Page 38 of Griffin Food

My legs cut out, and I drop to my knees. One giant claw snags my collar when I try to scramble away.

Around me, filling the broad stone ledge, are griffins in every color of the rainbow. I try to count them, but there are too many, too huge—a jumble of feathers, beaks, and lashing tails before my eyes rest upon Lark, face down on the floor.

“Lark!”

Lark groans and pushes up. A black griffin slams one giant spread talon over the center of his back, pinning him to the stone floor.

Rafe is dropped beside him. Still conscious, he roars and charges for me the moment he’s free.

He makes it no more than a step before the russet griffin knocks him to the floor, leaps to pin him, and raises a bloody claw over his throat.

“Don’t!” I scream.

The russet griffin freezes with his bloody claw poised to strike Rafe. His head swivels, and his whirling amber eyes land, not on me, but on the griffin behind me who holds my collar. They look at each other for a long moment while my chest heaves and my breath saws unsteadily in and out. Something seems to pass between them, and the razor-sharp claw retreats from Rafe’s throat.

A violent cramp hits me low in the belly, ejecting a cry from my lips. I double over.

Stillness. All eyes turn my way.

The pressure on the back of my collar disappears. A whooshing sound fills my ears, and the air behind me shifts. Goosebumps erupt across my feverish skin. Another savage cramp ejects a moan from my lips. My eyes remain locked on the stone floor as light footsteps circle me, and broad male feet enter my vision.

My senses are going haywire, and steeling myself, I follow the line of strong calves and thick muscular thighs, slamming past the male cock that hangs long and thick, ridges of abdominals, and a broad male chest.

Dark hair with hints of storm gray is whipped by the strong breeze, and a cold expression that brings a tightening to my chest—Atlas’s human form is every bit as arresting as his griffin.

I whimper and avert my eyes, battling to erase the memory of the strange ridges on his beastly cock.

He crouches before me, the whooshing sounds of griffins shifting to their human form reverberating around the cavern-like entry.

I start when his fingers snag a lock of my hair and lightly tug.

The air crackles. Giant wings—griffin wings—snap into being and curve around me, creating a barrier between us and the rest of the chamber and shielding me from the wind.

Only now do I realize how I was shivering, chilled despite the heat radiating from my core.

“Heat,” Atlas says implacably.

I nod. There is no disguising what I am, nor what is happening to me.

“How many heats have they tended you through?” he asks.

Gods, he knows. How can he know?

“I-I’m not sure,” I stammer, low, for his ears only. “Four, maybe five. I don’t remember what happened after… Please don’t hurt them. I-I love them. Please, if you have any mercy, let them go, let them live.”

“Barely acquainted and already bargaining with a Pride Leader, little red,” he says, tugging lightly upon the lock of my hair again. He sounds amused rather than angry with my request. “Are you going to be a good girl if I do not hurt your mates, hmm?”

Mates?

“Yes,” I say quickly, daring to glance up.

I get lost in his stern face and his strange, whirling eyes. He almost smiles, then seems to catch himself, and darkness takes its place. He releases my hair. “I shall not hurt them unduly, but I cannot let them go. Not when you have bonded. Not when their seed has already been spilled inside your cunt.”

He rises, and his wings snap out of existence.

“Let her go,” Rafe snarls.

The huge male with ash-blond hair cuffs him. “Speak when you are spoken to, human, lest I shift and tear out your innards before your stolen prize. They will make a paltry feast, but I will do it anyway.”