Page 53 of Feral Keep

He goes harder. Nine feet of crimson muscle driving down into me, the furs bunching under my shoulders with each thrust, his wings half-spread for balance—the membranes dark against the pale morning light. Three weeks ago this would have broken every bone in my body. Now my legs lock around his waist, my heels pressing into the small of his back, my hips rising to meet him stroke for stroke.

“Again,” I say, and my own voice shocks me. Where is this coming from?

He doesn’t pause. Just shifts his weight forward, plants one hand by my head, and angles his hips to hit the deep place that sends my vision white. His face is right above mine—gold eyes, the sharp jaw, the line of his mouth pulled tight with focus. The knot throbs, and the edge of cum starts to leak, hot and thick. My cunt grips him without permission, and he makes a sound—not the rut’s growl but something rawer. Something surprised.

Like my body is doing something he didn’t expect.

I’m matching him now.

The realization hits as the knot locks fully. I’m moving with him now, grinding against him, my own rhythm built on top of his—nothing like the tentative hip-shifts of week two or the passive acceptance of week one. My hands slide up his chest, scars rough under my fingers, muscle hard as worked stone, and when I reach the base of his horns I grip them gently, feeling the warmth, the slight give of the flesh at the base.

He shudders.

“Careful,” he growls, but his hips drive deeper, so I know he doesn’t mean it as a warning.

The knot pulses, and this time I press down, using the grip of my cunt to draw another sound from him. This one is pleasure. Pure, raw pleasure. His hands find my breasts, and he curves himself over me, his massive body boxing me in, and the intimacy of it is so complete it lands like a physical thing.

When the knot finally eases, hours later, his cock softens to that idle flex, still inside, still there, the prehensile tip tracing lazy circles against my front wall. He stays close, his body blanketing mine, his breath hot against my throat.

“Strong female,” he says. The two words sound like a benediction.

Heat floods through me at the sound of it, an ache that spreads up into my throat before I can stop it. Nobody’s ever called me that. Camp language didn’t have room for it—you were a body that worked or a body that didn’t, a name on a roster, weight to feed or weight to cut loose. I turn my face into his shoulder so he won’t see whatever’s happening on it.

By afternoon, the rut spikes again.

His cock thickens inside me between one breath and the next, and my body answers before my mind catches up. I’m already grinding down, already chasing the pressure. He’s flat on his back in the furs, one arm behind his head, the afternoon light through the membrane-walls turning his crimson skin to blood-dark. His tail lies slack across the furs. His horns press into the bedding, tilting his chin up, exposing the column of his throat.

I brace my hands on his chest and ride him before he’s fully awake.

His eyes snap open. Gold and alert, looking up at me—at the whole length of me above him, my thighs bracketing his hips, my hair falling forward. A sound comes out of him, something between surprise and hunger, not quite a word. His hands find my hips, grip hard, then ease. Letting me set the pace.

“Mine,” I tell him, sure of it in a way that doesn’t need him to agree.

I grind against him, moving in circles, feeling the way his cock hardens in response, the base starting to swell. The angle is different like this—I’m upright, my weight pressing him deeper, my knees wide on either side of his ribs. I’m in control of the depth, the speed, the pressure.

It’s intoxicating.

Control was never a thing camp-girls got to have. Not over food, not over sleep, not over their own bodies in front of guards who looked at you like livestock. Having it now, even just this much, even just the angle and the pace of one male under me, sends something dizzy and unfamiliar spinning through my chest, half joy, half a fear so old I almost don’t recognize it as fear anymore.

His knot catches against my front wall, and the pressure is so direct that my whole body seizes. When I come, it’s with my hands planted on his chest, my head thrown back, every muscle in my body tight.

“Again,” he commands.

But I’m already moving again, already riding him through the orgasm, already pushing toward the next one. His hands grip tighter, his breath becoming the rut’s roar, and the knot swells so massive that movement becomes impossible. We’re locked like this—me stretched around him, his cock fully inside me, both of us breathing hard.

“Can’t,” he growls. “Can’t come again. Knot won’t⁠—”

But his hips push up slightly, and the pressure of the knot inside me during my own contractions sends another wave through me. I come again, gentler, the pleasure distributed through my whole body rather than centered. He feels it, his eyes go wide, and the roar that comes from his chest sounds like a claim.

When the knot finally releases, it’s because his body is burning its load again. The cum floods me, warm and thick and so much of it that it spills down my thighs even as he’s still knotted inside me.

The evening of day twenty-three, he takes me to hunt.

“Come,” he says simply, and I follow.

The territory stretches out beyond the nest in ways I haven’t explored. The canopy thickens toward the north, the trees older and more massive, their trunks so wide they’d take twenty hands to circle. The ferns grow taller here. Thick, almost prehistoric. The air smells green and heavy, wet fern and something rotting sweet underneath, the smell of a place that’s never been cleared. Red moves through them like the terrain is nothing, and I follow in his wake, my legs strong enough now to match his pace without struggle.

There are markers I haven’t seen before. Claw marks cut into the trees, deliberate and high, a foot above my head. The scent of other ferals cuts through the green smell of the forest. This territory has been claimed and defended for years.