fists against in a tantrum.

‘Crack.’

Then it felt like her heart stopped.

The balloon that expanded in Alex’s chest was so close to bursting that she squinted her eyes shut in anticipation of her eventual gasp for air that would reveal her location. It was either going to be that, or the dog was going to sniff her out. She was doomed either way, or so she thought.

She could also make a run for it. She was faster and much more agile than any canine could ever wish to be, after all. With her breath still held, for what was close to three minutes now, the tigress’s heart thumped harder and harder in her chest as it fought to circulate what little oxygenated blood was left in her.

The crunches from the leaves, twigs, and snow got closer and louder. Then there was a final crunch that sounded just like a bone cracking. The tigress’s grip around her hatchet tightened so much that the leather wound around the handle squeaked. When she heard it, she knew that she was going to have to run. She started a countdown in her head as the sound of the canine’s footsteps got closer, closer, and closer.

Then they stopped.

“Edward!” a deep and masculine voice cut through the dead of night like a hot knife through candle wax. The canine who was in the middle of following Alex’s scent, stopped in his tracks so suddenly that his hefty balls swung forward and smooshed against his fat sheath. Despite being surrounded by snow, sweat still poured from the dog’s pores. A droplet of his ball sweat rolled over the curve of his orbs as they swung forward and landed right on the tigress’s shoulder, which caused her to open her eyes and turn to look at the small wet spot on her shoulder. Slowly, the tigress looked up to see the canine standing just a few inches from where she was oh-so-perfectly camouflaged. But he had turned his head over his shoulder to look in the direction where his name was called from.

The canine paused for just a second to contemplate whether what he heard was real or if it was just a darkness-induced hallucination. Before he had any time to come to a conclusion on the matter, he heard his voice called out again; this time, much louder.

“ED-WARD!”

With an eye roll, the dog turned on his heels and walked away from the boulder. Torch still in hand and a disgruntled look on his face, he looked just about ready to pillage and burn down a village. When he turned around, he saw the other canines standing together in a group, with their torches and spears in hand. There were five canines in total (including Edward) who were tasked with hunting the lone tigress down; two unrelated grey wolves with unsolved homoerotic sexual tension, an arctic fox who hated everyone and thought he was the smartest man alive, and an older, wiser, battle-worn German Shepherd who just wanted to get the tradition over and done with. To say they were a rag-tag team would have been an understatement; that’s what happened when you relied on a randomized system to choose your hunters and hunted every year. Sometimes you got good ones, sometimes you got ones whose personalities conflicted so much that they called your name to interrupt you just as you were about to find the tigress you had been searching for hours on end for. It made for a good spectacle, though. What fun would the games be if every year both tribes just handpicked their best?

“What?” Edward shouted back at his ragtag team of knot-bearing boys with more than just a hint of annoyance in his voice. He stayed put in place as he looked at the four canines; if the tigress was anywhere near, or even far, she’d have seen all of them coming with how much light and noise they were making. The grey wolf that called out to Edward, gestured for the mutt to join them with an excited smile spread across his face. He was maybe a little too excited, as the tip of his dick peeked out from his sheath like lipstick.

“Ivan thinks he knows where our pretty little birdy is hiding, we’re going to go flush her out so we can end this, win, and get to the feast.”

Ivan was the older German Shepherd, the only one (other than Edward) who seemed to have any sort of sense of how to play the game. Edward was inclined to believe him, even if the scent of the tigress was incredibly strong where he stood. He sniffed the air a few more times only to realize that the tigress’s scent had faded. With another eye roll, Edward started walking toward the group. “I was tracking her scent, and now I’ve lost it, thanks to you.” He brushed by the two wolves and playfully shoved the one who shouted his name to get his attention earlier in the shoulder.

Once Edward rejoined the group, Ivan gestured his head in the direction where he thought the lone tigress was hiding out and started moving in that direction. The other dogs followed, with Edward being the last to do so after turning to look back at the boulder and sniffing the air in one last-ditch attempt to capture her scent again. The tigress’s scent was still there, but faint. As he turned his head toward his peers, he stopped, raised his arm with his torch up a little higher, and sniffed toward his armpit. With a little scrunch of his nose, but zero change in his expression, he then looked forward and followed the pack, jogging just a little to catch up.

The crunching and crushing of snow, leaves, and twigs continued as Edward and his peers walked and talked like the word “stealth” had no meaning. Even as they got quieter and quieter as they walked away, Alex continued to hold her breath. She didn’t want to risk getting caught. She waited, waited, and waited until she couldn’t hear the canines with her ultrasharp hearing anymore before she let out a gasp for air.

11 minutes and 36 seconds.

“Hhhhyyyyuuuuuugghhhh!”

Alex’s hands clenched into fists and she grabbed a bunch of snow and Mother Nature’s debris as she gasped for air. After her first breath, the tigress proceeded to hyperventilate to refill the depleted oxygen levels in her blood. Even while she was catching her breath, the predator-turned-prey did not rest on her laurels – she quickly got onto her feet and peeked over the boulder. With the pack of dogs out of sight and earshot, Alex crawled backward, away from the boulder; and once she was a good distance away, she got up onto her feet and ran into the dark so fast that she was all but an orange blur to the nocturnal woodland critters who were watching from the tall leafless trees.

25 hours into being hunted.

The forest looked a lot different once the sun was out; the snow-covered ground was bright white, and the sky, too. But it was almost as quiet as it was when it was dark, save for the very few chirps from the non-nocturnal birds singing and going about their peaceful birdy day.

Alex hadn’t slept for a minute since she was woken up unceremoniously by Edward and his band of mutts. Surprisingly, she wasn’t as tired as she thought she would be. After she had caught her breath from the close call, the tigress climbed up a tall tree and set up camp there until the sun came up over the horizon. The last hours of the night were quiet, as the canines had wandered off to the east, presumably to the frozen waterfall, where the hunted from every year tried to wait out the 48 hours in the vast cave network that sat behind the base of the frozen waterfall. It was a good place to hide, but it was high-risk and high reward. Whether because the hunted became claustrophobic and came out on their own, or took a wrong turn and were cornered with nowhere to go, Alex thought about using the caves behind the waterfall as a place to hide and almost went through with it. But since her knowledge of the caves was from the spring and summer months, when it was swimmable she’d probably end up getting lost in there and losing, too.

As much as she wasn’t a fan of stupid traditions implemented by ancients, she was even less of a fan of losing.

If the feline tribe wanted a victory, she was their best bet. So long as nothing incredibly unfortunate happened. Luck was never on Alexandra’s side. How hard could it be? All she had to do was outlast the dogs for 23 more hours. She was only outnumbered five to one, in somewhat unfamiliar territory, and had a fur coat that was better suited for camouflage during the summer months.

The tigress looked around from the relative safety of her high castle and all she could see was white; no brown, red, or black in sight. She was safe up in the trees for however long it took for the canines to look up. But she was starting to get hungry, as the last meal she had was before the games started. Alex shifted around on the large tree branch that supported her weight, careful not to lean too far to either side as she reached her hand behind her back to grab a small red-stained cloth. She placed it in her lap and unfolded it to reveal five little raspberries that she managed to forage before she ascended the trees. With a tiny bit of hesitation, she plopped three of the five berries into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. The red juice from the berries spilled from her lips and stained the white fur around her mouth. It looked like she had blood running down the corner of her mouth, but after a few laps from her tongue, it was cleaned up. Five itty-bitty berries weren’t enough to feed a small child and were not enough to keep the tigress’s hunger at bay for the remaining 23 hours, but it was enough to keep her stomach from rumbling and hurting just for a little bit.

She’d have to go back down to the ground to find some food eventually. But the longer she could put that off, the better. She was sure that the canines were banking on her getting hungry and letting her guard down.

40 hours into being hunted.

The last two berries in Alex’s food pouch lasted a lot longer than she thought they would. With a combination of sucking on the berries, doing her best to think about anything other than food, and some sleep sprinkled in here and there, the tigress was able to make it 15 more hours before her stomach started protesting loudly. The sun had gone down and come back up over the horizon in that time.

“Ugh.” she let out a heavy sigh – her breath came out as a mist not too dissimilar to someone smoking a pipe from how cold it was, but despite being fully nude, she seemed completely unaffected by it. Maybe it was the adrenaline that was constantly pumping through her veins, or the naturally thick tiger fur coat that she had. As the tigress climbed down the tree that she had called her abode, using her hatchet in one hand and her claws in the other like climbing axes, she felt a sort of tranquility. She was transported to her childhood where she spent a lot of her time climbing trees just like this one with her brother and the other kids in the tribe. A smile appeared on her face for the first time since the games started, but once her feet were back on the frozen forest ground, it faded, and she tightened her grip around her hatchet. She headed west, toward the frozen lake where she and her brother liked to fish.

45 hours into being hunted.

The sound of fish sizzling over the open flame and the smell of its flesh cooking only made the tigress’s stomach growl louder. Normally, setting up a fire and grilling food in such an open area was a no-go, but the tigress couldn’t help it. She had fished a few salmon out from the frozen lake and ate one of them raw, but for some reason, when she did that, her brother’s voice echoed in her head telling her; “cooked salmon is so much better”. And he was right; smoked, cured, grilled, fried, or baked; salmon was better when it was cooked. The layers of fat that marbled the pink flesh of the salmon were so juicy and rich when it was rendered out. With a single fish on a makeshift spear that she hastily crafted and sharpened with her hatchet, the tigress stared at the fish’s skin as it bubbled and boiled over the flame and rotated the spear around to cook the fish evenly on all sides. Once it was done, she pulled the spear from the fire and took a bite. Her sharp teeth tore into the cooked fish meat with ease, and steam gushed out of the fish’s open wound. It was most definitely wiser for Alex to let the fish cool a bit, but with how loud her stomach growled and how long she had been staring at the salmon as it cooked, she didn’t even flinch as the heat burned her tongue.

She chewed, swallowed, took another bite, chewed, and swallowed again until there was nothing but fish bones in a pile on the ground. With a satisfied sigh, she tossed the fish-stained and charred spear into the fire and watched as sparks shot out from it with a satisfied smirk. There were only three hours left, she had managed to survive 45 hours so far without getting captured, maybe she really could win this thing.

Her confidence may have come a little too early, though, as a figure cast a shadow over her shoulder while she watched the flames engulf and eat up the spear.

‘Crck.’

The tigress’s eyes widened when she heard the haunting sound of a twig cracking under someone’s feet and flinched when she felt the sharp end of something gently graze against her back.

“You’re a difficult one to find, cat.”

---

19 hours into the Hunt.

Edward followed Ivan’s hunch and very soon came to regret doing so – as when they arrived at the frozen waterfall, it had been frozen shut with a wall of ice so thick and cloudy that it would take an act of God to dig through.

“Maybe she found another way in, sir,” said Carl, one of the grey wolves who was a lot more of an ass-kisser than the other one.

Ivan, not a fan of being ass-kissed, at least not in the way the wolf was doing, took in a deep breath through his nose, which he blew out the very same way just a few short seconds later to show his discontent in the politest, yet most passive-aggressive way possible. He knew that the younger generations were taught to respect their elders, but the canine tribe also put a lot of emphasis on the fact that respect had to be earned, not given away willy-nilly.

“Gee, Carl, maybe you’re right. Maybe she’s a witch and can phase through giant ice walls.” The old German Shepherd snarled at the wolf whose nose was so deep in his ass that he almost felt him breathing on his prostate.

“Yeah! She’s a witch!” Carl continued, seemingly not getting the hint.

The more Carl spoke, the more years were added to the German Shepherd’s already aging face.

Edward stood back in silence and watched as the other canines started to bicker over who was at fault for leading them astray. After a couple of insults about intellect here and a few slurs against specific Canidae there, he realized right there that he was the canine tribe’s only hope of securing a victory.

Edward walked away from the motley crew with a smirk on his face. He had 29 hours to find that tigress and he had already gotten close once. All he had to do was find her again.

45 hours into the Hunt.

Finding the tigress again wasn’t as easy as the Caucasian Shepherd mix thought; it was as if she had vanished into the white snowy wilderness without a trace. That was until he saw a smoke trail cutting through the otherwise completely white sky just a short distance away. The brown and white canine tilted his chin up and looked to the sky at the greyish-white trail of smoke that was instantly recognizable as a cooking fire. The dog’s lips curled into a smirk, which then turned into a grin as he adjusted the decorative bracelets around his wrists. The gold beads and black obsidian spades clinked together as he tightened them to make sure they didn’t fall when he started running.

Edward lifted his spear from its position on the ground as a walking stick, tossed it up into the air, and caught it in an act of showmanship before he took off in the direction of the smoke. His heart raced, his feet kicked up snow and debris, and he cackled to himself as he leaped over mounds of compacted snow, fallen tree trunks, and boulders that kept the landscape exciting. He ran for what seemed like 15 minutes before he came to a stop a comfortable distance away from the orange, black, white, and blue figure that he had been searching all day and night long for.

He took a moment to catch his breath; taking deep breaths through his nose and exhaling out through his mouth. He watched as the tigress sat by her fire, eating her fish, and involuntarily licked his lips when he caught a whiff of her meal. He too, hadn’t had much to eat in the past 45 hours. And while canines weren’t a huge fan of fish, the one the tigress was hulking down smelled so good that he would have tolerated the fish bones poking the roof of his mouth if he could just have a little bit of a taste. But from where he was standing, it looked like the tigress was just finishing up. Even if she wasn’t, was he just going to stroll up to her and ask her to share?

Edward did his best to be as silent as he could as he continued his approach on the tigress from behind. He was a lot more mindful of where his feet went this time around, avoiding leaves and twigs and keeping his steps restricted to only soft patches of snow that didn’t crunch when stepped on. He was a little annoyed at how slow his approach was, but each step brought him closer and closer to the tigress who had let her guard down.

Salmon, o salmon, why did you have to be so tasty?

The canine came up behind her just in time to witness her toss her spear and what was left of her fish meal into the flames in front of her. He came to a stop just a few feet behind her and waited for just the right moment before he made his presence known. He held his spear up, pointed the sharp end toward the tigress who sat comfortably on her laurels and took a single step forward to gently press the spear against the tigress’s back. His paw landed right on a twig, which prematurely announced his presence to the tigress. It didn’t stop him from smiling and saying the line he had rehearsed in his head on his walk over to her, though.

“You’re a difficult one to find, cat,” Edward said through his elated grin and prodded the tigress with the tip of his spear. “Looks like the felines lose again this year, as always.” his tail wagged around behind him as he gloated; he was unable to contain his excitement

Alex, at the unfortunate end of a spear, put her hands up in surrender as she sat in the snow in front of her fire. She was silent, but hyper aware of her surroundings. Her eyes darted to a bunch of different places as she tried to come up with a way to get out of the sticky situation. She had made it this far; three more hours and she would have emerged the victor. Regret started to show on her face as she looked at her spear which had already been reduced to charcoal. If only she hadn’t tossed it like an absolute idiot. What was she thinking?

The smug look on the canine’s face only got smugger the more he poked and prodded at the tigress with his spear. His tail continued to wag behind him with increasing speed and his heart raced to the same tune. All he could think about was how proud his tribe would be that he was able to bring the tigress in without the help of the four stooges that made up his team. Oh, how he was so ready to rub it in Carl the ass-kisser’s face.

“On your feet, slowly,” he barked an order to the tigress. As the tigress slowly got onto her feet, Edward dropped his left hand from the spear and grabbed the rope that he had fashioned out of tree bark that was loosely looped around the base of his tail. Spear in one hand and rope in the other, he moved a little closer to the tigress to grab her raised hands and tie them together. But to do that, the dog had to move the spear away from the tigress’s back, and he did that, just for a second as he grabbed her right wrist with his right hand – that was his mistake.

With the canine’s spear out of the way, Alex remained calm and waited for the dog to grab onto one of her wrists. Being right-handed, she hoped he would grab her left wrist first, and when he did, her surprised, scared, and vulnerable “tiger on her laurels” expression turned into a cute little smile that those close to her (especially her brother) called “the annihilator”. It was a subtle smile, but her lips curled in a way that was both innocent and sinister at the same time. Her tail swayed behind her and brushed against the canine’s legs as he reached for her right wrist.

With his fingers a mere millimeters away from wrapping securely around the tiger’s wrist, Edward’s smile grew wider and wider. He pictured how everything would go in his mind once he brought the tigress back to the canine village. He’d be hailed as a hero, inducted into the legends who previously single handedly won the Hunt just like he was about to do. Or at least so he thought.

Alex wasn’t going to let him take her win that easily.

The tigress moved her left hand away from the mutt’s as it approached and grabbed the hand that he had on her right wrist. Edward went wide-eyed and looked at the tigress, who now had her head turned over her shoulder. Their eye contact lasted just long enough for Alex to raise a brow at him and chuckle.

The tigress tightened her grip around the canine’s wrist and pulled her restrained wrist out of his grasp. With a simple, soft, and effortless move, Alex turned around and grabbed Edward’s spear with one hand, his shoulder with the other, and pulled him into a roll toward the snowy ground. By putting her entire body into it and relying on gravity for that extra pull, Alex pulled the dog off of his feet and to the ground, shoulder-first. Edward flipped in the air before he landed on his back with a loud thud. His spear was wrestled from him and ended up in the tiger’s hands – she slammed herself down on him with her knees straddled over him so hard that he had the wind of his latest breath was knocked out of his lungs.

‘Hooomph!’

Before the canine could snarl or fight back, the tigress twirled the spear around in her hands, wrapped her fingers around the weapon nice and tight, and pressed it down against his neck. Edward quickly put his hands up to grab the spear as it came down toward his neck. He wasn’t able to push the tigress off of him like he wanted to, as the feline possessed a surprising amount of strength considering her stature. His grip tightened around the spear that was oh so close to pressing against his Adam’s Apple and he put a lot of force behind his hands to try and get the tigress off of him. He grunted, groaned, stiffened up, and struggled under the tigress’s straddle. Although he wasn’t just going to give up, he knew that if he kept struggling, he’d be wasting energy. And since he hadn’t eaten anything in almost two days, every calorie counted. His grip was still firm around the spear, to keep it from pushing too close to his neck, but he stopped actively pushing against the tigress’s force.

“And you’re easy to trick, dog,” Alex said through grit teeth. Her voice was slightly shaky from how much force she had to put in to overpower the large canine.

“Doesn’t matter if you keep me pinned, tigress, I’ve found you, you’ve lost.” Edward’s snarl warped into a toothy smile that showed almost all of his pearly white blades that crowned his pink gums. The dog resumed pushing against the spear just in case the tigress lowered her guard when he spoke; she didn’t – thus his efforts bore no fruit.

Being completely naked, the tigress’s pussy pressed right up against the Caucasian Shepherd and Arctic Fox mix’s lower abdominal area. Almost immediately after she forced her way on top of him, the dog felt a warmth spread all over his body, which was normal when one partook in fur-to-fur contact with another person, but what wasn’t quite normal was the extra warmth that he felt pressed against his stomach. It took him a few seconds to realize what it was from, and when he did, he almost went wide-eyed but stopped himself just in time.

Alex felt a little bit of warmth against her when she straddled the dog and kept him pinned down, too; and while she wasn’t feeling cold, the sharing of body heat between herself and the mutt was quite enjoyable. Her reaction to it was a lot less dramatic than Edward’s, but she still had a little bit of a reaction nonetheless. She bit her lip and let out a little bit of a sigh that could easily pass as her letting out her frustration from the force she had to exert to keep the canine under her from shaking her off and gaining the upper hand. Her hips moved back and forth slightly as her knees dug into the snow to find their footing. Once she had the dog firmly in place under her and was sure he wouldn’t be able to wiggle his way free from her like a slimy little worm, she leaned forward to bring her face closer to her prey. Her muzzle hovered just close enough for her to be able to look down at him dauntingly with a smirk that curled into just one cheek and a raised eyebrow that mocked him for being taken down by a tiger, a lady tiger no-less.

The canines took masculinity seriously, almost to the point of toxicity; being toppled by a woman was something to be ashamed of, and it showed just a little on Edward’s face. But being under this particular woman, this tigress, wasn’t so bad. She was fit, and that warm pussy against him felt good – he was a simple man; tits, ass, pussy, or any combination of the three were like catnip to him, and Alex had all of them out, too much for just two eyes to look at all at once. Had the tigress not been part of the Hunt, he’d probably, definitely, maybe tap that.

Then an idea hit him like a horse drawn wagon full of loot tumbling down a hill.

He could tap that.

Alex was careful not to get too in Edward’s face; her past wrestling matches with her brother where she was headbutted taught her better. But she was still close enough that her breath blew over him and caused ripples and waves to appear in his fur. She stared at the dog in silence for a few seconds, before she said anything.

“Last I recall, the game ends when the time runs out, or when you bring me to the canine village, which is pretty far away from here. Even if I didn’t have the upper hand, you and your pack of mutts would never get me back there in time.” Alex’s smirk turned into a huge grin and she tightened her grip around the spear that kept the dog’s neck pinned down. Her tail swished and swayed behind her as her heart raced and her adrenaline-fueled confidence powered her continuous mockery of the dog underneath her.

Edward snarled at the tigress and tried to push his head up to headbutt her, just as she predicted he would do. After three failed attempts to knock her head with his, he gave up, and when the tigress told him that they were too far for him to win the Hunt regardless, the look of anger on his face turned into concern. His eyebrows relaxed from their near-constant furrowed state, and his grip around the spear loosened just a smidge. The way the tigress smiled as she said it made it believable and for the briefest moment he forgot that she could have just been bullshitting. If he restrained her somehow, carried her over his shoulders, and ran as fast as he could back to home base; he’d probably make it back with an hour to spare before the drums played announcing the end of the game, at the very least. He was being generous in regards to his running stamina, because who wouldn’t be? Failure starts with a bad outlook.

Regardless of whether or not he would be physically capable of carrying the tigress, it didn’t matter if he wasn’t able to get out from underneath her.

Edward, unable to overpower her, decided to play the same hand of cards as the tigress and tried to get in her head, too.

“You can’t keep me pinned down for three hours. You really think I came out here alone? My boys will catch up here any minute now. And you can’t take all five of us at once.” The canine let out a chuckle that was so deep and guttural that it too became believable. He cackled like a maniac – like him being pinned down by the tigress had been part of his plan to keep her distracted. The realization that she had forgotten about the other four canines who were also hunting her hit her slowly as if she were in denial about it. Normally, the tigress’s bullshit detector was on-point; but the situation that she found herself in was far from what anyone would call normal. With adrenaline, fatigue, fear, and anger coursing through her veins, the subtle body language hints that came with lying went over her head like a flat stone skipping across a body of water. Her grip around the spear loosened and her smug grin reverted to the smirk that it was previously, then it flattened out completely. Her heart skipped a couple of beats and she forgot to breathe. She worryingly turned her head over her shoulder to look behind her when she heard the familiar crack of a twig and looked around almost frantically.

With the tigress distracted, Edward took his chance and pushed against the spear with all his strength. The spear lifted from his neck and he was able to outstretch his arms until his elbows formed 90-degree angles. He let out a loud grunt, which was a mistake as it alerted Alex to what he was doing.

“Uuuggnnn!”

The tigress turned her head back around as fast as she could when she realized what Edward was doing, retightened her grip around the spear, and attempted to push it back down as best she could. She let out a grunt of her own as she was now the one on the struggling end of the spear. Her elbows formed perfect right angles, too, and she lifted herself with her knees just a little to apply more of her weight to it.

“Oh, you fucker!”

Alex’s arms tensed up as she tried harder and harder to press the spear back down against the mixed canine’s neck, but try as she might, she couldn’t move the spear at all. The right angles of Edward’s arms held strong and pushed against the tigress more and more. The spear moved further and further up until Alex’s arms were folded against her chest, at which point, Edward twisted the spear to the left and threw the tigress off of him.

The tigress held onto the spear until the very last second; her fingers slipped from the wooden weapon once the brown and white canine twisted, turned, and flung her off of him like a bull at a rodeo. The tigress fell off to the side and rolled three feet through the snow, only narrowly missing the fire that she was using for her food earlier with her feet.

Edward was quick to get onto his feet once the tigress was no longer on top of him; he used the spear in hand as a crutch to push himself up even faster. Once he was on his feet, he walked over to the downed tigress, who was on her stomach, coughing up some snow and leaves that had gotten into her mouth. The tigress pressed her hands firmly against the snow-covered frozen ground and pushed herself up, but before she could get up completely, Edward lifted his right foot and pressed it firmly down against the tigress’s back, keeping her flat against the ground as he fished for the rope that was still partially looped around the base of his tail.

Alex let out an airy grunt as Edward stepped on her back and continued to try to push herself up using her hands to no avail. When she was able to push herself up by about an inch, Edward let out a chuckle and pressed his foot down on her back just a little harder to keep her flat against the snow. He crouched down on one knee to tie the rope around the tigress’s wrists. He grabbed the tigress’s right arm first and brought it up over her head before he grabbed her left. While the tigress struggled; wiggling left and right to try and get out from underneath him, he had gravity on his side, and compacted snow wasn’t quite as forgiving as Alex hoped it would be.

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