Victory! I won the challenge over the rival! I have a home, and food. No more going toward the sun, and no more staying hungry. I have not felt this happy since I won my last hunting grounds from a rival. That was so long ago, it hurts my head to think about it. It was almost before I was, so long ago. I didn't have a mate then.

I smell my mate. She is getting closer to me quickly. Being with her will make me happier. I want to touch her and hold her and smell her. For the last few sun-ups-and-downs it has been hard to stay away from her for long. Going hunting alone leaves me with a little strange pain in my chest. When we go hunting together, we almost always kill a warm one.

My mate pounces me as soon as she is close enough. I am very surprised by this and I almost claw her, but I smell her and I am calmed. She starts to lick my face like she usually does, but she makes sure to lick my scratches. She smells happy, but also scared. I must have been scared of me losing the challenge. The only way to lose a challenge is to be killed. I lick her back, and hold her close to me. She makes quiet happy-calls into my chest and smells less scared. I am happy when she is happy.

I want to stay here with her longer, but I know that I have to do more things to make these my hunting grounds. I roll my mate off of me, and get onto my feet. I call and long jump to where the dead rival's smell is stronger. I keep jumping to where the smell is strongest, and my mate follows me. It takes a while before I find where the smell is strongest, and the sun is almost all the way down when I get there. This was the rival's den. Like the den I had, it is a pile of bones and warm one not-fur. It was hard to get to, which is good. If it is hard for me to get to, it will be even harder for warm ones to get to. Now that I know where it is, it will be easier for me to find it. I must now make the den mine.

I grab parts of the den and rip them apart, and rub them on myself. Flesh-water and bad-smell-water from my body gets on the not-fur, and makes it wet. I do this more, and I eventually have to cut myself with my claws so I have more flesh-water. The den starts to smell very bad, but that is because it smells like me and the dead rival. Now I take parts of the den that smell like the dead rival, and throw them to the ground. The den will start to smell like me soon. When I sleep in the den, it will smell like me more. In a few sun-ups-and-downs this will be the place where my smell is strongest.

My den is marked with my smell, and the wind will carry the smell to the rest of the hunting grounds. These hunting grounds are large, so I have to do more to mark them as mine. I jump out of the den, but my mate does not follow me. She stayed in the den. Must be sleepy. Marking the rest of the territory will take a while, so it is good that she sleeps. I long jump many times until I am where there is almost no smell in the wind. Not of me, not of the dead rival. The only things I smell are a few Small-Stupids on the ground. I start to make my mouth fill with spit-water, until it starts to spill out. I spit all of it underneath me, and rub it into the not-ground. I rub some of my flesh-water into it, too. This is a ground-mark. It makes a strong smell to show where my hunting grounds are. I long-jump a few times more, but I stay where there is the same amount of smell in the wind. I make another ground -mark. Jump away again. I keep doing this until I smell a ground-mark that I made before. The sun will be going up soon, and I am very tired and hungry.

I jump toward my smell and into my hunting grounds. My den smells like me and I can smell my mate there, too. There is a new smell in the air. This is not the smell of me, my mate, or the dead rival. The smell is very weak, and it is coming from inside a warm one den that is close. I jump down to the ground and toward the smell. I quickly find the den where the smell is coming from, and I jump through a large hole in the wall. I move slowly and low through the den, trying to find what is making the smell. It is close, and I can almost tell what it is. I can tell that it is a cold one, and a very scared one. The smell is right next to me! It is a she-rival! No, not a she-rival. It is a rival-mate. The rival-mate is sitting right next to me. I quiet-call, and I can tell that she is shaking and very scared. Scared of me. She smells like the dead rival. She was his mate. She is scared because she heard my victory-call. She knows her mate is dead. No, her mate is not dead. I am her mate now. I won the hunting grounds and her. I move slowly toward her, and she smells more scared. She is very small, smaller than the Strange-Rival. I get very close, and gently bite her neck. She has been marked. I have a new home and two mates.

Author's Note

A challenger appears!

That's almost what I named this chapter. Be glad I didn't.

Anyway, plot development and eleventh-hour characters comin' at you, WHOA! I going to stop making estimations of when I'm going to write up new chapters, juts to be kind to you fair people. Better to be left in the dark then disappointed, I guess.

I am planning on starting a new L4D story, but not for a little while. Mind you, this will mean I have two stories on my hands to not update.

Typos because I'm lazy,

PCN