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He found her by following the shrieks of fear and the screams of pain. He found her covered in blood in Kairon’s chamber. He lay on the ground with his belly vomiting out its internal organs and his neck twisted in an unnatural way, dead as dust. His limbs still twitched against the ground, eyes rolled up in the back of his head. She stood in a corner of the chamber, her breath fast and hoarse, covered in more blood and guts than he had ever seen her in despite all the battles she’d fought in. Her eyes were wide open, her snout a snarl. There was madness in that expression and he recognized it at once.

“Stars above,” he said. “Mia, are you alright?”

“No,” she said. “Neither is he.”

Lifen walked up closer to the body. What had not been destroyed by Mia’s teeth and claws was still covered in cuts and bruises. Both his arms and legs were broken at the joins and the left shoulder had been pulled straight out its socket.

He looked at her. “Why?” he said. “Why did you do this?”

Her eyes raised toward him. He stared at her with a confused expression on his face and she stared back with fury and terror at once, a trembling in her limbs betraying the shock she had sustained.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He did…And I…I didn’t want…”

He walked over the body and hugged her. He did it slowly so she could see every movement and he did it softly to make sure she didn’t see him as a threat. She did not hug him back but she didn’t need to anyway. The blood that soaked her scales bled on him too and stained his feathers, but it did not matter. Most of his feathers were red anyway.

They remained there for a while, a short while, just a bit before the smell of blood and guts started to spread in the lair. Soon voices started to raise and screeches started to echo in the lair as the smell reached the higher chambers. Sounds of steps and flapping wings soon followed ad then they arrived, dragons and gryphons standing together for the first time in many moons despite living in the same damn mountain. First they saw them, then they saw the body. More voices came, more screams in the air, but he ignored them. Someone said his name and he raised his gaze on the crowd gathered at the entrance of the chamber.

“Lifeneimh,” said one of the elders. He did not remember his name, but he was a gryphon and he was one of the oldest ones. When one of his flock said your true name, it was never a good thing. “What has happened? What did you do?”

Lifen didn’t answer. He looked at her and then at Kairon’s corpse and then at her again.

“He attacked her,” he said. “Kairon. I saw him do it. She lost control, but it was self defense.” He covered her with her wings. “It was all self-defense.”

Nobody said anything. Nobody that he cared about at least. Soon they came to tear her away from him, and he let them do it. The gods knew that he didn’t want to, they knew he wanted to hold her and bring her to her nest and wash the blood away from her but since he could not he had to play smart. He had to be safe. Most of all, he had to be a liar, and that was all right by him.

/

The next time Mia regained consciousness she was in the penance chamber. She hung from the wall, arms and legs and wings chained to dragonfire-forged metal. She had a muzzle on and every time she tried to breathe she felt as if not enough air filled her lungs no matter how deep she breathed. She was hungry and thirsty and scared and alone, then she remembered what had lead her to that place and all of that was replaced by blind fury. Her fists clenched and her teeth flashed, eyes wide, and she shook and pulled and twisted to try and free herself, but she could not. Had she killed him during a regular duel she’d have been treated as a warrior, but she had not, so she was being treated as a murderer.

For many hours she hung from that wall with closed eyes and dry lips, anger and shame burning deep inside her until she thought they might kill her. Only then the door opened. Two dragons, one male and one female. They unlocked the chains and let her fall on the floor. They grabbed her by the shoulders and brought her to a room paved in gray marble and though she wanted to she did not have the strength to resist, neither physical nor mental. They made her sit on the cold pavement and then the male placed himself behind her while the female placed herself in the front.

“Dragonelle,” she said. “What is your name?”

“Mia.”

“I mean your full name.”

She paused. “I’m Miakyr, of the Deynos clan.”

The dragoness raised two fingers. “How many are these?”

“Two.”

She lowered her fingers. “Do you know where you are?”

“I’m in the Room of Whispers,” she said. “I was brought there after I’d been put in a penance chamber for murdering a member of my clan.”

“So you do admit that it was murder?”

She trembled. “No.”

“Then what was it?”

“I have a right to a defender. I will say nothing until they are inside this room with me.”

The dragoness’ eyes narrowed. “You already know who your defender will be.”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “Now I’d kindly ask you to get the fuck out of here and send him in. There are things that need to be said and every second you spend here is a second less I can spend with him.”

The dragoness growled, but she lowered her head and gave her her back and walked outside of the room. Her male counterpart followed close behind but before leaving he turned toward her and smiled. He was old and bigger and covered in scars but his eyes betrayed a softness his body did not show. “Hold on, drakelle,” he said, almost whispered. “Your gryphon will get you out of here.” He left before she could answer.

A sound of step echoed in the corridor and then Lifen came in. She wanted to hug him and launched herself at him to do so but she was too weak and almost crumbled at her feet. “Fucking hells,” Lifen said. He pulled her up and cleaned the dust from her scales. “Are you alright?”

“Rhetorical question,” she said.

“Right, sorry.” He looked around himself as if searching for something. “They didn’t give you anything to eat?”

“Not really.”

“Bastards,” he said. “They want you as weak as possible during the audience. Doesn’t matter.”

“Lifen – “

“I got a plan, Mia,” he said. “Everyone in this mountain knows Kairon had been courting your for moons, and everybody knows how much you hated him for it. His sire and dam will try everything they can to have you executed, but all you have to do is say that he assaulted you and you defended yourself. Then I will say I saw him assaulting you and you reiterating and that I couldn’t call for help because I was paralyzed with fear. If that’s not enough, I have pulled some connections – got enough friends in the jury that will testimony in your favor no matter what. You’ll be accused of excessive self-defense and be confined to your chambers for a few winters at the very worst, and then – “

“No.”

“ – I will make sure that…” he paused. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“No,” she said. “This is not how it went.”

“But…of course it is. That’s what happened. We just need to twist the truth a bit – “

“He did not assault me, Lifen,” she said. “He hit me, sure. Once, in the face, hard enough to almost snap my neck. After that, I was the one assaulting and he was the one defending.” She lowered her head. “That dragoness was right. It was not self-defense, it was murder.”

“But he, he instigated you – “

“Maybe,” she said. “It still won’t be enough for the jury, nor for the judge. I’ll be lucky to get a life sentence – the rest of my existence spent walking from the latrines to my chambers. They will give me a book every moon to entertain myself and Kaidon’s parents will make sure somebody takes a piss in the food they bring to me at least once a week. Then the heat will come, but I know they won’t let you in, they’ll give me a dragon, and I know I won’t be strong enough to deny him what I chose to be yours.” She lowered her head. “I could not stand such life. Not for a day – not for a second. You might as well go on and tell them to proceed with my execution.”

“No,” he said aloud. Lifen was a shy thing and rarely raised his voice, so when he did she was always taken aback. “No, I won’t let them kill you. I won’t let them lower you to the lever of Ghuldur of Zoll, executed by their own clans for crimes that they did not commit.”

“Except I did commit them,” she said. “There is no other way, Lif. They won’t let me go free no matter what, and I’d rather die than be trapped in a hole for the rest of my life.”

“Yes there is,” he said, his shaking paw rising to fix his glasses. “There is another way. Say whatever you want, but I told you, I have friends in the jury. Worst come to worst, I can plead with them for exile.”

“Exile?” she said, and laughed. “There is a desert of canyons out there, Lifen. It just goes on and on and on…I don’t think I’ve ever seen its confines. I you do that, you condemn me to a slower, more painful death.”

“No, I don’t,” he said. “Because I’m a gryphon, and I fly fast, and I’ve seen the borders of the desert and I will come with you.” He took a breath. “If you’re exiled, I will come with you.”

Mia stared at him. She stared at this short red gryphon with more brain than brawns. He cannot hunt they said, he cannot fight they said. He is only good for reading and making poetry he said. More than once someone had wondered why she had chosen him to be her mate, and she could not say. It was so obvious to her it did not even need an explanation.

“Lif, you can’t be serious,” you say. “If I go in exile, the only thing I lose is a dam who hates me, but you – you got a mother, a father, siblings. You got a life here I couldn’t even dream – “

“You think you’re the only one with a mother who hates her?” he said. “I see my father once a moon, and when I do he doesn’t even acknowledge me. He’s never called me a runt, but I know he thinks I am. He’s always thought of me as a runt. And my siblings…”he shook his head. “Half of them will leave anyway, and soon. These damn canyons suck the life out of you. The sun kills you from the inside, year after year after year. We were already planning to leave, but if I have to do it, I’d rather do it with you than them.” He closed his beak and stared at her. “So?” he said, his big eyes shining in the darkness of the room. “Do we agree with this or not?”

She hugged him. It was all she wanted to do and all she could do because that’s as far as they would let her get away with, because otherwise he would already be on his back and she’d have him out of his sheath in seconds, and his cock buried so far down her throat she’d make him twist and groan as if he were already in rut. She leaned back her head and brushed her snout against his beak.

“How do we do it?” she said. “How do we turn this from a summary execution to a banishment?”

He smiled the weird way gryphon smile, the smile that say ‘I appear nice but I’m actually the most dangerous being in the room’. She loved that damn smile so much. “You let me worry about that, Mia,” he said. “You let me worry about that.”

/

The trial lasted forty-five minutes, second more second less. Kairon’s parents were beyond themselves and tried to accuse her of anything. They said she seduced him first and kept leading him on without ever offering anything back, that she used him, that she was the one following him around and not the contrary. When those arguments fell thanks to Lifen’s jury they went on with the accuse of assault and murder, and she did not deny anything. She told them he hit her first, suddenly and painfully, and she had lost control and killed him. The entire hall of judgement had gasped at that admission as if she had admitted to having killed the Great Mother herself.

“So you do admit it was excess of self-defense?” asked the judge as he caressed the beard that fell through his draconic scales. “You do admit yourself guilty of slaughter?”

“I admit myself guilty of loss of control,” she said. “I’ll let the jury decide what that means for me.”

After that it was chaos again. Kaidon’s parents wanted her dead, and said a summary execution needed to happen. Lifen protested, pulled out mitigating factor after mitigating factor until the only things left on the table were either confinement for life or eternal banishment. That was something neither she nor Lifen could decide: that was up to the jury.

Everything stopped then. She was brought back to her cell, but not chained this time. Lifen made sure she was brought food and water and for two days she walked around her cell and waited for the words that would decide her fate. She thought about what she would do if she were exiled, if Lif would really follow her. She asked herself where he would bring her and where they would nest. And what if they did not chose what she thought, what if they brought her in the hall of judgements and tied her with the chain of dragonsteel and killed her slowly, blow after blow after blow? How would Lif stop them then?

For two days her mind went on like this. For two days she did not sleep and barely ate and drunk what was given to her for fear of poison or taint. In the morning of the second day despair almost overwhelmed her and she almost cut her throat with her own claws, but then snarled and smashed her hand against the pavement so hard the stone cratered. She did not want to die like that. If she had to go, she wanted to do it spitting dead in the face. That’s how dragons meet their ends. When she finally heard a sound of steps closing up to her cell she felt happiness like she had never felt before. No matter the judgement, no matter her end, she would finally be free of the torment of waiting.

Then the door opened and she saw Lifen staring back at her with a smile on his face. Not a ‘I got you exactly where I want’ smile. Just a smile, the one he only reserved to her, the only one which was harmless.

“What happened?” she asked. “Am I free to go? Are they sending me to exile?”

He nodded. “The jury decided half an hour ago. You are to leave tomorrow, and me with you.” His smiled widened. “Two black sheep gone in less than a day. They even think it was smart from their part to do it.”

Again she threw herself at him, again she hugged him. He hugged back this time, and when they kissed they let their tongue tease each other before pulling away.

“You are amazing,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “But don’t tell anybody. Wouldn’t want them to find it out.”

She laughed, and then kissed him again.

/

They met on the northern cliffside as the red sun rose over them. Nobody was there to tell them goodbye, nobody wanted to see them one last time. Mia had no doubt it would have been like this for her, but she did not expect it for Lifen. Maybe leaving was really the best for both.

“So, are you ready?” he said. “I warn you, we got half an hour before your side of the clan is legally allowed to tear both of us apart.”

She let out a single chuckle. “I’m just admiring the dawn,” she said. “I realize now I’ve come to hate this place, but it has been my shelter from the outside world for all my life. I do not want to throw it away as if it were nothing.” She nodded toward the raising sun. “Look at that. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Not as beautiful as you.”

Mia snorted. “My gods, how corny you are.”

“Just saying it as I see it,” he said with a grin. He turned toward the horizon. “But yes, it is beautiful. I suppose leaving this place with a good views is better than just leaving it.

“Where will we go?” she asked. “You say that you’ve already been over the borders, but in what direction did you go? How long before we reach it?”

“Too many questions for too little time,” he said. “Come on, it’s not that far away from here. I’ll- ”

“You’re just a fucking disappointment, aren’t you?”

Both Lif and Mia turned their head back. Mia’s mother sat at the entrance of the cliff, her shadow projected against the side of the mountain. Her white scales shone in the dark light of the dawn and her blue eyes pierced her with such strength for a minute she thought they would tear her apart where she stood. Then Mia remembered she was her daughter and stared at her in the same way.

“Verasta,” Mia said. She would not give her the satisfaction of calling her ‘mother’. “It’s too late for insults. If you wanted to humiliate me, you should have moved sooner. We are about to leave.”

“Of course you are,” Verasta said. “Just like your sire. Just like your grandmother. Always leaving, always following the scent of adventure. But at least they had the guts to do it by themselves.” She looked at Lif. “You needed your bird toy to do that. Hello, bird toy.”

Kia growled. She took a step forward and dragged Lif behind herself. “Do not talk to him.”

“Why not? I like him. He’s the only one with half a brain between the two of you – he got you out of this affair with a slap on the wrist and a kick on the tail, while any other dragon would have been put to death. I suppose that’ll give him the right to give you at least a couple of clutches, won’t it? I suppose he deserves it, though the thought of my grandchildren being hybrids does make me want to puke my breakfast.”

“You’ll never see them, so that won’t be a problem,” Mia growled, her wing wrapped tight around her mate. “We’re leaving forever and never turning back. The elders may think they’re inflicting a punishment by exiling us, but we would have done so anyway eventually.”

“Of course you would have,” Verasta said. “Of course you woud. You could have mated with Kaidon as we had the decided – his sire and dam were ready to give me half of their hoard to take an egg of yours – but no, you had to do it your way. You had to murder the bastard. All you add to do was to give them an egg and in two generation we would have ruled over the clan, but no. You just liked bird cock too much.”

“Technically, it’s a cat cock,” Lif said, and gestured at his torso. “It’s one of the feline organs of my body. If we really want to be specific – “

Verasta raised a paw and slammed it on the ground. The cliff trembled, a crack spread where the blow had landed. “I don’t remember asking you anything, bird toy.”

“And I don’t remember asking you to come here at all,” Mia said. “So I suggest you leave, Verasta. Before I decided one murder alone is not enough for this week.”

Verasta’s eyes narrowed. “You would threaten your own dam?”

“I just did it,” she said. “We can declare an official duel right now if you want. We even have a witness. Say the word, and we – “

“No.”

They both turned toward Lif. Neither had expected him to talk. He was smaller than the two of them and his voice was thinner but he spoke with such clarity they both felt they had to stop as if an elder had said it. “Do you want to say something, bird toy?”

“I have nothing to say to you,” he replied. “I want nothing to do with you. More than anything else, I don’t want you to raise one hand over Mia.” He took a step forward to stand next to her. “The sentence has been given. The decision has been taken. We are to go into exile, but no physical punishment shall be inflicted on us. Touch us, either of us, and you break the law your own kind established.” His eyes sharpened. He turned toward Mia. “I think we’re done here.”

Mia looked at him, then looked back at her. She snorted. “I was about to say it myself,” she said. They both turned and gave them their backs and took flight. Mia hoped her mother would leave before they reached the line of the horizon, that she declared defeat and decided that it was not worth it, but she did not. She stood over the cliff and stared at them as they flew until the curve of the earth made it impossible for her gaze to follow. She had to give it to her: for all it was worth, she hated them until the very last flap of wings.

/

“You were very brave,” Mia said. “Standing up to my mother like that.”

They stood over the edge of a canyon, behind a granite hill that granted them a bit of relief with its immense shadow, a void thousands of feet deep below them. It was made of rock and stone and dust and only now that they were almost out of the environment she had called her nest for almost forty years she realized how much she despised it. "I never even heard you raise your voice against her.”

“And never would I again,” he said, snatching a flying rock-lizard in the eye and offering it to her. “No offense, but that female is insane. From the moment I first saw her when I was a fledgeling I felt like there was something wrong with her head. I mean, something’s wrong with your head, too,” he said, and she gave him a push. “But she is genuinely crazy. I mean, my mother is a bitch too, but at least she does not care enough to make me do things I don’t want to do. Can’t imagine how it would be to be your mother’s son.”

“She’d train you to fight, give you as much mandrake roots as possible to boost your virility and then try to pair you with the dragon with the most chances to be elected next elder,” Mia said. “That’s what she tried to do with me.”

“Yes, and look where that led us. How do you feel?”

“Why do you ask?”

“We’re about thirty miles away from the eastern borders of the desert,” he said. “Soon the dust will turn into bushes, the rocks into trees. We will leave this place forever and never return. How does that make you feel?”

She took a second to thing about it. “I don’t mind.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I don’t like this place. I only realize it now, but I think I just…just fucking hate it. I have no idea how I resisted living in it for four decades straight – how I never tried to find out what was beyond its confines.”

Fin shrugged. “Sometimes there is no reason. Dragons are possessive of their territory – maybe you thought ‘this is mine, so I have to stay here and defend it’.”

“Is that why you flew out of here before?” she asked. “You do not care about defending this place?”

“I just never saw it as mine. The creatures in it, sure – there was a time where I felt like they owned me, just as I owned them – so I had to protect them. Then I realized I am no warrior and neither I wanted to be. I want to be myself, and I do not think I can be it here, in a valley of canyons so old nobody remembers its name.” He pushed a pebble over the edge of the cliff and watched it fall until it broke against the ground. “I’m a gryphon. My place is in a forest, or atop a snowed mountain – but it’s certainly not here.”

“Forests and mountains are dangerous for those who are not warriors.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I brought you along with me.”

She laughed and pushed him with her shoulder. “Oh, so suddenly it was your plan all along to get me out of the lair?”

“Obviously. I’ve been pulling the strings all along, hidden in the shadow. Now you shall be my guardian in my quest to realize myself.”

“Listen here, birdie. The only thing you’re going to realize is –“

A foul wind raised at once, its gust so violent it made their wings bend against their backs. Clouds of dust rose around them, entered their eyes and throats, made them cough and cry. “By the gods above,” Mia said. “Where the fuck is this wind coming from?”

“No idea, but it smells like a sandstorm incoming,” he said, his arm raised over his face to protect it. “Don’t worry. We’re almost out of here.”

Fin grabbed another rock-lizard floating in the air next to him and launched it at Mia. She took it in her mouth and crunched on it once or twice before swallowing it still whole. “Let’s go,” they say. They spread their wings and once they were stabile enough to fight against the furious winds they followed east.

/

They flew. Mia had never been a fan of flying, she’d always favored running over it, so before they could reach anything resembling a forest her wing and neck hurt and her muscles were strained. She was about to complain when finally the first bushes started showing up in front of them like gifts from above – little clumps of green plants, not rolling balls of dry sticks as they had them in the canyons. Soon the bushes started to gain ground over the dust and then the first trees started to sprout here and there and before she knew it the dust was gone and the rock lizards were gone and everything was green and full of flowers, birds singing their unearthly songs in her hears and the sound and the vision of water flowing in streams and small waterfalls that made her realize how thirsty she was. They landed at the borders of a water spring and drank and drank and drank until her stomach was full and she could not take anymore. She raised her eyes then and saw Fin as he stared at her with a smile on his beak.

“What?” she said.

“Enjoying yourself?” he said. “You’re taking to the forest surprisingly well considering this is the first time you see it.”

“I’ve seen green before,” she said. “My father always showed it to me in his memories before he left.” She looked around herself. “Seeing it in person is a different experience though.”

Lif lowered his head and drunk too. Once he was satisfied he pulled his beak out and stared at the branches above them. The rays of the sun were gentle here and instead of hurting their eyes they merely warmed their hides to compensate for the chill of the forest in the morning.

“Would you like us to stop here?”

“What?” she said.

“There is a big mountain in that direction,” he said, pointing behind her. “It’s sides are full of caves, some of them sizeable, some hidden by great hills. We could make our nest in one of them, or lair, or whatever you want to call them.”

“You don’t want to explore the forest first?”

“We’ll have all the time of the world to explore it when we have a safe place to call our nest,” he said. “Call it gryphon instinct, but I don’t like the idea of being in an unfamiliar place without a place I can hide into if something bad happens.”

Mia grinned. “Coward.”

“Call me whatever you want. I like to have all my sides covered.” He flicked his tail. “Everybody is a hero until they get killed in a redcap swarm because they didn’t establish a base to retreat in first.”

“Alright, alright. You are the tactician.” She took another sip of water. “Let’s go see your caves. I don’t trust your judgement of a cave more than I’d trust a goblin to tell the truth, but maybe there is one cave out there that is worthy of being called a lair.”

They reached the mountain and started perlustrating its side inch by inch. Every cave they found Mia rejected almost immediately, some ancient primordial instinct telling her it was not the right one for reason she herself could not have said. They spent the whole morning and noon like that, and then the whole evening. Only when the sun had disappeared below the horizon and the moon was the only source of light aside from the sparkle of the dragonflies did she find one she liked.

“Alright,” she said. “This is the one.”

They went in. It was a spacious place, wider than it was tall but with many small caves connected to the main one. The moment she saw it she had a vision: wooden doors grafted to the stone as the main entrance, one room for sleep, one to lay eggs in. She smelled water too, so somewhere around there had to be an underground spring buried under a rock. Yes, this was the one.

“Are you sure?” Lif said. “It looks the same as the last one to me.”

“That’s because you’re not a female,” she said. “Nor a dragon, I suppose. But not everybody can be perfect.”

“I dare you to say that the next time you start sleeping on my feathers.”

“I’d lose it this very night,” she said, and smiled. “So? You agree on having this as our first lair?”

He shrugged. “I know nothing of lairs, so I think I’ll trust your judgement. What do you plan to do with it?”

“Lots of things,” she said. “For now, though, we should make something to cover the entrance. I don’t like feeling so exposed.”

“Already in front of you,” he said. “Make me a favor and use those deadly claws of yours to carve the superior entrance of the cave into tiny hooks.”

“Why?”

“Just trust me,” he said. “This is the one thing my mother taught me right. I want it to be a surprise.”

Mia shrugged and started to work. The stone was weird there, hard and brittle at the same time, and she worked with claws that had not been sharpened for days. Occasionally she threw a look at Lif to try and understand what he had planned, but all she could see was him harvesting leaves and cutting them up. It took her almost an hour to carve the hooks exactly as Lif had asked him to, and once she was done he found him staring at her with a grin on his face and long, thick ropes of interlocked leaves pending from his hands.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“It’s a trick my mother taught me when I was but a fledgeling,” he said. “She only told me the theory of course, we didn’t have any trees or leaves to actually do it, but I have a good memory.” He swung one side of one of the ropes around the first look and then pulled until both ends lay above the floor at the same length, then tied the two ends together. “See? They’re just leaves, but they’re interlocked so thick you cannot see from one side to another.”

“You learned how to do this when you were a fledgling?” she said. “In a place where leaves are rarer than water?”

“Told you I have a good memory,” she said. “Help me pull up the others, you’re taller than I am.”

So she did. They pulled up rope after rope and tied them together to the next one until the entire entrance was covered and no light could penetrate through the wall of leaves. They got some stones and some dry sticks, adjusted them into a circle and then started a bonfire with Mia’s molten breath. They looked around, feeling their now home. Lin’s eyes fell on her, and she nodded. “It will work for now,” she said. “But we can’t hide behind leaves forever. Sooner or later, we’ll need to use wood – or stone, maybe. Stone would be better.”

Lif smirked. “I think I’ll leave that job to you. Carving doors has never been my forte.” He stood up. “In the meanwhile, I think it’s time one of us goes hunting. Who stays and who goes?”

“I stay,” Mia said. “I want to explore the cave a bit deeper. You go and don’t turn back unless it’s with enough rock lizards to feed an entire clutch.”

“There are no lock lizards here, only elk and deer,” he said. She looked at him with a confused expression on her face and he laughed. “Nevermind,” he said, “I’ll show you later.” Then went through the wall of leaves and flew away.

Mia looked around herself. For the first time in a long while, she was alone without feeling like she were waiting for her judgement of death. The cave was big and housed many shadows, a darkness she was not used to and that her eyes fatigued to adapt to. When she was a hatchling her father once said that there is not one type of darkness but many, and with time she had to learn to master them all. She wished he had explained it better then.

She started to explore the cave. Every nook and cranny, every hole and pending stalactite. Before she knew it she was already cutting and breaking away what she did not like while digging through the stones in places she felt had to go deeper. The sound of water still ran through her ears but she couldn’t identify its source. It was not so bad - there was a pool of water a few steps away from the cave large enough to satiate an entire clan had there been the need – but the knowledge that something was right there and she couldn’t reach it drove her mad. No matter. Lif had a better hearing than her and she could put him at work to find the source the next day.

Time passed. Her internal clock told her that it had to be almost midnight and Lif had yet to come back. Her instinct told her to go out and find him, but she was in an unfamiliar environment and her usual tracking methods wouldn’t work here. Besides, she didn’t think there could be any big threat in a forest like that. It was more probable that Lif had messed up his hunt, more than once probably, and still had to sink his talons into something big enough to feed them both. Typical.

She was almost tempted to go outside and find something to hunt by herself when the ground trembled under her haunches. The entire cave shook with it and the few stalactites she had left because they embellished the environment fell on the floor and exploded in a thousand brilliant pieces of lucid stone. She jumped on her feet, her eyes flashing from one side of the other. “What in the gods damned hells?” she said. She feared a heartquake was about to hit the forest, but when she looked outside she realized the ground was still just a few hundred feet away from the cave and that the vibrations cave from inside the walls and spread through the ground. She stood there, immobile, all her instincts telling her a threat was coming and she should be prepared to fight it.

She was right.

Before she could realize what was happening the farthest side of the cave exploded in a waterfall of rocks and stones the size of her torso. A huge, hulking figure emerged from the hole, its hairy body rippling with muscle and covered in hold gray scars. Enormous claws were attached to his feet, and when he lowered his head to step through the hole he’d made through her wall she found herself staring at a furred, bestial face, only one eye in the middle of its head and a mouth full of fangs so long they extended through and beyond its tattered blue lips.

“Fucking gods, Mia,” she said aloud. “You just had to choose the cave with the behemoth in it, didn’t you?”

The behemoth roared and charged at her. She threw herself on the left and twisted mid-air to hit him with her tail in the back of his head, but he seemed to barely feel the blow. She landed on one side of the cave and then used her momentum to jump over him. She landed clean on its shoulder and started pummeling the back of its neck with all her might, every hit accompanied by a growl of rage. The creature’s neck started to crack and screak like old wood and blood and fragments of flesh flew everywhere around them as she dug its way toward his spine, but before she could land the fatal blow the creature grabbed her by the horns and slammed her on the ground below it. A huge feet raised above her to stomp on her head and she rolled away just in time to avoid it. She stood back up, her eyes wide open and snarling like a rabid dog, fury emanating from her like the fire she was about to unleash on the beast, but before she could do it the monster kicked her in the flank and sent her flying against the other side of the cave.

She hit her head against the wall and fell back on the ground, her vision blurred. She felt something warm leaking from the side of her skull and it took her a moment to realize it was blood. She shook her head and flexed his body to shake herself out of the numbness but by the time she had regained her senses the behemoth was already over her. The creature raised both first above his head to prepare for the final blow, and the last of Mia’s thought was what a waste of time and resources it had been, to die in this forest when she could have done the same thing in her lair the day before, a tear streaming down her cheek thinking of all the things that could have been but now would never happen.

Then Lif tore through the wall of leaves and slammed himself against the creature’s torso. The gryphon was not even half its size, but he’d been flying so fast the impact reverberated through the behemoth’s body like a rock thrown in water. The beast roared in pain and fell back and Lif instantly tried to rip its throat out with his beak, but before he could do anything the monster swatted him away with one hand and sent him rolling against the ground, its left wing broken.

The sight of Lif’s blood falling on the gray stone made her eyes widen. Fury returned to her like an old friend after a long time and before she knew it she was back on her feet with her jaws open and a roar in her throat. She jumped on the Behemoth, anchoring it to the ground, and before it could do anything to try and free itself she grabbed the sides of its head and spat a column of fire straight into its mouth. She went on like that for minutes, her flame burning on and on. Lif yelled at her to stop, that it was dead and that she was just wasting energy, but she kept going. In the end she felt Lif’s arm wrap around her and physically tear her away from the creature. Only then her fire waned.

The two rolled on the wasted ground and there they stayed. They breathed together in the cold air of the night as the scent of burnt flesh and charred bone filled the cave. When both their breathing became regular and Mia had stopped to tremble with rage he stood and looked at her.

“Are you alright?” he said.

She turned on her back and looked at him. There was some blood on the right side of his face and his left wing was busted, but it was nothing that wouldn’t heal in a few weeks at best. “I’m fine,” she said. “You could have come back sooner though.”

“Sorry. I wanted our first prey to be great and juicy, to celebrate the start of a new life in these woods. In the end all I caught a young buck.” He looked at the behemoth. “At a rough first estimate, I’d say you have me thoroughly beaten.”

Mia chuckled. “I was always the best hunter.”

“How true is that,” he said. He pulled her on her feet and hugged her with both his arms and wing. She did the same, tighter, keeping a tight hold on him as if to make sure he was truly there.

“Hell of an evening,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, and hugged harder. “Hell of an evening.”

/

They ate the behemoth raw. Its meat tasted horrible, but Mia had insisted that’s how a great prey should be consumed. They made a new bonfire and ripped off chunks of meat and ate them around it in silence, their backs pressed one against the other, Mia’s right wing draped over Lif. He had remade the wall of leaves and now they were alone again, undisturbed and with low changes to be in the foreseeable future.

When they finished eating Lif cleaned his beak and rolled toward her, his back pushed against her belly. “You know, the behemoth used a complex of galleries to move through the mountains,” he said. “We’ll have to make sure no other surprises jump out of the walls.”

“You leave that to me,” she said. “My kind has all matter of tricks to make stone stronger. We’ll be living in a fortress before you even know it.”

“Hope so,” he said. “Or we’ll have to get used to monsters busting through our walls in the following days.”

She laughed and wrapped an arm around him. “Forget about monsters,” she said. “Forget about the galleries. Tell me what you think will happen – only the best thoughts, no bad things.”

“But – “

“You heard me, bird boy.”

Fin chuckled. “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose I expect to live here, for a time at least. I expect to hunt with you and fight with you, and sometimes you’ll be angry at me and sometimes I’ll be angry at you but in the end we’ll always find a way to make up. If everything goes well, I expect to grow old with you here – to see the seasons go and the world spin while we stay here in our little slice of woods. We’ll travel, occasionally, just to get a glimpse of what the world outside is like, but in the end we will always get back here, because it’s where we belong.”

She confirmed his thoughts with a coo and a firm lick to the feathers that ran over the back of his head. “What about hatchlings?” she said. “How many should we get?”

“As many as we can handle, I think,” he said. “Unions between dragons and gryphons are difficult and rarely bear fruit, but it’s not like we have a limited number of time we can try for them. Nobody is running after us.”

“So you do want to be a father?”

“Of course I do." He turned to look at her. “Why, don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Neither of us has had the best parents. We have no idea how to grow an hatchling. What if…” she paused. “What if they turn out like us?”

“That would only happen if we had turned out like our parents,” he said. “Do you feel like you turned out like your mother?”

“No. Do you?”

“No.” He nuzzled his beak against her nose. “We’ve been through a lot. We’ve had it rough, and you’ve had it rougher than me, but we’re out of it now. We can raise our hatchlings like we wished our parents raised us. Avoid the errors, correct the mistakes. Make everything better.”

“And if we fail?”

“You said no bad thoughts, Mia. Only the best ones.” He nipped at the scales on his back. “And we won’t fail.”

They stayed like that for a while until Mia ran a hand over his side and landed a small bite on his shoulder. “Turn toward me,” she said. He did so as best as his wounded wing could handle and when they were face to face Mia spread her jaws and stuck his tongue in his beak. Fil was taken aback for a second, but when her appendage started making its way down his throat and twisting in such a way it made his eyes roll in the back of her head he relaxed on the ground and let her do as she wished. She had always been good with her tongue, Mia, even though he was the only one who knew it, and when it came to kissing he was happy to leave most of the work to her. No gryphon tongue could be as flexible as a dragon’s anyway.

The kiss went on for a while, her muzzle and his beak pushing one against the other, saliva dripping down the sides of their faces and onto the ground. Mia lowered a hand between his legs and start to knead his full, pulsing ball, her wrist playing with his thickening sheath. It took only a few minutes for him to harden enough for his cock to poke out of it, and a few minutes more until it was fully hard and throbbing in her hand. Gryphon cocks were different from dragon cocks – they had a smore serpentine shape, and their tip was more tapered – but they were big, and hard, and covered in ribs that scratched her cunt and her throat just the way she liked, and that was enough for her.

Mia pulled her tongue out of his throat. “Turn on your back,” she whispered.

Lif turned on his back. Mia crawled backward, her claws leaving deep grooves in the stone until she found herself face to face with Lif’s erection. A slight layer of pre was already covering it and it made her mouth water. She gave it a tentative lick and Lif groaned.

“Do you have to tease me every time we rut?”

“Not every time,” she said, and took hold of his cock. “I’m making an exception this time.”

She spread her maw and swallowed him in one go. There had been a time where she would have never been able to do that, but she’d had years to perfection her technique and now it came as easy as breathing. She wrapped is tongue around it, two feet of pink slick appendage and yet barely able to cover it all. She wrapped it tightly around every curve of Fin’s cock and then pulled and pushed until the first groans started to come out of him, along with the first spurts of pre sliding down her throat. She started moving it up and down, her saliva and his semen lubricating it to the point her tongue flew over his flesh so fast it was like she could cover it at the same time, and she went at it until she decided his groans were not loud enough and started to move her throat along her tongue.

It did not take long for the spurts of pre to become a continuous stream, and she swallowed it all as she worked over him. Her free hand descended over her flat, slender belly until it hit her slit and started teasing her labia and the tender flesh around her clit. She was already soaked, the pressure in her loins already reaching dangerous levels. Little squirts of feminine essence spurted out of her in intervals, but she tried to take ahold of herself as much as possible. He had to come first – then it would be her turn.

Her head movements accelerated, her tongue massaging his cock as her head went up and down, up and down. Lif moaned and groaned like a little bird, small pitched noises that made her want to jump on him and ride him until he passed out. When she felt him close she buried her throat against his crotch and let her tongue finish the job.

Lim let out a powerful screech, and then a torrent of semen released in her throat. Thick, fat spurts of dense cum whose rhythm she had to match if she didn’t want to choke on them started pouring down her throat and filling her stomach. Dragons liked to say no male of any other species could come as much as male dragons, but if that were true then she was glad she’d never mated with a male of her kin – those bastard would have drowned her. The orgasm went on and on for minutes, and only when the torrent started to die down and Lif’s cock started to soften did she let her herself touch her clit.

The sea she’d tried to old at bay busted trough her like an old dam. She pulled away from his cock and roared as her first orgasm of the night spurted out, a condensed jet of her juices pouring out of her cunt and arching in the air before splattering against the cold rock. Her body shook and her hips pushed forward as if to facilitate the release, and the knowledge that Lif was looking down at her as she climaxed with his eyes wide and his breath ragged made the orgasm all the more intense. Once it was finally over she gave herself only a moment of respite before climbing above him and planting her feet at his sides.

“Ready for the next round?” she breathed.

He chuckled. “I was hoping you’d gave me five more minutes before riding me into the ground.”

“Sorry to disappoint. You only get ten second.” She stroked his cock with her posterior feet, and once it had awakened from its half dormient state and was ready and hard again she used her tail to point it at the entrance of her slit.

“Hard or slow?” she asked as she stroked her labia against his cocktip.

He grunted. “Does it matter what I say?”

“No.” She grinned, and then impaled herself onto him.

Both of them moaned in unison as she went from completely empty to stretched to her limit, the feeling of emptiness that had plagued her since the evening now finally gone. Juices started running down his length and soaking his cock almost immediately, and she only took one second to adjust herself before starting to hammer her hips against his own with enough strength to break the rock under them. From that already wild pacing her movements only grew more and more erratic, until her cunt started running up and down his cock so fast they became impossible to follow. The pressure in her loins soon began raising again, and this time exploded first, almost unexpectedly. She could not even moan as the first spurts of juices landed on his belly and bathed his cock in her fluids: Lif soon followed, her body moving spasmodically until his core pushed up and his cock thickened and a river of seed flew through his organ and into her belly, filling her to the brim in a matter of seconds and then falling out at the sides of her cunt.

Each one of them had already come twice, and hard, but they’d just started. What little control Lif had on the rutting was lost as Mia assumed complete control of the rutting, her lips retracted in a snarling smile as she rode him with mad abandonment, cum and juices flying everywhere around them and pooling behind their joined crotches. She milked orgasm after orgasm out of Lif until the sound of his groans became white noise to her ears, her focus purely on her own pleasure. She did not even know how many times had she come, but the climaxes came and came and came and she refused to stop, refused to make them stop, drunk on the satisfaction of knowing she could drive him at his absolute limit and keep going as much as she was drunk on her own pleasure.

A new sun was already half-hovering over the horizon when she finally gave up. She would have liked to keep going, she really would, but her bones felt like dust now and her muscle were nothing but broken spring. Lif, poor guy that he was, had done as much as he could to keep up, but when she slowed down the mad grinding of her cunt and looked down at him she realized he was fully unconscious, her movements bare spasms of pleasure flowing through his fried brain.

Mia pulled herself off of him, one last shiver of pleasure spreading through her before his cock slipped out and she collapsed on the ground next to him. The floor was covered with cracks, some of them as big and large as they were, and though the satisfaction of her own mating power was almost as good at sex the moment she stopped and started breathing great slow breaths to calm herself down all the fatigue and the extreme effort she’d put in that mating crumbled onto her like a mountain. Soon she realized she had to be as tired as he was, if a little more conscious, and that she needed rest more than anything else. She turned her head toward Lif and saw his head tilted to the right, his eyes closed and the beak open and drooling, the cool wind of the morning running through his feathers. She turned on her left side – one more movement that costed her no little pain – and then hugged him with one arm while draping one wing over him. She licked his beak and nipped his neck, a little bite with her tiny front teeth, then closed her eyes and fell asleep.