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(Note: The first part of the story involves Frand raping one of his other daughters. Be aware. Should you wish, for whatever reason, to avoid such a thing, you might consider scrolling down to the page break.)

From the moment that Frand appeared at the door, with Natalie's unconscious, heated form in his arms, Elizabeth had known that her sister's fate was sealed, and was acutely aware of exactly what was going to be done to her. She hadn't imagined, though, just how much, and how intimately, she was going to be involved with it. After all, while Jessica had been forced to see Elizabeth's initial molestation, everything else had been between Frand and Elizabeth, alone, behind closed doors. By the time Frand had stopped caring about that, and had started taking Elizabeth out in the open wherever her heat became strong enough for him to notice, Jessica had been long gone, welcomed into far safer arms.

This time, though, Frand didn't simply take Natalie into his room and have at her then and there; that had been their destination, true, but not before Frand had indicated for Elizabeth to follow, an implied command that she didn't dare disobey, now that Frand had returned and was back in charge. She'd followed him in, wondering about the large duffel bag that was strapped to his back, although she wasn't left to wonder for long - once Frand had dumped Natalie's limp form down on the bed, he'd set the duffel down next to her and unzipped it to reveal its contents: Natalie's clothes, or at least the clothes that Frand had decided would be appropriate for her to wear upon her return to the family. Unsurprisingly, it seemed to be packed with either tight or revealing tops, several stacks of panties, two very short skirts, and nothing else.

Not satisfied to wait until her sister awoke, which was apparently supposed to be the next morning, Frand ordered Elizabeth to help him strip her sister, and dress her in clothes that were, in his words, "more consistent with her proper role." With Elizabeth helping to maneuver her sister's limp, nerveless limbs, Frand was able to disrobe her, allowing himself the liberty of removing her black, lace-edged bra and panties by shredding them with his claws for his own enjoyment. Then, to Elizabeth's shock, he'd taken a moment to tilt his head down near her sister's crotch and sigh deeply as he inhaled her scent - even as Elizabeth, following his motion, found herself looked down in horror at her sister's folds, already swollen and slightly spread, her complete and utter helplessness on display. At least Frand didn't go any further at that point, instead looking on admiringly at her condition for a moment before rifling through the duffel bag for his preferred outfit. He'd ended up settling on a pink spaghetti-strap top that clung tightly to her figure, pulling it on without a bra to make sure her swollen nipples were on display, dotting points on the rainbow that spread over the pastoral fantasy glade on the front. Apparently, it was part of a set with matching panties, ostensibly girly but provocatively low-cut pink cotton ones, with the silhouette of a unicorn embroidered in white stitching on the front just below the waistband. It was an all-too-familiar look: while not quite as plain as what Elizabeth had, it was basically what she had been wearing the first time Frand had taken her.

Once he finished dressing her sister, Frand had Elizabeth lie down next to her, sliding up the hem of her shirt and stroking the fur on her side as he began to speak to her. Apparently, his time in jail had at least done something to him, as the first words out of his mouth were about how much he forgave her, how he would never hurt any of them again, and how he was going to get them all comfortably into their proper roles, him included, so that he could be the best possible father he could. Elizabeth, on hearing that, wanted very strongly to point out that people didn't usually claim to be the best father in the world while looming over their drugged, underwear-clad daughter, who they were planning on raping repeatedly as soon as she woke up. Of course, she didn't say that, knowing how Frand, even newly-"sorry" Frand, would probably react; instead, she said nothing at all, trying to ignore Frand's fingers playing through her fur. The only real sign of Frand's supposedly new leaf was that his hand didn't wander inside her panties and spend a few minutes feeling her up before he let her go to sleep; instead, he gave her a few light pats on the head, before encouraging her to snuggle up against her sister, ostensibly to help her rest and so that she could be calmed by a warm, sisterly embrace when she woke up. Elizabeth, as always, complied; and, she had to admit, there was a part of her that was reassured to feel the rise and fall of her sister's chest, reminding her that Natalie was just resting and would probably be okay in the morning. On the other hand, though, she felt oddly guilty to be enjoying her sister's warmth and the snuggly feeling of cuddling against her plush, soft fur, just being there making her feel, rightly or wrongly, almost complicit in the unavoidable ordeal her sister would face the next morning.

Her conflicting feelings finally abated, though, and sent her drifting off to sleep, only to awaken the next morning to light streaming in through the worn bedroom curtains, and the feeling of her sister's body stirring against her. Her sister woke up slowly, rubbing her head and looking around with a dazed expression on her face, still trying to fight off the lingering effects of whatever drug Frand and his accomplice had used on her. Seeing her sister lying next to her, though, seemed to snap her out of some of it, replaced by a look of confusion that only grew as she realized that she was in her parents' bedroom, and grew even more when she turned around to see a waking Frand greet her with a smile and words that officially welcomed her back to her place in the family.

Still confused, but aware enough to know that something was very wrong, she half-snarled and Frand and demanded to know what she was doing there, why he'd dragged her away from her normal life, and just how, exactly, he thought he was going to get away with whatever he thought he was up to. Frand seemed oddly happy to reply, grinning with his own ingenuity as he outlined his scheme, which even Elizabeth had to admit was chillingly clever. The investigator had apparently been watching her closely, and knew her routine well enough; serendipitously, Frand had been released on a day she wasn't at work, and they'd sprung into action once she'd started running errands in the afternoon. Frand's accomplice had somehow intercepted her calling in a prescription, and knew from the filling time that it would be the last place she'd visit on her shopping trip, and in the intervening hours he'd retrieved Frand on bail and implemented the plan. He'd gathered all the contact information, and they'd called her boss and landlord in turn, spinning a familiar enough story: a rural girl, struggling to make it on her own in the big city, finally succumbing to all the stress, having a nervous breakdown, and needing to move back in with her family until she got back on her feet. It had been a good enough story that they'd both bought it easily, and had promised to tell any friends of hers that might come by looking for her. Then they'd found her in the parking lot, a bag with her heat-suppression prescription in her hands, and from there it had been a simple matter of letting her "rest" (in Frand's words) until she woke up in her current position.

Elizabeth could see her sister's eyes fill up with dread as her situation began to sink in - she was back here, waiting for Frand's revenge, in such a way that no one would be looking for her or trying to go for help. Thinking, somehow, that Frand planned to beat her for her betrayal all those years ago, she shrank back and tried to protect her front, even as she somehow found the courage to call him out for his cowardly penchant for violence.

Her outburst, however, didn't faze Frand at all, and the look of supreme puzzlement returned to Natalie's face as he forgave her freely and easily for her transgressions before, swearing that she would face no violence or retaliation for it. That was only the jumping-off point, though, as he used the apology to quickly launch himself into a strange, rambling impromptu speech, covering his prior history, his supposed epiphany while in jail for abusing Elizabeth, and how it had made him understand things in a new light. From there, he went into a halfway-incomprehensible litany about his theory of how a proper family worked, with each and every person having a specific role to play, and how the others had mostly fulfilled their roles, but he had fallen short in his own.

Boiled down, his ramblings seemed to distill into a rather simple philosophy. Everyone in the family was supposed to answer to the father, the man of the house, and generally do what he said, but even more important than that, everyone was supposed to fulfill their basic roles. Boys, if there were any, were supposed to help their father with his work, obey his edicts, and protect and provide for every need of their mother and sisters, even if it meant sacrificing some things for themselves. Girl, on the other hand, were supposed to help out with various household chores as they were growing up and dutifully serve the men; then, once they had matured and their heat was upon them, they were expected to give in to it, submit happily to being bred by the man of the house, and bear children that they would raise together. Based on that model, it appeared that in Frand's warped mind, he didn't consider himself to be doing anything wrong on the front of actually raping his daughters; after all, under his model, taking their heats was one of his rights as a father, while being bred was simply an intrinsic burden of their role in the family.

The lesson that Frand had learned in jail, then, had not been that he was wrong to rape his daughters. Rather, the lesson he'd seemed to take away from it was that, while fulfilling his role in breeding Elizabeth, he'd been too selfish: that he'd thought only of his own needs, using her heat as an excuse to sate his lusts, without properly respecting her, considering her feelings, or ensuring that her pleasure came first before his own. He even spent a few minutes apologizing for the times he'd paraded her around the house naked after their showers, and how that wasn't dignified enough of him; apparently, though, parading her around in her underwear was completely acceptable, and when it came to him pinning her to the bed and taking her afterwards, his only regret seemed to be that he hadn't forced her body to enjoy it sufficiently.

Finally, then, he got down to his main point: from now on, he was going to do it right, and make sure that he fulfilled his own role by making sure everyone else was happy in theirs. He also, in his twisted way, talked about how he was truly repentant for not breeding Elizabeth the "right" way. That, he said, was part of the reason that Natalie was there: while it did seem to also have something to do with Natalie falling out of her role by trying to suppress her body's "natural and proper condition," she was also there because Frand wanted to show Elizabeth just how much he was improved, and by letting her watch as he bred Natalie in a way that he found to be more acceptable, that she would be able to get over how Frand had treated her, and know what to expect once she'd had her baby and it was time for Frand to take advantage of her heat once again.

As Frand made his way through his rambling craziness, Elizabeth watched her sister's expression go from confusion, through anger, and into fear, finally resolving into a tense look of panic as she realized her situation. Her sister's gaze darted around the room, seeming to take in for the first time her state of undress, the pungent wetness spreading across her panties to indicate that her heat remained unrepressed, and her demented dad going on about he was going to breed her with love and kindness even as he lay next to her wearing nothing more than a pair of boxers that were rapidly tenting outward.

As he finished, Natalie's full awareness seemed to finally return, everything about her situation clicking into place as she fully realized what was about to happen to her. Then, sensibly, she'd sprung up and made a run for it, displaying a surprising athleticism as she practically made a jump shot to undo the latch at the top of the door before throwing it open before trying to bolt down the hallway with a surprised, angry Frand trying to catch up. In her haste to escape, though, Natalie had apparently forgotten about one of the downsides of her condition - her heated state meant that her mound had swollen up dramatically against her panties, and the friction of her sensitive crotch rubbing against her thighs as she ran led her to stumble into the wall, shuddering, after only a few steps. Then it was just a matter of Frand catching up to her, grabbing her up in a big hug, and tossing her back down onto the bed with his arm hooked around her waist to restrain her.

At that point, Elizabeth knew that all the pretense, all the delay, was over. Natalie, now tightly in Frand's grasp, would have no further chances to escape; in fact, if Elizabeth's experience was any indication, the only way Frand would allow her sister to leave the room was with a couple loads of her father's seed inside her. Nevertheless, despite the hopelessness of her condition, Natalie still glared back at her father with defiance, even as he flexed his free hand and ran one of his claws down her chest, cutting cleanly through the fabric of the shirt. A couple more quick swipes at the shoulder straps, followed by two more where the fabric narrowed on each side of her panties, and Elizabeth watched as the skimpy clothing was tossed aside and her sister was laid bare once more.

Elizabeth grimaced at the sight of her father looming over her naked sister. All his lofty, half-insane words, it seemed, hadn't amounted to much - her sister was bedded, stripped, restrained, and seemingly about to be taken just as Elizabeth was before. To her muted surprise, though, all Frand did was brush down a few errant tufts of fur on Natalie's stomach that had been disturbed by his claw passing through them, then moved his hand back to Natalie's side and patting an area below her near the foot of the bed, and told Elizabeth that that was where she should be situated for what came next. When she asked her father why she needed to be down there, the answer was as an insane and perverse to her as it was apparently sensible to him: he was going to show her what he thought was the proper way to go about breeding a woman in heat, and he wanted her to see everything that happened to her sister and how she responded to what Frand did, so that Elizabeth would know exactly what to expect and to not be afraid when her heat came around again. Elizabeth doubted that very much, and knew it would be just as bad for her sister - it had been humiliating enough for her, just to be abused and touched in front of her younger sister, but Frand was asking her to watch closely as Natalie's most intimate parts were defiled. Natalie looked appalled at the suggestion too, struggling again under Frand's arm and futilely flailing at him, but Frand merely grabbed her wrists and pinned them to the pillow above her head until she gave up. Satisfied, he looked pointedly at the spot on the bed, and Elizabeth grudgingly nodded, pulling herself up onto all fours and crawling down the side of the bed to the indicated position before settling back down against the sheets. After all, there was nothing else she could do - and given that she was mostly off-limits to Frand's reprisals due to the child in her belly, she knew that any defiance on her part would probably be directed into more misery for her sister.

Despite her position, she tried to look away, but Frand noticed immediately and placed his hand on her muzzle, guiding her head back to where he wanted her to look. Following Frand's intent, she had little choice but to stare with horrified fascination at her sister's mound. Unlike her, Natalie had carefully kept the fur surrounding it trimmed short and neat, a light, soft halo surrounding and accenting the puffy oval of flesh within. Instead of the normal, slightly-curved patch of skin, though, the mound was swollen outward dramatically, pushed out almost into a foreshortened hemisphere. The tight magenta flesh was stretched shinily taut, every inch glistening with a slick, heavy sheen of moisture. From the top of the dome, a pair of ridges stood at attention, swelled into an even more intense shade of drenched crimson. Their swelling, she realized, had pulled the hood at their tip down and away with them, leaving her intensely pink, erect clit on full display, the little nub stretched and expanded almost to a point as it strained outward from its surroundings. Elizabeth grimaced as she watched Frand move his head down next to hers, inhaling her sister's scent approvingly. It was a scent that she had tried hard not to acknowledge, but with her pussy exposed, the smell was impossible to ignore, musky in a female way and tinged with a strange, overpowering sweetness that was beginning to thoroughly permeate the room. Elizabeth couldn't recall if she'd really smelled like that, but at the time she'd been preoccupied enough that it had somehow faded into the background.

Crouched there, with his muzzle less than a foot away from her crotch, Frand laid out how his new scheme would work. He wouldn't simply force his physical will on Natalie, as he had done with Elizabeth; rather, he would only take her when she was fully ready to accept him. However, they all certainly knew how empty of a promise that seeming choice was. Without anything to control it, Natalie's heat would only grow, and while she would certainly never volunteer to be with Frand under any normal circumstances, it was a near-inevitability that if Frand kept Natalie in place, her own body would eventually likely make the decision for her.

Frand, though, was not known for his abundance of patience, and had no qualms about helping things along manually. After all, he claimed that Natalie was in desperate need of relief, and that, regardless of any other act, it was his responsibility to take care of that need if she was unwilling or unable to. As a result, the moment that the swelling between her legs finally forced Natalie to involuntarily squirm in discomfort, Frand began trailing a couple of fingers down across Natalie's belly and venturing lower, between her hips, stopping just above where her swollen mound was protruding. As his fingers hovered there, poised to do more, Elizabeth watched with a sense of anticipatory dread. Knowing what Frand was about to do, Natalie shook her head, almost imperceptibly this time, but didn't even seem able to command her own arms to reach over and attempt to bat Frand's hand away. Both sisters, then did nothing but watch as his fingers spread out, rubbing along the edges of the mound to either side, tracing a path around the ridges until his fingers met just below, then bringing them back up to go around again. This time, though, he arched them just enough for the leading edge of his claws to trace along the path, with the lightest touch possible. This caused Natalie to gasp sharply, her thighs clenching together around Frand's arm in a desperate attempt to halt the sudden, intense sensation. Frand, unperturbed, merely grabbed her knees and pulled her legs back into a narrow V before beginning the subtle tracing motion once again. The process repeated a few more times, her legs coming together only to be prized apart once again - until on one of the traces, her hips and thighs seemed to freeze instead, shuddering visibly for a moment before her hips bucked forward, her mound twitching as the ridges within seemed somehow to flex against themselves.

As soon as they did, though, Frand quickly pulled his fingers back, resting his hand gently on the edge of her hip instead, before his head rapidly bobbed down to press his muzzle around one of her breasts. Elizabeth watched as his tongue flicked across her nipple between his cracked-open jaws, Natalie gasping again as she tried weakly to push Frand's head off of her, only for her arms to fall back trembling to her sides as a particularly intense lick seemed to shoot a dart of tension down her spine. Her hips gave another buck, and a long, lowing moan escaped from her lips, riding a deep, steady note for several seconds as her body trembled. Before she had even recovered from the sensation, though, the hand was back between her legs - but less subtly this time, Frand's outer fingers rubbing up and down against the edge of her ridges as the inner fingers descended on her clit, batting it back and forth between them as the tiny nub reddened dramatically. It only took a few seconds before Natalie cried out sharply as her entire body shuddered, sagging back down a second later as her ridges squished wetly against each other in quick, trembling spasms, her legs seeming to spread instinctively wide to accommodate the forced climax tensing frenetically between them.

Elizabeth watched her sister's body dance through its initial climax, feeling a strange mix of horror and twinges of awful, unbidden arousal. Seeing her sister going through this, seeing her body breaking down and giving in under Frand's insistent manipulation, should have done nothing but shock and disgust her - and perhaps, if she hadn't been subjected to the things she had before, she would have only felt the normal reaction. Seeing Frand ministering to her sister, though, somehow brought back memories of her own torrid first encounter with him. Only now, some months removed from the initial shock, the memories seemed to have taken on an edge of anxious eroticism, as she considered how her own contact had mirrored the strange transition from anxious resistance to the pleasurable surrender of succumbing to her own body's desires as Frand's touch forced her body into compliance. Was that how she had looked, shivering and trembling and overwhelmed with nervous pleasure, when she'd first collapsed into his arms? Was that how she had looked down there, all glistening pink and pulsing lips and raw, exposed feminine readiness?

Except in her case, there hadn't been any time to reflect on the situation - by the time she'd recovered, Frand had already thrown her onto the bed, and a few seconds later her surrender was already a done deal. She hadn't really had time to do anything but simply feel, not to cry, or scream, or do whatever women were supposed to do when they were about to be raped. Here, though, whatever strange twinges watching her sister climax had brought on were quickly cut through by the sound of her sister's soft, defeated sobs. Frand, though, seemed to see them as tears of frustration, leaning in close and brushing the fur on Natalie's head while reassuring her that it was all right to give in, and that he would be sure to take good care of her and that it wouldn't hurt a bit. Natalie, though, found some reserve of strength in herself and weakly shook him off again, and Frand seemed to show a surprising amount of patience as he pulled back again; a few minutes later, though, his hand was back at work between her legs, Elizabeth looking silently on and trying as hard as she could not to feel anything at all as Frand forced her sister's body to betray her anew.

If anything, Elizabeth realized as her sister convulsed again, Frand's distorted sense of love meant that his doing the "right" thing was exactly the opposite, and that his rough, unceremonious taking of her had actually been the merciful approach. What he was doing to Natalie was almost some form of slow-motion, humiliating torture, forcing her body to succumb again and again, forcing her into a weaker and more desperate state until she finally gave in to his "love." Despite everything she'd been through, Elizabeth could only imagine how much worse it must be for her sister, not just being taken, but being forced to submit in both body and soul, being reduced to the instincts of an animal and stripped of every shred of dignity and independence as her own sister looked on and did nothing to stop it. As Frand began to work once again, and Natalie shuddered once more, a heavy pang of guilt pushed its way forcefully through to the front of Elizabeth's mind. She had to do something, but what? She was powerless to stop Frand, and even speaking up against him could cause him to go off unpredictably - while he might claim otherwise, Elizabeth knew from experience what her father was truly like. That left only one option, and one that she was more than familiar with: offering herself up as a sacrifice, in the hopes of at least buying her sister a small respite.

Elizabeth did what occasionally worked, at least when Naomi was shrieking in pain under her father and she needed to give her a break. She flopped over onto her back, and when Frand noticed and moved to pull her back to her watching position, she spread her legs apart just enough and ran a hand down the front of her panties. When Frand just looked at her quizzically, though, she spelled it out for him: there were two women in the room, and while one of them probably needed his attentions more than the other, there was nothing wrong in taking turns. Frand, not seeming to see the ploy for what it was, reminded her that her sister's plight was more urgent to deal with, grabbing her arms and pulling her back up despite her pleas - only to take her into his arms, holding her close to his chest in a surprisingly chaste, almost fatherly embrace. He held her for several minutes, gently petting her head and saying softly into her ear how much he cherished her, how she was his perfect little woman, and how lucky he was to share his life with all of them. At the same time, though, she could feel her father's member practically thrumming through his underwear against her stomach, and knew that however Natalie eventually reacted, he was going to begin what he truly had in store for her very, very soon.

He finally set her back down on the bed, although he made sure she was watching carefully again before he turned back to her sister. She had received a brief respite from Frand's ministrations, and despite the fact that Frand had hardly done anything to her at the moment, Elizabeth half-expected to for her sister to give her a small look of relief or gratitude for at least belatedly stepping in and doing something to share the burden. Where Frand had left off, though, Natalie's own hormones and responses had picked up on their own. Her legs splayed off to either side, no longer even bothering with trying to maintain any pretense of modesty, and a steady stream of moisture was trickling down from between her lips to pool and soak into the sheets below. Down there, her sister seemed swollen even beyond the point of readiness, her mound puffing up even more, stretching up and out even as it tugged further on the inner lips it contained, spreading them to either side to fully expose the engorged, yielding flesh that surrounded her opening. Seeing her condition, Frand grinned tremendously, once again solicitously asking Natalie whether she was ready for him - this time, though, instead of calling him off, Natalie couldn't seem to find any words at all, reduced instead to a husky, plaintive mewling sound, tinged with an edge of desperation. Between her heat and Frand's hands, her body had reached its limit of resistance, and seemed to desire relief more than even thought.

As soon as he heard her barely verbal response, Frand's hands were already moving back towards his sides, and Natalie barely even moved when he released her. His boxers slid down, and were quickly on the floor, giving Elizabeth a not-so-flattering view of his furry butt as he quickly got on all fours and positioned himself between her sister's legs. Instead of just lowering himself down on her body, though, as he had with Elizabeth, he hooked his arms under her knees and brought her legs back up towards her chest, angling her hips upward and thrusting her pussy into the air as her tail twitched limply beneath her. Holding her in that position, he crouched his body down over her, even as Elizabeth realized why he was putting her in that particular position - from that angle, her crotch was clearly on display from where Elizabeth was sitting, where it would otherwise have been almost invisible from the position in which Frand had taken her. True to his word, Frand was making sure that Elizabeth would be able to see each and every horrid, carnal detail of their mating.

Now that his prize was so firmly in his grasp, Frand was done asking for permission. Without hesitation, he rocked his hips downward in a practiced, almost perfunctory motion, and Natalie was so heatedly prepared that even with both hand occupied, there was no need to even carefully guide himself in. The tip of his cock caught the edge of Natalie's mound, letting the soft, puffy flesh draw him in, the tip skittering across the surface for a moment before catching on her lips and following them down to her exposed, vulnerable opening. There wasn't any catching, not a moment of hesitation, not even a sense of anything stretching or being shoved aside as she was already fully open to him. There was just his shaft, sliding smoothly into her, and then her pussy lips forming a bulging, taut crimson ring that was already yielding slightly around the edge of his knot pushed in snugly against them.

And there, for a moment, he stopped, and just as oddly began talking again when Elizabeth had been certain he'd much rather be getting down to business. Instead, though, he began explaining that he was doing this so that Natalie could get accustomed to the feeling of him inside her, and so that Elizabeth could see what it looked like to be initially mated without too much motion obscuring her view - and how this would help her know what her body could expect so that it would all feel not just normal, but second nature, when it was her turn to go through it again. Elizabeth just looked on, aghast, as her sister's hips squirmed weakly around the shaft impaling them, and then watched as it slid back out, Natalie's lips tugging gently upward as though they were trying to hug the crimson mass and bring it back into place, grimacing as her father's veiny length glistened and shone perversely with her sister's slickness. Then Frand's hips slammed back into place, Natalie's lips seemingly pulled back inside along with the thrust, leaving their base in a tensed ring around his knot for a moment before rising again as Frand slowly began to build up a rhythm, and as his thrusts began to elicit the bucking hips and sharp, barking cries that Elizabeth now knew all too well: the involuntary, instinctual rhythms of a woman's body and animal mind fully succumbing to being bred.

If Frand's display was intended to ease Elizabeth's fears, in reality they were having a much different effect. The sight of her sister's most intimate parts stretching and squishing and tensing under Frand's steady, relentless thrusts merely served to confirm an already depression realization. It wasn't that Elizabeth herself had been particularly weak, or hadn't fought back enough, or had been lacking in some other virtue. Natalie was a strong, independent woman who had stood up to Frand before, the only one with the guts to resist and escape unaided. And yet, for all that, there she was, barking and whimpering as Frand took her. The reality of it, Elizabeth knew, was that behind closed doors, beyond the porous protections of outside society, women like her and her sister were powerless to resist men like Frand. No matter how strong they might be, their muscles would never be a match for his, and the scant clothes they were allowed to wear were nothing more that the slightest, most momentary barriers. In fact, watching Frand effortlessly thrusting into her sister, Elizabeth couldn't help but perversely wonder that women, in their most intimate parts, seemed almost designed to submit. There was no barrier that a woman's body put up to keep a man out, no muscle she could clench or defense she could raise, lips that spread and an entrance that yielded regardless of her wishes. And that wasn't even counting the scourge of heat, which caused a woman's body to open and prepare itself unbidden, spreading her apart and clouding her mind so that even the thought of resistance gave way. Now that it was happening, Natalie wasn't even trying to fight back at all anymore, just lying there and letting her body rock and react in time with Frand's. The only remnants of her earlier defiance were her clenched-shut eyes, perhaps trying to imagine that she was anywhere but here, doing anything but this, and the few ignored, solitary tears that pooled up at their edges before slowly trickling away into her fur.

Just as Elizabeth was finally beginning to feel numb about it, though - becoming inured to the violating sights, the squelching, slapping sounds, and the intermingling of Natalie's sickly-sweet, heated scent with Frand's growing, perversely heady musk - the angle of Frand's hips shifted abruptly, and his next thrust, instead of dipping in briefly only to bob back out again, slammed down hard enough to make Natalie's body buck forward on the bed in response, his hips pressing in against her hard and relentlessly as the stretched ring of her flesh strained outward under the pressure of the knot. The move was accompanied, as it had to be, by a short, gasping bark from Natalie at the initial impact, followed by a choked, ragged, almost spastic moan as the feeling of the knot being forced against her overwhelmed what was left of her consciousness with a shock of intermingled pleasure and pain. While her sister's surrender had truly happened some time before, Elizabeth knew that it was now all but certain, and while her lips stretching around the knot seemed tensed almost to the breaking point, Elizabeth knew that they too would soon yield. With each hard, wracking thrust, she watched as they strained for a moment before finding some newfound level of elasticity, becoming a tight crimson line that encircled higher and higher up the knot with each thrust. Finally, when they truly seemed like they couldn't stretch any more, she watched as they hugged the midpoint of it for a tense, trembling second - and then, with a sickening, squelching pop, the thing was suddenly buried inside her, her entire mound seeming to bulge outward to contain it even as the very outer edge of her lips, the last part that the knot hadn't pulled inside with it and buried under its pressure, settled back into a taut ring around its base, the flesh flashing from crimson to a deep, vivd purple almost instantaneously.

Elizabeth had known it would happen, of course, but it was the strangest thing to actually see it happen, to watch as her sister's body was strained to its absolute limit before giving in to its ultimate surrender. Elizabeth looked on, perversely fascinated by the whole spectacle, the scene seeming to take up her whole vision and concentration as it unfolded before her. She barely even heard her sister's incoherent scream in the background, or noticed that her own hips had begun to subtly thrust back against the sheets as her body reacted to the raw display in front of her. For a moment, it almost seemed to play out in slow motion in front of her: Natalie's hips desperately trying to squirm out from beneath Frand's, gyrating strangely around the knot whose presence she both couldn't accept and found impossible to relinquish, while at the edge of Elizabeth's vision she could see Natalie's arms come back to life and flail ineffectually at her father in a last, desperate, and beyond futile bid to get out of the situation her body was so securely locked into. Frand, though, only ground his hips in closer in a quick, intense rhythm, and just like her sister, Natalie's panicked struggle only lasted a few short seconds before her body tensed violently, as though she'd been shocked, momentarily arched into a full-body spasm as the stretched ring of her mound seemed to vibrate for a moment almost faster than Elizabeth's eyes could pick up. The tension quickly dissipated, though, first to an almost fluttering vibration, twitching for a few seconds in an odd, rapid, almost random cadence before quickly resolving into a series of strong, rhythmic motions, the ring clenching visibly inward around the base of the knot as her body gave itself over completely to the sort of body-wracking orgasm that only being knotted could bring. While she could only see the most exterior signs of it, Elizabeth knew from experience that the contractions ran through her entire length inside, her body forcing its unwanted pleasure through every inch of her even as it milked the shaft buried inside her to its inevitable climax.

Frand, though, somehow managed to hold out until Natalie's contractions had all but ceased - probably, Elizabeth thought, so that he could make sure that Natalie could cruelly and clearly feel every pulse of cum as he unloaded it inside her, and so that Elizabeth would be able to see the culmination of his horrid show unobstructed. Sure enough, now that he was fully inside, he'd shifted his hips back up, giving Elizabeth a good view of his fuzzy sheath as it tightened up and pulled in closer to his body, his balls pressing up against the edge of Natalie's mound, close enough that Elizabeth was sure Natalie could feel them twitching strongly against her as Frand finally let himself cum. A moment after each twitch, Natalie let out a short, shrill whimper, Elizabeth knowing that her cries gave sound to each gentle impact as another jet of seed shot from Frand's buried tip, splashing hotly through her very last spread-open barrier to settle irrevocably within her womb.

And then, just like that, it was over. Frand grunted a couple of times and then rolled over, enfolding Natalie in his embrace, telling her over and over in an almost breathless voice how well she'd done, what a good girl she was, and how much he loved her. The vivid image of her sister's most intimate parts, and Frand's violation of them, were mercifully hidden from view. Assuming that Frand no longer cared if she was still watching, Elizabeth flopped down on the bed next to them, still feeling overwhelmed, partly numb, and depressingly aroused from what she had just witnessed. She could guiltily feel the spot of wetness on the fabric of the panties pressing against her, a sensation that only added to the overwhelming wrongness of the entire thing. It was one thing to feel it happen, but witnessing it like that was somehow an order of magnitude worse. Maybe it was the fact that without the sensations and instincts to overwhelm her, she had truly and clearly seen what had been done to her for the very first time. And as horrible as it had been, then, knowing how... pathetic it all was made her situation suddenly seem all the more despairing. It was made even worse by the fact that, even while cradling her sister, Frand seemed to remember about the needs his daughter had professed in her earlier failed gambit, reaching a hand over to slide down the front of her panties and start working insistently against her crotch. To her shame, even with the fingers massaging her through the soft fabric, her contemptible arousal meant that it took less than a minute before she fluttered and climaxed against the touch, saturating her panties and her father's perverse hand with her juices. Through the light haze that her climax created in her mind, she eventually heard the soft pop that signified that her sister's first mating with Frand had concluded - followed by an uncomfortable, slightly queasy lurch in her belly that she'd learned was her soon-to-be child moving around within her. At the moment, at least, that reminder seemed to remove the last possible bit of denial about her current situation, and she felt tears welling up in her eyes. Knowing that her sister was surely feeling worse, though, she clamped her muzzle shut, letting only the slightest whimper escape it and crying silently as she watched her sister shift in Frand's arms to look at him. When she spoke, though, Natalie's tone didn't seem angry, or frustrated, embarrassed or depressed - just blank and even, as she uttered only a single word.

"Why?"

Frand, clueless even now, offered the expected reply. "Because you're my daughter, and as there is no other man in your life to do so, it is my duty to take your heat myself - just as it is your duty as a woman in my house to surrender it to me. Now that you have done so, now that you have taken on your role, we're going to be a nice, happy family once again." Then he set her down, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and got up to take a piss, leaving her lying there, limp and defeated. After a moment, though, she rolled over, an act that seemed to take a tremendous effort, and looked over at her sister, her eyes glinting with tears to match Elizabeth's own.

"I'm sorry," she said, tremulously, to Elizabeth's surprise.

"Sorry? I don't- I was the one who just, just sat there while he just took you like that-"

"And could you... haah... have stopped him?"

"I- No. You can't stop Frand, but... I should have done something, warned you somehow. I should be the one apologizing to you, not the other way around."

"And how could you have warned me, if you didn't even know where I was? No... hnhh... I'm sorry. I'm sorry that when I took off, I didn't take you both with me. I swear I didn't know he would get this bad. I knew he was violent, but he never really hit you guys, and I could only figure out how to take care of myself. If I had known..."

Elizabeth felt ready to cry all over again. "Look, we're both sorry. Now that you're in this just as much as I am, I don't even know what to do. I saved Jessica, maybe, but I... I failed you. I'm a failure, a fuck-up, I'm so used to this awfulness that I almost came from watching him rape you. I'm... irredeemable. You were strong, you fought, he laid you low, and somehow I have to be to blame. You're not supposed to be here, you're not supposed to be going through this, but me... if I've fallen so far that that's how I reacted to you being hurt, then maybe I deserve this."

"No one deserves this, Lizzie. No one. If there was a way out of this, I'd take it. I never knew Frand was this clever, but... it's too late. I'm not naive. Even including mom, he's strong enough that even the three of us together probably couldn't resist him. And with this stupid heat-" She paused, flinching, before rubbing a hand down between her legs to quiet feelings that were seemingly already building up again. "With that, I can't even resist him properly if I try. If he's put this much effort into it, he's probably barring all the doors now, and I doubt he'll even let me out of his sight." She shook her head. "This is so fucked up. He just... he just raped me. I never really thought about it, just what they show on dramas on TV. I thought I'd feel angry, or hurt, or depressed, or something. Maybe even just totally blank, like my mind was broken or something. But I feel good. And right now, that's the most horrible feeling of all." She cringed, trying to blink through her tears. "So, you shouldn't feel guilty. This stuff is all just... insane, upside-down and backwards, and I don't know what to do. Don't know what I can do. How... How did you make it through all of this?"

"I just... once Jessica was safe, I just let it happen, and knowing that she was okay was... it made the other stuff bearable. But that's all."

Natalie nodded, gritting her muzzle, and Elizabeth wanted to say something more, something reassuring or helpful that would make the things that happened next somehow more bearable, but the conversation was cut short as Frand walked back into the room, no longer even trying to hide his nakedness or his burgeoning erection, and within moments he had once again expertly corralled Natalie in his arms and begun to work her towards another mating. This time, though, things progressed much more quickly, now that Natalie was fully in heat and had had the urge to fight it literally fucked out of her. Now that he was done with his tutorial from earlier, Frand all but ignored his other daughter, apart from snapping at her when she tried to get up and leave. Instead, she lay there next to them, curling up against her pillow and tucking her head firmly into it, turned away from what was happening both to give her sister slightly more dignity as she suffered again through Frand's ministrations, and also to give herself a respite from the reality of what was happening. Soon, though, the bed was rocking with a forceful, steady rhythm, and even the pillow clamped tightly around her head wasn't enough to mute out her sister's cries. It was too much to allow her to sleep, and she felt and heard more than saw Frand vigorously mate and knot her sister twice more, Natalie's sad, defeated little whimpers as he spurted inside her reverberating through her head and placing a crushing weight upon her mind. Even though Natalie was probably right - that there was one, and only one, person ultimately to blame for their shared, miserable predicament - she couldn't help but feel awful, even as the cries faded away and the only sound that remained was that of Frand's snoring. He only slept for a while, though, and got up again when the midday sun streamed clear and bright through the windows, dragging a naked, wobbly-kneed Natalie off to get cleaned up before they all continued what was sure to be a very trying day.

As the hours and days passed, things seemed to settle once again into a new normal, accompanied by the supposedly new and improved Frand. True to his word, at least in his own perverse way, he tried to live up to his newfound principles. Once again, his dictated dress code for the women - panties and midriff-bearing, nipple-outlining shirts - was fully in force, and the few skirts he'd allowed Elizabeth were quickly gone, as they apparently interfered with her duty as a woman to show off her beauty to him. Frand, though, apparently felt somehow guilty about this - not because he'd done it, of course, but because he hadn't performed the reciprocal duty for them. As a result, when he was in the house, he now wore only a pair of snug, form-fitting boxer briefs, with his balls and sheath clearly outlined and any erection disturbingly visible, especially as it seemed to be omnipresent during the remainder of Natalie's heat. Also true to his word, unlike with Elizabeth, he didn't simply rip Natalie's panties off and take her wherever they happened to be, deciding that such a thing was too disrespectful. He seemed to think it was perfectly acceptable and loving, though, to pull her into his arms and mash his fingers in against her crotch, gently cradling her when she inevitably collapsed, quivering, against him and carrying her back to his bedroom, usually closing the door mercifully before getting down to business and only occasionally taking Elizabeth or Naomi along for the ride.

A few other things, due to his philosophy, were at least... somewhat less bad. Instead of climbing in the shower with them, he instead watched from the doorway, as clothed as he ever was, as they washed up, albeit occasionally encouraging them to wash each other for his diversion. However, while it provided slightly more dignity than the usual pawing, it also only slightly delayed the evening's inevitable content - while he usually left midway through the shower, leaving them to rinse and dry off in peace, once they had done so they were expected to walk out, naked, and stand in a line at the foot of the bed, while Frand kneeled in front of them and gave one of his strange, impromptu speeches about how much he loved and appreciated them, and how grateful he was to have them all there in their proper roles. And then, even more typically, he would approach them one by one, rubbing between their legs with practiced fingers that by now knew every one of their sensitive spots; and, one by one, they would each give in and collapse, weak-kneed, onto the bed, after which he would give his attentions to those who he determined most needed them. For the first week, of course, that person was Natalie, and over time Elizabeth became as inured to the sounds of her sister being taken repeatedly for an entire evening as she was to it happening to her mother. Well, except for one important difference: she didn't feel a twinge of guilt stabbing at her every time she heard her mother have a moan forced out of her.

In a weird way, after a while, it really did feel basically as it had before, just with one additional woman in the house to take her share of Frand's lust until her belly, too, began to swell. Elizabeth, meanwhile, had already had hers swell to the most that it was going to, and each day she felt the child inside her moving around more and more. Soon, soon enough at least, she knew that she would give birth. She had learned enough in school about it to know that, as a wolf, she knew that the birth itself would be quick, generally uncomplicated and relatively painless - her body would instinctually tell her to find a soft, dark place to curl up, and then make a series of things happen automatically inside her, and after it was done she would hold her baby in her arms. What would happen then, though? She had no idea how to care for a child, she didn't know what Naomi would actually be able to teach her, and Natalie, of course, had her own problems now. And then... and then there was the question of what would happen if the baby she delivered was a girl. Frand might be disappointed, but probably wouldn't do much more under his new philosophy other than wait for her next heat to arrive and knock her up again. Wolf children grew up fast, though, and Elizabeth shuddered when she considered what that could mean: the very real possibility, if nothing was done to stop it, that some years down the line she could be lying there on that same horrible bed while Frand raped her own daughter in front of her.

The one slight silver lining of the situation was that, for the moment at least, Frand seemed to have his fill of female attention, and any talk or action directed at getting Jessica back was noticeably absent. Natalie, despite her proclivity for running away, seemed to be there for good this time - a full, heated week of being constantly under Frand seemed to have sapped most of her resistance, and she seemed to know that, after what happened and due to the fact that she was with child, her old life would no longer work out the way she had planned even if she managed to elude Frand and escape once again. As a result, much like Elizabeth, she seemed to have simply given in, accepting Frand's influence in her life and at least trying to live the rest of it around him. At first, after the week of heat was over but the humiliation of catering to Frand's needs continued, Natalie had seemed to go kind of blank, and Elizabeth had worried that she would sort of fade away into herself as Naomi often did, but after a few days of Elizabeth sitting next to her and trying to draw her out, she had seemed to come back. A few days more, and she seemed mostly back to normal, but still hollowed out somehow, without the drive and determination that had seemed core to her personality before. Now, though she seemed okay enough on the outside, she seemed to sort of drift through the things that were expected of her, only seeming to come to life fully when she was talking or doing things with her sister, and every night the blankness returned as she walked naked from the shower, and stayed until Frand was done with her.

Despite the changes to her sister's personality, and the underlying damage that they surely concealed, Elizabeth had to admit that she was relieved to have someone there to share her life and commiserate with again. Not having to be alone with predatory Frand and listless Naomi, having a sister to talk and share her life with again, sitting on the couch for hours just listening to her experiences in the outside world and filling her in on what had happened here at home, brought life again to an environment that had before been oddly hot and cold, filled with aggressive lust but mostly absent anything truly approaching love. Even though it seemed almost normal again, except for the nights, the guilt was something that Elizabeth simply couldn't shake, and nagged at her every time she heard listlessness creep into her sister's voice, or the oddly quiet panting that was now the only sound she made when Frand was taking her, now that heat was no longer forcing instinctual cries from her chest. Beneath it all, beneath the coerced acceptance and feigned happiness, she knew that she had failed her sister, and that it was probably only a matter of time before Frand started thinking about Jessica again.

Amidst it all, though, on the eve of what would turn out to be her daughter's birthday, it was that horrible vision of what Frand might do to her own child that finally set her resolve. Hearty wolves like him could stay alive, and sexually active, for quite a long time - and given his relative youth, and the relative quickness with which wolf children could achieve physical and sexual maturity, there could potentially be several more generations forced to literally serve under him. That was a legacy that Elizabeth knew she couldn't countenance. If she simply waited around and did nothing to change the current fate of her family, though, that horrible future could potentially come to pass. There was no question, then; when it came down to it, provider or no, Frand had to go before the cycle repeated itself. And since there was no way he would leave the situation he created for himself under any circumstances, that left only one answer. It would have to be quick, sudden, taking place in a moment when he let his guard down, when he was completely trusting of her, when he would never suspect it. And once it was done, then... well, then the rest would somehow sort itself out, but with the important difference that her children, at least, would grow up safe and free.

---

Ever since their first glimpse of what took place within the ritual area, heat and mating had become the main topics among Jessica's peers. Part of the reason, of course, was due to what they'd just seen, and there was much discussion amongst themselves trying to interpret what had taken place and what it all meant. Mautaye, having gone through it, was especially peppered with questions early on, but even with the education they'd had so far, she didn't seem to quite have the vocabulary to clearly relate what she'd experienced.

Mautaye herself, though, represented the other reason it was on their minds: she was the leading edge, but they all knew that soon, very soon, what she was going through would happen to all of them. It was also, it seemed, a more involved process than Jessica's sister had let on - although, admittedly, she'd been consciously trying to hide it, and for good reason. From the little she had seen, though, she'd been under the impression that heat was sort of a sequential process - a woman got into it, a man did things to her, and then the woman, happy or otherwise, went back to normal. Her sister had seemed to, at least until the next evening, and Jessica had run immediately after that. For Mautaye, though, the resolution of the process seemed only to last from when she left the ritual area to when she awoke the next morning, and as soon as she did her behavior reverted to the giddy, overly friendly, extra cuddly and touchy kind that apparently represented what heat was naturally supposed to look like. It also was longer-lived than Jessica had initially thought - during a hastily-prepared lecture on some of the specifics of heat that the instructor gave them the next day, it was explained that heat, and participation in the nightly rituals, always lasted for at least a week, and sometimes even two.

That class, of course, had been buzzing with questions, but as the teacher explained to them, it was generally considered inappropriate to talk in detail about the mating rituals before the people involved had had a chance to experience them for themselves - that, she said, was the most natural way, and meant that they could experience the true, basic impulses and desires of mating without other complications or consequences. Instead, she chose to focus in more detail on the changes that came about when a girl went into heat, and attempted to demonstrate that while the changes could be substantive and seem strange of scary at first, that they were a normal part of the natural order and a key component of a woman's fundamental beauty and sexuality. To more clearly demonstrate her points, and true to the hands-on nature of the class, Mautaye was called up to the front; and, once the teacher made sure she was comfortable with it, she leaned back on the floor with her legs spread while the other girls were invited to gather around her and see some of the changes that heat brought forth in a woman's body.

Jessica was still a little nervous about taking a look, as it meant coming face to face with the condition that had led to so much trauma for her sister. She worried, too, that seeing it would brush aside the lingering bits of denial that she'd been using to keep from thinking about it, and remind her that it was a situation she would soon have to confront personally. Heat, it seemed, led to the ritual of mating no matter what - according to the teacher, at least, it wasn't just something that women in heat wanted to go through, but something they actually needed, and would demand on their own if the heat went on too long without it. If that happened, though, uncontrolled and in public, it was very much frowned upon - which was why, on they day they went fully into heat, that night they would take part in the ritual to make sure that their heat "expressed itself" in the proper setting, and stayed under proper control each day they were under its influence.

Her conflicted curiosity eventually outweighed her fear, though, and she ventured over close enough to take a quick peek between Mautaye's legs. After all, it wasn't exactly like she hadn't seen what it looked like, at least from the front - as they were all naked, the pink, wet puffiness of heat was at least partially visible to everyone who happened to be working or playing nearby. Up close like that, though, with everything clearly visible... for a moment, Jessica flinched away, the sight of Mautaye's sex seeming momentarily too alien - but when she gulped down her fears and looked back, taking in each of the features on their own, Jessica realized that it did look, in a way, beautiful. The inner parts, usually tucked away, were gently spread open like the soft petals of a delicate flower, glistening and sparkling with moisture from the light trickling into the classroom. Coupled with the deep, vibrant crimson color of the puffy flesh that surrounded them, she had to agree that it looked... right, somehow. On the few occasions Jessica had looked at her own spot growing up, it had seemed like a whole lot of flesh nothing around a hole where her pee came out, and in an odd way it was actually somewhat encouraging to see that even such a nondescript spot had a hidden beauty that could blossom under the right circumstances. Of course, a small, anxious voice in her head reminded her that such beauty also carried with it a certain dangerous vulnerability, at least in the presence of one who was willing to exploit it. After all, she could see it as she watched Mautaye - while Jessica herself was too nervous to try it, a few of the girls reached out to touch Mautaye's pussy with her consent. The flesh dutifully squished and flexed under their touch, the inner petals curling around the finger of a particularly daring Teilen, and Jessica knew that in such a state, they would yield just as easily around one of the boys' penises, whether the girl wanted it to or not. Here, though, she was sure that such things would truly only happen if they were wanted, as her viewing of the ritual seemed to indicate, but it still made her think about what had happened to Elizabeth in her father's bedroom - and how horribly helpless it must have felt to have a part of her body that couldn't fight back against what Frand had done to it. If anything, the notion made Jessica even more uneasy, and she began to dread even more the arrival of the fateful day when her heat would arrive, and she would have to confront it: both in the hopefully better situation she was currently in, and in the dark, parallel world that Frand's cruel acts had conjured forth, a world that she desperately wanted to ignore, but one that she knew would never truly fade away as long as her sister was forced to reside there.

Mercifully, though, the lesson was soon over, and at the very least the phenomenon of heat was now somewhat less mysterious. In fact, from what the teacher and Mautaye had said, it actually sounded kind of fun and exciting - in their environment, at least. Jessica was just happy not to think about it for a while, and let her denial take hold again for at least a few more days. It was slightly assisted the next day, where instead of having another session talking in detail about heat, their sex-ed teacher took the girls who weren't already involved over to the ground where the mating rituals took place.

It was empty during the day, of course, and so instead of making their way onto the ramparts to watch, their teacher instead ushered them in via the main gate that they would use once their heat arrived. Inside, without the torches and groups of writhing people, there really wasn't a whole lot to see, just an expanse of grass with a mostly-doused fire pit sending up faint white tendrils of smoke. Scent, though, was another matter - intermingled with the lingering smoky smell were subtle hints at dozens of different scents, both male and female, all tinged with the complementary pungence of musk or heat. Even though the acts that accompanied them were long done, the scents remained, a clear and present reminder of what had taken place, and a foretelling of what was to come once the sun retreated back over the horizon.

Benoit was there to greet them, along with a limber, vulpine-featured woman around Naomi's age that he introduced as Mewasahna. She was the woman in charge of maintaining the sanctity of the rituals that took place there, and she was to be the one who would teach them how to do the various ritual dances, as well as instill in them the importance and value of the rituals themselves.

The dances, though, came first, and Mewasahna walked them through each of the motions step by step, letting them try out the turns, whirls and leaps at their own pace, and providing more direct, hands-on guidance and encouragement to the girls who flailed or stumbled. Jessica, though, had always been athletic enough, and the work she did every day had left her feeling stronger and more balanced than she'd ever been. Some of the moves were more complicated than others, but she quickly picked up the basics of the sequence and how she had to move, following along more than adequately as the instructor talked about the significance of the different movements: the spins representing the continuing cycles of nature, of which the mating rituals played an important part, the leaps signifying the joy of moving forward in love toward a new generation. It took a couple of hours before all the girls were on board with it, but it was also quite fun, and the motion was exhilarating in and of itself, at the conclusion leaving Jessica feeling both a little exhausted but also somehow excited from the frenetic motion. Of course, she realized that was probably the point - however their heat was progressing, the ritual dance probably helped to excite all of the women involved into full readiness for what would come next. For the moment, though, Jessica was happy to collapse tiredly back onto the grass next to her friends, looking up at the wisps of clouds shifting across the blue sky above them. Rather than Mewasahna, though, it was Benoit who began to address them from off to the side, intoning in a slow, clear voice one of the stories from the times of legend, one of the beginnings from which the mating rituals came about.

It was a story about the old gods, the ones that shaped the world, back when they were represented by the sort of animals that walked on four legs instead of two, and the predecessors to the more complicated modern ones. In the story, as the young world was just beginning to show the first signs of life, two of the gods had a disagreement on how a certain part of the world was to be shaped. The argument became a fight, and then a battle, with the other gods being drawn into it one by one. The battle raged and raged, the reason for it eventually fading and changing until the battle was simply a fight for its own sake, one so imbued with the magic and power of the old gods that the violence and hate itself eventually coalesced into its own living form, creating a new god: a silent, dark fox with bloodied fangs and burning eyes that spread its paws and wrapped the world in its horrible, hateful embrace. This new being, though, only made the gods more angry, and gave a new reason to their violence. They fought with it angrily, and it fought silently back, but every blow they struck, every impact of anger and hate and rage, only served to make it stronger. The violence merely caused it to spread, its tail growing and splitting forth into tendrils that surrounded the entire world, choking out the light and sending all the new life it contained into darkness and peril. Not understanding that their own efforts were responsible, the gods redoubled them, and the world plunged further into despair.

All would have been lost, but one of the goddesses discovered the errant ways of her brethren and decided to intervene. She made her way among the warring gods, asking them to step aside and let her try to defeat the monster they had created. Initially they scoffed at her, but as their own efforts continued to fail, one by one they backed off and let her face the dark fox alone. The goddess was a beautiful wolfess, her clear, pure fur radiating light out into the cosmos, but even that light seemed insignificant against the gathering darkness. As she approached, the other gods watched, sure that at any instant the darkness of the fox would engulf her and her light would be snuffed out.

When she got close, the fox lashed out in silent, incoherent rage, but she did not fight him. Instead, when a mighty paw lashed out, she simply let it slide past her, curling around it as it did and holding it tight in her warm, bright embrace. The fox paused, confused, before lashing out again, and again she parried it, puffing herself up and encircling it with her tail, bringing it in close to her and treating it only with love. The strange battle continued, each pulse of rage from the fox countered by one of kindness from the goddess. Within this embrace, the rage began to bleed away; and as the anger was replaced by love, the fox began to unwind its darkness from the world, pulling away as it was drawn deeper and closer into the goddess's loving embrace. Eventually, the world was free, as the two of them became completely intertwined and intermingled from muzzles to tails, darkness and light flashing for a moment into a muddled, electric grey, and together they, along with the other gods and goddesses, looked down on the devastated world below. As they did, though, the healing embrace bled away the last vestiges of violence, and the two combined were finally overwhelmed with love, and knew what they needed to do. Together, they encircled the earth again, but instead of choking darkness, they covered it in a life-giving embrace, a global storm of light and energy that burned away the things destroyed by darkness, rejuvenated the oceans, and poured down life-giving rain that restored the lands and brought forth new and better things to populate the world.

And so it was that the fox of darkness and the wolf of light engaged in the first carnal embrace, a ritual that could chase away the hatred and rage that would otherwise darken the world, replacing destruction with creation, life, and love. And as they created the life that would spread forth upon the renewed land, they decided that it would be similarly blessed, and so each life-form was given a version of that merging embrace, where men and women would come together and embrace love above all else - and through that love, new life would grow anew, ensuring that whatever darkness might spread into the world, there would always be life and love to push it back and wreathe the world in light and hope once again.

Benoit was not as demonstrative in his storytelling as Jaenesa, but Jessica looked over just in time to see him finish the story with a flourish, waving his arm to point towards the girls assembled nearby. "Such is the story of how the rituals began, and we honor them to this very day - as a celebration of fertility, of bringing forth new life, and in joining ourselves together in a love untainted by the conflicts and imbalances of the cold, modern world."

He turned slightly as he continued, seeming to look directly into Jessica's eyes as he spoke. "That legend is one of the more important ones to consider, and it is traditionally told to those who are coming of age. An allegory to that tale, though, one that is not often told, is that of the belief that there are those who bear the mark of of those old ones who set the world we know into motion. Those of vulpine ancestry, with pelts as dark as the night, are often considered to be harbingers of darkness. We do no see it as a stigma, though, so much as it is an obligation on our part. Any of that kind are brought into our family without question, and provided with understanding and love - so that through our acceptance of them, through rescuing them from the darkness of the outside world, we may through them bring light to he that they represent, and move the world closer to the state of peace that is its natural destiny. By that same token, the descendants of wolves, with fur like snow, are seen as prophets of hope; their arrival foretells that times of fertility and prosperity are ahead for all of us. Not all believe in such things, and that decision is up to them. I didn't take much stock in it myself, but... Jessica, when you came to us, still trying to hold out hope after treading such a difficult and painful road to get here... the more I considered it, the more I prayed and listened about it, somehow I knew that those prophecies had to be true. And I don't believe that your presence here is merely a blessing for us in general - I believe that you were brought to us for a reason, and your presence here is a good omen for your own life, and a sign that all those you care about, and all those who care about you, will see a powerful love come into their lives and uplift them, pulling them away from any lingering darkness."

Benoit stepped back slightly, panning his gaze across the assembled girls, as Jessica glanced around and noticed that they were all suddenly looking intently at her. What Benoit had said was powerful, and while she wasn't quite sure she believed it - after all, kind words or not, Elizabeth was still with Frand - it was still a nice thought, albeit one that had suddenly made her, and her predicaments, the center of attention.

"While there are sometimes such specific prophecies, though, in truth, you are all her descendants, and the blessed power of fertility and love resides within each of you. That is why the mating rituals are some of our most important and sacred, as they bring forth that expression of love and life that you have been blessed with. A man may know pleasure, and engage in the rituals with you as equal, but he shall only know the abiding love of your season by reflection. It is you who have been given the gift of someday bestowing life, and bringing it into this world with the divine love of the earth, the sea, the sky, and those who watch over them all. And so, when your first season comes, may you welcome it with joy and allow its happiness and love to flow through you and enrich us all."

Benoit finished his speech by actually bowing to them in respect. "The tribe awaits your ascension to womanhood, and to take your places among us not as children, but as equals." As he walked away, the girls looked amongst each other in stunned silence. To see the de facto leader of their tribe refer to them with such unexpected reverence was something else. Jessica was probably the only one who wasn't particularly impressed, but that was mainly because she was turning Benoit's words over and over in her head. It was probably too much to ask, or even wish for, but somehow she truly hoped that Benoit was right - that her being there really was some sort of good omen, and that somehow the world would convince someone to intervene, and set her sister free from the nightmare world Frand had forced her to inhabit with him.

That hope, vain or not, continued to hover in the back of her mind, even as her classmates spoke around their cooking fire with renewed enthusiasm after their return from the ritual area. While heat and mating had been a topic of interest and speculation before, there was now a palpable sense of anticipation surrounding it, and almost a sort of reverence towards the few girls that were already experiencing it. After Mautaye, Callie had been next, and Isabel had awoken to it only the morning before. In their state, they seemed happy to occupy the center of attention, snuggling up to their questioners and purring happily. Jessica was happy enough for them, but for a different reason: they provided an easy distraction that took the attention off of her, and headed off a situation where she might be pressed to explain just how she was supposed to be prophetic. While it seemed crucial to hold on to the hope that such a thing afforded, the more rational part of her wondered how reliable it could possibly be. If anything, she had probably caused her family more strife by running, at least in terms of Frand's reaction, and it still hurt to know that Elizabeth had to suffer all of it alone. If she could really be that prophecy, though, if she could really make her presence count in some way that could bring hope back to her family... if that happened, if it pushed her to find a way to make something good happen for them, then maybe it was a prophecy that could have meaning, whether or not it was accompanied by divine intervention.

When she finally drifted off to sleep that night, it took longer than usual, as she felt excited and energized by her newfound determination. She didn't yet know what she would be able to do - after all, omens or not, the people here didn't seem very eager to get involved in any disputes that were part of the modern world, or venture unnecessarily from their compound. She could probably ask Aryen to do something, given how she knew he felt about it, but she didn't know what she could ask him to do - he seemed strong enough, but he was still young and small, and she could imagine Frand snapping him in two if he decided to make some sort of challenge. There had to be something she could do, though, and as she drifted off to sleep, she resolved to figure out what it was, no matter how hard it might be.

While she was sufficiently wrapped up in her own plans that she didn't really consider it, some of the excitement that she had felt had come from a decidedly different source. And while that source wasn't particularly obvious that evening, hovering subtly in the background, it grew as she slept, causing her dreams to grow wilder and more vivid until she finally awoke with a start, her eyes snapping open to see the first rays of sunlight shining in through the edge of the tent flap, and a strange, wild undercurrent of energy coursing and tensing through her body. As strange as it was, though, given what everyone in the tent was going through, she was all but certain about what was happening. As much as she had both half-anticipated and half-dreaded it, the waiting and wondering was now over: whatever she might have wanted, no matter how much she might have wished for it to be cancelled or delayed, she knew within moments that this was the first day of her heat.

Not that it was a bad feeling, of course, which she quickly realized as she fully awakened, as she usually did, into a quick morning stretch. This stretch, though, lasted several luxurious seconds, and send a series of happy little shivers thrilling wonderfully down her spine and setting her tail off to twitch madly underneath her. In fact, she quickly realized, everything seemed somehow better. Her fur felt fluffier, the air smelled crisper, and the entire world looked more vivid, with everything in sight, even things that would normally fade into the background, seemed to pop out at her into the center of her vision. And through it all, seeming to pulse just beneath her skin, was that weird, nebulous energy, at once thrilling and yet also deeply comfortable, leaving her simultaneously wanting to jump around the inside of the tent and curl up into a big, warm, fluffy ball. Every part of her seemed somehow more sensitive, more aware,all of it together forming an incredible sensation that was like nothing she'd ever experienced before.

As she woke up further, though, the sense of coursing, nervous energy only got stronger, accenting her growing, energetic restlessness. She had to get up, had to do something to burn off some of the energy running through her, before the pent-up tension she was feeling, as there was some part of her that seemed to know that eventually that thrilling energy would boil over into frustration if it wasn't made use of properly. Since at the moment she felt really, really good, she really didn't want anything to get in the way of that - not for now, at least.

Of course, she'd learned enough about heat to know that there would be other urges that would emerge to accompany the current ones, but she hadn't quite understood just how amazing and alive the condition would make her feel. True, the girls who had already gone into heat had definitely seemed happy enough, in a bouncy, cuddly, and strangely half-dazed kind of way - but initially, at least, heat wasn't seeming to muddle her perception at all. In fact, she felt the opposite - everything, including her own thoughts, seemed somehow preternaturally clear, and despite the fact that every few minutes the edges of everything seemed to glow with their own inner light, the world was suddenly, uniformly fascinating. Admittedly, the teacher had hinted that every woman experienced their heat a little differently, and perhaps for Mautaye and the others it had been even more revelatory, to the point of affecting their words and interactions.

As she considered that, though, she couldn't help but think what such things would have meant for her sister. To be so aware, so sensitive in every way imaginable; and then to have Frand do things to her, and having to experience every touch, every movement, every physical and emotional hurt at heat-enforced maximum intensity... to get through it, she realized that her sister must have been even stronger, even more determined than she had realized.

Jessica knew, though, that she couldn't dwell on those memories, and not just because the buzzing energy in her head was making it a little hard to concentrate. She knew the state she was in, and also what came along with it: participation in the mating rituals as soon as the sun went down. Even if she could use her history with Frand to convince Benoit to let her opt out of it somehow, the words of the teacher rang out in her mind: whether her mind wanted to or not, her body would eventually demand the sort of attention the mating rituals involved, and she would be shepherded into the ritual area before her instincts threatened to spiral out of her conscious control. And in her current situation, it wasn't like she could hide her condition and pretend it wasn't happening - even if she didn't really want to look down there herself, she could already sense that there were other things happening within her beyond the initial surge of energy. Already, some of that warm, comfortable energy seemed to be settling and pooling within her belly, sliding slowly downward in a strange sort of thrilling, trickling sensation. Once she stood up, she knew, it would only be a matter of time before that warmth finished its descent and flowed out to coat a probably quite visible mound with the scented, glistening moisture that was the unquestionable mark, in this laid-bare society at least, of a woman's blessed and valued season.

So, whatever she did during the day, it seemed all but certain what would await her soon afterwards - but at the moment, the fears she was sure would accompany her first heat seemed hard-pressed to break through the uplifting energy coursing through her. And even without that, she knew, she was in a different place than she'd been on that horrible night standing on the other side of the door. That experience was still with her, true, and would probably never entirely fade away - but on the other hand, there were now a lot of other experiences to counterbalance it: watching couples engage in what was surely a similar act, but with boundless love and exhilaration, and without trepidation, shame, or fear. Hearing the chorus of enthusiastic moans and howls, similar sounds but with drastically different meanings. Watching as first Mautaye, then Callie and Isabel, emerged after their experiences, marveling at the looks of satisfied bliss on their faces, and feeling the warmth and taking in the deliciously exotic, intermingled scents radiating from their bodies as she'd help them back to the tent. Everything about what she'd seen in the encampment had told such a drastically different story about heat that, despite her experiences, she was ready to give the most weight to. It wasn't enough to eliminate the fear entirely, but it was enough that, coupled with everything else, she was more than willing to ignore it, deciding instead to bound up into a standing position. Suddenly, despite the fact that she'd never been the most eagerly athletic person in her previous life, sprinting a lap - or three - around the camp's perimeter seemed like a good idea.

As she got up, though, she was joined by Isabel, who sprung up next to her, looking her over excitedly. "Ooh! Are you in heat too?" Isabel darted down into a crouch, looking more carefully. "Oh yeah, definitely! Aren't you excited!" She arched back into a stretch, her arms curving back above her head, letting it linger as Jessica had done until a short, happy high-pitched whimper escaped her muzzle. "Wow... even after last night, it's all back the way it was before, all that like, energy and good feelings and stuff. Mmm... isn't it just woooonderful?"

Before Jessica could reply, though, Isabel suddenly sprang out of her crouch, turning in the air to land expertly in front of her before reaching out and pulling Jessica forward into a bouncy, enthusiastic hug. Normally, Jessica wasn't that used to hugging people, aside from short, chaste ones with her sisters and uncomfortable ones with Frand, but in her current state she returned the hug eagerly, bouncing in time along with her friend and reveling in how snuggly their intermingled fur felt, how soft her newly-developed breasts felt as they pressed against her own, nipples that seemed somehow extended nestling against her fur and quickly forming points of heat against the skin beneath - a sensation she probably would never have noticed before, but was made more than keenly aware of in her condition.

The hug lasted perhaps longer than one between two friends was supposed to, but neither of them minded in the least, and if anything they left the embrace even more excited than they'd been before. In fact, Isabel was so fired up that she immediately grabbed Jessica by the arm, pulling her out of the tent and onto the impromptu jog that she'd considered earlier, babbling on enthusiastically about her plans for that evening.

"Oh, Jessica, you're going to have so much fun! I know, I know, you've seen it all happen and stuff, but just watching doesn't tell you how much better it is when you're right there in the middle of it. I mean, yeah, I've seen boys before, even hugged them, but I had no idea they could make you feel like that! All warm, and loved, and totally melty inside, and then they really get in and there's this incredible feeling that runs all through you, and then you're both together and everything feels just perfect! Oh, I can't even describe it - there just aren't the right words for how awesome it is!"

She waved over at a young male fox-type that was re-threading a tent seam that had come loose on the opposite side of the pathway. He waved back with a grin, pausing from his work a moment to let his eyes linger over the pair of them. Jessica realized that she was happy to oblige, facing him with her feet planted a little father apart than usual, puffing her chest out almost instinctively to emphasize her figure. Isabel giggled a little at her stance, but was basically doing the same. Of course, the view that they had was pleasant as well - the fox was a little shorter than some of the other boys, but with a masculine definition coming into his lithe form that even the obscuring effect of his fur couldn't hide, but not so much that he didn't still maintain some of his fuzzy, boyish cuteness. Jessica hadn't really noticed him particularly before, beyond the fact that he he was a boy about her age, but at that moment he looked suddenly quite handsome, an attraction that seemed to have an immediate effect - there was a part of her that wanted to run over to him, jump into his arms, and nuzzle his extra-fluffy chestruff. She probably would have imagined more, had her lingering edge of fear not inappropriately intervened, but by the time she was able to shake it off Isabel was already tugging on her arm and moving the both of them along. Jessica acquiesced to her friend's insistence, but not before eyes locked onto the red tip nosing its way up from the boy's sheath, focused intently on it through some unspoken instinct.

"Mmm... isn't he something else? I wanted to find him last night, but it was really crowded, and since it was my first time there a whole bunch of people were trying to entice me, and when it thinned out later he was already gone. If he's there tonight, though, I'm gonna seek him out first thing, and pounce on him just like that! Ooh, or maybe I'll let him pounce on me..."

Jessica knew she didn't quite follow her friend's enthusiasm that far, at least not yet, but it was hard to deny that the boy hadn't had an effect on her. As soon as they'd moved on, the warmth in her belly had crept downward rapidly, and was soon accompanied by the sensation of something cooling between her legs. She hazarded a quick glance downward, and while it was hard to see much without really bending over, what normally showed nothing more than a patch of fur from that angle now betrayed a hint of pink, glinting with evidence that her body had fully transitioned into the stage of heat that left her ready for the mating that was still to come. In fact, she had been so preoccupied by the sudden, unbidden onslaught of thoughts and emotions that it took several more steps before what should have been the most obvious fact stood out: the boy's fur had been jet-black, with a few small flecks of silver, just like what Benoit had talked about. She wondered if Benoit had told him the same story, and what he thought about supposedly being a prophet of misfortune. From what little she'd seen of him, he seemed nice enough, and couldn't imagine him being related to anything bad like that. After all, if bad things were going to have an avatar in her world, she could think of only one man worthy of holding that title.

By the time the two of them returned to their tent, the other girls had already prepared breakfast, and they sat down next to them to eat. While the other girls sat as they normally did, Mautaye and Callie had managed to sort of curl around one another, making soft, contented purring sounds as they nibbled lightly at their food. Isabel didn't go that far, but she did snuggle up to Jessica's side, both of them enjoying each other's warmth. Although the food smelled even better than normal, somehow the scent didn't inspire its usual appetite, most of her energy still eager to go in another direction. She ate perhaps half the amount she normally did, but it seemed like more than enough, and as soon as she was finished she felt ready to jump up again and do something, anything, to take the edge of her restlessness and building anticipation.

Heat or not, though, there were still things to be done. The day passed as most of them did, although the adults, she thought, were probably more lenient on the girls who were going through heat, and rightly so: as the day progressed, it seemed to go by more and more in an anticipatory blur, albeit one that rapidly slowed down and focused any time a halfway-attractive male came into view, or her nose happened to get a whiff of their scent. As the day wore on, though, some of the buzzing energy had faded, and the strange glowing and vividness in her vision had worn off shortly after lunchtime. After a while, though, she realized that the energy hadn't really worn off, exactly, as much as it had coalesced, flowing back from her extremities and fluttering anxiously in her belly for a while before sinking lower and centering itself in her pelvis.

When the more direct feelings of heat became apparent, though, they didn't seem to work the way that the other girls had described them. It didn't seem like an itch, exactly, or an ache, or a pang like hunger or thirst. More than anything, she thought, it was more a sense of intense awareness. Before that, her insides had seemed like just that, some indistinct thing that occasionally grumbled or growled but was otherwise just an indefinite part of her, the "sexual" parts especially - she was well aware of the exterior parts, of course, especially now that such parts were not always hidden away behind clothing, but there had never really been any sense of what lay within. Now, though, that part of her had come alive with distinct feeling, and she could sense the layers of flesh within her rubbing subtly against one another with every movement, slick and warm and ready. Somehow, though, the subtleness of the sensation was more tantalizing than it ought to be, in that it was so faint against something that was so sensitive that it seemed to call out for greater intensity. Of course, she was more than aware, by now, that a boy's parts were designed for just such a thing - and now that her body was keenly aware of perhaps not its need, but certainly its desire, the notion of the mating rituals was becoming more and more directly compelling. After all, her friends had made a compelling case: cute boys to snuggle with, in intimate ways that could satisfy every part of you, even deep inside, in a way that entailed celebration and happiness. She also knew, though, that for some of them such a celebration entailed being grabbed by a boy and held tightly, pinned to the ground, quivering and yelping in that horrible cadence as their partners slammed against them again and again. It was that kind of thing that made Jessica quickly shift her gaze back to the couples around the bonfire during the times that she'd watched, because of how, despite the fact it was supposed to be happy, it seemed like something Frand might have done. All she knew was, that was the last thing she wanted to experience - but in the middle of the rituals, if someone pounced on her like that, what was she supposed to do? Deciding who to mate with was supposed to be her choice, but if someone did chase after her, could she really push them off? Would her body even be capable of it? She still remembered clearly just how quickly her sister had succumbed when Frand had claimed her, and she was aware enough of how sensitive her condition had already made her. And so, as the day wore down and the sun sank low, she headed back towards the evening meal with some anticipation, but also a sense of fear and trepidation that was more than just simple nervousness about her first time.

The combination of heat and worry led to her doing little more than picking at her food. This didn't seem to concern her friends, though, as the other girls in heat were mostly doing the same. She ate in silence, part of her wanting to bring up her concerns, but it was hard to do so when all the other girls around her were going on about the fun they were going to have, either later that evening or when their heat finally came around. It was somehow both strange, and strangely comforting, to hear them talking about their planned sexual exploits in completely frank and unashamed terms, talking about acts that her previous group of friends would only discuss in vague, hushed whispers as casually as if they were discussing their studies. It lent even more credence, at least, to the soothing voices within her that continued to work on setting her fears aside. By the time the meal was over, the feelings of warmth and energetic anticipation seemed to be unquestionably winning out, and for the first time that day, Jessica had the sense that maybe, just maybe, the craziness of heat and the mating rituals might actually turn out okay.

As they were cleaning up after their meal, Mewasahna herself came to escort Jessica and the other girls in heat over to the ritual area. The other girls looked a little surprised at that - Jessica hadn't really paid attention to it, but on previous evenings they'd simply walked over on their own. Mewasahna's explanation was that she wanted to make sure the girls remembered some of the more complicated dance moves, but at the same time it was hard not to notice that she kept her hand resting conspicuously on Jessica's shoulder, walking next to her closely enough that the fur on their sides occasionally brushed, glancing over at her frequently with a look that was neutral enough to be hard to interpret. Whether it was about the prophecy, though, or perhaps Benoit's reflected concern about what she'd been through, Jessica was content enough with the contact - though it wasn't, perhaps, what a part of her seemed to be wishing for more and more, for the moment at least she felt safer with a strong female presence nearby.

It was Jessica's second time walking into the ritual grounds proper, but the ambience could hardly have been more different. The bonfire was already alight, fresh logs piled into its center, lending the area a smoky, spicy scent as sparks flashed and glittered around the rising column of smoke. The fenced walls around them flickered in the guttering orange light, their presence casting shadows that played across them in reaction to the dancing flames. They were the first ones there, but soon after they arrived others began trickling in - first the other women, and then the cadre of men who had been given the honor of starting the night's rituals alongside them. Jessica glanced back and forth between the two groups, her nerve faltering a little as she saw the shafts of the males begin to emerge and grow above their unobscured sheaths, even as the sight simultaneously sent a thrill through her abdomen that quickly sent the curious, tantalizing sensation of awareness within her surging with even more subtle, teasing sensation, while staying just vague enough to keep it from being truly comfortable or satisfying. She recognized some of them, more or less, from seeing them around the camp, although the only ones she knew at all were the few from her age group, and even those she didn't know all that well. The only one she really knew was Aryen, who still looked more like he was outwardly trying to show that he was comfortable and confident in the rituals than actually was, his projected face and posture betrayed by the unconscious cant of his ears and the occasional nervous twitch of his tail. The black fox from before was there as well, she saw, seemingly trying to hide behind a few of the other boys, his ears seeming to display even more nervousness. The other boys seemed more excited than anything else, and Jessica wasn't really sure what to think about them - especially because her eyes were suddenly preoccupied with another group. Standing next to them was a trio of men, big and burly from hunting and woodcutting, and while one had a sort of reddish-brown fur, the others had the sort of speckled grey fur that reminded her uncomfortably of her father. True, their faces were much different, and seemed generally kinder, but their presence made her nervous all the same. She'd been nervous about just interacting with some of the boys, but out of what she'd watched before, there didn't seem to be any real order - while people generally kept to partners within a certain range above or below their own years, it seemed that anyone was allowed to mate with anyone else. What was she supposed to do if one of then chased after her?

She felt a masculine hand on her shoulder, and her current nervous train of thought nearly caused her to jump straight up, her head whipping around to see Benoit standing behind her. Like the other men, his shaft was nearly all the way emerged, the knot beginning to swell up below, but he made no move to do anything beyond talking.

"Worry not, my dear. Simply let your body move to the rhythm of instinct, the flow of life. The dance will help you to feel it, and when you do, the feelings within you will resolve into harmony. I cannot strip away your past, but there is no need to be clothed in it here. Step away from the coldness beneath its shroud and let your true self, tonight, be laid bare, empowered and loved before all gods and people as one of their own. Fear has its place, but that place is far from here; within these ritual walls, you are safe, and there is no place for hurt, only love."

Jessica nodded, trying to let Benoit's words sink in, but as he stepped away to begin the ceremony her gaze worked its way back to the trio of men. They were talking amongst themselves, exclaiming and laughing as their eyes occasionally played across the group of women arrayed across from them, apart from their erections seeming totally normal, despite the fact that soon each one of them would have a woman locked in their undeniable, carnal embrace. As much as she worked to reassure herself, though, as much as she worked to give in to the much better set of feelings governing her body and trying to infiltrate her mind, each glance at them sent a memory of Frand coursing through her and stoking a sense of panic that wouldn't quite give up. It was undeniable that she was fast approaching the point of no return - Benoit was already atoning something, the torches around the perimeter were coming alight one by one, and the women around her were tensing and stretching in preparation for the dance. In a matter of minutes, someone would be upon her, and while she tried to tell herself that everything would be good, and fine, and blissfully wonderful like it had been for the other girls, all she could see was Frand's horrid, smirking, aroused face, the way her sister had weakened and shuddered and collapsed into his arms, the horrible perversions of joyful sounds as their union was forcibly consummated. She knew the feelings from before were still there, the intrigue and the sensitivity, but they were being outweighed by a sudden sense of surging panic. This is different, she told herself again and again, trying to hold onto the smiling, joyful faces, trying to ignore the way her heart was pounding, seemingly in time with the growing beat of the drums. Then, all around her, women were moving into the first few steps of the dance, and she willed herself into motion, stumbling through the half-remembered steps as her mind seemed to be whirling even faster than her limbs.

Somehow, though, as the dance progressed, her senses began to pick up on something beneath it, some unseen thread that seemed to tie the beats together with both her own motions and those of everyone moving and whirling around her. She didn't know if that was precisely what Benoit had been talking about, but she did her best to let it play through her mind and command her body. Her movements became quicker and more fluid, the tempo of her limbs synchronizing with those dancing around her, as all her senses seemed to combine to bring back the sense of excitement from earlier. Her vision began to sparkle and shine again, the firelight taking on a throbbing glow that seemed to permeate through everyone assembled there, their fur glowing and strobing to the cadence of the beat. Everything began to seem beautiful again, even the group of intimidating men, who were dipping and weaving through their own dance, of the sort that Frand wouldn't have been caught dead doing. They really were different, it was all different, and for a brief moment her existence was heady and incredible again, the energy of the dance and her nearly overflowing anticipation merging until the entire world seemed to pulse perfectly in time with her own racing heartbeat. Her head was spinning even before one of the women picked her up and twirled her from one set of arms to another in a dizzying series of spirals, and when she was finally set down after spinning the gauntlet, it took a moment for her to regain her balance, clinging to the sensations even as they faded a little.

Then the music stopped, Benoit intoned his proclamation, and the world seemed to come slamming down with a thud as the synchronized movements dissolved into spirited chaos. People were suddenly running every which way, pouncing and tugging on each other, and a spear of panic throbbed in Jessica's chest as she glanced around wildly, trying to decide what to do? Stay in place? Run, with the risk of someone chasing after her? She froze on the spot as one of the masculine trio seemed headed towards her, but he veered off several paces before to chase after one of the women that Jessica had done leather-working with. One of the boys nearby, though, after locking eyes for a moment, seemed to be making a beeline straight for her. Looking at him, Jessica felt another flush of warmth deep inside, and suddenly her limbs felt shaky all over again. She knew he would be upon her in a matter of moments, and once he was, she got the sense that her condition would let him do whatever he wanted. Suddenly, her mind seemed to be screaming: NO! I don't wan't this! Not like this, not standing here, weak, getting taken...

She was about to close her eyes, bracing herself for the worst and making one last-ditch effort to convince herself that it really would somehow be different, somehow be okay, when another boy darted over from the side and ran up to the one approaching her. She realized she couldn't even place the first boy's name, but the second one was unquestionably Aryen, who grabbed the other boy by the shoulder and held him back for a moment.

"Hey!" the first boy yelped, turning towards him. "What do you think you're doing? You know we're not allowed to have dibs-"

"Oh, it's not like that," Aryen replied, gesturing subtly off to his side with his other hand, away from where the first boy was looking. "I'm just... helping out a friend."

"What, her? But you're not allowed-"

"No, not her. You see, men aren't allowed to challenge like that, true, but if a woman has her eye on you..."

"I, um..."

"Oh, you don't have to do anything... beyond bracing yourself, that is."

The first boy looked confused, but then turned quickly as a blur of fur darted in from his opposite side, quickly resolving into the enthusiastic form of Mautaye as she executed an expert tackle and brought the boy to the ground, arching over to press the boy's face into her breasts as her crotch began to grind excitedly against his. "That's right..." she purred, the heat evident in her voice. "What happens later is up to you and her, but for now, you're mine." She grinned down at the boy, who suddenly seemed decidedly less put out. As they began to move with increased enthusiasm, though, Aryen stepped in front of Jessica, proffering his hand.

She accepted it, thrilling a little at his touch, and allowing him to slowly guide her away from the swirling maelstrom of people chasing and pouncing on each other. Beyond the thrill, though, there was also a certain sense of relief that it was Aryen beside her, and not someone else. After all, even though she couldn't claim to know him well, spending most of her time with her female peers, he was still the one guy in the encampment that she knew the most. She also knew, for sure, that she could trust him - after all, on the night that he'd found her, it had just been the two of them alone in the woods. If he had wanted to take advantage of her, there would have been no better time, but his first instinct had only been to help her. It certainly also didn't hurt that he was just completing his transition from a boy to a man, comfortably masculine but not bulkily, aggressively so like some of the others.

"I, ah... I hope I didn't derail something you were interested in," he said as they walked closer to the bonfire. "Because of your... history and stuff, Benoit asked me to keep an eye on you, so I kinda put together a little plan just in case, and when I saw you looking all frozen like that when that boy was coming towards you, I thought... maybe you'd me more comfortable with me?"

Jessica nodded. "Thanks, I-"

"No need to thank me. I just... well, you're really nice, and ever since I found you out there in the woods, I wanted to, well... er, let's just say that this isn't just because of Benoit. There's some - a lot, actually - of self-interest involved, too."

He led Jessica over to a spot not too far from the bonfire. There were already several couples nearby - mostly older men and women, though, with hints of fading in their fur, rubbing muzzles and tucking themselves into mutual embraces. They were by far the youngest pair in that particular area, but knowing the differences in the acts that usually took place there, Jessica didn't seem to mind.

"I know I have a tendency to want to be out on the chase, at least during the first few times I've been able to take part here, but I thought something more like this would be better for you. I haven't really tried it like this before, but... would you like to be with me, here, like this?"

Jessica nodded again, this time with renewed enthusiasm. "Yeah... it sounds kinda strange, but if I'm going to do this, I think you're like the one guy here I'd be most okay with."

Aryen smiled, releasing her hand. "That's a... strange endorsement, but coming from you, I think I really do appreciate it." He sat down a comfortable distance from the fire, in a cross-legged position. Somehow, Jessica's aroused sight had managed to avoid lingering on it on the walk over, momentarily wanting to focus on the calming touch of his hand in hers, but from his new position it was impossible for her to ignore his arousal. By now, he was fully emerged, the long pink shaft sticking up from the sheath, both the flared tip at the top and the swelled knot at the bottom a slight shade darker and more intense. Jessica knew, of course, that her own arousal was just as clearly on display, although it had been for some time - with the culmination of her body's anticipation so close at hand, though, the warmth within her was flowing freely again, enough so that she could feel a few tendrils of it trickling beyond the periphery of her mound and tickling against the fur on her upper thighs. When the other girls had talked about being "ready," Jessica was sure that this was what they meant, and now that her mind and body were mostly in agreement, the latter had finally grown tired of waiting. As a result, when her legs gave anther wobble, she happily let them give in, half-falling, half-jumping into Aryen's lap.

As soon as they made contact, his arms were wrapping around her back, and hers were automatically pulling around his, hugging each other close together as his muzzle snuggled in against her neck, his breath puffing quick and hot against her fur. Just the sensation of their embrace was impressive enough - because of the sensitivity of her state, she'd been keenly aware of even the wind blowing gently through her fur, so the direct, warm contact with Aryen was intense enough to cause a short, happy moan to escape her lips as Aryen's touch seemed to reverberate through her. She rocked herself instinctively in closer against him, feeling the powerful warmth of his shaft as it brushed against the soft fur on her abdomen, and by the end of the motion her hips had moved in close enough that the outer edge of Aryen's knot made contact with the hood at the very tip of her mound. The sudden skin-to-skin contact was for a moment intensely hot, and the way that the contact made the hood shift against the button within it sent a shock of intensity shivering up her spine, and a simultaneous pulse throbbing straight upward through her pelvis and causing something to tense deep in her belly. Almost immediately, the keen awareness from before shoved its way back into the forefront of her mind, the pulse seeming to make her insides come alive even further. Suddenly, the sensation of Aryen against her wasn't nearly enough - she knew that her body wanted, needed, him inside as well, giving her inner passage the direct touch needed to move beyond the subtle sensations that had moved rapidly from intriguingly tantalizing to frustratingly inadequate.

She pulled back slightly, glancing down between them, to look at Aryen's shaft again, and instantly regretted the decision. It was still instinctually intriguing, for sure, and between that and his somehow impossibly delicious scent her body was more than willing to let anything happen, as long as the contact it involved was as intimate as possible. Her mind, though, seemed to acknowledge the fact that there was going to be a man inside her, for real, and for a moment Aryen's arms seemed more oppressive than comforting.

Aryen, noticing her pulling back, looked up at her with concern. "Are you all right? I didn't think- I mean, we were just, you know, we weren't doing anything yet, really..."

"N-no, it's not that, it's... I really, really want you, right now, in that way, but... I'm just afraid, afraid of what it's like, to have someone h-holding you in place and... doing things to you, I know it's supposed to be good, and I think my body knows it, but..."

She looked back, momentarily worried about what Aryen would do if she pulled back at the last minute, but he seemed to nod in understanding. He relaxed his embrace, his hands coming apart, gently petting the fur on her back instead of holding her tightly. The soft sensation momentarily brought her instincts back to the fore, and she snuggled back against him, a purring noise thrumming in her throat. When she spoke again, her voice had the unmistakably husky, heated note she'd heard in Mautaye's earlier. "I... I want to... I'm just not sure how to do it without being afraid..."

Aryen glanced at her, and then quickly around to the couples around them. Jessica, though, was hesitant to follow his gaze, for fear of seeing something else unsettling happening nearby - some of the barking cries had already started up, and that was already more than she needed at that point.

"You know," Aryen continued, his hands never ceasing in their petting motion, "we don't have to do anything different. We can just do it like this - just get up on your knees a little, line yourself up with me, and then lower yourself back down again. You can do all the moving if you want, be totally in control, take it at whatever pace you're okay with and... I'll try to hold out, keep myself in check, just stay still and let it happen. I, um... I've never done it like that before, but I've seen some of my friends do it with the girl on top, and they seemed to be able to do it like that just fine, so..."

"Okay." Was it really just that easy? Jessica tried rocking herself upward experimentally, shivering a little as Aryen's muzzle descended into the soft patch of chestruff in between her breasts, the warmth within her thrilling again as Aryen's tip trailed down lower and lower along her abdomen, her hood occasionally nudging against the shaft until the flared edge was rubbing right up against it. Then she moved up just a little more, just enough so that the shaft, which had been back between the two of them, sprang forward to return to its normal position as it was freed. Her hips bucked involuntarily as the tip rubbed intensely against her button sliding inward along the crease between her suddenly throbbing pussy lips before settling in between them, its heat nudging into place between them right at her entrance, the very edge of her insides thrilling at the first hint of the intense sensation they had been yearning for.

Her body was suddenly, instinctively in motion, her hands clutching firmly at his back and her muzzle tucking in between his neck and shoulder as her impatient hips rocked smoothly downward. Whatever she had been worried about, whatever pain or weakness or terror, didn't come to pass - instead, there was a brief stretching sensation as her nether lips pulled around him, a faint reflection of her luxurious stretch from earlier, and then a warm, wonderful stroking feeling as the shaft slid smoothly into her, letting her inner walls gain their desired purchase around it, their promised sensation rolling upward through her as her insides hugged him closely, already throbbing gently around his welcome presence. It wasn't an invasion, as she had feared, but a more intense mirroring of their own outward embrace, the intense closeness dominating above all else.

She stayed like that for a moment, clutching him tightly both within and without, and was rewarded with a throb inside her as his shaft seemed to swell even more snugly into the embrace of her comfortably stretched walls. "W-whoa," she heard him say, his muzzle hot against her shoulder. "I... I've never felt it like that before, just... close..." Jessica simply purred in response, deepening her embrace and trying to take in every single sensation, even as the inner embrace began to feel slightly too... static, and a sudden yearning for the stroking sensation from before sent her hips rocking quickly back up. She gasped a little as the flared tip pulled back, the sensation of it subtler in that direction but also somehow more intently focused, the tension it formed in her chest quickly releasing in a short, happy cry as she settled back down. The sense of flow, of some underlying rhythm, was quickly returning to course through her body, triggered by the stroking sensation within her, and quickly settling her hips into a particular rhythm, slow at first, but settling into a quick, steady motion that ensured the tip was constantly stroking her in one direction or another, pausing only occasionally when a particularly emphatic downward thrust caused her outer lips to snug and stretch intriguingly around the upper edge of his knot. Somehow, in the background, she could hear the instinctual mating cries ringing out from her muzzle to join the chorus around them, shadowy forms writhing in the firelight around the edges of her vision, but all of her focus was on her partner, holding him close, thrilling at every stroke, every movement, every caress. She knew he was feeling it just as intensely as she was, his heart thudding fast enough that she could feel it against her breast, a few ecstatic, whimpering cries of his own intermingling with hers as they continued.

As the seconds stretched into minutes, and her body settled into the rocking motion, the sensations grew better and better, more and more intense - but then, they seemed to plateau, leaving her hovering on the edge of something amazing but, she quickly realized, not all the way there. It had something to do with the tip that was moving within her - it was reaching in fairly deep, but there was something just beyond it, pulsing with an even more tantalizing sensation and aching for the direct contact that was just barely eluding it. She tried to push down harder, moving him in deeper, but her nether lips didn't seem to want to stretch far enough - the stupid knot was in the way, and just moving herself didn't seem to get it to move in enough to where it needed to be.

"Rrrgh... why won't it go in!" she growled softly, Aryen panting a breathless reply a moment later.

"Let... me do it? I need to be... on top, I think... I can... lay you down... it might be intense, but-"

The sensation within her was suddenly even more frustrating, and Jessica felt her claws dig in a little against Aryen's back. Whatever lingering fear she'd had was long gone, replaced by a drive that blotted out all else. She needed to feel him, there, and whatever was required to do that was more than okay. "Just get it in there, now!"

Jessica felt Aryen's embrace grow tighter again, holding her close as he leaned forward against her, their bodies rocking backward as Jessica felt the soft, cool grass settle in against her back. They were still together, Aryen on top of her, but his arms were no longer around her, instead bracing to either side so that his weight didn't settle too heavily against her. She kept her arms wrapped tightly around him, though, letting out a weird, guttural moan as Aryen's hips took over the motion between her own. This, though, wasn't the flowing, rolling motion that she had used, but a short, sharp thrust that ended with the knot pushing in firmly and unyieldingly against her nether lips, and her teeth gritted together as the force of the knot stretched them around it and sending them into a tight, vibrating tension before they somehow found a way to stretch themselves even further around it. As soon as they seemed to get comfortable around it, though, Aryen pulled back partway before hammering back in again, the sudden intensity of his stroking inside her quickly tempered by the feeling of the knot pulling in even further against her outer lips, sending them momentarily flashing over into pain. She cried out from it, momentarily wanting to shove him off, but the need within her was intense enough to instead pull him in even closer. The next thrust, though, delivered only an intense stretching sensation instead of pain, and the one after that was met with an intense, shuddering moan as her opening seemed stretched as far as it could go. On the next one, though, it stretched just a bit further, and then something seemed to give way, part of her feeling like it was being tucked in front of the knot and pulled within her. Then there was a sudden lurch forward, and a sudden, intense feeling of snug, stretching tension between her legs as the knot slammed firmly into place, her insides forced into a new configuration around it even as the tip simultaneously pressed up tightly against a ring of smooth and sensitive something deep inside her and nudged inside until it gripped him tightly as well.

For a moment, the intensity seemed too much for her to take, the knot mashing against the sensitive button that now seemed to be somehow tucked firmly just inside her, the tip hot and buried deep as its presence forced something to yield and open around it, and for a few brief, strange seconds she desperately wanted all of it out of her, even as the sensation of her body tightening around the knot reminded her of how futile such a thing would be. As that last wave of anxiety washed through her, though, the intensity of the sensation against her button seemed to flash over into unbearability - but the shuddering intensity that her body suddenly gave into exploded instead into a wave of pure ecstasy, her back arching and her entire body shivering as the feeling shot through her, every sensation boosted to maximum intensity as the climax ran across her spine and seemed to detonate between her eyes, the fire behind them lighting up to glow in vivid, intense flashes as the part of her that was wrapped around Aryen's tip suddenly seemed to grip it of its own accord and squeeze it intensely in a series of rapid, throbbing pulses. She heard Aryen gasp against her at the contact, even as the throbbing rolled downwards until all of her insides were pulsating against the shaft of pure heat within them, thrilling at each intense contact as they hugged him tightly over and over again. For a moment, the world was reduced to light, warmth, and the wonderful sensations coursing through her belly. Even as the throbbing began to ebb, diffusing to a more general warmth that flowed tinglingly outward along her extremities, and even as the world began to resolve back to its normal form, she felt Aryen lower himself even closer against her, a ragged, shuddering, beautiful cry ringing in her ears before the shaft within her throbbed in counterpoint to her own pulsations, each one culminating in a jet of warmth splashing out from the tip into something even deeper inside her, a place that didn't have the same intensity of sensation, but enough to provide a sense of permeating, liquid warmth which grew and spread with each throb. She called out happily with each synchronized pulse, enjoying how close, how right it made her feel. By the time it was complete, the tantalizing need was fading along with it, as her own climax resolved into a comfortable relaxation.

She looked up at Aryen, feeling like she was seeing him properly for the first time since their intimate embrace had begun. He looked back at her, his dark eyes shimmering with intensity, but the look was broken up a little by the sight of his pink tongue lolling out of his muzzle as he panted desperately to recover from the exertion. Jessica almost would have laughed at the sight of it, if it hadn't been for the fact that she knew she was doing the same. For a while the two of them lay there, connected, the sound of their breath puffing out into the cool evening air lost amongst the chorus of moans and howls sounding out around them. After a moment, though, Aryen looked at his enervated, wobbly arms that were struggling to hold him just above Jessica.

"Wanna... want to go back to how we were before... y'know, upright?" Aryen managed to get out, and when she nodded her assent, he worked to pull them back to their previous sitting position, but it took both of them struggling for a moment against sapped, relaxed limbs before they managed to achieve it.

Jessica relaxed her embrace, bringing a hand up to brush against Aryen's cheek. It left a trail of red along with it, though, and when she pulled her hand back to look at it, she realized, horrified, that her claws were tinged with blood from where she'd raked them against Aryen's back as her climax took hold.

"Oh... Aryen! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..." she said, waving her hand about in a panic until Aryen took hold of it.

"Hey, don't worry about it. That's what's supposed to happen, er, at least that's what does happen with most girls at least. As a guy you just have to get used to it, and you know, I think it's worth it." He leaned forward, flicking his tongue out to lick gently along the edge of her muzzle. "That... that was really fun."

"Yeah," Jessica agreed. "I knew it was supposed to feel good, but I didn't think it'd feel so..." right? For some reason, that seemed to be the word that came to her. Maybe it was because what she'd been exposed to before had been so wrong, but for whatever reason, what had happened was exactly what she'd needed. With Aryen, at least, there was nothing to fear, and perhaps that sense could extend to others as well.

Jessica settled in against her partner, rubbing her head against Aryen's chest. "So... what do we do now?"

"Well... we kinda have to be together for a while, with the knot and everything. I guess when I've done it before, we just kinda snuggle together and stuff, and enjoy how it feels... just, don't be too still, okay? I saw Tacye and one of the older girls cuddle up and they ended up falling asleep, and some of the guys had to pull them apart and carry him back to his tent, and they wouldn't get off him about it for days..."

Jessica couldn't help but giggle a little at the story, looking up at him. "I'm sure we can stay busy somehow," she said, nuzzling against him again, even as she heard the chorus of sound around her build to a new crescendo. "Howl with me?"

"Sure," Aryen replied, and they both tilted their heads up towards the clear night sky and joined in the communal cry of happiness. While Jessica had been welcomed into their midst with open arms, and had seemed to find a place there, at that moment, howling contentedly in Aryen's embrace, she felt like she fully, truly belonged.

Eventually, the howling was over, and they spent the rest of the time snuggling and petting each other comfortably, content to enjoy their mutual closeness without additional words getting in the way. By the time Aryen had receded enough to pull free, Jessica was ready to leave his embrace, and they both flopped over onto their backs next to each other for a moment.

"You gonna be all right?" Aryen asked as she watched the smoke and glittering embers drift up towards the stars sparkling above. "Since you're in heat, you probably want to do more, but I really got into it and I'm, ah, kinda worn out already... I think you should be fine, though, and if you aren't interesting with someone, just let them know - no one's gonna do anything if you don't want them to."

"Yeah, I think so..." To her surprise, Jessica actually felt like she actually believed that. Glancing around, looking at all the blissful faces and happily intertwined bodies around her, there really was the sense that the only way such a coupling could resolve there was with mutual closeness and satisfaction.

Aryen got up slowly, giving her another light lick on the cheek before bidding her a very fond farewell, wandering off towards the male entrance a bit unsteadily, something that made Jessica feel, oddly, more than a little proud about.

She sat up, feeling the hint of renewed arousal beginning to mingle again with the warmth comfortably settling within her, and noticed the crowd gathered around the fire was much more diverse than it had been when they'd arrived, as some of the chasing couples had evidently made their way over before catching each other. She spied Mautaye a little ways off, snuggling happily atop the boy from before, her hands swatting out to pin his arms back against the ground each time he began to move underneath her - evidently, she wasn't ready to let go just yet. Closer by, Benoit and Mewasahna were cuddled together in a side-by-side, spooning embrace, and while they were old enough to be her parents, their unashamed presence, here at least, seemed completely and thoroughly normal. Off to her other side, she realized that Isabel had ended up next to her, curled up, tail and all, around the dark-furred fox boy from before - evidently, her hunt had been successful.

Noticing the movement beside her, Isabel glanced over, her eyes lighting up as she saw Jessica nearby. "Oh, there you are! So... having a good time yet?"

"Mhmm..." Jessica replied, and Isabel flashed her a knowing grin.

"I know, right? Being in heat is sooooo much fun, even better than I thought it would be! Especially with a cuddly little fluffball like this to spend time with!" She gave the boy another squeeze, even as the boy looked shyly over at Jessica. Given his short stature, his ears flicked up just between Isabel's breasts as he looked forward. Jessica realized that, as the boy was facing forward in Isabel's arms, the two were no longer tied, but she was holding onto him nonetheless. In fact, the boy looked a little bit relieved when Isabel released him and rolled over to snuggle against Jessica instead, though he continued to watch the pair of them intently as they snuggled and lazed about together for a few minutes, Isabel going into perhaps excessive detail about the tryst she'd just shared with the fox boy as his ears dipped slightly in embarrassment.

Once Isabel released Jessica and bounded off to stalk and vigorously pounce on one of the other boys, the fox boy sat down hesitantly beside Jessica, still looking at her a little strangely.

"H-hey," he finally said, even as his body began to betray interest where his words apparently could not. "A-are you going to jump on me too?"

"I... don't think so? I'm not sure I'm really a pouncing kind of person..." She looked over, wondering whether or not to ask about what was on her mind before her body grew tired of questions, and maybe in fact did pounce on him. "Um... can I ask you something?"

"Sure..."

"Did Benoit tell you that story? About the dark fox god, and the prophecy, and stuff?"

The boy seemed to flinch a little when she mentioned the prophecy, but replied anyway. "Y-yeah. Oh, yeah. It's the first thing he told me when I got here. That's why I'm here, really."

"Why you're here... what do you mean?"

"Well... why I'm right here, I mean. I came... when I was really little, my parents got deployed overseas, and I was supposed to go with them later, but they got... exploded before I could go there. So I got passed around to a bunch of foster homes, but it's almost all dogs around here, and they thought foxes were inferior, and didn't want me... I ran off, then, and when the cops found me they brought me back to some guy's office, and he asked me if I was okay with being here, so I said yes. But then I got here, and with the prophecy, it was like everything was suddenly different. I mean... it wasn't fun, but I got used to being ignored, and all of a sudden everyone was really nice to me all the time and there wasn't a moment I could spend alone. Then, once I came of age, I was sent here, and I have to be here every night, because I have to be loved so bad things won't happen or something, but it feels more like everyone's just pouncing on me, and it feels good but crazy at the same time, and I don't know what to think."

He nodded in Jessica's direction. "And now that you're here, because of what the story says, I thought you were going to pounce on me even more, and... hold me down until the evil's forced out of me, I dunno..." He paused, dipping his head. "Sorry... I know that sounded really stupid, I just... I just need a little break from being pounced on, is all..."

Jessica nodded, suddenly feeling an odd sense of kinship and sympathy for him. "Do you... do you really not want to do that? If people are pouncing on you like that, holding you down against your will, even if you're a boy and they're girls, that's still not right."

"Huh? No, it's... it's not like that, exactly. It's not like I don't want to do it. I still get... aroused every night, it's not like I'm forced to be here, just encouraged, but everyone's been so nice to me I don't want to let them down. It's not bad, it's just... it's really intense, all the time, and I just want to be... normal for a while, not the center of attention, you know?"

"Yeah, I think so..." Jessica glanced over at where Benoit was untangling himself from Mewasahna, and an idea began to come to her. "What if... what if you could do it in a way that was equal? Where I wasn't pouncing on you, or you weren't pouncing on me..."

"Um... do you want to?"

Jessica nodded, leaning over onto her back and then rolling over onto her side, gesturing for the boy to lay down beside her in a similar fashion. "If we're like this, then no one has to be on top, and I think we can still do it somehow..."

"O-okay," the boy replied, lying down next to her and allowing her to wrap and arm around his shoulders and pull him in closer. "Um, before we begin... I, um... I don't even know your name..."

"Jessica," she replied, brushing her hand along his head before tucking his muzzle in against her breasts. "I'm Jessica."

"Samu- just Sam," he replied, snuggling in closer, and while the sensation of his shaft pressing against her belly wasn't quite as intense as it had been with Aryen, she felt her arousal quickly building again within her. With the diminutive fox snuggled up against her, she didn't feel afraid at all, and knew, even more than before, that being there, mating at all, was definitely going to work.

Admittedly, the act itself didn't work out as immediately successfully as she'd imagined, and it took a few tries before Jessica figured out a way to hook one of her legs around Sam's thighs in a way that allowed everything to line up properly. It had also meant that things didn't go in quite as far as they had before, and once they got into it she eventually had to roll over onto her back and let him thrust on top of her to get the knot she had by then desperately desired into place. While they were able to maintain it, though, it was slow, warm, and surprisingly comfortable, since neither of them had to balance on or support the other. She did have to admit, as Isabel had pointed out, that Sam was, indeed, extra cuddly, and she thrilled at running her fingers though his soft, fluffy fur as they joined together. While the fox wasn't quite as endowed as Aryen, it did mean, at least, that the knot eased in a bit more comfortably, and while the knot didn't make her climax simply by mashing her sensitive clit into submission, the fox made up for it with a series of short, quick humping motions that ground their hips together as soon as they were tied, the motion rubbing the edge of the knot against her button incessantly and driving her to a screaming, howling orgasm, and the throbbing intensity was still reverberating through her by the time Sam's own climax was beginning to ebb.

They stayed cuddled together afterwards, although, remembering what Sam had said before, she made sure to let him be the one to wrap his arms around her instead of the other way around, choosing instead to lightly caress his cheeks and shoulders.

"So," she said, as they calmed down, "do you think we... fulfilled the prophecy or anything? I know it... affected you a lot, but I think it's kind of a nice idea, symbolically at least, even if it is sort of silly..."

Sam looked back at her - and seemed to really, genuinely smile for the first time. "Heh... yeah, it's completely silly, but no one else seemed to listen to me when I said that. I probably don't bring doom, you probably don't bring light just because someone somewhere said so, but... for all that, you're the first person who really listened to me without just pushing blind love on me. I know that everyone else loves me, in their own way, but... you're the first person who didn't just do that, but loved me in a way that let me love you back." Sam looked at her, his ears suddenly spiking in panic. "Er... I mean, what we did was nice, I know it's not exactly about love love, I know I don't really know you yet, but what I meant was... thanks for not just pouncing on me. It was... it was really nice."

"You're welcome." Jessica hugged the boy closer, happy that she could do at least a little something of what he had done for her: making it so that mating could be seen, maybe, as being about closeness and happiness, not about someone doing something to someone else, wanted or not.

After a time, Sam was content to leave her embrace, and she let him go, watching him walk off maybe a bit more confidently as his fluffy tail swayed attractively back and forth behind him. The mating had driven the feelings of need a little further down inside her, but she wasn't quite ready to be done. Most of the other boys, though, had already gotten the bulk of their energy out, and she was able to rope another canine boy into joining her in a repeat of the sitting embrace without too much difficulty, and even found enough confidence to swap partners with Callie, who had shown up nearby with a brown-furred boy with a bit of collie ancestry. She even managed to get up enough courage to let him climb on top of her from the start and bring them together at his own pace - although, that late in the evening, the cadence and vigor of his thrusts were well within the comfort zone that Jessica had developed. By the time he all but collapsed into her arms, Jessica's satisfaction was all but complete, replaced with a sense of relaxation that was deeper than anything she'd felt before.

Despite her exhaustion and relaxation, though, she was still the most steady on her feet in the quartet of her peers as they together stumbled their way back towards the entrance. She wondered, as she supported Callie's wavering form, if it was perhaps due to the more sedate pace she'd started out with. Jessica knew, of course, that they all looked a sight, fur puffed out every which way and wet, sticky warmth continuing to drip down to coat the fur on their thighs, but none of them seemed to mind - as the product of the important ritual they'd just participated in, in fact, it was one that seemed to be welcomed, and she caught the occasional guy looking over with appreciation, or occasionally with what seemed to be pride as he caught a glimpse of someone he'd had a hand in satisfying. Jessica smiled back at them - back, in fact, at everyone in general - as the group made their way to their tent. Now she knew what Mautaye had meant when they encountered her after her first mating session - everything really did feel so perfect, so warm, halfway-dazed but in a good way, the sort of way that made the world pleasantly fuzzy around the edges and made fear or pain seem like nothing more than abstract concepts. Jessica just felt purely, simply good, and by the time they got back and collapsed together into a big, snuggly pile, she was more than happy to burrow into the middle of it, wrapping her thighs enthusiastically around one of their legs and unashamedly humping gently against it until a series of warm, happy shivers drove the relaxation so deep that she could almost feel it seeping into her very bones. Maybe she wasn't the harbinger of hope, or of doom, and maybe she'd been exposed to the wrong things, or the wrong messages, about what love and family were supposed to be. Here, though, cuddled together naked in a way that would surely be considered scandalous in the outside world, fresh from participating in a ritual that was even more so... here, finally, Jessica though that maybe, just maybe, she'd finally figured out what love was truly supposed to be.