There was no holding back in the previous race, and Fendros didn't intend to hold back here. Once they were off, though, Ahnasha quickly proved that her own agility and coordination had not been lost at all. She flew through the trees as if she was weightless. While Fendros was able to keep up at least some of the way, he took one pause at the halfway point to second-guess himself, which was enough for Ahnasha to shoot ahead without any hope of catching her. Far from giving up then, Fendros redoubled his efforts. He tried to jump from branch to branch with less time and effort dedicated to judging trajectory or the strength of the following branches. It looked as if he was gaining some ground, but he couldn't get to Ahnasha before she reached the end of the makeshift course.

Even if he could have caught up, Fendros' own overeagerness caused him to misjudge the thickness of one of the final branches, causing him to curse as it bent and broke under his weight. He managed to grab another branch to slow his fall, but that broke as well as he fell, scrambling feet first, into the water below with a loud splash. He broke the surface with a deep breath and a sore tail bone, looking a little flustered. "Okay, I'll admit that you were right...this time," Fendros said between breaths as he made his way to the tree Ahnasha stood upon. He looked up at her and tried to plot a way to climb up to her, but the tree didn't seem to have any low branches that Fendros could reach. The lowest one there was was barely reachable with the tips of his fingers when he jumped up as high as he could. Eventually, he sighed through a smile, put his hands on his hips, and spoke up to her. "Am I going to have to finish the race properly, or are you going to come down here so I can tell you how much I love you?"

Sabine's expression was still ambivalent. Meesei's explanation made more sense, but she decided that she probably wouldn't know for sure what it would be like amongst such a large pack until she got there. "There will still be a lot of people to meet," Sabine said without turning to Meesei, "I've not talked to lycans outside of the pack before. I want to make friends, but...I haven't had a lot of practice before I started talking to people again. I feel like I might say something wrong."