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Mari stepped back, trapped in the centre of their fire-circle, the four other lions of her pride staring her down from all sides.

"She failed us," Anula growled, pointing a claw straight at her, the pride's eldest lioness standing with her colourful robe hanging loose from her shoulders. "She ran from the hunt."

Growls erupted around the fire. Their male, Urdu, watched from his pile of skins with the orange glow reflected in his eyes. He lay with his necklace of long Fossa bones around his neck, his legs wide open, his robe barely covering the pride's centre of leadership and control.

Mari tore her eyes off his half-covered sheath and pointed a claw back at Anula in panic. "You let the Fossa take our territory." She swept her claw over the two other females and both of them hissed. "It's not my fault we starve."

"Litter runt," the second-oldest snarled, arms folded, a bad-tempered lioness named Naru. She gestured at Urdu. "She does not hunt, yet she begs for scraps at our fire."

Growls and argument filled the night. Mari glanced around their faces, her own flushed with anger, her heart thudding hard, her voice lost among them. "I'm no coward, I'm better on the hunt than any of you-"

Urdu lifted his paws and silence snapped over the group. "What, girl?" Danger shone in his eyes. "Say again, so we can hear."

Silence gripped Mari. Humiliation washed through her at the word 'girl' - she was old enough to be a woman, but the bastard had refused to make her one. Drawing herself up, glaring back at him, she pressed her robe in between her breasts to force him to see. "Give me a chance. I'll hunt better than them."

Shocked mutters and growls simmered around her. Urdu's gaze went to her chest, but only a moment, then his paw went out for Naru.

Naru slunk to his side then lay down against him with a smug smile. Naru had never been pregnant while Anula had, and her figure was still that of a younger woman. She tucked her long, bare legs up against Urdu's side and slipped an arm around him, her predatory eyes joining his in assessing the pride.

Urdu put a paw against Naru's bare thigh, stroked to the edge of her robe, then slid it up inches from her hip. He pulled her against him with his other and watched Mari with the uncaring, uninterested eyes of a male already fully satisfied.

Mari wanted to hiss at Naru but kept her mouth shut.

Naru lifted her chin. "I brought a Fossa back two nights ago. Whole." She smiled. "The one you begged for scraps from."

Laugher from Naru and the pride's fourth female, shy Sinri, made Mari's cheeks burn. "You stole the kill," Mari snapped back. "I was there, you stopped me from-"

"You were there," Naru interrupted, "running from a Fossa, screaming for your bosom-mother."

Laughter started up again.

Naru picked a half-empty bowl up from near her feet and drew it back over her shoulder. "She wants scraps?"

Mari flinched but the bowl and greasy Fossa bones struck her shoulder and head. Her eyes stung and she covered them with a paw, her throat twisted with emotion.

"Take them," Naru shouted above the laughter, "and chew bones in your tent."

Mari whipped her paw away from her wet eyes and rounded on the blur of the others. "I'm a better hunter than you, than anyone, I'll, I'll bring a Fossa back!"

The laughter rose, drowning her. She wiped at her eyes in anger and shouted over them. "I'll kill one, bring it back, I swear it!"

"Alone," Naru snapped, and others quietened. "You do it alone."

"It's settled," Urdu rumbled. "The girl brings a Fossa back by tomorrow sundown." He gestured to Sinri and she went to him too. The second-youngest to Mari, she slunk down against his other side and tucked her legs up in the same pose as Naru.

Urdu wrapped his arms over both their shoulders and held her eyes. "If this girl cannot hunt, then she is banished to the desert. We don't need a mouth that begs for scraps."

Mari stared back, numb. The desert was exile.

Exile was death.

Naru bared her teeth in a grin, her paws stroking Urdu's chest through his robe. Sinri looked away, seeming shocked. Anula still stood in the same place, stern-faced, watching.

Anger filled Mari and she nodded. "You'll be sorry. When I bring one back, I eat well, and you-" she pointed at Naru, "-will beg_me_ for scraps."

---

Thin rope ran through her paws. She held her mother's necklace and brushed her padded fingers over the long bone hanging from it, her claws carefully sheathed, and placed it over her head so it sat below her neck.

"You agreed," Anula said, just behind her, and warm paws stroked through the fur of her back. "It was brave to agree. So today, as a hunter-" Anula's paws slid to her shoulders and squeezed, then rubbed in circular motions, "-I serve you."

Mari sighed. Being touched by another, even Anula... her mind sunk into a daze. Anula's experienced fingers drew quick, careful stokes over Mari's cheeks, across her forehead, and down her arms. They dipped into a nearby earthen pot every so often, its inside ochre-red with dye, until she was done.

Anula stroked her shoulders after, her touch soft, then something pressed into Mari's paw. "Take."

Mari looked down and her eyes widened. It was Anula's spear, the pride's best by far. She accepted it and met the other lioness' eyes in searching confusion.

Anula held her gaze a moment, all of the anger from her speech around the fire gone, then she looked away. "Strike true, hunter. Be brave." She squeezed Mari's paw one last time, then darted for the hanging tent flap, and was gone.

Mari broke from her daze and looked after her. Her eyes heated and threatened to fill, so she blinked and padded to the table. She lifted the polished slate her mother had left her and looked.

A startled young lioness in full hunting paint stared back. She blinked damp-eyed with twin stripes over her cheeks and forehead and the tribe's signature markings curved around her eyes.

A hunter shouldn't be so afraid. She bared her teeth instead and ticked a low growl in her throat.

But it didn't work. Her face fell into sadness - the lioness was still a girl, and still un-mated despite her eighteen summers.

She sniffed at her reflection. Why didn't Urdu desire her? Her mother had called her beautiful when she'd still walked the sand. Maybe he would take her and make her a woman if she proved herself, caught a Fossa, brought it back to camp and cooked it for him over the fire...

A moan came to her through the tent's rippling flap. A quiver excitement shot through her, and slowly, carefully, she padded outside and toward the source of the noise.

Urdu was mating Naru in his tent. Her moans and sighs were so distinct - confident, indulgent. Urdu's groans were soft and pained, like he always was with Naru, his favourite of the pride. He'd mated with her more than both Anula and Sinri combined, and now, in the last year?

He'd hardly looked at anyone else.

Poor, greying Anula had been cast aside after her many faithful years in his bed. Her only litter of cubs had been traded to another pride for a winter's worth of food, Urdu's laziness and lack of foresight spelling their loss. He barely called Sinri to his bed either, preferring the younger lioness to please him with her mouth around the fire in full view of the others.

He hadn't managed to seed Naru, though. Nor the others. He hadn't seeded any of them since his one litter with Anula, and Anula talked about it around the fire sometimes in a hushed voice, saying their pride was barren now because of him.

Mari listened to Naru's deep, indulgent moans and ached to slip her paw under her robe. He should be trying for cubs with her, the youngest and most fit to carry them, not indulging himself with his favourite every night.

The anger from before boiled through Mari, but deeper, and her claws slid from their sheaths around Anula's spear.

She'd show him. She'd show them all. Blanking the sounds out, she stalked from Urdu's tent and out into the night, away from the pride.

And to the hunt.

---

Mari crouched between palms and ferns at the edge of the oasis. The stars lit enough of the sand and swaying trees to let her have a good view of the area. The edges of her short cloth robe rippled in the desert breeze around her thighs.

Male Fossa prowled here. Their reddish musk reeked from nearby rocks. She gripped Anula's spear tight and cast her reflective eyes over the terrain. She wouldn't run this time; she was a hunter, and they would fear her. She swallowed, hard, and glanced back to check they weren't sneaking up on her.

The Fossa were like them. They had the same fur, same claws, same whiskers, tail and paws. They walked on all fours and barely came up to her knee, and they were beast, animal, but the stories told of them sharing ancestors.

They were clever like them too. Not the same way, not like speaking or crafting spears, but sly. Clever on the hunt. The Fossa would run down oasis rats, snatch them whole and unmarked, then use their shrieks outside nests to draw others out.

She reached to her mothers' necklace and drew her fingers along the long, thin, but strong Fossa bone. It was near the length of her forearm, from her elbow to her wrist.

It was the bone from a male Fossa's loins. She'd kept it hidden from Urdu lest he demand it for his own necklace. He wore a half-dozen of them, all taken from Fossa males the pride had caught and killed over the last few years.

It hadn't been nearly enough though. The Fossa hunted nearly all of their territory now, and through Urdu's laziness and their ferocity, the pride's hunting had been decimated to the point of starvation.

Her ears drooped as she stroked it. It was why her kind were losing, and the Fossa were winning, wasn't it? No wonder their males were so fierce and strong with loins like this. She'd seen their strange, spine-covered shape from carcasses the pride had butchered, but had never seen one engorged by lust. It must be terrifying. Maybe that's why Urdu wore so many around his neck, to try and take their strength for this own...

Nothing moved for a long time. She settled in to wait and her thoughts drifted back to the sounds that came from Urdu's tent nearly every night.

She'd watched him and Naru through a gap in the tent's flaps more than once. Naru on her back, her bare legs wrapped around the pride-male, her face a picture of closed-eyed, open-mouthed bliss. Mari could only guess at the things Naru was feeling from her winces, her moans, the way she writhed against Urdu, her claws flexing and catching the skins they lay on.

Did Mari want to be intimate with lazy, selfish Urdu? No.

But bid she want to feel those things, the things that Naru did nearly every night?

Yes. Yes she did, and more desperately with every passing moon.

The boredom made it so much worse. Her mind had nowhere to run to when her body did this, nipping between her legs, the dampness welling with heat inside to torture her for hours. Images came of Naru stroking Urdu's head inches from her own, panting into his eyes, a true woman, gasping and moaning up at him as he took her. She was everything that still-virgin Mari was not. The pride lion's loins were hers, again and again, and she satisfied those loins so deeply that he only had eyes for her.

A different scent brushed Mari's nose and her thoughts crashed to a halt.

Meat. Her stomach snarled. She lifted her nose and caught it again. It came from somewhere ahead, closer to the water.

She was moving before she'd remembered the hunt. She kept low, her shoulders hunched, and stalked until the oasis' main clearing came into view.

A crescent of bare sand hugged the edge of the oasis water. A rocky outcrop stood near the centre, and in its middle, the Fossa pride's lair. It was a dark cave just big enough for her to maybe crawl through. Bones and torn fur from oasis rats littered the ground around it, and in their midst-

A young antelope carcass.

Mari tunnelled in on it and saw nothing else. It had been felled by bites to its neck, its jugular torn and the blood now dried. She licked her fangs, her nose full of the close scent of meat, and put a bare foot out into the clearing.

Nothing moved. She stepped forward, still hunched, the spear held close. Days of chewing bones and begging Naru and Anula for scraps drove her to take another, and another, her wide eyes searching the clearing and nose scenting the air for signs of the animals.

But none were there.

Elation surged through her - the Fossa must have left it here and went back out hunting. Sticking her spear in the ground, bending down by its side, she slid her paws beneath its bulk and felt how best to lift it. She hefted it off the sand, her arms strained, and-

Something hit her square between the shoulder-blades. She cried out, dropped the carcass, and topped face-first onto it. Something snarled behind her and agony bit into the soft scruff at the back of her neck.

Mari screamed. Her deep instincts triggered at that bite and she tensed under whatever had her by the scruff.

The teeth bit down hard and she mewled, trapped, like she'd been mated and held. She glanced around in panic and movement came from her left.

A male Fossa. He was small, only standing to her knee, but the fluid way he moved held her in wide-eyed fear. A thick pouch hung beneath his back legs, his strength showing in more than just muscles. He stalked towards her and his nostrils flared.

Another must have her by the scruff. She fought the deep instinctive_need_ to stay still under that bite and glanced at the shaft of her spear. It still stuck into the ground by her side. If she could reach out, snatch it up, and-

The bite on her neck pulled backwards hard.

Mari cried out and moved with the pull on instinct. She fell backwards off the carcass and on to her backside in the sand, then scrambled over it with her cloth robe open around her bare legs. The creature that had her pulled her back a few meters from the antelope then held her still. She strained to look behind her and caught the edge of a Fossa's head from the corner of an eye.

The male Fossa stalked forwards and scented her. Those clever, sly eyes approached her with something in them. Something intense, excited, eager...

She couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Those eyes had her, somehow filled with more hunger than just a bloodthirsty animal. He reached her open legs and placed a thick, heavy paw just below her knee.

Mari flinched, locked in rigid terror, her rapid breaths leaving her lungs empty.

The animal's lip lifted in almost a grin, his eyes full of predatory delight, and his nostrils flared to scent her. A sigh huffed from him, one she'd heard Fossa males make when they...

Found a female.

Mari glanced down between his hind legs and her eyes went wide. The swollen, veined tip of his Fossa lions had already pushed through his sheath. More slid free and the full end of it pushed out, pale pink and pointed, then his sheath opened around a bigger bulk behind.

The odour hit her. Raw, unwashed, animal and male. He lowered his nose between her legs, over the centre of the hot itch that had tortured her, and sniffed deep. His sheath opened wider and a spine-covered bulge pushed out. The fleshy spines peeled free of it and more slid free as he scented her.

She flinched at the huffs of air on her sensitivity, too stricken to scream. The Fossa pushed his weight on her leg, planted his other paw on her knee, then climbed up so his loins jutted straight at her. A second bulge had come out and his huge loins swelled full with lust beneath him, every bit as terrifying as she's imagined, its spines and bulges wet with the reeking musk of his sheath.

Mari breathed in open shock at it, her legs still splayed open, her claws sunk in the sand.

The male climbed over her and his loins brushed over the centre of her folds. The heat of male desire burned from it, flush against her virgin own.

She gasped, still held by the scruff, and watched in trembling disbelief. Part of her knew she could still fight. That if she really tried, that if she burst into a hissing thrash of claws and teeth right now, she could be free.

But that heat. That raw male lust against her, her own desire burning in reply, the wet itch so strong her folds parted easily against it and her musk dampened its spiny underside...

The male dew his spine-covered swell back so the tip nudged between her folds, hooked his forelimbs around her hips, and spread her around it.

She gasped, sharp, her eyes shot wide. The Fossa walked his hind legs forward and he sunk deeper. He growled, twitched, and forced himself inside her to his first spine-covered bulge.

Sharp pain shot through her from that pressure, that invasion deeper inside her - she yelped and mewled in panic, her claws in the sand beside her, her teeth bared to the night air.

His tip burst through a sharp wall of pain and the spin-covered bulge sunk into body's tight embrace.

Her mewling cry bleated into the breeze between the palms. She winced her legs in against his sides, her claws slid from her toes, her muzzle open and long meat-tearing teeth bared.

The animal humped his second bulge into her and the full length of its bone-rigid loins filled her in a few last thrusts. He hunched between her legs, lay his head below her breasts and jerked it inside her with hard, quick thrusts that twitched his whole muscular body against hers.

The spines opened around the twin bulges and raked her sensitive insides with every quick, sharp thrust. The aftermath of her stolen innocence stung but the animal didn't stop or give her a chance to recover, its strength terrifying despite its small size.

The pain faded as it took her through her mewling cries. Raw sensation replaced the pain and sent shudders racing down to her toes and up along her spine. She moaned in shocked pleasure, the same sounds that Naru made with Urdu, and the Fossa humped her and snarled against her belly.

The jaws holding her neck snapped open and released her. A Fossa female slunk into view, her teeth bloodied, and sat to watch with cold, staring eyes.

The female might go for her throat if she fought now. The male took her relentless, his rigid loins hot with lust, sighing and growling with his cheek pressed against her flat stomach.

Mari curled her claws into the sand. Pleasure coursed higher and she closed her eyes in lustful cry after cry into the night.

The ecstasy built so quickly that she wailed, helpless, and came in a fitful judder around the potent loins of her animal rivals. The Fossa humped her through it, jerking its hilted loins and moving its head with the pleasure, mouth opening and closing, eyes wandering and seeing nothing.

Mari panted for air after, her mind cleared of enough lust to feel deep, profound shame, her virginity claimed not just by her rivals, but by an animal.

Another flood of pleasure built over the next while and the waves lapped at her mind. She burned inside around him and the wetness of mating trickled down her bare hindquarters to the sand. Her cries rose again to fill the night by the oasis, her mouth open and lion teeth bared inches from the male animal hunched between her legs. His spines became searing sensation, digging into her inside, those bulges long-swollen beyond the point where anything could pull him out.

Mari came again with a judder and a yowl, squeezing on those knots, rolling her hips and pressing her thighs in against the animal's sides.

The Fossa snarled at her, teeth bared, and jerked hard into her with bursts of strength.

Deep guilt and humiliation flooded her as the ecstasy burned away. She lowered her feet to the sand, her legs laid open around the male, and fought back sobs.

I've failed as a lioness,_she thought. _I've failed my kind.

The terrible guilt faded under a slow burn of pleasure. It glowed again around the bone-solid malehood inside her, the male never seeming to tire of her, and she mewled for him, helpless but to enjoy it, to feel it, and know she was giving him the same.

It showed on his face and in his huffs for air; mating a lioness must be as-good, or better, than mating his own.

She burned into a mewling daze of pleasure and horror, time going slowly, the Fossa never letting up. He gripped her hips and jerked against her through every moment of it, never letting her have a moment of rest.

She clenched and came around him a third time after a long while, the explosion of pleasure heavy with aching muscles this time, and bleated more humiliating cries into the quiet oasis clearing.

Their males had such prowess, and their loins were so potent - she whimpered under him, ears low, her primitive instincts rewarding her for submitting. She thought of Urdu's lazy decadence and knew it then, not just as a lion, but as a woman, and with utter certainty.

Her kind were doomed.

His humping finally sped into a burst of frenzied pleasure, then he snarled and dug his claws into her leg.

Mari yelped, her leg searing in pain, and he held himself flush between her legs, growling low in his throat, his limbs twitching. She just breathed, near to sobbing, and held still. Pressure pulsed inside her, around him, the animal seeding her.

When he was done, he tugged his claws out of her leg then clambered back form her and pulled his knotted malehood against her body's grip, but he was still too swollen. She winced and he snarled. It took many more tugs and for the swell of those twin bulges to lessen before he could pull it free. When he finally did, his spines raked her sore, sensitive insides the entire way out and she yowled into the night.

She flopped back against the sand and breathed, her legs wide open. He sat back with a lifted leg and started licking his long malehood, the terrifying shape wet from her and blooded from taking her virginity.

Mari sat up and stared. Her folds were puffy and open with the pink edges of her insides showing. Some of the pressure of him was still inside her. So was some of his warmth. She tensed and pushed against it, just a little, and a mix of blood and white Fossa seed oozed out of her.

She mewled at the sight. Her virginity was lost to an animal. An animal that she'd come here to kill. It hadn't just bested her - it had outsmarted her, trapped her, then bred her like one of its own.

The male Fossa finished licking its loins and went to the female. She bared her teeth and they darted fangs at each other like some kind of greeting or gesture.

Mari climbed to standing on shaking legs, glanced at her spear, then padded to the antelope carcass and watched them. They continued, ignoring her now, so she hauled the carcass over her shoulder and limped the hour back to camp with Fossa seed running down her thighs.

---

They didn't exile her.

The antelope carcass was enough for them to eat for a few days. They were so hungry that her failure to kill a Fossa was forgotten under the scent of crackling meat above the fire.

She became hungry again soon after though, just like them, but with a different kind of hunger too.

She mewled in her tent at night and longed for the sharp ecstasy the Fossa male had driven her though. As days and days passed, with no sign of Urdu taking any interest in the pride's least-ranking female, she craved that pleasure again just as much as she craved meat.

Both urges drove her out one night, furtive with guilt and shame, and back to the Fossa lair at the oasis.

They were waiting for her.

She knew it somehow, even though they were supposed to be beast, animal. The female Fossa sat between two males in the middle of the clearing, and before them, another antelope carcass.

Mari hadn't bothered bringing her spear. She approached and the males broke away to either side, stalking around the clearing, while the female sat by the carcass and watched her. Mari reached the meat, drool running from her lips, and climbed down to kneeling on the opposite side.

The female bared her teeth and growled at her. Mari wasn't allowed this time. At least, not yet.

One of the males approached her from behind.

Mari climbed to her paws and knees and lifted her tail. It filled her with deeper shame than any defeat could have, but the wet heat nestled in her hindquarters and and her empty, churning stomach won out. The male swelled for her, mounted her hindquarters like one of his own, and sunk his Fossa loins into a lion woman with a snarl.

She hissed and spread her knees wider on the sand, accommodating him as he thrust more into her, the sensation somehow heightened like this as though the position were more fitting, more primal. He grasped the curves of her hindquarters, walked himself close, and humped at her with sighs and growls.

The pleasure she'd craved flowed again and she mewled under the animal, her youthful body surrendered, and came after a while with a muscle-clenching roar.

The Fossa reached over, bit down on her scruff, and held himself close as he spread his seed inside her with sharp jerks and twitches of his bone-rigid loins. He tugged his spines at her until he'd lost enough swollen heat to slip back out, and then the other male was there, growling, already out of his sheath, pawing at her.

Mari looked back into the eyes of the female still sat on the other side of the carcass. The female bared her teeth and growled again, so Mari stayed on her knees and kept her tail up.

The second male mounted and took her. It drove her through another growling, roaring climax until it bit her scruff and seeded her too.

When it finally tugged its loins out of her, she collapsed to her side and lay panting by the slain antelope. Fossa seed leaked down her thighs, warm, and the pressure of what they'd left in her glowed in the raw tenderness of her spine-raked insides. The two males went to the carcass and tore into it, their loins wet from her and receding slowly.

The female began to eat, too. Mari climbed up to kneeling, watched them a moment, then tore a chunk off in an explosion of sweet, savoury taste.

She ate with them, among them, and knew that her loyalty had shifted.

---

"She's too well fed."

Mari looked up from the fire. Naru had spoken, and now she glared from her place by Urdu's side.

The others looked up as well. Anula put the pot she'd been decorating down. "She eats what we give her."

"No." Naru's glared narrowed. "Her fur shines. She has been eating fat."

Mari glanced between their stares. "No. Anula speaks the truth."

"Her hips are fuller," Urdu rumbled.

She cowed in panic. She should have realised they'd notice. A month had passed and her body had been changing from her regular meals with the Fossa. She moved her robe to hide the swell in her belly too and kept her downtrodden look. "I only eat what you spare me."

Naru pressed on. "Where do you go at night?"

"I told you, I like to walk the desert when it is cool-"

"Lies," Naru hissed.

"Her chest is fuller," Urdu said, a paw on his chin, gaze appraising her. Naru shot a bitter snarl at her.

Confusion swam through her - it was? She glanced down at her chest and noticed, though it had been in the back of her mind for a while, that her robe covered less of her breasts than before.

"Mari," Anula said, climbing up to standing, "come to my tent?"

Relief hit her and she stood quickly, then followed Anula around to her tent and inside.

"Take your robe off," Anula said, standing in the middle of the space filled with her scent and life's possessions. As the eldest, Anula had collect all kinds of bones and trinkets that normally fascinated Mari, but as she slipped her robe off and let it fall to the skins around her feet, they may as well not have been there.

Anula's eyes widened at her figure. She came forward, pressed her paws to Mari's stomach, then felt around with prods and pushes of her padded fingers. Next, she ran a paw over one of Mari's breasts and squeezed a few times as though trying to sense something.

Anula stood back, swallowed, and looked into her eyes. "You are with cubs."

Mari stared back. The floor seemed to move and she stumbled forward into Anula, her breathing gone shallow, her knees weak. Anula helped her down into her bedding, fetched her water, then sat with her.

Emotion and panic clashed in Mari and she pressed her paws over her closed eyes. It shouldn't be possible, the Fossa were animal, beast, how could they have bred her like one of their own...

The stores, their shared ancestors. Part of her had known. There had been a deep, instinctive submission in cowing down, lifting her tail, and letting rival males slake their lust in her. Rival males with more potent loins that made them fiercer, stronger, and better hunters. She'd mewled under their humping, her dripping sex speared deep while they'd spilled seed inside her, dozens of times now...

"I won't tell," Anula whispered, "though there will be no hiding it, soon. Did Urdu take you?"

She sat still for a long moment, then shook her head.

"Another pride-male?"

Mari shook her head again then leaned into Anula's hesitant embrace.

"Then what?" Anula asked, and Mari just shook her head.

Anula held her for a long while, then whispered in her ear. "I will tell them you are sick. You'll have a few weeks before you grow too much to hide. I'll pray for you, young one."

---

Two weeks later, Mari mewled under a Fossa male, her scruff bitten, her pregnant belly beneath him as he twitched and bucked at her.

The Fossa female came to her. She sat and waited until the male was through with Mari, then started towards the edge of the oasis and waited until Mari followed.

They moved through the desert to the edge of Mari's camp. The pride were there, eating the scraps of desert rat Sinri had caught, but the Fossa female made sure to stay downwind and out of sight. She growled at the camp, nudged Mari with her shoulder, then growled low in her throat.

The other Fossa appeared behind them over the next while, filtering out of the oasis, joining them in the cooling evening. A dozen males and a few younger females that Mari had rarely seen. They all lay down and waited.

There were no words, but Mari knew what would happen.

And what she needed to do.

She looked into the female's eyes, blinked twice, then got up and padded alone past the fire and the hostile, suspicious glares of Naru and Urdu with her robe hiding her swollen breasts and belly as best she could.

---

Mari waited until long after sundown. She crept out the back of her tent, one of its pegs removed earlier in the day, and dashed through the dark toward Anula's.

Anula was fast asleep. Mari put a paw over her mouth and her other on her shoulder, then shook her gently awake.

"You must leave," Mari whispered, close. "Take water, shawl, but you_must_ go, now. Please." Mari licked her cheek, released her mouth, then crouched and slipped back out of her tent before she could rise from her skins.

Soft moans came from Urdu's tent. Mari approached its back, found the tent peg she was looking for, and dug the sand out from around it.

Something caught the moonlight from the crest of a nearby dune. A pair of reflective eyes. Mari blinked back at the Fossa female, twice, then leaned around the edge of Urdu's tent to peer towards the camp.

Anula left her tent. She took one last look around, a water skin below her arm and a shawl over her head, then darted away from the camp and into the night.

Mari lifted a paw toward the eyes on the dune and beckoned. Shapes flitted through the dark and four Fossa males were suddenly around her, intense eyes fixed to her. She pulled the tent peg from the sand, lifted the back of the tent, then gestured them through one after another.

She jumped back up and was already moving when the first screams started.

Sinri's tent was next to Anula's. Reaching it, she waited by the flap, tense, heart racing.

Roars and shrieks came from Urdu's tent through a hail of animal snarls and hissing. A body crashed against one of the walls and dragged the whole tent over with a tear of fabric and crack of splintered wood.

Noise burst inside Sinri's tent, and Mari slipped inside. "Sinri?"

Sinri had risen from her skins and stood naked, eyes wide. "What's happening!?"

"Stay calm," Mari hissed, "you're safe here."

Sinri searched her face, breathing fast, then nodded and whispered. "What is it?"

Mari gestured for her to stay put and left the tent.

Urdu lay face-down outside his broken tent in a pool of blood. Two of the male Fossa lay nearby, shadowed and unmoving, the sand around them red. Naru fought with the last two, blooded over her legs and arms, taking swipes and darting back from them as they leapt at her.

Mari crouched into the shadows of Sinri's tent. Naru swiped at one and the other pounced. It locked its jaws around her leg and she roared in pain and rage. Her next step staggered and she crashed to the sand with a yowl.

Mari stood from the shadows and padded forward.

Naru saw her, lifted a paw, and cried out. "Help me!" Her bloodshot eyes screamed for her pride-sister's aid. "Mari!"

Mari stopped, stood, and watched.

Jaws bit into Naru's shoulders, neck, arms - she screamed and then the sounds turned to gurgles. More Fossa slipped through the gaps around the tents and descended on her, tearing into prey, and Naru fell silent.

The female Fossa padded out of the night and came to Mari. She was flanked by two more males, her lips drawn back, her eyes fixed to Sinri's tent.

Mari met her glare, blinked twice, then slipped back inside.

Sinri sat on her skins, one pulled up over her bare breasts, her legs tucked up. She was young, ripe, and ready to be a fitting reward. She stared at Mari. "What's... was that Naru?!"

"You're safe," Mari said, going to her and climbing to her knees beside her, "it's all right-" she opened her arms and pulled Sinri into a hug.

Sinri hesitated, but accepted and put her arms around her.

Mari mewled, calling to those waiting outside, and tightened her grip around Sinri.

"Mari...?" Sinri tried to pull away but Mari held tight. "What are you doing? Let go!"

A lithe shape slipped by her, Sinri went rigid, and a cry of primal pain left her over Mari's shoulder.

Mari let her go and backed away from possible slashing claws. The female Fossa stood behind Sinri and held her by the scruff, teeth sunk in deep.

Sinri wailed, frozen in place by that bite, just like Mari had been. "Help-!"

"Don't fight," Mari said, crouching down to eye level with her, "don't struggle."

"What, what are you saying?" Sinri searched her face in open horror. "They killed Naru, she called for you!"

A male stalked through the tent's open flaps and stood by Mari's side. It was one of the four who'd slain Urdu and Naru, his muzzle bloodied. She stroked the thick muscle around his shoulder blades and a growl started in his throat, his blood already up from the fight.

Sinri's wide eyes darted up to the flap and the night outside. "HELP! Urdu!"

"Shh," Mari said, still soft, and moved to take Sinri's ankles into her paws. "Don't fight." She pulled Sinri's legs open just as the male padded between them.

Sinri caught sight of his half-engorged malehood and her legs kicked in Mari's paws. "What are you doing!?"

The Fossa male climbed over her, hooked his forelimbs over her hips just like the first had done to Mari, and moved to take his reward. His tip missed her and he humped, struggling to get it in...

Mari let one of Sinri's legs go, took his hot loins into her gentle hold, and guided his tip into her pride-sister with a shiver.

Sinri screamed. The Fossa took his place between her open legs and humped, driving the rest of his length into her, and she wailed in horror.

"Shhh," Mari soothed, kneeling by her side.

Sinri roared, her paws going to the sand to push herself up-

"Don't!" Mari grabbed her wrists and held her paws flat on the sand. "They'll kill you if you fight."

Sinri descended back into cries and wails. Mari spoke close, trying to soothe her, but the female Fossa holding her scruff drew blood. "It'll start to feel good, I promise, just let him..."

Sure enough, Sinri's wails lessened and different sounds began to come from the lioness. Heat flushed Mari at how Sinri's whole body reacted to the unwanted pleasure, relaxing, her legs opening around the male, her struggles going half-hearted.

"That's good," Mari soothed, stroking her, "just feel him, their desire is so strong."

"Hahh," Sinri gasped, the male humping hard between her legs, her eyes dazed now, "ohhUrdu... ohh..."

"Urdu's gone," Mari whispered, "lay back-" she lifted a paw to the muzzle of the Fossa biting Sinri's neck, and the animal let go. Mari eased Sinri's head back against the sand and kept stroking her, smiling down at her while the male worked. "Relax, feel your mate, enjoy him..."

Sinri moaned, her pleasure blatant, her gaze weak and unfocused.

Seed her, Mari thought,seed her while she's weak.

The scent and sounds of mating drew in the rest of the males. They stood or sat with their tips swollen free of their sheaths.

The male didn't last much longer. He snarled and bit into Sinri's thigh when he came, his claws out against her backside, his loins jerking hard between her legs. Mari imagined the heavy pouch between his legs coursing with the heated blood of battle, giving him his ferocity in the fight, and bit her lip at how those same loins would now course with the hot lust of mating. He snarled from his bloodied muzzle, conquering a rival female after slaying her pride-male, spilling his seed deep in an unclaimed womb.

Sinri struggled, but she was weak, and strange elation washed through Mari as she held her arms against the sand while the animal bred her pride-sister. The male finished inside her with a few last bucks and growled in contentment.

Now, she wasn't the only lioness in the Fossa's pride.

She wouldn't be the only lioness with a bump in her belly either.

Months later, her and Sinri would yelp and mewel for Fossa males in the oasis clearing, both lionesses pregnant and on their paws and knees, their tails in the air, their scruffs bitten hard.

Her litter of Fossa cubs might arrive first, but Sinri's would follow, and both of them would nurse animals against their swollen breasts with little muzzles sucking at their nipples.

They might never see Anula again, and much later, when they grow old, there might be no lions left to replace them. The Fossa might have won, breeding their kind out of existence, the two female's weakness and failure to realise it driving their kind extinct in the desert.

But until then, until her kind died out, Mari wouldn't be alone.