Page 32 of Griffin Food

We set out from Acton Trussell. Ahead of us is a several-week journey on foot, at the end of which I hope to finally glimpse a griffin. Our backpacks are full of rations, a tent, and other essential supplies, enough to last us for weeks if we can supplement the food with game along the way.

Every step takes me closer to realizing a dream, and every moment builds anticipation in my heart.

The ascent is gentle at first, but soon grows steep. A twinge catches me unexpectedly, and my hand lowers to my abdomen.

Rafe, who walks ahead and, ever attentive, pauses to glance back at me. His deep forest-green eyes rest on my hand, noting how it covers my lower belly for too long.

“It’s nothing,” I lie. “Too much time in the saddle. I’m a little rusty on my feet.”

“It’s starting already,” Lark says from behind me.

“What?” I laugh; it sounds nervous even to my own ears. He cannot possibly know what is or is not starting, and further, has never made mention of it before. I refuse to go into heat now, when I am so damn close. Waving a dismissive hand, I shift my backpack on my shoulder. “Something I ate for breakfast.”

We carry on, but I’m aware of their attentiveness, how Rafe turns to check on me more frequently than he usually would, how Lark is always close, helping with any obstacle in the path. Every time he takes my hand under the pretense of helping me, my awareness shifts and heightens. The little tingle that lingers where he brushed his thumb over the back of my hand becomes a source of undue fixation. I find myself finding reasons to touch them in return, pretending to need a steadying hand.

We walk throughout the day, and as dusk falls, Rafe finds a good place to camp beside a stream.

They are both quiet and industrious. Rafe prepares the camp, setting up the tent. Lark elects to see if he can snag some game.

I unpack my bedroll and go to wash up in the stream. Stripping down, I wade a small distance into the icy water. This quest is coming to a head. Soon, I will see a griffin, and after that, I shall have no more excuses. I must return to Hydornia, probably seeking a place with my sister, Rosalind, where I will confess that I, too, am an omega and ask for her help finding a mate.

Maybe when I am mated to an alpha and my belly begins to swell with a child, I can put aside these restless adventuring days and embrace an ordinary life.

Ordinary life?

As I stare at the flowing stream, my toes going numb from the cold, I wonder if this heat, so imminent, will be the one that ends me. If I will die here on this desolate mountainside, still holding onto a dream of seeing a griffin.

Something is coming…

My stomach cramps. It’s so severe I have to bite my lip to keep my whimper inside, and it’s accompanied by a sharp, visceral image of me writhing between two blurred shapes. Men… their hands are on me, lips against my throat, fingers inside me, pumping, hot cocks sliding against my skin… pleasure.

My body jerks, and a deeper spasm engulfs my core.

I drop to my knees in the stream with a splash, a climax detonating in my womb. The images keep coming one after another, hot male flesh filling me, pumping into me, and me begging for more…

“Violet? What are you doing, lass?”

Rafe’s stern voice snaps me out of the daze, and I stumble to my feet.

“Nothing! I, ah, slipped. I’m fine now!” Gods, he can’t see me like this! “Please don’t come any closer! I am undressed!”

“Alright,” he says gruffly. “Don’t wander. It’s getting dark.”

“I won’t.”

His footsteps move away, and I sink to my knees again, this time slowly, and splash cold water over my face.

My hands are shaking. The strange episode, or whatever it was, has passed, thank goodness, and was assuredly not one of my false heats. They are mindless experiences that I sink into swiftly and without warning. A fever where one thrashes and moans, and someone presses a cool cloth to your forehead, from which I eventually awake wrung out and exhausted.

A sweet, delectable shiver runs down my spine. A fresh false memory assaults me, of hungry lips moving over mine, tongues tangling, messy kisses trailing down my throat… another mouth on me intimately.

I whimper. A prickling awareness sets the hairs rising across the surface of my skin. Goosebumps bloom.

“Got a nice rabbit,” Lark calls as he stomps noisily into the camp.

I have a terrible, terrifying notion that what I just saw was not a false memory, and that it might have happened.

Only if it did, that would mean…