Page 34 of Griffin Food

How many times?

How many heats?

Goddess help me. How did I ever bury this? How did they act normally after?!

Only they didn’t, did they—not completely—and now a thousand and one previously discounted moments threaten to overwhelm me.

They have been inside me. Worse, I begged them.

Atlas

A knock sounds upon the door of my study. I put down the ledger left by our eyrie warden and call, “Enter.”

Darrion, my second, saunters in. Elegant in his long-jacketed black silk suit with fine silver embroidery, his cropped ash-blond hair is tousled like he has just risen from bed. “He’s brooding again,” he says without preamble and drops down into the carver chair opposite my desk without invitation.

I don’t ask who.

There is only one of our pride who has become dangerously moody of late, although all of us suffer some degree of restlessness, as is the nature of a broken pride.

I sigh heavily. “I told him in clear, unambiguous terms not to engage in another battle with a bear shifter.”

“He’s already picked a fight with Vander this morning, and Vander was also in a mood, so he did not go easy on him.”

I grunt, push back my chair, and rise. “I will bang their godsdamned heads together.”

Darrion smirks and rises slowly, following me as I march for the door. “Not a good idea. Vander has a thick skull. It would likely knock what little brains Fenix has from him.”

My boots ring out against the flagstones of the corridor. Darrion falls into step.

He doesn’t tell me where to go. We all know where Fenix goes during one of his episodes. I consider telling Darrion to fuck off. But it might be useful if he’s there so he can pry my fingers off if I decide to strangle Fenix.

When I step out onto the craggy outcropping that constitutes the entry to the eyrie, I find Fenix, my Pride Third, staring broodingly into the distance. His red hair, which falls to his shoulders, is whipped about by the wind. His leather jacket hangs open and is likewise buffeted by the breeze.

I stand beside him, trying to temper my annoyance.

He casts me a brief, cagey glance and then returns to his brooding. It is the fifth time I’ve caught him thus. Only he doesn’t stare at the village today, but at the forests to the south.

“Fenix?” I ask.

His hand goes briefly to the center of his chest. A touch, and then it moves away. Given the bruising on his face, he might well have cracked ribs. “Just restless,” he says, then grimaces and gives me a shifty look. “I told Vander not to go easy on me.”

Well, he has no one else to blame… although I’m tempted to go and thump Vander for listening to the idiot.

“There’s something down there, Fenix?” My gaze sharpens, shifting from him to where he stares.

Danger? More of the bear bastards? Raiders? It is a little early in the season for the dark fae to commence their thuggery, but it’s possible. There are seven griffin prides in the Askrigg Mountains. We fight among each other as much as our enemy, so that is a possibility too. One particularly memorable incident last year happened over the skies of Acton Trussell. Vander lost an entire claw, ripped clean out. It took months to grow back. Some things defy even shifting, it would seem.

“No,” Fenix says. “Not that… I need to fly.”

He has been warned not to fly alone. Ordered. He doesn’t always listen, as his lacerated wing after the last such moment of insubordination will attest.

“I will go with you.”

He rolls his fucking eyes.

“I’m not going to get myself killed.”

“No? You battle as though you crave it.”