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The multiple layers of the Crag started to come awake steadily as the sun pierced the clouds, shining into the various caves on the east side of the spiraling mountain range that made up the Crag's homeland. Some eighty or more gryphons of various ages began to make their way out of their dens, stretching and starting their morning routines with an undercurrent of excitement and desire buzzing throughout.

Stretching his large, vibrant red wings, Rico admired the shadows casting themselves over the grey terrain. Like every other gryphon in the Crag, he knew that the most exciting time of all was just a week or so away, and he couldn't wait. His tail swayed behind him, and he spread his wings, free now of nighttime stiffness, and glided his way from the fourth shelf, down to the communal gathering spot in what was known as the 'Bowl'.

The Bowl was lined with a multitude of stone slabs that served as tables, all of which reached an average-sized gryphon's chest when they sat before it. Rico was not an average-sized gryphon, so as usual, he had to lean forward when he grabbed the small clay vessel that was used to scoop grains into before his meal. Rico admitted that he didn't envy those who had to wake up multiple hours before dawn to cook for the entire Flock, but he did admire their food.

Nox soon joined him at the table, a snowy owl mixed with a snow leopard, pelt and feathers both the colour of fallen snow, but going more ash-gray with age, and Rico looked over at the Elder with a respectful bob of his head. Nox was, indeed, the oldest bird that Rico had ever known, and was most likely the oldest of all eight Flocks in the north. He had asked her once how old she was, and she had hit him with one of her wings as a result - a mistake he had never made again.

"Excited, Rico?" Nox asked, tilting her head as she drank down some of the warm broth from her own clay bowl.

Rico offered a small grin, an upturning of the edges of his beak, but like most expressions, it was mostly the eyes - a playful sparkle that couldn't hide his excitement any more than the sway of his tail could. "I've been excited since two weeks ago, when I saw the first leaves fall. I was made for this season, and you know it," he quipped. It wasn't bragging, not quite. But it was awfully close.

Nox glanced at Rico, slowly shook her head, and took another sip of her broth while a few more gryphons started to file in. One of those, settling in the orbit of Rico, was a young adult named Jasper. He was an osprey-wolf combination, one of two in the Crag, and the younger of the two. More than once, Rico had wondered if he had any relation to the other Osprey.

Considering the communal raising of young, they might have been for all that the two were aware, moreso as they shared similar colourations throughout - white melding into brown in both feathers and fur. Worst still was their shared overlapping personality traits, the most notable being their admiration for Rico and his natural appeal. Both males had used him as a study on the art of showing off.

Jasper brought his bowl to his beak and sat up a little straighter, mirroring Rico's pose. Rico had long since noticed this mirroring and was past the point of finding it strange. It was almost flattering, though Nox would undoubtedly have other opinions about it being a bad influence on the next generation. "When does the official celebration start?" Jasper asked, his bushy wolf tail giving a sway despite trying to mirror the cool ease of Rico nearby.

"The official season starts in a few days, and you and your age group will be locked away when it does," Nox commented, making Jasper roll his eyes just in time for him to be joined by another of his shelf-mates named Quill. If it wasn't for the fact that her legs were so long, one might have suspected that Quill was a runt; Jasper's white and brown frame was almost twice the size of the narrow peregrine falcon-maned wolf combination that Quill was. Her lithe body almost looked like it was on stilts, and indeed, her hindlegs were slightly longer than her fore; making her have to adapt her posture as she moved.

"Most of the males are technically able to breed already, I'm not sure why they aren't allowed," she said as she took her position alongside Jasper. Jasper, who immediately went into thought at this, was distracted long enough for Quill to reach over with her talons and steal a piece of meat from his bowl. "I mean, they've gone through puberty proper; it isn't like us females who haven't actually started estrus."

Nox's gaze met Quill's, slowly and deliberately, "Physically, yes. Emotionally, young one, they aren't ready this year. Next year, you will all join."

"I'm emotionally ready," Quill countered, and Nox firmly shook her head. Even Quill knew when not to push an issue, and she returned to her full bowl of food as Jasper stopped contemplating the sky and his future, and now was wondering why his bowl was half empty instead.

Gareth arrived next, flanked by his two perpetual shadows - Breck to the right and Slate to the left. The three made an imposing entrance, and that was the point. Gareth was the third Eldest of the Flock, and the second oldest that was actually born in the Crag. A golden eagle-timber wolf combination, his body was large and powerful despite his advancing age, with streaks of grey now in what used to be the tawny-brown fur of his hindend.

Breck was a younger male, about half Gareth's age, and had fallen in with him the season before Rico arrived. A red-tailed hawk-maned wolf gryphon, Breck could have been eye-catching if he didn't spend so much of his time in the orbit of Gareth, whose presence alone lured the eye away. Like Quill, he had a lanky attribute to him due to the mammalian half, but if he was ever self-conscious about it, it didn't show.

Slate was just... Slate. No one really knew much about him, truthfully. He was a boulder of a bird, physically large and intimidating, with brown eyes so dark they appeared near black, serving as Gareth's muscle. The grey-feathered, grey- furred male was a combination of peregrine and wolf, though exactly which of the latter was still up for debate among the flock.

Gareth sat with the ease of royalty coming home, and Breck and Slate took their positions to either side of him. "So, just a few days until the first heat? I can't wait," he rumbled to himself, his beak offering a grin that his eyes never matched. "Rico, we don't want an incident like last year, do we?"

Rico's body tensed, but it passed in the beat of a heart. So fast that Jasper hadn't noticed the break in the cool exterior of his role model, "I will keep myself behaved if you do," he countered, and Nox tensed for a moment at the other end of the table, as if expecting an argument to break out.

"I'm glad to hear that," was all Gareth commented, sipping at the broth in his bowl.

"I'm just glad that we get to spectate this year, if only for five days. Being locked up with all the nestlings from the first autumn leaf is miserable," complained Vesper, one of Quill and Jasper's shelf-mates. A raven-coyote mix, she was partially trickery incarnate, but also self-assured to boot. Nox had always seen her as a potential problem, and she had lived up to that multiple times while growing up. If it wasn't for the personality, she might have been a heartthrob in her age group, her black feathers the colour of ink, helping her vibrant teal eyes stand out.

"I don't mind," Wren commented, sitting between Vesper and Quill. Another shelf-mate, he was smaller than the others, and his jay-Arabian wolf combination marked him as someone born from outside genetics, while also rendering him the smallest of his friend group. Indeed, he barely came up to Jasper's shoulder, though he didn't seem to mind, considering he spent most of his time hovering around Quill. Side-by-side, they were a contrast of colour, with Quill's slate-blue and Wren's far more vibrant shade of blue.

"Of course not," purred Kossho, by far the most exotic gryphon in the Crag. A peacock-lynx, he had all the vanity and careful posturing that a peacock demanded, and it was with this posture that he took his seat by Wren. "I, for one, intend to fully sample all the... fruits I can."

"You five are up early," Rico commented, addressing Vesper, Quill, Kossho, Jasper, and Wren.

"And there will be no fruit sampling," Nox commented afterward, making Kossho try his hardest to put on a look of innocent indifference.

"I got them up early," Quill quipped, taking from her side a small wooden block with various engravings on it. She set her talon against it and started to engrave, writing into it in a language only she knew. "I wanted to make sure to watch as much as I can, so I can write a guide for us for next year."

Rico laughed, shaking his head slowly as he did so. "Little hen, the season isn't something you can study. You have to feel

it," Quill paused in her writing for a moment at that, before furiously jotting down another line of script.

"So," purred Kossho, all with the innocence of a cat in a bird cage, "What is the feel of the season?"

"Don't answer that," Nox chided, before Rico could open his beak. "And stop asking, Kossho, or I'll lock you away early." Kossho, at least, had the grace to back down.

Having not heard Nox, or choosing to ignore her, Kestra entered and took a seat on the other side of Rico, "The season feels like excitement and pleasure, all in one." Kestra, a magpie near-opinicus, was more avian than hybrid; almost no fur to speak of, aside from the short bob of her tail, and the telltale sign of her backlegs having mammalian paws, not talons. No one knew, exactly, what feline heritage Kestra sported, but in the end, it didn't truly matter; her black and white plumage that ended in vibrant iridescent feathers at her primaries always caught the eye.

Quill looked up, "How would you describe pleasure?" Nox tossed Kestra a glare that even she ended up shying away from.

"Ignore her, Quill. She's just trying to get under Nox's feathers," announced Liz, a peregrine falcon-wolf hybrid with deep, warm red fur that easily caught in the sun's rays. The red-brown of her feathering overall complemented the fur, and in the rays of the early morning sun, she appeared to almost glow. She took her seat beside Kestra, who ended up hip-bumping her as she did.

"And succeeding," commented Nox.

"I'll take that as a victory," Kestra quipped back, reaching over to take another bowl of food from the center of the table. All told, some sixty gryphons had assembled into the Bowl, and the air was now filled with the hum of excited conversation.

Before long, most of the food had been claimed at the lengthy table that Rico first sat down at, and one of the late arrivals was soon grumbling about it, "All out of corn chowder?" commented the mirror image to Jasper as he sat down on the other side of Kestra. A mirror image that was all legs and awkward gait, whereas Jasper was far more compact.

"Alas, Chuck - early bird gets the worm and all that," Rico commented, though he did pass over the last half of his own, a gesture Chuck was instantly thankful for, and instantly devoured as well.

"Well, this early bird is still trying to get used to having grown a foot in the past two months." Chuck was one of the males who was going to start his first season and was at the tail-end of his last growth spurt, as was common for most of the males. Many got used to their bodies quickly, but the osprey-wolf had grown at least another foot and a half in the past year, and thus his gangliness was a trait he hadn't quite grown out of.

"At least you didn't trip this time," recited Quill, still studiously taking notes. From the sudden dark shade of Chuck's ears, he wished no one had remembered that.

The last to join the table was Mango, a bird that immediately caught as many eyes as Rico or Gareth, but for entirely different reasons. She was the tropics come alive, and had Rico been at the Crag earlier, he could have been mistaken for her father. Vibrant greens, reds, and yellows made up the Oriole front half of her, and her canine backhalf even had green 'socks', a colouration no one could explain. "Pass the seed, please," she commented, with all the enthusiasm of a deflated balloon. Like Chuck, this was the first season she was old enough to participate in, and thus was trying to balance out growth spurts and hormonal changes all at once.

"Long night?" asked Breck, reaching past Gareth to hand her a bowl. Gareth followed the motion, looked at Mango herself, and did some sort of rapid, mental math before returning to the plate in front of him.

"Very. Couldn't sleep, kept feeling an uncomfortable warmth in my belly." At once, every male at the table froze. Every single one of them lifted their beaks and sniffed the air, only to relax after a few moments and resume their conversations. No scent of heat on the air, yet, and even one hen wouldn't be lost in that condition over the pack of bodies.

"Probably your body is prematurely readying itself. Happens all the time," Liz commented, giving a bob of her head. "I got the worst cramps the week before the season started."

"You're... Liz, right?" Mango asked, tilting her head and examining the red-furred female. A slow nod of acknowledgement followed, and Mango pressed on. "You... ran away last season, didn't you?"

Liz went still as a stone, and some of the conversation immediately around the pair died. "I was locked in with the rest, but I heard-," her question died off as Kestra leaned forward and tossed her a glare that would have made anyone wilt. "I-I, what I meant was-"

"I was, yes," Liz murmured in a thin, measured tone, "I wasn't ready last year, so I ran. Hid in the peaks until it all ended," she looked upward and then shook her head. "I don't regret it, but I am ready this year. I am going to be here."

"I-Good. That's good," Mango commented, looking down at her food as Kestra leaned back. Quill, who was taking more notes, was suddenly stopped by Jasper reaching over and pinning down her foreleg with a shake of his head. It took Quill a moment, but finally she understood: not something to be recorded, and she lifted her fore to cross out the few marks she had just made.

The rest of the conversation picked back up, and some eight-odd gryphons had their breakfast together in the warmth of the rising sun.

The rest of the day passed relatively uneventfully, at least until the gathering at the Bowl came in the early afternoon. Every gryphon was there, with the younger ones being on the ledge above - able to watch, not participate in the activities. Nox had placed two of the older females up there to keep an eye on them, while she herself sat on her haunches, patiently, for the arrival of everyone. It was a slow process, as it was a warm, lazy afternoon before the chill and crisp of Autumn truly caught up, and everyone was enjoying it.

Quiet conversation bubbled all around, and once Nox had done a relatively accurate headcount, she lifted a foreleg for silence. Gradually, those around her went quiet, and the ripple of silence extended further back until everyone was quiet and paying attention to her. "This marks the start of the Season activities. We Eldest, we track the Seasons, the Stars, and the cycle of the World, and we know that the first heat will arrive within five days." A quick murmur of conversation surged, then died down again.

"First order of business, as always, is that next year's adults are allowed to watch, not participate," she tossed a look up at the ledge, specifically at Quill, who was frantically taking notes and thus oblivious to the gaze. Kossho, who was beside her, was not - as Nox's eyes roamed onto him next. "They may watch the posturing and gift-giving, but they are not to join in.

Not to accept a male's gift. Not to try and leave one themselves."

"Secondly, a female's den is off limits for the duration of the season. From now until I declare the end, no male will be allowed within the female dens. However, arranged outside of them will be a small, clay bowl, akin to those we use to eat with," she lifted her own, chipped and the colour worn with age. "Males will place an object they think will impress in the bowls of those they desire the company of, covered with their scent. There is no limit to the number of gifts one can give - as you know, multiple fathered litters is the Flock way. However, it is up to the hen to decide to accept it and to visit. If any male pressures a female, they will be severely punished."

She waited, letting that sit in for a moment. "For the first five days, or until someone enters their heat, please restrain your passions. We may not be the most modest of creatures, but try and leave something to the imagination for the next year's participants," the assembled gryphons chuckled softly at that. "Pre-season sex is, as always, restricted to the dens or the outskirts of the Crag. Once the season officially begins, however, the grounds are free for use."

Quill paused in her note-taking, looking around herself with a sudden interest in the geography of the communal gathering area. "What are you doing?" Whispered Vesper to her.

"Trying to figure out the most used spot for coupling in the season," Quill responded, matter-of-factly, and Vesper clicked her beak.

"Lastly, as is our way, we have done an exchange with the other Flocks for new blood to join ours," Nox announced, and with this, Gareth's attention snapped from bored disinterest to attentive listening, his body tense as Nox did so. "We have traded three for three, all of the same age. All are beginning their first season as adults. The first was Miko for Y'tar of the Steppe Flock," she gestured to the side, where three individuals were aligned. The first stepped forward upon being called, a female with pale grey feathers of a steppe hawk mixed with a steppe wolf. A traditional breed of her Flock.

"Next was Alta for Buhle, of the Jungle Flock," a female with a vibrancy that nearly rivaled Mango's stepped forward, bobbed her head in acknowledgement, then stepped back. Gareth started to relax, then the last one was called, and the tension returned in a rush.

"Lastly, we traded Argon for Kade, of the Canyon Flock." What stepped forward suddenly brought the crowd to total silence and total awareness. The male was large, rivaling the stature of both Gareth and Rico. No, Gareth corrected with the appraising look of someone judging a piece of meat - bigger than either of them. Kade's particular blend was raven and timber wolf, and Gareth's head turned, scanning the crowd as the crowd's eyes turned onto the newcomer. Thankfully for Gareth, who was still running a series of mental calculations, Nox spoke again and regained the crowd's attention as Kade stepped back.

"We want to thank our fellow Flocks for their contribution. Remember that these three are now part of our family, so treat them as you would treat any other bird of the Crag. Now, you may begin the first night of the festivities. The bowls will be set out for the gifts tomorrow morning. " Nox closed, and the bubbling of conversation resumed.

Gareth was rooted to the spot while the others moved around him, parting around him like he was a stubborn rock in the middle of a river. His eyes remained fixated on Kade, who had moved his way closer to the center of the communal area, but not into the center as several other males had. He just took a seat back on his haunches, looking around at the faces of his new Flock. Oddly, that got under Gareth's feathers even more than if he had joined the posturing males in the center.

There, his inexperience as a first-year may have backfired, or the females might have lost their interest. Instead, Kade's almost disinterest in it all seemed to attract the eye and Gareth's ire, in equal measure.

Kestra was near the center 'stage' that the males had assembled upon to begin their flashy mating displays, and she leaned over to speak to Liz, who was staying alongside her, "That new one is an eyeful," she murmured, and Liz merely rolled her eyes. The season hadn't even started, and the posturing males on the stage were already annoying her. Liz wasn't sure how she was going to make it through up to a month of this, but she vowed she would.

Rico, front and center of the males, overheard and leaned forward to respond. First of all, the new posture was counterbalanced by one of his hindlegs lifting up, exposing the sudden hang and heft of the male's low-hanging balls and full weighted sheath. The colouration there was far more muted than the vibrant red of his feathers, but the charcoal grey nevertheless caught the eye for reasons beyond his plumage. "The Canyon only ever sends their best," he quipped. His own home had been the Canyon, and when he had left, Kade was still young, still a hatchling. Now, clearly, he had fully grown into his own.

Kestra's tongue snuck out, licking the edge of her beak as she looked directly at where Rico wanted her focus, "So I see," Liz, beside her, rolled her eyes and playfully swatted at her friend's shoulder with a forefoot. Kestra huffed, as if insulted, "What? Can't blame a girl who knows what she likes."

"I can if she starts making the stones wet before the season starts properly," Liz commented dryly.

Mango had made her way over during all of this and was suddenly overwhelmed and embarrassed in equal measure. Kestra was a year older, had been through a season, and had the easy confidence of a female who knew what she wanted and the experience to no longer feel shame for it. Mango had none of that, and her orange eyes were glued to the weight of Rico's balls. Every motion he made caused them to pull up or bounce, and she soon found herself blushing as she realized what she was doing. She looked away.

Straight to Kade, sitting to the side on his haunches, which meant that his hind legs were partially spread; he wasn't purposefully putting himself on display like the others on stage, but nevertheless, the weight and fullness were fully there, shadowed by the rest of his frame. Shadowed, but still in detail enough to make Mango have to look away again.

She had decided the sky was quite lovely today.

Thankfully, Chuck gave her a distraction as he moved to sit beside her. "Not going up there?" she questioned as his large, somewhat lanky frame settled beside hers.

"Oh. Um... no, not today. Tomorrow," he commented, his eyes glued on Rico. Mango wondered if, perhaps, he had an interest in males. There was nothing wrong with that; some of the males swung that way, or both. But, no, she noticed that his attention wasn't where hers had been moments ago, but rather on every movement of Rico's body. As if he were studying the postures and positions Rico was putting his body into during the display. A display that - oh. Mango looked away with a fresh blush.

Up above, the younger crowd was talking among themselves. Quill, particularly, seemed frustrated as she carved her writings into a fresh piece of bark. "I can't make out any of the details properly from up here. How can I have proper documentation if I can't see everything?"

Kossho, lounging in a way that made him look elegant without trying, was examining the talons on his foreleg, "That's the point, Quill. Our poor, innocent eyes aren't meant to see them display."

Quill's exasperation of a sigh followed, "But I can see Jasper and Wren's anatomy every day," she complained.

"I never said it made sense," Kossho offered as a form of sympathy, although a part of him enjoyed seeing Quill's frustrations.

Nightfall brought the gathering to a steady closure. This was one night of peace, which would start becoming far less so in the coming days. Tonight, males weren't expecting guests at their dens, so several lingered at the edges of the Bowl, the caldera at the base of the Crag's semi-circle nature. One of those was Kade, sitting by himself and looking up at the night sky. Something both familiar to him and new, all at once. The stars were familiar, but in different places than they had been at the Canyon.

His quiet musing was ruined by the arrival of another male, one that smelled faintly of minerals and earth - like a stone on a warm day. He turned his head, spotting a golden eagle-timber wolf settle beside him, with streaks of grey in his fur and a lighter colouring around his beak, telling of his age. "I'm Gareth," the newcomer announced to him.

"Kade," Kade responded, before resuming his look up at the stars. He wasn't being unfriendly, per se, but he was clearly in thought and wished to be alone.

"Welcome to the Crag, Kade. Let me give you a word of advice," Gareth continued, either ignoring or not noticing the mood that Kade was in. As Kade lowered his gaze, silver eyes meeting sharp yellow, he settled on the former. "You're new, so you don't know our Flock's rules."

"I assume," Kade began, "they're the same as the Canyon. No murder, no rape, no theft."

"The core ones, yes. But, you see, you're new. Exotic. I saw the looks you got at the gathering, even without putting yourself on display like that oversized rooster."

"You mean Rico?"

"Yes. I guess it makes sense that you two know each other, being from the same Flock. But you'll attract the eye and attention of every female. That sounds like heaven, but what it actually does is weaken the genetic diversity of the Flock. So, we don't let newcomers breed on their first season with us. Next year, you can do so to your heart's content, but this year? You can't touch a female."

Kade's crest twitched atop his head, talons curling in against the dry grasses beneath him, "And if I do?"

"Mm..." Gareth slowly stood, shaking out his feathers and fur, "I recommend you don't find out. If you are into it, you may sleep with the males; we aren't so cruel as to require celibacy during the middle of the breeding season. Goodnight, Kade, and welcome to your new home." Somehow, he managed to make it sound entirely sincere, but Kade saw through it straight away. Gareth's eyes were cold and emotionless as he started to walk away, leaving his warning echoing in Kade's head.

Kade resumed stargazing, but now his crest was pinned down, and his thoughts swirled with Gareth's threat.

Nox usually enjoyed sleeping in, one of the few benefits of her age and position, but she also knew that today was too important to put off until after sunrise. Males got an early start in the season, and as such, their gifts needed a place to go. Nox made her way to the back of her own den, looking at the stack of bowls, each made by one of the hens just before their first season. It carried a piece of themselves on the bowl in the design alone, and though there were no markers otherwise (Nox suddenly considered Quill’s written language potentially useful), she was familiar with each and every one of them. So, as she had since she was made the Elder of the Flock, she made her trek to each female’s den and set the related bowls outside of them.

First was a pair of bowls, belonging to Liz and Kestra. The two had shared a den since childhood, and their personalities were as contrasting as their bowls - Liz’s a plain, but well-made, red clay bowl, and Kestra’s a sloppy, somewhat lopsided, vibrant purple and green.

The next bowl, five shelves up, belonged to Mango. A newly made thing, it had nearly every colour that one could stick on the space used, a vibrant treat for the eyes, and stood out entirely by comparison to every other bowl her neighbors currently had. A part of her wondered, as she placed another bowl down, what a male’s bowl would look like if the roles were reversed? She considered this as she moved through the dens.

She passed Rico’s den and assumed it would be something vibrant, most likely as red as his crest. Made with passion and a surprising bit of care. The next den belonged to Chuck, and that one would most likely be a mess of a bowl, she decided. Most likely decorated with all kinds of seashells and assorted objects. A mess, but a mess with potential. Soon she passed Slate’s den, and she didn’t even have to think of his bowl - plain and grey, an emotionless exterior, but a partly polished interior. Breck and Gareth were last, their dens basically side-by-side. Breck’s, Nox wasn’t entirely sure, and she stopped in her movement to consider. Breck’s was still forming, she felt, and he didn’t know the shape of his own soul - his own bowl. Gareth’s, though, would be a full, warm orange. Maybe a red. But only the outside, Nox considered as she frowned. The inside, however, would be an icy shade of blue, or maybe a black. She sighed, “No, maybe males shouldn’t paint their own after all,” she considered as she put down another bowl outside another hen’s den.

---

The feeling of everything had changed, almost immediately, on the second day. The younger crowd had now been restricted to the second shelf and higher, as the base of the caldera, the ‘Bowl’ as the Flock called it, was now a full-use space by males for the remainder of the season. Liz was outside, eating her breakfast as Rico took his place on the center ‘stage’, making Liz roll her eyes and glance away as Rico started his usual positioning and stretches. He was soon joined by other males who had woken up and decided to get their morning ‘stretches’ in.

The crowd of assorted, participating adults started to shuffle in, and some of the males were already carrying shiny objects within their beaks or clutched in their forefeet, placing them in various bowls as they snaked their way down to the base of the Bowl. The season had fully started, Liz mused, as one of the other males took a seat across from her. One of Gareth’s friends, she noted absentmindedly.

---

Quill was protesting the sudden restriction of what had been a public space to what may as well have been a brick wall, for all the gryphon seemed to respond to her ranting. “I could just fly down there,” she quipped, and his downward look was practically daring her to. Her feathers puffed up, and then she turned sharply on all fours, back to the food arrayed out on the second shelf instead.

“Couldn’t convince the wall?” Jasper asked, stuffing his beak between words with grains.

Quill merely huffed and set down her bark, pushing her talon against it as she glanced over the ledge at the scene below.

“If you want a reference,” Jasper managed, swallowing another beakful of food, “I can try posing like Rico.”

Quill’s talon froze mid-motion on the bark before looking over at Jasper, eyes roaming from his beak, down the feathers of his chest, and slowly lower-

Only to be snapped out of her wandering gaze by Kossho speaking up, “Don’t taint your document, dear Quill.” Quill considered this, then sighed and continued her etching while looking down at the distance.

---

Kade arrived, and several eyes were quickly latched onto him as he did so. He circled slowly, eyeing the various bowls and stopping to smell near each. He didn’t know them by heart, as several of the males would at that point, so he only had scent to go off of. His right forefoot was clenched, carrying something as he moved from bowl to bowl, and slowly the crowd’s attention shifted back to Rico, who was now rearing up and showing off the shades of red-to-charcoal on his underside, and the full, heavy weight of that hanging sheath. Unnoticed, Kade moved toward a simply decorated, well-made bowl that smelled faintly of a rich, smoky scent - the good kind, not like a fire - and dried herbs and assorted berries.

He opened his forefoot and dropped a single, smooth shard of obsidian into it.

Afterward, he casually moved away and looped around the performance area and assembled tables, back to the position he had been in the day prior - just slightly off to the side, watching the crowd for the time being rather than being part of it. He watched, then, as Gareth entered the gathering area and approached the assorted food, taking his seat beside a red-tailed hawk hybrid that Kade wasn’t familiar with. The two talked briefly, and Gareth’s eye darted toward the red bowl, then immediately back to his own food. Kade’s ear flicked, wondering what the glance meant, if anything at all, and pushed down the forming anxiety.

---

“He left something,” Breck murmured quietly as the female he had initially sat next to got up and left, soon replaced by Gareth’s large frame. “Didn’t see what, exactly, but something in the red bowl over there,” his tail flicked behind him, the tip pointing toward the entrance to Liz and Kestra’s den. Gareth turned his head slightly, yellow eyes flicking in the direction before he resumed eating the food in front of him.

“You’re certain?”

“Positive. I heard it clink into the base of the bowl,” Breck commented. He didn’t know why Gareth wanted to know, only that the larger male had made the request of him the previous afternoon. Had asked him and Slate to keep an eye on the newcomer activities and report if they saw any gifts being left or given. “The two new females have both received a few gifts, too. A smooth stone, a seashell, a-,” he trailed off as he noticed that Gareth wasn’t really listening, but rather just looking straight ahead toward Kade.

“Do you think he’ll cause problems for you, as Rico did?” Breck asked. He had been too young to understand it all when it happened and had only heard the story from Gareth last year. Rico showed up four years prior, a trade from the Canyon just like Kade was, and from what Gareth told him, had utterly disrupted the breeding season. His vibrant plumage and large size attracted over half of the females to him, and Gareth said that genetic diversity that year was at an abysmal low.

As far as Breck knew, that is where Gareth’s dislike and rivalry with Rico stemmed from, and he wondered now if he was seeing a similar pattern emerging. Yes, the new male wasn’t as vibrant, but he was striking in other ways. Ink-black feathers that absorbed light, calm and patient silver eyes, and the posture of a male that saw the world moving at his pace, and he was in no hurry. Plus, while Breck was never self-conscious about his own endowments, considering his sheath and balls more than adequate (he’d always been smaller than Gareth and Rico, but he didn’t care), he had to admit that he felt a pang of envy when his gaze traveled over Kade.

By being in the shadow of Gareth the previous year, he had had a decent first season. He wasn’t a virgin and was the father of at least one pup, perhaps two. Gareth, he knew, had had at least seven, but now he wondered if there was about to be a dry season for him and the other, less impressive, males. So far, he understood Gareth’s worry over Rico and undoubtedly why he had asked Breck to watch the newcomers.

Finishing his food, Gareth stood up and made his way toward the stage to join the other males, and Breck turned back to his own food. That wasn’t his scene; he was never one to pose and posture himself. He knew it worked; Rico and Gareth were firm examples of that, but it just never sat right with him. He’d find a lover his own way this season, and without Gareth helping him. After all, Gareth’s protection and kindness would only go so far, and Breck knew he had to pull his own weight. He owed Gareth that much.

Gareth’s arrival on the center platform, the ‘stage’, definitely didn’t go unnoticed. The male moved himself alongside Rico with the confidence born of being a top male for many years, and soon set his motions to mirror Rico's. The females all appreciated the mirror display, as when Rico’s hindleg lifted, Gareth’s did as well, letting all the hens compare the weight of balls and the warm weight of sheaths in front of them, before they turned and curled their tails up just far enough to show off the way their nuts hung, and no higher.

Turning away, though, wasn’t just to show off for the females, of course. Gareth always had a plan and tried to stay three steps ahead, “Rico.”

“Gareth,” the red-feathered male responded, looking straight ahead and not breaking the stride of his well-practiced routine.

“What do you think of the newcomers?” Gareth asked, his tail lowering in time with Rico’s as they turned side-on to the crowd next, adopting a posture with one hindleg stretched backward and the other firmly planted.

“The hens are cute, but I think you’re asking about Kade, aren’t you?” Rico asked. Much to Gareth’s irritation, Rico wasn’t just a pretty, stupid male. He had a brain in that skull of his, and caught on faster than Gareth appreciated.

“I am. What do you think?” Gareth was doing his best to stay cordial. Keeping his voice light and friendly as their bodies moved to another pose, exposing more of themselves to the females and males admiring from the crowd.

“He’s impressive, I’ll give him that. When I saw him last, he was all lanky legs and awkward steps, sort of like Chuck is,” Rico tossed a look over at Kade, who was in the process of getting up and making his way out of the Bowl. “He clearly grew into his body since I came to live here.”

“Alas. I feel he is about to stretch the Flock to breaking,” Gareth commented, his tone lowering to one of concern as he moved to face the crowd with Rico. Both males, simultaneously, reared up and showed off their undersides. Gareth’s eyes noted the vibrant, colourful plumage of one female who was front and center, her eyes fixated directly on his hanging sac, then Rico’s, and back again. Gareth filed that for later.

“The Flock, or you? Last time, you practically started a civil war over my arrival,” Rico commented, his warm golden eyes a reflection of Gareth’s own old, calculated yellow.

“Tsk. You exaggerate. I just didn’t,” He stopped for a moment as he lowered down onto all fours again, and he moved to step to the side. Rico followed with him, “Didn’t want to see you take every hen for yourself.”

“You say that as if they all belong to you. A hen is free to pick, Gareth. I don’t hoard them like some treasure,” Gareth’s response was a flick of his tail and a look back at the equally-sized male.

“Of course she is, Rico. Of course.”

“Then I fail to see the problem, Gareth. A hen is free to pick, and we’ve both seen the same womb quicken with our seed simultaneously,” Rico quipped cheerfully, and the expression of irritation that briefly crossed Gareth’s face was something he’d savor for a long time.

---

Liz returned to her den as Gareth and Rico were exiting the stage, having taken the time to walk around the Crag and clear her mind. She didn’t know why the season got under her feathers so easily, perhaps because she saw it bring out the worst in everyone. Or, she considered, maybe it was her? She shook her head and was about to enter her den when something from within the red-painted bowl of hers caught her eye. She, at first, assumed it must have been meant for Kestra, who already had three other gifts within it, but the object itself was unusual. She hadn’t seen something like it before, and she picked it out of her bowl and turned it over in her talons. It was shiny and black, and the scent clinging to it was utterly unknown to her. It was kind of a damp, earthy smell overlaid with a smoky scent that was somewhat similar to her own, at least in a way.

Her eyes roamed the gathering, trying to place who had left it, and she spotted many of the familiar beaks and scents. It raised the question of who had left it, though her eyes soon landed back upon the center of the Bowl, where a few of the males were busy showing off. One was reared up and, unlike Rico and Gareth, was being far more overt, not relying on his own charm to win. No, instead, he was hip thrusting, and while he was getting some appreciative glances from the hens nearby, Liz suddenly lost her taste for the season as the narrow, tapered head of his flushed-red shaft emerged, and a drooling drop of precum landed on the beak of one of those spectating.

Liz dropped the obsidian back in her bowl as Kestra was exiting the den, “Ooh, what’s that?” Kestra quipped, zeroing in on the shiny piece of black glass. Like the magpie she was, she picked it up and admired it. As Liz had, she pressed it against her beak and inhaled, “Huh. Don’t know this scent. Must be one of the first years,” she commented, placing it back in the red bowl before turning to look directly at Liz.

“Don’t,” Liz commented.

“Don’t what?” Kestra spoke, the perfect model of innocence.

“Don’t tell me I should accept it. I...” her eyes darted up at the male, now on all fours again, but scooted to the edge of the platform that they all displayed on. But he was still dripping, and the hen beneath seemed all too happy to have that warmth drop onto her beak. “I'm sorry, but it’s probably...” she gestured at the stage.

“Liz. That’s the season. Males get stupid, we get even dumber as it goes on, and in the end, everyone’s happy,” Kestra leaned close, offering a form of a hug by crossing her neck over Liz’s own. “If this is too much for you, I get it. I get it, even if the other hens don’t. But, don’t just give up ‘cause of one male’s... over-eager show.”

“I-,” Liz sighed softly, and bobbed her head. “I won’t run this year, I just...”

“Liz,” Kestra tried, quietly, “Whoever this was chose you. They put that in your bowl - that isn’t something from here. That isn’t a gift given without thought.”

Liz’s crest lifted and fell repeatedly, her mind awhirl, and in the end, the bitterness, or perhaps fright, won out: “They probably picked me for my cunt.”

Kestra knew the fight was lost, but she pushed on, “Liz, you’ve got a nice cunt. I wouldn’t blame them.” Liz glared daggers at her for that comment and turned tail, disappearing into the depths of their shared den. Kestra sighed, but knew she had to get Liz to leave. To not take her anger out on the shard itself. She reached into the bowl, taking the shard of obsidian into her talons again while turning it over. “You’ll regret this if you throw it out.” She murmured, tucking it in among her feathers for the time being. She’d give it back when Liz was ready.

---

Kade was up high in the Crags, and he had to admit that the view was breathtaking. The Canyons he came from were a series of twisting rivers, going through rough, stone walls. The gryphons of his old Flock nested in the sides of the walls, above the river, so sleeping in a cave at least wasn’t a shift for him. But everything else was. The Canyon was at a relatively low altitude, and while the views weren’t bad by any means, none of them compared with the rolling mountain ranges, tall firs, and clusters of mountain grass and flowers.

Of course, it wasn’t all perfect by any means. For one, he never expected to leave his home, nor to feel like such an outsider, as if he didn’t belong. Rico, who was from the Canyon originally, seemed to be doing well enough — perhaps Kade was just overthinking things, stuck in his own head. Kade’s ear flicked as he heard the sound of approaching talons clicking on the stoneway behind him. He turned his head and saw the white and brown feathering belonging to an Osprey. The male was relatively tall, though a bit shorter than him, but he looked as if he was all limbs, or still growing into his body. “Oh!” the other male exclaimed, eyes finally landing on Kade.

“I didn’t know anyone was up here. I’ll just go,” he commented, starting to turn around.

“You don’t have to. I’m just enjoying the view.”

“I-,” the osprey hesitated, “Okay.” He slowly approached, moving to sit down next to Kade’s frame. They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes before the lanky male spoke again. “I... I came up here to practice. Y’know...” From the top of the Crag, the Bowl was visible. The shapes were all blurry silhouettes, but the center and the performances there were obvious enough.

“How to pose?”

“Yeah. Like Rico does. He seems...” the male’s crest lowered for a moment, “Successful.”’

Kade thought for a moment, then spoke, “Show me.”

The lanky osprey-wolf gryphon hesitated for a moment, eyes inspecting Kade as if searching for signs of malice. After a moment, he slowly stood and then tried a simple leg lift. The first thing that Kade noticed, beyond the shaking limbs, was the low weight of the brown-furred balls in front of him, and the heavy, low-slung sheath in front of them. The male wasn’t exactly small, body-wise, but he was far more endowed than Kade could have predicted. Then he followed the other male’s posture.

Kade stood up, arching his back and stretching for a moment as he circled around the other male. “Not quite. Relax your body - it’s a natural motion, like... like peeing in the morning,” Kade explained, moving a fore to the lifted hindleg to put it in a position that flowed, extending out in a way that would also be comfortable to hold. The other male momentarily lost his posture, and the hindleg slipped to the ground, which was followed by a frustrated growl.

“Try again. Yes, like that.”

Kade worked with the other male on the basic posturing that Kade himself had witnessed until the sun was starting to set, and the other male was able to hold several leg-lifting angles with much smoother ease than before. “Thank you.” The other male commented, his tail swaying back and forth behind him, entirely betraying his emotions if the warm glint in his eyes wasn’t doing that already.

“Of course. I’m sure that you’ll get some looks tomorrow,” Kade’s eyes darted down, looking briefly between the other males’ hind legs again, “And there will be some appreciative females there.”

The male’s ears tinted pink, but that wagging kept going. The osprey turned then and started down the path. Halfway down the path, Chuck realized that he had never given him his name. He was about to turn around when another male pushed past him. The male looked oddly familiar, but he couldn’t place them. They were built like someone had stuck four legs and a beak onto a rock. Chuck suddenly forgot where he was going, or perhaps was dissuaded by the arrival of the new male.

Kade looked over as he heard talons tapping on the stone again, thinking it was the osprey from earlier returning. They had forgotten to exchange names. Kade stood, shaking out his feathers again, and then froze as the living equivalent of a rock strolled into his sight instead of the lanky male. The two looked at each other for a moment, and Kade registered two things very quickly - this male felt absolutely nothing about why he was here. Those dark eyes were impersonal and uncaring.

There was a sudden tension that filled the air, and what’s more, Kade swore that suddenly the world was quiet. No background hum of lingering conversations from below, none of the laughter or murmuring appreciation related to the male's posturing below. Total, utter, bone-chilling silence. Kade’s body braced.

Something that bulky shouldn’t be able to move that fast; that was all Kade could think as the boulder-of-a-bird took off running. Kade spread his wings and flapped them, leaping back with the extra momentum, but that speed just didn’t match the sheer bulk. Mid-leap, that weight collided into him, and it was like all the air in his lungs escaped at once. The two males tumbled through the thin layer of dirt and dust atop the grey stone. Kade’s hindpaws tried their best to kick upward at the large body (or downward? Kade found it hard to tell while their bodies were in motion), getting a few kicks in where fur meshed into feather on the living rock’s belly.

It didn’t even phase the other male whatsoever. Now, Kade seriously wondered if the guy was just a rock somehow animated, as if a hatchling’s story had come to life. Before he knew it, Kade was sprawled out on his back, and there were talons digging into his shoulders. It started as a mild ache, then blossomed into red-hot pain as those talons pierced through the plumage to the skin beneath. The boulder-bird’s forefeet curled inward, hooking those talons in place, and Kade went deadly still. Movement now would tear. The other bird knew exactly what he was doing, but those eyes - those dark, near-black eyes, they remained emotionless. This wasn’t personal. This wasn’t even something he cared about. This was pure business.

The bird that may as well be a rock spoke, his voice gravelly, but not unpleasantly so. “You were warned.” That was it, three little words, and Kade suddenly wondered-

The gift. Someone had seen. Someone had told, or maybe Gareth himself had witnessed it. Either way, it was him participating. He had tried to brush off Gareth’s ‘friendly’ warning, assuming it was all bluster. The talons digging into his shoulders, hooked like his was a fish on a line, told him it was far from it. Kade inhaled, then slowly exhaled, calming himself before he responded. “Understood.”

Those dark eyes searched his own for several heartbeats, and then the forefeet uncurled, and the talons smoothly left, a rich sheen of red now on them from Kade’s own blood. He felt the warmth of it seeping into his feathers, but he ignored that for now as the large rock of a bird stood and moved the other direction, now wordlessly leaving. Message delivered, job done. Kade shook his head, slowly getting onto all fours with a wince of pain from his still smarting forelegs and shoulders.

Gareth was undoubtedly behind this, Kade knew. A hot lance of anger and nausea bolted through Kade’s stomach, and his talons curled in against the grey stone. He breathed deeply. In. Out. In. Out. Centering himself. Calming himself back to just... being. Anger would do nothing for him. Self-pity would do nothing.

No. He had to bide his time, and if that meant playing by Gareth’s rules for now? Then so be it.

He vowed to himself that he’d understand the rules of this game, and in the end, he’d find a way to win.

It was weird how quickly routine set in, despite the sudden shift in the norm. Wake up in the morning, preen your feathers, and go to one of the different basins of water to wash up. Then, make your way down the winding path to the Bowl. For Mango, it was an automatic process that her feet followed along without conscious thought. Of course, as she took a seat at one of the tables, her eyes darted to the first males to take their place in the middle of Bowl. Her eyes passed over several, and while she was physically attracted to them, there was something about most of them that just bounced off of her that she couldn’t explain. The other day, she had gotten a single, red bead in her bowl and had followed the scent to its owner in the evening - a third-season male.

By all accounts, the male should have been her type. Physically, she felt an attraction right away as she sat across from him in his den, making idle conversation - he was endowed well enough that her eyes couldn’t stop darting down, but there was something... fake about him. She couldn’t put her talon on it, but watching the males putting on their morning displays was like putting something into place. Rico, with his vibrant red feathers, was in the middle of his posturing and posing, and Mango had decided a while ago that, for him, it wasn’t an act. The dance itself was just part of who he was, how Rico functioned. Same with Gareth, who was making his way to the middle, too, though there was something about him that Mango couldn’t quite place.

But then there were the other males around them, each of them posturing like Rico was doing, and on them it just didn’t fit. Mango understood why, of course - even in her younger days, she knew that Rico had rapidly become the male role model that every younger gryphon aspired to be, and adopting his mannerisms and motions made sense. But those same motions didn’t fit most of the males. Sure, some could pull it off quite well and with a fluidity that spoke of days or weeks of practice, but it still felt like they were trying to fit into someone else’s feathers.

Her eyes darted as Chuck decided to move to the stage, and her eyes roamed over him. She still didn’t know why her eyes were naturally lured between a male’s hindlegs, and she still found herself blushing deeply whenever she caught herself doing it. She grew up with Chuck - not on the same shelf of the Crag, Chuck was two tiers below her, but they were the same age. She had never really looked between his thighs. Oh, she had seen male balls and sheathes, of course; no gryphon wore more than a shawl or forms of jewelry, traded from the other flocks, but before it was more of just... there. Now it had become a focus of attention.

She couldn’t even blame it on the relaxed state of males as the season approached. Most males showed far less from Winter to Summer than they did now, their anatomy tucking away to become more manageable for flight and motion, but as the season shifted, their body naturally started to ready itself for breeding - but, again, that wasn’t even the reason. Rico was sexually active year-round, his round, low-hanging, mouth-watering-

Mango swallowed and focused on her bowl of food for a moment to redirect her mind. When she had calmed a bit, she looked up again. Yes, Rico’s weight was the same now as it had been a month ago, yet a month ago she hadn’t really noticed in more than a ‘that exists’ sort of way.

Food finished, Mango stood up and pressed her way closer, joining the crowd of female bodies (and a few males) watching the displays. Chuck, she noted, was actually doing quite well, and the motions and posture didn’t seem borrowed. They seemed his own, and as such, Mango found her gaze straying from Rico to the lanky frame of the male. Between his legs, as much as she tried not to. Her mind was comparing - Rico’s large, charcoal-furred balls, hanging low and heavy between his hindlegs, undoubtedly able to do their job and then some, and Chuck, who was surprisingly well equipped. She wondered if any of the other females had noticed, like she had, that Chuck’s awkward body was hiding a very large secret. However, her interest in Chuck started to waver as he looked at Rico, and started to position his body and wings in a way to mirror Rico’s.

She wondered if this was why the gryphons, a year younger than her, weren’t allowed to participate. Some were already sexually mature, but she wondered what she would have done a year ago, standing here and faced with all of this. Most likely overwhelmed with the truth of it, most likely not knowing herself enough to say no, as she had done the previous night to the male who had left the bead. Nice enough, but not something she was looking for.

Yes, despite her sudden newfound obsession with male anatomy, she was far more comfortable with herself in the middle of everything than she would have been last year; she was sure of that.

She was about to turn around and make her way to her den, to check her bowl for any potential gifts, when Rico reared up on his hindlegs. The show was always worth it, for reasons that still embarrassed Mango when she found herself staring. This time, though, she didn’t stare for long, as shortly afterward, Chuck moved toward the front, standing to one side of Rico, and he reared up, trying to match and follow Rico’s movements and body language. Mango rolled her eyes, but then she saw Chuck’s hindleg tremble. A brief tell that made her hone in on him.

A tell that led to disaster, as it were, as that leg slipped on the stone, the paw scrambling to try and maintain purchase before the lanky-limbed male toppled forward, beak first into the stone with a thud that echoed off the Crag walls. All at once, everything stilled, and Mango’s instinct was to try to rush forward to help, but there was a sudden press of bodies as everyone was craning to look at what had happened. Chuck stood, and the body language, the movement, all of it lost all signs of pretending. Of being something Chuck wasn’t, and despite the fall that should have made her laugh or look away, she felt oddly attracted.

Chuck rapidly slipped out of the crowd, tail tucked and wings folded in tight, and Mango looked around, seeing pity or amusement in the eyes of most. All but three - Gareth, who had a guarded, almost blank expression; Rico, who was neutral but still warm; and then Kade, who she knew had been at the edges of the gathering, but now she was paying attention to him. His gaze was one of raw concern, and from the position of his body, though he was now settling back down, he had gotten up to try and help as she had, and been detoured by the sudden press of bodies.

Now that the crowd was returning to its usual self, and the activities resumed, Mango weaved her way toward the large male who, for the third day of arrival, was merely spectating, not participating. “Chuck’s first part seemed to go pretty well,” she commented to break the ice.

Kade’s silver eyes blinked before he looked down at her, tilting his head in thought, “Oh, the one doing the leg motions? Yes. He learned to stop trying to borrow the motion of another and find how his own body can use them.”

There was something unsaid there, Mango could feel it, but she couldn’t quite place it. She brushed that off for now, “If only he didn’t try to one-up Rico.”

“He is just trying to get spotted, like the other males,” Kade commented, quite neutral.

“What about you?”

Kade thought on that for a moment, “I am also getting spotted. You’re here talking to me, aren’t you?” Mango couldn’t argue that, nor could she hide the fact that her eyes had scanned over his body. The only reason they hadn’t lingered was that Kade’s tail was curled partly around his hindpaws, and the view of everything that lay there was partially obscured.

“I just hope he’ll be okay,” Mango offered, looking at the winding route that led higher up, and seeing that lanky, white, and brown form trekking the path with their head, tail, and wings tucked.

“It’s a bruised ego. He’ll recover.”

From the center of it all, however, a pair of yellow eyes was not watching the loop of Chuck, but rather the conversation Mango and Kade were having. He was too far to overhear the conversation, but he could see the movement of her head. The place where her eyes kept looking. Those yellow eyes of his narrowed in both thought and planning, before the male they belonged to departed from the Bowl.

Kade and Mango talked for some time, just friendly, time-wasting chat, before Mango announced that she was going to go check if she had gotten any new gifts. Unlike the night before with the lanky-legged male that, through Mango, Kade had learned was named Chuck - he and Mango actually exchanged names. Kade watched the vibrantly coloured hen leave before he stood himself and made a slow, unhurried circuit of the caldera.

The path he took led him past the red bowl that he had left the piece of obsidian in the day before, and a quick glance spotted that it was not among the new gifts - a red bead and a polished stone. He wasn’t quite sure why the red-to-tawny-feathered female had caught his attention, but she had. Her mammalian half was a charcoal colouration that shifted into beige along her belly and inner thighs, and a thick canine tail followed that pattern - beige on the underside, charcoal on the top. She wasn’t the most eyecatching, Kade had to admit that by raw ‘catch the eye’ factor, it’d be Mango or the red-feathered female’s denmate, a magpie opinicus, but something about that female had caught his attention on day one.

Nevertheless, he had done all he could - now it was up to her. Comfortable with the fact that the shard was at least collected, he continued that slow loop until he returned to the spot off to the side, circling it to take his seat once more, and to watch the comings and goings of various beaks that he was trying to learn.

It was then that he noticed one of the younger hens coming down, striding with all the confidence of a female that belonged, but Kade sensed something was... off. She was entering with a piece of bark tucked in against her slate-blue to white feathered chest, walking with that three-legged gait that came from holding something. Her eyes were darting around in a fashion that told Kade she very much didn’t belong there, and Kade shifted his weight and stood again, moving in front of the hen. She froze for a moment, then produced that bark and pushed her talon against it, pressing into it and making a mark that was entirely alien to Kade.

“What is that?” Kade asked, with genuine curiosity.

“Oh, I’m taking notes,” she commented, her gold-rimmed eyes looking up into his with a tilt of her head. “You’re one of the new ones, aren’t you? I’m Quill.”

“I’m Kade, and I can’t help but get the feeling that you aren’t meant to be here.”

Instantly, Quill froze, but Kade had to give her credit for the rapid recovery, standing a little straighter as she responded, “Oh, I very much belong here. I’m here to,” her eyes darted to the side, where there was some hawk-gryphon in the midst of posing, “gather some more data. Before the season starts.”

Kade frowned, the edge of his beak slightly downturned, and his eyes darted to where Quill was looking. The male wasn’t showing off much, but the moment that he lifted a hindleg, Kade casually stepped between the two, obstructing the view from Quill. Quill looked up at Kade and, undeterred, shifted herself to look at him. She had her eyes roam downward, and Kade moved his body in a way to keep her from looking at anything between his hindlegs.

“Isn’t the point of the season,” Quill quipped, “for the hens to actually see what anatomy the males have on offer?”

Kade snorted at that, clicking his grey beak in amusement, “Yes, but something tells me your eyes shouldn’t be looking at that up close and personal.”

Quill puffed up her feathers, attempting to look bigger as she stood up a little straighter, tucking that piece of bark in against her breast once more, “My eyes can look at whatever they desire,” she countered, looking again along Kade and then pausing her glance with a tilt of her head. “Huh.”

Kade waited for a moment before rolling his eyes gently, “What?” he asked, Quill clearly waiting to be prodded.

“Your wings aren’t pure black,” she commented, matter-of-fact. Kade, who was happy her eyes were redirected at least, extended one of his wings, unfurling it to reveal the full size and colour of it. That caught attention, as the light cast his primaries into shades of iridescence rather than the expected black. Several heads craned toward him during this momentary display, only to look back at either those showing off in the center or their conversation partners as Kade’s wing tucked in against himself again.

“In fact,” Quill commented, scooting in a bit closer, “Your black isn’t all black at all, only,” she touched his chest, just above the breastbone, “here and above. The rest fades toward silver.”

“You have a very capable eye. Most can’t pick up the colour shift of my feathers. They just see blacks and greys,” Kade admitted, his tail swaying to and fro with earnest appreciation of someone being complimented.

“I pride myself in noticing things,” she commented, then tried to lean past him, only to be obstructed by one of those large wings once more. “And I’m noticing you’re getting in my way.”

“He should, too,” commented the warm tone of authority that instantly made Quill freeze. “Thank you, Kade. This young one should know better than to wander down to the bottom tier.”

Quill tried to make herself look as innocent as she could as she turned herself around to face Nox, the sharp snow-owl features glaring down at her in a way that instantly made Quill wilt. Any fight and defense she had went out of her at once, and Nox reached out with a foreleg, gripping one of Quill’s ears and physically dragging her along and upward. “You get to spend the rest of the pre-season days with the hatchlings. Your shelf-mates should just be happy I’m not punishing all of you.”

Kade watched with a shake of his head as Nox and Quill made their trek upward, Nox’s nearly pure-white frame full of contained frustration and Quill’s entirely in defeat. Kade decided, with that, to head up to the top of the Crag again - that was enough excitement for one day, he mused.

---

The males continued their posturing, the females continued their oogling, and the day proceeded as routine until early afternoon, when Liz and Kestra were making their way toward the assembled crowd in the Bowl. “Ugh, I wish we were three levels up,” Liz mumbled, taking a wide berth around the males in the center and their attracted crowd.

“Speak for yourself, Liz. I love being down here. It’s where all the fun is,” Kestra chirped, turning her black-feathered head. Her gaze wandered over to the performing males, and she licked the edge of her beak, “Most of the fun, anyway.” Liz rolled her eyes, walking closer just to shove her hip into Kestra’s own in a playful nudge.

“Get your hormones under control, Kestra.”

“Let yours be less controlled, Liz,” she sing-songed back, a familiar and well-trotted argument that neither side had the energy or desire to escalate any longer. Both females stopped in front of their respective bowls, looking at the objects within. Liz took the shiny pebble and bead and sniffed them, if only to avoid Kestra’s judgment, while Kestra looked at her four objects and did the same. Liz felt a brief pang of jealousy that she couldn’t quite explain, but brushed it off.

“Smells like one of the third-shelf and fourth-shelf males. I can’t place their names.”

“Mine are from him,” Kestra gestured at one of the males in the center, “him,” a second, “and then two on the upper shelves,” she clicked her beak in irritation afterward, putting the objects back in her purple and green bowl.

“Not one you were looking for?” questioned Liz, curious despite herself as she returned the two objects she got to her bowl. Like the other females, they’d remove only the objects they pursued. Neither was planning to follow up on the current offers in their bowls.

“I was hoping for him,” Kestra admitted, gesturing at Rico, who was making small talk with another male. “Hoped for him last year, and never got it.”

“Oh,” Liz answered, blinking her soft, wheat-coloured eyes. A warm sort of pale gold that would absolutely get more attention, Kestra thought, if Liz wanted. “Rico doesn’t do that.”

“He... what?”

“He doesn’t leave gifts. He doesn’t need to,” she commented, blinking again.

“How do you know this, and I don’t?” Kestra asked, turning to face her friend with a mix of genuine interest and annoyance balled into one.

“I overheard one of the males talking with him earlier. He had asked why he never smelled Rico’s scent near any of the bowls, and Rico said he doesn’t have to try. Hens just come to him,” Liz answered, tilting her head. “I... I am surprised you didn’t know that.”

Kestra’s talons dug against the stone below, leaving sharp, white indents upon the grey. “So I could have- ugh,” she rolled her eyes with disgust and then looked back at Rico as a plan formed in her head. “Liz, be honest with me - are you going to follow any of the gifts to their owners?”

“Well, when I find the right o-,” she was cut off.

“Nope. Tonight, we’re going to visit Rico. Ah!” she held up a foreleg, and a talon, to silence Liz as she opened her charcoal coloured beak, “Nothing sexual. But you need to get out and actually enjoy the season, not hide in our den like a recluse. Neither of us are properly in heat yet, and Rico can control himself,” she looked the large male bird up and down, taking in the vibrant red of his plumage that faded toward a pale white at the waist and base of his wings. “Though I wouldn’t mind if he didn’t.”

That earned her another swat from Liz.

---

Liz and Kestra were both preparing themselves for the night out, Liz with far more trepidation than Kestra, who was practically vibrating with her desire and excitement. Why Liz agreed in the end was beyond her. Perhaps a part of her agreed that she couldn’t just spend the evenings and nights shuttered away in the warmth of her den, much as she wanted to. As much as it pained her to admit, Kestra was right.

She had been busy preening her feathers just right, trying at least to make herself look presentable, and Kestra spent almost as much time doing the same. Liz admitted to some budding excitement at the prospect of just doing something different, and it was with a great deal less unease than she expected that she stepped out of the den beside Kestra. “Oh, one second,” Kestra quipped, darting back into their den.

Liz waited for a few moments and was about to enter to ask what the magpie was doing when Kestra reappeared. Her feathers were preened partly at a different angle, which shouldn’t have taken as long as it did, but Liz didn’t question it. “All set?”

“All set. Look,” Kestra commented as she fell into step beside Liz, “It takes effort to look this good, okay?” Liz rolled her eyes, and the two walked in comfortable silence up the path of the Crag. Rico was on the fourth shelf.

As they stepped onto the flatground of the fourth shelf, Kestra’s tongue was lolling in a shallow pant from her beak, “I wish that it was easier to fly upward than glide down,” she complained, shaking out her feathers and stretching a hindleg.

“Even gliding is hard to do right now, with how dense the crowds are in the Bowl,” Liz quipped, mirroring her earlier thoughts of irritation at how crowded the Bowl had become with the courtship displays.

Both hens approached Rico’s den entrance, a hollowed-out pseudo-cave dug by talons over generations, just like the rest. Even from outside, the scent of Rico clung thick, flooding both Liz and Kestra’s lungs. An exotic spice that neither could place, and some sort of tropical wood, “Elders, he smells good,” murmured Kestra from beside her. Liz looked side-eye at her, eyes roaming up and down before the two stepped into the entry.

Rico’s first reaction was a rising of his crest on seeing two hens enter his den, eyes rapidly darting from Kestra’s eagerness, which made that vibrant red crest rise even further, to Liz’s less interested, more ‘I got dragged along for this’ shuffle closer to Kestra. His crest lowered, and his posture shifted, becoming no less friendly but far less revealing. “What brings two lovely hens from the Bowl up to the fourth tier tonight?”

“Well, you know, when there is a handsome male that catches a hen’s eye,” Kestra quipped, moving forward with a shift of her wide hips. Liz, for her part, immediately moved forward, purposefully stepping on one of Kestra’s hindpaws with one of hers. Her friend winced, but dialed down the... everything afterward, taking a seat close to Liz. Both females were sprawled out, putting their weight on one hip with their forelegs pointing toward Rico. Rico, for his part, was on his side, extended across the length of his nesting material - assorted fabrics, stuffed with feathers and local grasses.

“Mm. I believe that for you, Kestra, but your friend here doesn’t seem so interested,” Rico commented. There was no frustration or annoyance in his voice or posture, just stating a fact.

“Liz here needed to get out of the den. She- she isn’t fond of the season,” Kestra commented, downplaying the situation dramatically.

“I heard, of course,” Rico said, leaving it at that. He recalled when Mango had brought it up at breakfast two days ago, and was present himself the previous season. Even Liz’s bowl had been put away after the first hen entered estrus, most likely by Kestra. “There is no shame in that. Not everyone is ready in their first season.”

Liz’s crest rose partly at that, and Kestra breathed a bit easier. She figured that Rico would be a good male to approach, just to show Liz that not all of them were thinking with their dicks. At least, not yet. “Were you?” Liz asked, and the laughter that came from Rico was warm and rich.

“How could I have been? I was told I was being exchanged to another Flock as I reached proper, full adulthood. Sure, my balls had dropped the prior year, but as you know, all males and females are kept out for an extra year,” Emotional maturity, they all knew. They never understood why, until they were in the thick of it all, and then they did. “So here I was, thinking I was about to hit the Canyon running, to pursue the hens I had grown up with and had caught my eye a dozen times, and I’m whisked several hundred kilometers into an unfamiliar home and an unfamiliar climate.”

“I don’t know,” Liz commented, “You seemed to do pretty well. At least three offspring confirmed to be yours after that season, with at least four more potentially,” They could only base such things on appearances of offspring and recanting stories of the hens after. Not everything lined up with such a system, and some things ended up slipping through the cracks.

“Oh, sure, once I found my footing. The first week was utter hell, and don’t even get me started on Gareth.” The feathers and fur, red to grey, on Rico’s spine rose in agitation. “After I had finally found my rhythm, had taken Reed as my first, Gareth told me to stop. Said I was going to ‘pollute the genepool’.”

Liz gasped, and Kestra made a sound akin to choking; almost simultaneously, they blurted, “He said what?”

“I know. I didn’t learn everything for another year, but now I get it. Before I arrived, Gareth seemingly was the father of almost all of the Crag’s newborns. Some seventy percent, or so I heard. And that his lackies and...and...”

“Sycophants?” Liz provided.

“Yes, thank you - made up almost all the rest. Free choice in hens, true free choice, was at an all-time low, as most males were cowed by Gareth. Nox told me he wasn’t always like that, but my arrival only made it worse. His behavior, if not the numbers.”

Liz and Kestra looked at one another, then back at Rico. “That sounds horrible,” Kestra said, quite earnestly.

“It was. Yes, I managed to find where I belonged, and yes, Gareth no longer can do anything to me, but then? I was young and didn’t know any better, and Gareth tried to manipulate me into just standing down.” Rico’s crest rose, then flattened as his expression darkened. “I fear he’s only gotten better at it since then.”

“So, what was your first time like, then?” Kestra quipped, both redirecting the conversation and derailing it all at once. She had seen the look of concern and spark of sadness in Rico’s eye, and the shift at least brought back the playful gleam that usually existed there.

“Kestra!” Liz blurted.

“What? I want to know!”

Rico laughed, and the next hour or so was spent with warm company and warm conversation, though Liz noticed Kestra speaking less and less as time went on, and more of just staring. Rico wasn’t putting on a display or showing himself off, but this was his den, and he wasn’t shy about his body. Her eyes kept looking at the full, rounded shape of the two white-furred orbs there, and the sheath draped over one thigh.

Toward the tail end of that hour of conversation, which was almost all just Liz and Rico, Liz noticed another scent cresting over the exotic spice of Rico. Something that smelled akin to fruit after you bite into it; a sweet, near citrus scent that Liz identified immediately. You don’t live with someone for most of your life and not pick up on their scent changes, and Liz knew that Kestra was aroused. Horribly so. A glance over told her even more; Kestra’s green, gold-flecked pupils were blown wide with arousal.

Liz slowly stood, making her way to Kestra. “I thank you for a genuinely lovely evening, Rico. You might have helped this hen believe the season is worth staying for, but I think someone needs to go home.”

It took a moment for Kestra’s brain to catch up to the conversation, running several lengths of dialogue behind. When she did, she blinked slowly, “Huh? I’m fine. You can go home if you want, Liz.”

Liz clicked her beak, moved behind Kestra, and set both her fores on the magpie’s thick, white-furred haunches. She then tugged, forcing Kestra backward and to stand up with much squawking complaint. It took some work, but inch by inch, she dragged Kestra out, and Rico, through it all, stayed silent but amused.

Of course, Rico had noticed Kestra’s arousal, the scent building; it was hard not to. But he also knew that it wasn’t the time to act on it. Liz needed reassurance, and someone’s fears ruining one of the best months of the year was something he found all too relatable. He glanced at the spot where Kestra was forcibly dragged from and spotted a small, glossy sheen of wetness, now smeared over the stone flooring. “Those two are going to be a talonful for whatever males they fully fall for,” Rico commented to himself.

When Liz finally got Kestra back home, the arousal had settled down to a low hum, and while she was still mock-upset at Liz for dragging her away, she was playing it up in the fashion that was purely her. Liz rolled her eyes and ignored it, heading for her ‘wing’ of their den, a separate section dug out to one side that housed her own private things. She was exhausted, and imagined that would be a routine thing over the month. She crashed down onto the bedding and stretched, tucking her head against a stuffed cloth, filled with grasses. She breathed in and out, and the scent of earthy stone and wood smoke filled her lungs. She didn’t know where the scent came from, and she didn’t much care - it was oddly familiar, and in that moment, it was comforting as she closed her eyes to sleep.

---

Kade was starting to make his way back down from the ninth shelf of the Crag, the very top of it, as night settled over the land. He heard the step of talons as he rounded one of the corners and came beak-to-beak with Gareth. His whole body tensed, fight or flight triggering, and his heart thudded in his ears. He forced himself to take a deep breath, which is when he saw two more behind Gareth; the one to his left was the living rock that had put the still-stinging marks under his plumage, the other was a male he hadn’t seen before. A hawk of some sort with the long limbs of a maned wolf - deep, near-red feathers of his back melding into the true red of his lower, furred half; his underside, from throat down, was a cream-white that blended into the red at about mid-belly.

“I hope you’ve been enjoying the Flock’s hospitality?” Gareth asked with a tilt of his head.

Kade felt his crest and the line of feathers and fur along his spine start to rise, but he willed them down. Willed himself to relax. This was part of the game, he identified. The baiting. Trying to get him to complain. “They’ve all been,” his eyes darted to the rock’s dark, still, emotionless eyes, “Very welcoming.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Gareth replied, words thick as honey that his eyes didn’t match whatsoever. “I’ve been wondering - has anyone helped you find a den of your own?”

Kade’s tail twitched behind him, and he gave an honest response. “I’ve been sleeping outside at night. The weather is quite lovely for it.”

“Mm,” Gareth looked up at the sky himself, giving a bob of his head, “It is, I’ll give you that. But,” he lowered his gaze, once more meeting Kade’s, “That won’t do in the long term. Thankfully, Slate here knows of an empty den on the eighth tier - and oh!” he looked around at where they were, “Conveniently enough, we’re already here.”

The living rock, Slate, stepped forward. Kade looked at him, then back at Gareth, and then at the third male as well, who looked away almost immediately. Kade took a moment to compose himself, then responded, “Thank you, truly, Slate. I’d be happy to see my new home.”

“Very good,” Gareth offered a slight curve upward of a beak. His eyes showed pleasure. “Slate here found you somewhere warm and quite cozy, isn’t that right?” Slate grunted in response. Kade wasn’t sure if that was a yes or a no, and knew it didn’t matter anyway.

Gareth turned around, and the other male with him. They had moved a dozen steps or so before Gareth looked back over his shoulder, “Oh, yes. Slate here is going to help you settle in, too. He’ll be with you overnight - and for as...” Gareth raised a foreleg, swirling it around in the motion of thinking. “For as long as you need.” The undertone was plain to Kade.

His eyes looked over at Slate, the living rock. His new warden. “Well then, Slate... I guess I’m following you.”

Slate looked at him with those expressionless eyes and gave a clack of his beak, before he turned in the other direction from Gareth and the other male, leading Kade further along the eighth shelf. Gareth had played his opening gambit, and now Kade just had to play along until he found a way to respond.

Liz woke tangled in the stray fabrics of her nest. It wasn’t an uncommon thing, tossing and turning in her sleep, but the thin fabrics of feather-down and fur-stuffed into thin sacks that served as both blanket and sheet were in utter disarray this morning. She had felt overheated all night long, experiencing the pre-season changes in her stomach and lower body throughout the night. It was only the experience of this being the second year she’d gone through it all that let her know that, no, she wasn’t yet in heat, and it was all just a false alarm of her body. She was close, though. She could feel that, too.

She blinked open her wheat-gold eyes and took a moment for them to adjust to the gloom. The little side pocket of her shared den with Kestra got almost no light, but that was fine. She shifted, stretching out her fore and hind legs, before turning the crumpled form of her pillow over and shaking it to try and get it back into the shape it had been before she had slept. It was during this that something clattered free, clanging faintly off the grasses beneath her. She looked down at the object, then reached out to pick it up.

In the gloom, it was nearly impossible to see. Which let her know it was black in colouration, whatever it was. She felt along the edge of it and felt a slightly sharp press against the scaled digit of her forefoot. She tapped it with her talon, then, after a moment of hesitation, she lifted it to her beak and inhaled. The scent of earth after rain and wood smoke circled in her brain. The object from her bowl on the second day. “How did you...” she questioned the shard, as if expecting an answer. She tucked it in against the feathers of her breast and stood. Making her nest could come later.

The shard had broken her usual routine, and as such, she interrupted Kestra in the middle of hers. Kestra was busy preening her feathers into order, something that Liz hadn’t bothered with just yet, and the magpie looked up at her with earnest confusion at the early intrusion, “Is the Crag on fire?”

“No. I wanted to ask you something.”

“Can’t it wait until breakfast? I’m starving.”

“Kestra, you’re always starving.” Liz reached into the brown-to-red feathers of her breast and fished free the shard. “What’s this?”

Kestra didn’t respond, only clicking her beak after a moment. “It’d help if I could see what you’re asking about,” and held out a forefoot.

Liz felt... oddly possessive all of a sudden, in a way she couldn’t quite explain. She wanted to hide the shard again, and that comforting damp earth and wood smoke scent she had let fill her lungs all night. Instead, she pushed past the feeling and handed it to Kestra, who promptly turned it over in her talons, going by feel more than sight with the object that practically vanished into the darkness.

“Oh, the gift from a few days ago. I put it there.”

“But... why?” Liz asked, not angry or frustrated, just confused.

“Liz, look. This season is about having fun and exploring yourself, and I saw two days ago you weren’t even ready to consider that possibility. Now you are, right?”

Liz’s silhouette in the darkness nodded slowly.

“I’m not expecting to throw you in the middle of the stage and start a Liz orgy-,” Kestra paused, thinking. “Though that does sound like fun.”

“Kestra!”

“All I’m saying, Liz,” Kestra resumed, brushing off the complaint as she preened at one of her primary feathers, “Is that whoever gave you that clearly has intentions beyond just a quick piece of tail. That isn’t from here. If I were you? I’d ask some of the others where it came from, if you want to find its owner.”

Liz pondered this in silence as she moved back to her portion of the den, settling into the usual morning routine while her mind circled a thousand possibilities.

---

Breakfast was laid out as it always was, and Breck had to wonder about who got up that early. They were like... invisible helpers, he mused as he took a seat at one of the tables. In fact, he’d never met a single gryphon that claimed to be part of the cooks, and that made it more interesting, because the food was good. “I think if someone claimed they made this,” he murmured to himself, sipping at part of the broth in front of him, “They’d get a ton of hens during the season.”

“Or a lot of requests for more food,” quipped Mango as she sat down across from him. She reached past him, grabbing the seed from the table. All around the tables, gryphons were in motion, settling in to eat or grabbing a quick bite before getting to whatever they had planned for the morning. For several males, that was ensuring they’d get the best spot in the center, on the stage, to get the best light on their feathers.

Breck snorted at the comment, clicking his beak, “Mm, true. I guess it’d be a double-edged talon.”

“You’re from the sixth shelf, right?” Mango questioned, turning herself to continue the conversation while also admiring the males making their way into the center.

“Ah, no - that’s Quill. We’re both maned wolves, though she’s a year younger and, well,” he gestured down his front, and Mango followed the gesture to its conclusion, her eyes seeing the outline of the top of his sheath. She managed, with great effort, to tear her gaze away, back to the stage. “I’m on the fourth with, well, him,” Breck pointed a fore at one of the males now entering the Bowl. Namely, Gareth. Gareth seemed quite happy this morning, Breck thought.

As he looked around, he saw the reason for it - Kade was nowhere to be seen, and the events of the previous night, of Gareth sentencing him to den arrest, flooded back in. Part of him hoped it was a bad dream, but no, it wasn’t. He understood the reasoning for it - another male, exotic as he was, would get the majority of the hens and pollute the gene pool for the year. Gareth said he’d let him join in the following year, when his exotic status had calmed somewhat.

The problem was, Breck wasn’t sure if Gareth was telling the truth or not.

Breck started to make small talk, then noticed the absentminded look and glazed over eyes of Mango, and followed them to the source of it - the low hang of Gareth’s now swinging balls as he took his place on stage. Breck shook his head in amusement at it, then excused himself from the table. Maybe he just needed a break himself, a break from the worry growing in his belly. He reached into his feathers and produced a small, polished gemstone. He had been lucky with this find, having found two of them while he was digging out the back of his den for more room.

He dropped one into a red bowl and the other into the neighboring green and purple, then decided to go and practice his own displays. In private, he decided, as his eyes darted to Gareth, the older male absolutely dominating the central position.

---

Liz and Kestra were late to join the breakfast line, and Kestra’s complaints were undoubtedly to follow for the next hour or so. Liz figured it was a small price to pay, now that she had found out about the shard that Kestra had smuggled. It sat snugly in the feathers of her breast, and she wondered, as she looked around at the different males eating, who it belonged to. Kestra, next to her, was ranting while filling an empty clay vessel with cold broth.

Liz was tuning her out, just nodding her head along at the points where she felt she needed to.

Eventually, Kestra’s rant was silenced as the large form of Rico strolled in. He looked at the center, at Gareth, and then decided to move to the tables instead. He sat down across from Kestra, “Hello, you two.”

Suddenly, Kestra’s appetite had shifted, Liz felt, as she seemed far less hungry with her beak, and far more with her eyes - clearly not hiding as they roamed over the white underbelly the large male had, and as low as they could before the stone slab of a table obstructed the view. Liz wondered if she’d have to yank Kestra back into the seat, since her frame started leaning forward, but she managed to stop herself in the end. “Thanks again. For last night.” Liz offered.

“Hrm? Oh, no need to thank me. If every night was spent in the company of two lovely hens, I’d be in bliss for the rest of my life.” Liz rolled her eyes, though she knew Rico was laying it on thick on purpose. Kestra was still just silently staring, and now Liz wondered if she’d need to pick her lower beak-mandible off the table before too long.

“Actually, I was wondering, do you know what this is?” Liz asked, fishing into her feathers to produce the black shard. Rico reached across the table, leaning forward in a way that instantly caught Kestra’s eye, before settling back, turning it over in his talons.

“This is obsidian. I haven’t seen a shard of this in years,” he lifted it up to his beak, inhaling it for a few moments. “That’s...” Rico blinked, shaking his head, “That’s a potent scent,” he extended his foreleg, with the obsidian, back to Liz, who took it gingerly and tucked it back into her feathers.

“Obsidian? Never heard of it,” chimed in Kestra, finally having her brain outpace her body.

“It’s something that happens near the magma slopes, near the islands the Sea Flock nest on. They were frequently traded to the Canyon,” Rico offered, tilting his head for a moment in thought. “A male’s scent changes, fundamentally, when they properly hit adulthood. But that - I think Kade’s scent was close to that.”

“Kade?” Liz asked, and Kestra looked at her as if she were either blind, stupid, or both.

“Yeah, Kade. The Canyon trade?” Kestra offered, meeting Liz’s blank stare. “Big. Black feathers,” she held her talons apart, “BIG. Like, biggest male I’ve seen, and I don’t mean penis - sorry Rico,” Rico shrugged, “big. How did you not see him during the exchange?”

“I-.” Liz opened her beak. Closed it. Opened it again. She couldn’t find an excuse that didn’t sound flimsy.

Kestra rolled her eyes, “You need to get your head out of the clouds and start looking,” as if to prove a point, Kestra grabbed hold of Liz’s beak, making her squawk in alarm, before angling her head to look head-on at the central performance area. Right, directly, at Gareth’s sheath on full display in the middle of his routine.

“Kestra!” Liz complained, shaking her head to free her beak from her friend’s grip.

“I’m right, and you know it. Maybe not about...” she gestured at Gareth, “That one, but in general.”

Liz opened her beak to speak, then shook her head afterward. “Where is Kade, then?”

Rico offered another shrug, “Not sure. Usually he is around here, off to the side and watching by now,” he looked up at the sky and gave a slow nod of his head, “Yeah. But, I don’t see him anywhere.”

---

The midday passed uneventfully, with the younger generation of the second shelf seemingly far quieter without Quill’s obsessive need to learn to drive any of them, and with none of the hens going into heat properly just yet. Gifts were left in various bowls, and small clusters of gryphons gathered to talk. Kestra, though, knew she needed something. Anything. She had to take the edge off. Undoubtedly, Rico would have obliged, but she wanted to go to Rico properly. When her body was hot and bothered by the season, not just the raw carnal need pulsing in her veins.

It was bad enough that she was letting things slip through the cracks that she wouldn’t normally. She had just berated Liz earlier about not seeing Kade on arrival, and yet she hadn’t even noticed he wasn’t among the others gathered in the Bowl. Her focus was too scattered, her attentions entirely on her body, and her mind kept wandering all the time.

In short, Kestra knew she needed to get fucked, or at least something to take the edge off. So, as Liz was asking around to see if anyone knew where Kade had gone (Good on you, Liz, finally! ), Kestra looped back to the outside of the den she shared. She looked first at the red bowl, with its assorted trinkets - a seashell, a few polished stones, a plain rock, some kind of gleaming gem. Her magpie instincts almost kicked in, but she restrained herself. Instead, she looked at her own bowl. Many of the objects were similar, but where Liz got a seashell, she had gotten a braid of feathers and a small piece of woven fabric.

She rummaged through the objects in her bowl, bringing each to her beak to inhale it and figure out who they belonged to. One of them, she noted, was Gareth’s. Had Rico not just informed her about him, she would have been tempted to. Gareth was as big as Rico, just about, and that would have taken the edge off. Definitely. But, no. Eventually, she saw the gleam of a gemstone in her own bowl, and her magpie instincts seized it immediately. She lifted it up, moving the gleaming object between her talons, before bringing it to her beak.

The scent of dried grasses and an undertone of fruit - not sickly sweet, but just lingering at the edges - greeted her. A profile her mind took a moment to identify. Breck. She looked at it and wondered. Breck was part of Gareth’s group, sure, but he wasn’t Gareth himself. He also had a keen eye, which was constantly on alert. “Mm...” she placed the gem among her feathers. “Maybe I can find Kade for Liz AND get laid.” She mused, walking with a new bounce in her step.

---

Rico knew that something was wrong the moment Kade hadn’t shown by the time the sun had reached its zenith and was cresting toward setting. He wandered up the Crag, from the Bowl to the fifth shelf, asking if anyone had seen him. Everyone had said no. The sixth shelf hadn’t either, and up he went, wondering.

The eighth shelf he skipped entirely. No one nested that high up during the autumn-to-winter months, as the wind chill made each den there practically freezing. The top of the Crag, the ninth ‘tier’, wasn’t much better, but perhaps the male had come up here to be alone. Rico knew some came up that high to practice their posturing for displays, but there was no sign of him. He saw Chuck in the distance, trying to rear up and slipping, and while he felt sympathy for the lanky male, his mind was focused elsewhere. Besides, Chuck probably would get too bashful and embarrassed if Rico approached him.

Rico was about to call it a lost cause when his eyes spotted something. It could have been nothing, and for all purposes it was nothing - a fresh settling of Crag dust on the topmost shelf, a few stray feathers caught in the blowing tufts of grass. Several black feathers, partly torn and speckled with rust-red, and a single slate-blue feather. All of them were trapped in the tangle of partly crushed grass. Rico reached forward with a forefoot, plucking one of the black feathers. The same scent that was on the obsidian was there, along with an undercurrent of iron. Of blood.

The other smelled like Slate, and suddenly Rico went stiff. He didn’t have the full picture, not even close, but he could assume. Gareth wouldn’t kill Kade - he didn’t like getting his talons dirty, and it didn’t matter the hold one had over you; murder was a limit most gryphons wouldn’t cross. Slate can be brutal and firm, but to kill? No. Murder was grounds for immediate exile from the Flock, and your name was sent to all the others. Persona non grata, as he had heard the Eldest put it once. Unwelcomed in any nest.

No, Rico had to assume that Kade was being forced to stay away, most likely by Slate. Rico hadn’t seen him, either, at breakfast, though Slate usually wasn’t the most social of creatures. Rico calmed himself, looking around again. Small amount of blood, a fight of some sort, but no lasting injury. A threat delivered, most likely. Rico looked skyward.

“Gareth found a new player to put on his board,” he murmured quietly to himself as a distant Chuck was trying yet another posture change. “I wonder, will this finally be the one he loses the game to?” Rico knew, very clearly then, that he couldn’t get involved. Couldn’t even tell others. No, Kade had to figure this out himself, as much as Rico longed to help. Still, Rico thought, Kade had other pieces in motion that would help, even if no one, not even Kade himself, was aware of it just yet.

---

Kestra wished that the males had bowls outside their dens, or some kind of marker. She felt like she had been wandering for hours and was now second-guessing the location entirely. Somewhere near Gareth’s on the fourth tier was all she knew, but where was a different question.

Each tier wasn’t just a flat, semi-circle directly above the Bowl. No, she mocked herself as she wandered, that’d be too easy; instead, they snaked around the natural formation of the cliffside, winding and bending. A few times, they even went through the cliff, coming out the other side in a small tunnel.

Rico’s had been easy to find. His warm scent was welcoming from a foot away, but for some reason she just couldn’t -

Her thought trailed off as she emerged from one such tunnel, on the far side of the caldera, and scented the powerful smell of mineral and sunbaked rock. It was both akin to and deeply different from the earthy smells around her, but she knew she was on the right path. Gareth’s stretch. Indeed, past the tunnel on the far side of the cliff were a dozen or so dens, each taken by one of Gareth’s lackeys.

Gareth’s was easy enough to note, the entrance being the largest of them, and the scent permeating from it. What became more difficult for Kestra was finding the exact den that belonged to Breck, having to stop outside each den opening and inhaling, reaching past the cloying scent of Gareth to the other males within.

Part of her, as she repeated this process, wondered if that was part of it - part of what Rico had mentioned. You come here, as she had, pursuing one of his lackeys while in heat, and you hit a physical wall of scent. A scent so thick Kestra could taste it on her tongue; a hen in heat - an inexperienced one especially, would be lured like a moth to a flame.

Hell, Kestra herself was almost tempted, but thankfully, she eventually located Breck’s den. Every gryphon’s scent was unique, and while there might be overlap between one and another, no two were entirely identical. So, she was certain as she strolled into the darkness that this was Breck’s home.

Breck was, at that moment, working at the back of his den, talons digging into the soft earth and harsh stone, excavating it as so many did. As gryphons reached adulthood and needed more space, it was a rather routine situation in the Crag, unless one managed to occupy an older den that had been sufficiently dug out already. Kestra watched for a moment, seeing Breck with a single-minded focus on expanding the space of his den further.

“A polished gemstone.” Kestra finally chirped, breaking the silence and making tunnel-visioned Breck jump in place. He turned around and showed all the signs of his physical activities; feathers astray, fur matted here and there with dirt, his chest heaving, and his tongue lolling partly from his beak in a pant. More, his scent was stronger, richer to Kestra due to that physical exertion. Not overwhelming, like Gareth’s outside, just sharper. More there.

“Oh! You’re... Kestra, right?”

“In the flesh,” she offered, unfurling her wings to show off the iridescent sheen of them, the fading afternoon sun’s stray rays highlighting a few primaries through the entry.

“I should - should step aside to wash up,” he commented, shaking out his feathers to try and get them more in place. Kestra, though, side-stepped in front of him with a shake of her head.

“No need. Besides, I like seeing you like this, if I’m being honest,” she offered, eyes unashamedly wandering over that ruffled display before her.

“What, covered in dirt and panting?” Breck commented dryly, the corner of his beak turned up in a small smile.

Kestra moved closer to him and pushed her beak straight into the feathers of his neck, and he froze as she did. She inhaled that warm scent of him, made more potent by the recent physical exertion, “No. Not composed. It means you’re being entirely honest with yourself right now, and,” she walked partly past him, shoulder-to-shoulder, and her short tail, nothing but a bob, flicked, “Your body is, too.”

Breck blinked, his brain taking a moment to register her words before he lifted up one of his hindlegs and looked back, and indeed found himself swollen. Sheath hanging low and the deep red of his tapered head exposed at the entrance, already beading the first droplet of pre. “Oh! I’m so-,” Kestra cut off his apology by setting her forefoot against his beak.

“Breck. I came here to have sex with you.” She commented, very matter-of-fact. “Well, not sex-sex. But, pleasure. Do you think you’ll be okay with that?”

Breck didn’t trust himself to respond. Instead, he simply nodded his head. Kestra parted her beak in a grin, and even in the dark, he could see her eyes light up. Predatory, wanton, and pleased. He gulped before she moved her fore down to his chest and shoved.

The push shouldn’t have done much, merely knocked him back a step, but he was caught off guard by, well, everything. The long hindlegs of his maned wolf heritage did him no favors there, tangling as he fell over onto his side, and Kestra calmly walked over top of him.

There, she lifted a forefoot and made a circling motion with a talon, which Breck followed by rolling onto his back, splaying out his long, russet-red hindlegs and bracing his fores against the soft white plumage of his chest. Breck’s mind was trying to catch up with everything, but that became far harder when one of Kestra’s hindlegs moved. Her thighs and hips were meaty, not in the way of weight, but the way of a natural, buxom well, and he couldn’t help but watch the muscles there move, the feathers ripple.

It was enough that he didn’t notice why she had moved until his breath caught in his throat and his back arched, soft warmth of her hindpaw squishing in against his sheath and exposed head, rubbing back and forth. That paw had none of the dexterity of an avian forefoot, but it had warmth and pressure and - Breck stopped categorizing the advantages and started rolling his hips upward, with soft gasps leaving his black, parted beak.

Kestra, for her part, was quite pleased at the look she got for it. Breck’s composure struggled to come back, only for it to shatter as her hindpaw started to toy and tease. Pressing down on his sheath firm enough to be felt, but so that the pressure wouldn’t be painful. Each rub of her paw exposed more of the leaky warmth that, even now, was making a sticky mess of her pawpad. Squishy digits of her toes curled, as best they could, over the tapered head of him as she made him squirm and buck.

Kestra noted, in that kind of way a female that has had multiple partners does, that Breck wasn’t the biggest male as he continued to get hard. She’d seen bigger. Been with bigger. But he was large enough, and he’d certainly make whoever he was with quite happy without the extra time and preparation to take him.

Breck’s parted, panting beak and glazed over eyes looked up at Kestra with a warmth as he rolled his hips toward her, and slowly Kestra moved closer. Her hindpaw stepped off from him, from grinding on his cock, to stepping on the nesting beside Breck’s head.

Breck looked up in momentary confusion. Kestra, noting the look as she looked underneath herself, gave a low chuckle, “Not seen a feline before, have you?” She wasn’t upset by that; she was used to it. Most of the Crag had canine heritage for their mammalian half, and as such, feline anatomy always caught first-time partners off guard.

Instead of it being a thick, fleshy spade with a familiar Y-shape, it was quite a deal slimmer and in the shape of a teardrop. Kestra was tempted to just drop her hips and force Breck to learn on the job, as it were, but instead she murmured to him quietly, “Reach up with your foretalons.”

Breck followed the instruction, reaching up with his fores as Kestra instructed him to use the blunted, smooth edge along the back of his talon to push up against her. He moved slowly, dragging it through the feathers of her inner thigh, twisting to the side to let the sharper tip tease the skin beneath the feathers there as he approached the heat and dampness already glistening on the edges of her pussy.

Then he turned his talon to that smooth edge and pushed it against her. Her hips twitched at the contact, then started to roll against his talon as it moved back and forth, “A bit higher...” she directed through a gasp of raw need. Breck followed, tracing along the delicate lip of her cunt, until he came to the top of the teardrop. He brushed something there that felt like a pronounced nub, and he didn’t need a verbal confirmation that that was the right spot.

Wetness splashed down onto the plumage of his face, flooding his senses with the scent of freshly bitten fruit and the potent fragrance of citrus mixed with the scent of baking grains. He shuddered and continued the grinding and slow toying with that sensitive spot he had discovered, making Kestra’s hips twitch and dance above him.

A dance that she continued for some time before she decided she wanted - no, needed - more. She pulled her hips up, and while Breck followed initially, she gently swatted down his foreleg with a pre-coated hindpaw. Breck got the message and stayed as he was as she scoot back down.

They were now beak-to-beak, and Breck saw those green, gold-flecked eyes blown wide with her need and desire. “I’m going to ride you,” she stated, “But you’re not going to penetrate me. Is that going to be an issue?”

Breck looked up without fully understanding, and Kestra shook her head, deciding to show rather than waste words. She dropped her hips down and pressed the heat of her pussy against the underside of his throbbing, red shaft. Then she started to roll her hips back and forth, and he understood what she meant and was instantly okay with it. He groaned, head snapping back and eyes closing at the eager roll of her hips.

Breck wasn’t a virgin. Gareth had given him a female for his loyalty the previous year, introduced him, and told him she was eager for him. At the time, he was all too excited. Now... now he questioned it all. That female had put almost no effort into it, and Breck just considered that normal - that it came down to just biology and reproduction.

But that wasn’t even on the table right now. Breck opened his eyes to see Kestra’s body. Her hips were rolling, eyes shut tight, a foreleg braced against the white feathers of his chest as she rolled back and forth. The heat and dampness of her was soaking into the fur of his peeled-back sheath and steadily tensing balls, mingling with his own scent that had morphed from a fruity undertone similar to hers, to something thick, heady, and animalistic.

His talons seized her hips, just to grab on, and from the throaty groan leaving her beak, she approved of the motion. His talons tugged into the flesh beneath her feathers, leaving shallow marks as she kept rolling against him, her body starting to tremble as she did so. Breck was, in a way, fascinated by it. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, how the feathers of her body were puffing up as she got nearer to the crest of her pleasure.

His body wasn’t still, either, grinding upward in a way that rolled the underside of his cock through the lips of her teardrop cunt, his shaft slippery and thoroughly coated as her talons scratched at his chest and her head tilted back, a long, low moan leaving her beak.

Kestra shuddered from her now-raised crest to the tip of her lashing, bobbed tail. Whole body taut as a wire, then relaxing all at once as a crash of pleasure raced up her spine and spread through her veins, blossoming from her belly. But, despite her release, Kestra knew she wasn’t done with the male, panting and grinding beneath her. Instead, she leaned back as much as her anatomy allowed, one fore still braced on the ground as the one on his chest raked downward.

Her talons gripped the back of his knot, feeling it start to swell in response to the stimulation, as she used that hold as a guide. She lifted her hips and then pressed the head right against her pussy - not pushing into it, but letting the head grind back and forth, smearing a constant stream of precum. Then she gave a squeeze behind that knot, and Breck made a strangled moaning noise, hips bucking upward, cock near penetrating with the pressure, before he came undone.

While Kestra had soaked his balls and inner thighs, Breck came with the force of a male that had gone all year without release, and now was finding that he had an outlet. Thick jets sprayed across the slightly gaped shape of her teardrop cunt, and she redirected him afterward, letting his cum spray and soak into the feathers of her lower belly and inner thighs. Once the first, powerful splashes were done with, she released the hold on his knot, letting him go before slumping onto him.

The two lay there together, belly-to-belly with their mixed releases pooling and matting into feathers and fur, the heavy scent of fruit, warmth, and animalistic musk telling the tale of their encounter quite strongly. Both were panting heavily, and neither was in a hurry to move.

Eventually, Kestra recovered enough to scoot up slightly, putting her weight on one foreleg to let her still drape over Breck’s somewhat larger form as he remained splayed on his back. “Mind if I spend the night?” she questioned. Breck blinked, his mind still several beats behind, both in recovery and in just muddling through things.

“Oh, um. Sure. My den has room for two,” he looked at the fresh dug-through wall, “now anyway.”

Kestra looked at that, then down at him, and thought of how to approach things. Her eyes scanned Breck’s, and she eventually decided how to push. “You seemed... uneasy. I didn’t push you, did I?”

“Huh? Oh! No, no. This was lovely. Warm. It just... reminded me, is all,” Breck commented, his head turning away and those teal eyes of his looking off into nothing.

“Something you want to talk about?” She asked, snuggling in a bit closer to him. Let him talk, she thought, and I’ll learn more than if I pry.

“I...” Breck took a deep breath and dipped his head. He could use getting it all off his chest, but he had to think for a moment. Eventually, he found a comfortable, roundabout way of it all. “Last year, I ended up getting a partner, with Gareth’s help. That and other debts I owe him for, though,” he looked up at her, and the word died on his tongue. ‘You were better’? or ‘You were more passionate’? All true, but maybe that was just this hen? It didn’t feel fair to the female he had taken last year to compare them. And yet...

“Gareth asked me to... help him with something the other day. Really, I was just a body. But, I don’t...” his shoulders slumped a bit, ears flicking atop his head as he looked up at her again. She could see the earnest tug in that, loyalty battling with personal morals. “I don’t approve of it. I-,” he closed his beak, looking up, and took a deep breath.

“Thank you. For helping take my mind off of it all,” Breck finished, bobbing his head. Kestra studied him and knew that was the end of what she’d get out of him, but she was observant and smart enough to put two and two together. Gareth had done something to Kade.

A desire to run to Liz, to tell her what she found out, formed in her mind, but instead she curled in against him. She wouldn’t leave him alone with his thoughts for the night, not after the enjoyable... activity they both shared. “Well, I’ll stay here with you, but don’t be surprised if I’m gone before you wake.”

Breck offered a small grin, those teal eyes sparkling close to the gemstones he had given, “I’ll take the time I can get, then,” and tucked his forelegs around her body, pulling her close to his in an intimate, rather soaked, cuddle.

---

The moon was full, and Kade looked out from the eighth shelf to the Bowl below. He was placed above it, allowing him to see the movement of bodies below, and he didn’t know if that was deliberate on Gareth’s part or not. It created a sense of longing in him, but also a stronger, quieter sense behind it all- to find a way free. To get back down there, to those he was trying to get to know. To what was now his family.

Slate was still there. Had been there all day. Kade had seen him leave only once, and that was to mark a nearby tree when he had to piss. Kade started to wonder, now, if Slate was even flesh and blood, at least until mid-afternoon when that same red-tailed hawk male had delivered food to the pair. Breck was his name, Kade had overheard.

The food had been cold, but edible, and that was all that mattered. Now, a memory several hours old, Kade wondered what to do with himself. He looked at his talons, which were blunted in the fashion of a gryphon that just dug out his own den, and indeed, he had spent several hours doing just that. The den had been too cramped for his frame, and now it was comfortable enough for him. He’d continue to work on it.

After all, he only had time.

Slate was sitting near the ledge, between Kade and the one path down to freedom. Yes, Kade could have done a running jump from the edge and just glided downward to freedom, but that wouldn’t solve anything. Not really. He was new, and if he complained about his treatment, well - Gareth had far more clout in the Flock than he did.

No, he would stay, and he would find a way forward. He looked to the side at Slate, emotionlessly staring out at the night sky, and made a choice. He approached the other male slowly, as non-threateningly as his large frame could.

Slate looked at him with those dark eyes, his powerfully built frame twisting on its haunches as he did so. Kade lifted a fore in a universal sign of peace, or calm, and then took a seat beside Slate.

Slate stared at him for some time, as if trying to determine if this was some trick, before turning his head back to watch the glinting stars. That was fine. It was a form of progress. He joined that silent watch, tilting his head up as the full moon illuminated both of them, high on the eighth shelf.

And from below, in the bowl, the few remnants of the night who were still performing or sharing warm conversation swore they saw the shadow of a gryphon when they looked up at the moon.

Everyone felt the difference in the air, even if no one could properly word what it was. Every gryphon had woken up with an electric undercurrent, but as they shuffled into the Bowl, each of them quickly picked up their usual places. Males who wanted to show off to the center, females who wanted to admire them gathered around, and everyone else in loose clusters, enjoying conversation or food.

Liz and Kestra were both in their den, preparing themselves to join the crowd; Kestra having snuck back in during the middle of the night, something that Liz was all too aware of and didn’t press on. Liz brought the shard to her beak again and inhaled that warm, rich scent that, for some odd reason, soothed her nerves. The scent was starting to fade, she could tell, but she pushed that aside as a tomorrow problem.

Feathers preened, and in order, she made for the joining tunnel between her section of the den and Kestra’s own, waiting for the magpie to emerge. When she did, she wore a grin that Liz was all too familiar with, “I don’t want to hear about your sex life,” Liz commented dryly.

“Oh, yes, you do,” Kestra responded in a sing-song tone, a fresh bounce in her step. Kestra had thoroughly washed herself, Liz noted, as the only scent on her body was her own. Was she embarrassed by who she had had sex with the night before? Liz didn’t think so. Embarrassment in that way wasn’t really Kestra’s thing.

“No, not really. You probably went to Rico, right?” Liz assumed. It was, even Kestra had to admit, a logical choice. But Kestra shook her head.

“Nope. I won’t tell you who, but I will tell you this - Gareth got to Kade.”

Liz’s frame stilled, one foreleg extended in mid-step, and her brain and body clearly fighting to process exactly what she had just heard. “Got to... how?”

“That I am not sure of. He’s alive, I can say that much. I don’t think...” Kestra paused for a moment, then edited her thoughts before speaking them. “The one who told me didn’t act concerned in a way that a murder would cause. Kade is safe, he’s just...”

“Gone.”

---

Liz and Kestra joined the gathering, Liz with an intense look of thought on her beak, and Kestra with that light step of a hen that had had a good night following along. They split up, each going different ways - Kestra to admire Rico in the center, and Liz to get herself some food. The fact that Kestra came back after a moment to steal Liz’s first bowl of food was something the warm-feathered female had expected, and was already in the process of filling a second when it happened.

Liz felt a sudden surge through the undercurrent of the crowd, and she lifted her beak to look at the slope leading down into the bowl. She noticed she wasn’t the only one; a slew of heads were turned, watching the descent of one female who was walking with the slow purpose of someone important. Liz placed the female as Reed, a female a few years her senior, who easily started to pass through the crowd.

The wind shifted then, and it all became clear.

Reed was a red-tailed hawk mixed with some canine that Liz couldn’t place, but what she could place, besides the smug look of confidence and surge of attention the red-headed, white-breasted female was getting, was the thick, overwhelming flood of her scent. Every male suddenly froze in place, and every female was quickly talking in hushed whispers. The first of the season. The first hen to hit her heat.

At once, two dozen male forms responded to that scent, their bodies already preparing them for the season now going into overdrive. The males on stage suddenly had a newfound... swell to their sheath that Liz hadn’t seen prior, a weight that lingered, and the weight behind that, of their two balls, hung a little lower. A bit fuller. All signs of the season.

Reed took a seat at a table, sitting tall and knowing she was, for now at least, the star of the day, before there was a clearing of a throat from above. Nox was on the second tier, and her voice carried off the Crags, down to the bowl. “As the Stars had shown, we had our first estrus on day five.” There was a scattering of excited murmuring from those who hadn’t been downwind or had arrived late.

“An hour from now, I will be escorting the gryphons of the next season to their isolation with the nestlings,” a groan of complaint rose up from the second-to-third tiers, where most of the younger gryphons were staying. Nox waited until the complaints had died down.

“You have an hour to talk and say goodbye, as none of them will be allowed out of the nestling dens until the last hen has exited her estrus, and one day has passed.” All of those who had done this before nodded their heads, Liz included. Approximately three weeks from today, give or take a few, until they are allowed to be freed from their confinement.

As a hatchling into a young adult, Liz always thought of it as a punishment. Even the year before her first season, when she could spectate up to this very moment, she thought being ushered away was a punishment. She knew better now. Knew that this was to give them another year to figure themselves out.

For Liz, it had taken an extra two, but nevertheless.

Liz watched as several of the adults made their way up to say goodbye. While very few gryphons knew of direct family ties, beyond child and mother, some still bonded. Others just wished to spend a bit more time among that younger group and impart words of wisdom or advice. Liz was in the latter category.

Liz came across Vesper and Jasper, both sitting and flicking a rock back and forth with the tip of their talons. Liz sat down beside both of them, and as expected, they talked almost immediately. “It’s unfair,” was all Vesper said, her sharp teal eyes looking up at Liz’s own. Liz saw, in that moment, that Vesper would be a problem next year.

Not in the sense of causing issues, but in the amount of attention she got. Those eyes with that dark plumage, which then faded into the dusty grey of her coyote half? Liz was going to have an overflowing bowl next year. “I would have agreed with you two years ago,” Liz chimed after a moment.

Vesper was, clearly, caught off guard by the pseudo-agreement, and was trying to figure out how to capitalize on it all when Jasper spoke up, “Not sure why we can’t just stay and watch. Sex is... normal, right?”

Liz opened her beak to answer, then closed it. She sat for a moment, settling on her haunches before giving a small nod of her head, “It is. There is nothing wrong with it,” Rich, Liz, she thought to herself. Lie to them about how you feel. She sighed, then shook her head, “There can be, though. I still haven’t done it myself.”

“Aren’t you two years older than we are?” Vesper asked, moving herself closer and tucking her tail around her hindpaws. Jasper decided to follow the motion, settling to her right, with his hip brushing hers in a subconscious movement. Liz noted it and noted that they already had feelings for each other. Not on the surface, no - they’d both adamantly deny it if someone confronted either, but it was there. Liz understood a bit more.

“I am, yes. And when I went into my first year, I-,” she looked down at the talons of her fores, “I ran. After the season officially started, that is - like today,” she gestured down, where Reed could be seen, surrounded thickly by a crowd of males (and a few females). “I hid in the peaks on the outskirts of the Crag, and only came back at night to get food. I think Nox was aware, as there was always one bowl of food out when I showed up, after the ninth day. The season can make one do really stupid things, though, and not everyone is the same,” she looked from Jasper to Vesper, and back again.

“You two might be emotionally ready now, but that doesn’t mean the rest of your age group is. Imagine Quill’s anger that you two, say, got to participate in it all a year early, even though you,” she poked Vesper gently in the dark plumage of her chest, “haven’t hit estrus, and won’t, this year. And you,” she did the same, then, to Jasper’s broad chest. “decided to breed some female.”

Jasper, for his part, looked away and blushed at the comment, and Vesper took a moment, “Well, it’d be funny for one,” Vesper quipped, before feeling the thump of Jasper’s hip to hers. She groaned, “Fine, yes. Quill would be pissed. And,” she looked at Jasper - really looked at him, eyes roaming from his own soft hazel eyes, down his chest. She nodded. “Yeah, I think I get it.”

Jasper tilted his head in confusion, but Liz only had the corner of her beak turn up in a smile. Vesper would be jealous if Jasper, who was sexually able already, got another hen pregnant, but couldn’t do the same to her. “Fine, fine,” Vesper commented, standing with a lazy stretch. “I get it. We’ll hide for the month so you all can hump yourselves to death against every rock, sheesh.”

Jasper thumped Vesper harder with his hip, while Liz’s brown-to-red feathering darkened several shades with a blush.

---

Rico wasn’t entirely sure why he decided to go to the second shelf. Sure, he enjoyed the season and all the consequences of it - he had a few hatchlings he could easily claim were his without much issue, due to the vibrant red plumage of their crests, but none of them were here. Most gryphons lived upwards of fifty to sixty years, and reached their first season at sixteen.

He shook his head at the math - he’d be in his thirties before the first offspring of his was joining the festivities. Still, he figured he should at least try to be there for the next generation. Pass on words of wisdom or something like that. He clicked his beak in mild amusement, wondering where that sudden impulse came from; the last four years, he’d been front and center to the first female in heat. “Maybe this Kade thing has me out of sorts,” he mumbled to himself.

“What Kade thing?” came a voice to his side. Rico stopped, frozen for a moment before turning his head and relaxing. It was Wren, one of Quill’s friends.

“Oh, that’s adult business,” the look that passed Wren’s beak made Rico chuckle softly, “No, not season business. Adult business. It’s... complicated, and not my place to speak of it,” Wren scanned him, and Rico did the same in return. Wren always flew under the radar, sucked into Quill’s gravity, or was in the background for Vesper and Jasper. But Rico saw something there, with the keen eye of a male who could identify another male who would be a potential rival in the future.

Wren was, what many would consider, a runt. But from the glance Rico got... when Wren fully grew out (he’d still be small, physically), he’d be much larger in the areas most hens cared about this time of year. “You miss Quill, don’t you?” Rico offered, moving to sit down beside the lither male, the picture of total relaxed ease.

“Yeah, I do. I’m... I don’t know. I feel like part of me is missing when she isn’t around,” Wren commented, looking up at Rico’s beak. Rico thought on that, pondering: young love, or maybe something more unhealthy? No, Wren was smart, and Quill’s flights of fancy had undoubtedly tempered him. Young love, then.

It was during this internal view that another of Quill’s friends arrived, “Stop hogging all the attention, Wren.”

Kossho. It was weird, Rico thought, for him to feel unnerved by a male younger and smaller than him, and yet the look he got made him feel like he was being analyzed and served up. The predatory gleam in Kossho’s eye didn’t help that any.

“I wasn’t. Rico was just telling me -or, uh... not telling me about some ‘adult stuff’,” Wren offered, curling his sandy coloured tail around his hindlegs. Rico looked him over, really looked him over, from the vibrant, stunning blue of his feathers, down to the more mundane tawny sand of his lower canine half. The former was rare, but not unheard of in the North, but the latter...

“Who was your father, or maybe mother, Wren? That,” he gestured at Wren’s lower half, the canine half of him, “isn’t native to the Crag.”

Kossho rolled his eyes, “Ugh. This again. His father was a prince who came up here and swooned over a princess. Can we get back to more interesting things now, like you?” The purr that came afterward was unsettling. Rico felt like a trapped mouse before a cat.

Wren, for his part, brushed off the suggestive advances of his friend, “My father was from the southern continent. Something called a ‘desert’. He was a nomad and traveled the north, visiting most of the Eight Flocks. He only failed to reach the Mountain Flock, as they’re even more north than we are, and...” he offered a shrug. “He stayed here the first week of the season, from what I know, and my mother was lured by his stories and his exotic nature,” he thumped his tail on the ground. “He couldn’t stay here after a week, though. Got too cold, so he went back south. I’d have to go south, too, if not for my mother. I got my longer fur from her.”

“As I said - Prince and Princess,” Kossho hummed, standing up with a curve that stretched out one hindleg leg. Yes, Rico thought, this male is going to be a problem for all the reasons Wren won’t be - forward, vain, self-assured, and knows what he wants while being smart enough to stop before real aggravation sets in.

Wren followed after Kossho as the peacock left, the two arguing as they did, joining the press of bodies being led up the Crag by Nox, toward the hatchling dens. Rico didn’t know why he stopped to watch, but Kossho clearly felt eyes still on him, as he turned and offered an unmistakably... provocative motion of tail and hips.

Yes, Rico thought, He is going to cause a lot of problems for the males and females next year. By hogging all the males. He shook his head in both amusement and a bit of unease before he made his way back down. He hadn’t quite spoken the words of advice he expected, but he still got information for next year, and that, in itself, was valuable.

---

Nox appeared once more after the younger generation had been escorted to the hatchling dens. Her appearance caused a wave of excitement for those familiar with the customs, and a wave of curiosity for those who weren’t. Mango took a seat near the performing center, where even the males who had been showing off upon it had sat back on their haunches, looking up at Nox, who was on the tier above. She used the natural acoustics of the Crag itself to have her voice carry down.

“Thanks to Reed,” the female mantled her wings in recognition, “the season is officially underway.” There was scattered cheering and chirping at the proper, full announcement. Nox waited patiently until it had quieted before continuing. She stood a little taller, unfurling her large, white plumage, “All that you see before you is now free use for the season, as needed, with no shame or embarrassment. Remember, though, that a hen’s word is law. If she says no, all males must respect that choice, or face exile.”

It also went without saying that males had to be equally respected.

“Aside from that,” Nox continued, settling her wings in toward her sides as she did so, “Things will continue as they have. Males will leave their gifts outside a hen’s nest, and she will decide who she visits during the day or night. Performances will continue throughout the Crag, though now that...” she paused for a moment, “that innocent eyes are gone, I understand they’ll ramp up in their forwardness.” That earned soft chuckles from many of the gryphons, with several males moving past Mango to get their position upon the central, raised stone.

“I will not keep you all any longer, but before I let you free to follow your instincts, I have a special announcement to make.” The crowd, which had started to turn their intentions inward, toward their neighbors rather than toward Nox, suddenly jerked their heads back toward the ash-grey female. “The Flock of the Grove shared with me some special objects in trade a month ago. I will say no more on what it is, but at the mid-point of the Season, we will have a special festival to celebrate it. I will announce the details three days before.” Some gryphons looked on in confusion, and others were counting the days on their talons. There was a sudden murmuring of rumour and wonder that bubbled up that Nox briefly allowed, before she raised a foreleg to call for silence.

Once the rumble of conversation dulled, Nox cleared their confusion, “In ten days, the celebration will start.” So in a week, they’d hear the details of it. The gryphons who couldn’t quite do math beyond the number of their talons breathed a sigh of relief. A week they could track; at least, in the vagueness of knowing when seven days and nights had passed.

Nox then stepped back from the ledge, and the attention suddenly was everywhere. Mango felt the wave of it, that layer of excitement that had built since Reed’s arrival, and suddenly, an even larger crowd of males all rushed around her. Mango noticed two males absent from the crowd clustered thickly around Reed - Rico, and Gareth. She knew of the latter in the way any gryphon growing up in the Crag would. He was an older male who had been here her whole life.

While Rico was nowhere to be seen at that moment, Gareth took advantage of the absence of so many males to dominate the center of the performance area. Sure, his presence alone was usually enough to accomplish that, but now he didn’t need to try and jostle for position. He just placed a hindleg forward, adopting a relaxed posture that didn’t hide absolutely anything, and Mango once more felt her eyes wander. She noted it wasn’t the first time they had done so during one of Gareth’s displays, and like before, she noted the sheer weight of everything between his hindlegs. She felt herself wanting to lick her beak in appreciation, and she resisted. She tore her eyes away from that low-hanging fruit, up to Gareth’s eyes, and saw that he was watching her directly.

She couldn’t place the look in his eye. It wasn’t predatory, but was similar in nature. She figured it was the look of a male judging his interest in a female, and Mango couldn’t help but stand a little bit taller underneath his scrutiny. He responded, in kind, by lifting that hindleg closest to her upward, giving her an unobstructed view of everything. She couldn’t help it as her eyes darted downward, looking over all of it in earnest. Her tail, absent from her own control, gave a slow wag as Gareth continued to watch her. Then, the rush of what she was doing, what she was staring at, made her flush. It didn’t show through the vibrancy of her feathers, but the heat was present in her cheeks. She looked away and, after a moment, darted out of the gathering.

Gareth noted all of this, following her swift retreat with a steady gaze, and his own tail gave a small, involuntary sway.

---

Chuck was one of the few males who had left the Bowl after Reed’s arrival and not returned. Not because he didn’t want to be there, but rather because the incident from a few days ago still stung. Not physically, no, but emotionally. He still felt the mocking eyes of everyone around him, and while a part of him quietly said that no one had been laughing, the louder part of him declared that they all had been.

He shook his head and made his way from the seventh shelf to the eighth, as he steadily climbed from his home on the third tier. He contemplated going to the ninth, but he knew that the tallest spot of the Crag was considered somewhat romantic, and as the season started in earnest, couples might head up there for the view while they enjoyed themselves. Plus, the last time he had gone up there, he had spotted Rico leaving, and Chuck wondered just how much of his practice routine the other male had seen.

The eighth tier was fine in Summer and late Spring, when the chill was out of the air, but this time of year, the gusts and ambient temperature made it unfeasible for the majority to nest there, and thus the gryphons that might utilize it were all on the lower shelves now. Chuck decided to take a right at the split in the ‘road’, following the path as it snaked along. He would at least have a view of the Bowl in this direction, as well as the horizon as a whole.

Two-thirds of the way, he froze. Before him were two gryphons, both of whom he recognized; one that he had practiced his posturing with a few days prior, and the other being the male who had walked past him that same day. They were together, though standing quite separate, and if Chuck didn’t know any better, the dense, smaller male was the guardian of the path forward. Chuck weighed his options, between going back and finding somewhere else to practice, or going forward and maybe soliciting the help of the dark-feathered male whom he had, absentmindedly, forgotten to ask the name of.

It was the look from the male who had helped him earlier that stopped him from leaving. A look of curiosity mixed with unease. Chuck looked over his shoulder, then back at the other male, and moved toward the living boulder. The male’s dark, emotionless eyes watched him, but he physically did nothing more, allowing Chuck to simply walk past. The moment he was past the other male, Chuck hurried his motion, all four legs moving with a swift, gangly gait closer to Kade. “Chuck. That is, I’m Chuck.”

“So I’ve heard. I’m Kade.”

“Is he... a friend of yours?” Chuck asked, peering over his shoulder at the stationary male. He may as well have been made from the very stone of the Crag.

“He’s my...” Kade’s expression went through several stages before he gave a click of his beak. “He’s here to keep me safe.”

“Safe... safe from what?” Chuck asked, tilting his head in the form of earnest, avian confusion.

“From myself.” Chuck’s confusion deepened, but instead of pressing Kade for more information, he took a deep breath.

“I-,”

“You want more help with your posing,” Kade commented, slowly bringing himself to stand.

Chuck gave a slow nod, “I take it you... saw?”

“I did. I wanted to help, but the press of all the bodies was like a solid wing,” Kade offered, moving in closer to his fellow male. Kade’s eyes roamed along Chuck’s body, from the black-tipped, yellow beak, across the white and brown feathers. The latter, on closer inspection, wasn’t a solid brown. It was a softer, lighter tawny with darker spotting throughout, almost like the spots that a snow leopard might have.

“I just,” Chuck sighed. “Rico makes it look so easy.”

“Rico is four years older than either of us,” Kade countered, but he slowly circled his fellow male, with Chuck turning his head, watching the progress. When Kade reached one of those hindlegs, he lifted a fore and gave it a soft tap, “Lift this like last time.”

Chuck lifted his hindleg in a showing stretch that, after he got his balance with the remaining three long legs, was an action borne of ease. “A hen gets plenty of an eyeful with that alone,” Kade commented, with Chuck’s ears going a darker shade of pink.

“Yeah, but... they’d quickly lose interest, most likely when the male next to me does something,” Chuck’s hindleg slowly lowered, “Showy-er.”

Kade’s eyes had, once more, seen the full weight that the lanky osprey carried, and he clicked his beak, “Mm, doubt it. I think a multitude would appreciate just that view, but.” Kade placed a forefoot on Chuck’s thigh, carefully moving that leg back. As Chuck tried to compensate with his others, Kade spoke up, “No. Freeze the other three.”

The sun of early afternoon had started its journey westward when it started, and had crested the westward peaks of the outskirts, casting long shadows as Kade continued his help. Fores moved with care and no hesitation as he directed his fellow male, who was now trying to rear up and pose on his hindlegs, wings unfurled in a display that he had crashed and burned on both. Kade had one forefoot on Chuck’s left, inner thigh, and the other on his hip, helping to get those long limbs into a semblance of position that they needed.

“I wouldn’t do this one just yet,” Kade commented, a fore holding firmer to that inner thigh. Kade ignored the heat that occasionally swayed into his forefoot as Chuck’s sheath swayed with the motions of his body. He also ignored that it had swollen in size since the activities had started, as Chuck himself seemingly hadn’t noticed. “See your left hindleg?”

“The one you’re holding?” Chuck commented, looking downward at his body and Kade’s, who was bracing it. Kade nodded, then released his grip... and instantly that leg started to shake. Chuck felt his balance starting to give, then Kade’s forefoot gripped tight again, helping to brace him in place. “I... yeah, okay.” Chuck conceded, slowly leaning forward to end up on all fours again. He gave a full-body shake to get most of his feathers and fur back into place, and Kade couldn’t help but watch the full-weight sway of that swollen sheath between the other male’s thighs as well. Though those silver eyes of Kade’s soon met Chuck’s own amber-yellow eyes.

“Thank you, Kade. Can I... can I come back here again tomorrow?” Chuck asked, tilting his head in curiosity.

“I’d enjoy that. It helps me get my mind off of...” He looked toward Slate, who, during all of it, had just kept his watch. Kade wondered if he was even a flesh-and-blood gryphon. “Of my situation.”

The expression on Chuck’s face was one of concern mixed with even more questions, but he could tell from the look on Kade’s own face that he wasn’t ready to talk about it. Chuck wondered if he was even allowed. “I’ll come back before sundown, then,” Chuck offered, his tail gave a slow sway while he leaned forward to give Kade an affectionate and thankful brush of his beak against Kade’s own. Then, he turned and made his way back down the Crag, toward the gathering of males and females, leaving Kade upon the eighth shelf, alone with nothing but what may as well be a rock given life.

---

The moon had started to rise as Kestra made her way from the Bowl, up to the fourth tier. She hadn’t seen Rico all day and wondered where he had gotten to after the start of the season. Already, Reed was narrowing her choices to three males, one of which was Gareth - and it looked, cleanly, like Gareth was going to win that contest, despite only putting himself in toward the end. It wasn’t a mistake, Kestra knew. He had waited until the majority of the males had either lost interest or been pushed out before he joined the crowd.

But Kestra’s interest that night wasn’t in Gareth, even with the inkling she had learned from Breck the night before. No, tonight she was acting on her own accord, with her own goals and agenda. ‘Sorry, Liz,’ she thought, ‘But this hen has a desire.’

It was partway up the third tier when she saw his red crest, partly lifted as he talked to a vibrantly coloured hen. Kestra took a moment to place her before realizing it was Mango. The two seemed in conversation, but not in the way of flirting with each other, so Kestra was content to wait. Eventually, Mango gave an appreciative chirp and turned, walking past Kestra with the ease of a hen having a weight lifted from her shoulders.

Kestra’s ear flicked before she moved with the sway of her body, which she knew attracted the eye. The warmth in Rico’s eyes told her that she had certainly attracted his. “What was all that about?”

“Mango was asking how she’d know, properly, when she came into heat. I told her she’d know, and if she didn’t, the first male she met would definitely let her know,” Rico commented, making Kestra blink... then laugh softly.

“The first season is confusing for everyone,” Rico commented defensively, and Kestra shook her head with a raised foreleg until her laughter was under control.

“I’m not laughing at her. I’m laughing because Liz had asked me the same thing the first year. Of course, my response then was: How am I supposed to know?” But, she then steadily pushed Mango from her mind as she moved closer, pushing her beak into the white feathers of his chest, where the red blended in a way that made it look almost akin to bleeding. She inhaled, taking in his rich scent as her tail lashed.

“Normally, we’re the ones smelling you,” Rico commented with warm amusement, leading Kestra to nip his chest as she pulled back.

“Yes, but you smell like some kind of... I don’t know, rare spice. From one of the other Flocks,” which tracked, technically speaking. “It’s warm, rich, and something I could get lost in.” Her eyes looked up at his, and he saw that they weren’t the usual blown wide from arousal that they had been the last time they’d been together. Kestra was still fully in control, not her body.

“Cinnamon, or so I remember it smelling of. We don’t get it this far north that often,” Rico commented, though he leaned forward to give her a nip to one of her ears. The shudder that traced up her spine was delicious, and Rico was about to lead her off when she set a forefoot on top of his.

“Not yet,” Kestra commented, reading his intention with ease, “When my heat starts. One or two days. Three tops.”

Rico considered this, eyes roaming over her body before he spoke, “I hope you know what that means.”

“A male mounting a female in her season? Of course I do. I’ve mothered three last year,” Kestra confirmed, licking her beak. She could see Rico’s interest only grow, as a male with his reputation would. “I want to experience the full, proper Rico. The one that comes out on top of a hen in heat.”

Rico considered this for a moment before giving a nod of his head, “Then in one to three days.”

Kestra walked past him, brushing her side to his the whole way; smearing the warmth of that cinnamon spice into her own feathers, “In one to three days.” A promise made to each other, and in passing, Kestra hiked her tail up, letting Rico’s eyes wander without shame over the teardrop shape of her feline cunt.

Likewise, Rico curled his bushy tail up just enough to reveal the warm heft of the white-furred sac of his, Kestra admiring it for several heartbeats before moving on. Just one to three days.

Kestra could wait that long. She had already waited a year.

---

Kade spent the time between Chuck’s departure and true nightfall digging out more of his temporary den, now comfortable enough to actually be within, minus the cold that came in at night. Thankfully, Slate or Gareth didn’t want him dead, and Slate had brought him a thick, feather-stuffed blanket before he had woken up. It wasn’t quite enough to make things comfortable, but it was bearable now.

As was the case the night before, Slate was looking out over the Bowl, dark eyes giving nothing away as Kade approached and took his position beside him. This time, Slate didn’t question the motion and allowed the presence of the other male nearby without so much as a questioning grunt. They sat in silence together, the height making everything a blurry outline, even with an avian’s keen eyesight, but the activities in the middle of the Bowl were quite plain to either male. “First of the season,” Kade commented, watching the obscured outline of two individuals, one on the back of the other, with their bodies moving in the telltale rhythm of breeding.

“Is this your first season?” Kade asked. Silence followed for a time before Slate grunted a response. It wasn’t a proper word by any measure, but it somehow still carried the meaning. “A year older than I am, then.”

The silence continued, warm and relatively easy. As easy as a prisoner and their warden can be, anyway, while the shapes down below stopped moving. The tie. Kade was thankful that the chill of the shelf didn’t also carry the scents of the activities down below. Not because he didn’t want to partake of it in some fashion, but because he did.

“Is there a hen down there that you want to visit?” Kade asked. Silence reigned for a time, a longer beat, and Kade wondered if he had used up his number of grunted responses for the day, before Slate gave another grunt. Kade gave a slow, sad nod.

“Yeah. Me too,” Kade commented, eyes closing as he imagined Liz’s warm-feathered frame. It was inaccurate with the way that time eats away at details, but alas, both of them were stuck up here, on the eighth shelf, and Kade wouldn’t get a refresher of it any time soon. Still, at least Chuck was allowed in, for whatever reason. That meant something, but Kade wasn’t entirely sure of what just yet.

Kade stood up and stretched, and Slate looked up at him with those dark eyes. They weren’t as emotionless, Kade noticed. Not quite sympathetic, but understanding. Then it was gone, and Kade wondered if he had just imagined it all. “I am going to head to sleep. Good night, Slate. If you sleep.” Slate clicked his beak in response, and Kade made his way toward his dug-out den.

He curled up on the bedding, closing his eyes as he got as comfortable as he could. One day down, twenty-or-so more to go... but who was counting?

The sun's warmth hadn't quite settled across the Crag yet, barely a sliver on the horizon, yet Liz woke with a start. Building low in her stomach was a mixture of intense heat and suddenly overwhelming need, both of which were something she was keenly aware of. Last time, she had already been on the outskirts and had spent that whole day hiding, not even coming back for food. Now she suddenly had a rush of thoughts and desires, all arriving at once. The demand of her body to go out and do what came naturally, the overwhelming fright she had felt the year before, the quiet unease that the only thing the males would see was her body. Her talons dug into the bedding, and she screwed her eyes shut.

Her talon impacted something hard. She gripped it, pulled it to her beak, and inhaled. His scent had faded, but it still lingered. He was a ghost, clinging to the shiny, black surface of the obsidian shard. The curl of warmth filled her brain, and the warring thoughts slowly stalled. They were still there, but quieter. More manageable. She wasn't sure how she felt about it — a male she hadn't said two words to, and yet his scent had managed to calm her.

She turned it over in her talons and had to wonder how much the season was already impacting her thoughts. She could barely recall what the male looked like, aside from Kestra’s description the prior day, and yet the gift in her bowl - that exotic gift... was it all just the season finding a way to curl into her after all, to make her make a rash choice? She wasn’t sure, and part of her didn’t want to face the prospect of all of this being just...

Just the tug of her body, finding her an excuse that her brain is comfortable with, one that only works because of the distance. But when the distance closed, when Liz finally met Kade, would it be her brain (or, more accurately, her heart) deciding... or her cunt? She shook her head, banishing the thoughts for now.

She tucked the shard back under her bedding and started her morning routine.

She found Kestra in the pathway between both of their wings of the den, and the magpie didn't have to spend more than a second to know that something had changed. "Scared?" Kestra asked.

"Terrified," Liz confirmed, giving a bob of her head.

"But you're staying." It wasn't a question from the other hen; it was a statement.

"I'm staying," She confirmed, and Kestra moved closer, hooking her head over Liz's neck in a hug. Sure, the smaller female had to lean back slightly on her haunches to do it, but she managed.

"I'm proud of you," Kestra said, with none of the usual teasing in her tone when she said something along those lines. It was genuine and warm.

"What about you? Are you going to... to help me today?" Liz knew she'd be a sudden target for attention, and her anxieties still bubbled beneath the surface.

"Yes and no. This, this is something you need to navigate yourself, Liz. I can't hold your fore in mine and guide. Just remember - you get the final say in every encounter." The magpie tilted her head, reading Liz's expression for a few moments, as much as the gloom allowed.

"Then, what are you going to do?"

"Me?" Kestra had that teasing note back in her voice, and Liz braced herself. "Why, I'm going to keep my eyes open and find your boy toy." She was thankful for the near-total darkness, as she was sure her blush was vivid enough to be seen from five shelves up.

---

Dawn brought with it all the anxieties of the previous night, rushing through Breck's skull. He wasn't sure how long he had slept, or if he had slept at all, only that he had spent the previous day faking illness to Gareth, because his head just wouldn't quiet. Ever since he admitted his disapproval, even in a roundabout way, of Gareth's actions against Kade, they'd bounced around in his skull. Disloyal. Unfaithful. But was he also being true?

Did Kade deserve the eighth shelf? Breck wasn't so sure, but he also knew that Gareth always thought of the Flock, not just the season. Yet, if that was true, why couldn't Breck just swallow it all and follow like he had the previous few years? Breck decided he had to do something, and he rushed through his morning routine. He wasn't looking to impress anyone today, anyway, so he didn't care that his feathers were askew.

He stepped out into the light and ran into Gareth, the larger male eyeing Breck in the slow, analytical glance that Breck had seen him with a dozen times before.

"Feeling better?" The larger male asked, and Breck nodded his head. There was a moment of silence then, before Gareth responded with a single word, "Good," and walked off, undoubtedly to head to the Bowl. Breck could see the hazy silhouette of another in Gareth's den, undoubtedly a female he had spent the night with. Usually, Breck would have been curious about who the gold eagle-gryph had bred, in that way of males swapping stories of their escapades.

Today, he had more pressing matters, and he left without so much as a glance at the female within.

It took the better part of twenty minutes to go up the four tiers, pushing past the stream of bodies going the other direction, like he was some fish that didn't get the memo that he was meant to be going downriver, not up. But, eventually, he got past the crowd and to the shelf he desired, only to find Slate on guard. Slate's body was a bit more slumped than normal, and the dark eyes had a quality to them that spoke of a lack of sleep. Most would miss it, but Breck had known Slate now for two years.

"Did you sleep at all?"

Slate took a moment, as he always did, to respond. "Some," his tail flicked behind him, "When he slept.”

Breck nodded his head, "Did Gareth send anyone to deliver breakfast?" It was either cosmic timing or comical timing, but Slate's stomach rumbled at the mention of food, and the deadpan expression - somehow put on, rather than the natural emotionless he wore - was all the answer needed. Breck considered that for a heartbeat before stepping to the side. "Go down, get food for yourself. Relax. I plan to talk to Kade for a bit anyway."

Slate looked at Breck slowly, eyes judging, as if seeing if there was some unknown other motive behind the gesture. His posture relaxed after a moment, "One hour," Then the dense male stood onto all fours and made his way past.

Breck waited until Slate had disappeared around the corner before he moved toward the den that Kade was now housed in, and found the larger male in a state that, undoubtedly, mirrored his own appearance; feathers askew, disheveled, and for all appearances a male that had woken up on the wrong side of the nest. "Breck, right?" The raven addressed him as he stepped out into the warmth of the sun.

Breck swore he saw a small tremor run through that large frame, but it was quickly suppressed. He made a note to inform one of Gareth's younger males to bring another blanket up. "Right. I just- I wanted to," He’d been through this a thousand times in his head. How to make it land right, sincere, instead of it coming off as pity, either toward Kade or, somehow worse, himself.

"I'm just sorry for all of this," Breck managed, with a small bob of his head.

Kade considered that in silence for a time, his tail sweeping behind him as he walked past. Not the hurried motion of someone avoiding the conversation, but the slower, methodical movement of thought, as he took a seat on the ledge. Breck moved over to join him.

"Would he be sorry?" Kade asked, looking over at Breck, who blinked in confusion. "Gareth. Do you think he's sorry for all of this?"

Breck opened his beak, then closed it, and opened it again. "It isn't personal, if that is what you mean. He's doing it to protect the Flock." Silver eyes looked at Breck and, after a moment, the larger male nodded his head. He saw no deceit in Breck's eyes, only a belief in what he was saying.

"So would he apologize for this?" Kade asked again.

"I-... no. I don't think Gareth would, because he thinks this is what is best for everyone," He commented, looking up at the sky.

"So then you don't need to apologize for yourself or for him. If you follow him, you need to believe in his vision," Kade offered as he looked at the caldera below, where the press of bodies was starting their day. "You need to have the conviction to believe in his vision, or find one for yourself."

Breck opened his beak, then closed it again, stunned to silence twice in one conversation with Kade. "Conviction." He finally managed, looking down at his forelegs.

What was his conviction?

---

Kestra had decided to let Liz off easy, or so she led her to believe. Kestra had teased Liz about parading her out into the Bowl during her heat, but had relented when she saw the genuine unease building. Instead, Kestra had gathered a bowl of grains and the corn chowder and delivered both to Liz, who had decided that today was a perfectly nice day to stay indoors. It wasn’t running, but it also wasn’t her being ready to face reality. Kestra could nudge, but a real push right now might just set the warm-feathered hen running, and Kestra knew that.

So, she relented. The second loop of the tables brought with it the press of bodies. The scent of females in heat was now a constant backdrop, not yet overwhelming, but present in every breath. Enough that every male Kestra saw now sported a perpetually swollen sheath, from the oldest male eating breakfast in the form of Gareth, to gangly, first-year Chuck. Her magpie gaze landed on the latter in the way it would a shiny object, and she made a mental note to get a closer look at that one day. A much closer look. But, for now, she had other plans, and she was trying to figure them out.

Approaching Gareth directly was her first instinct, and also the one she rapidly tossed out. He wouldn’t help her, and at worst, might try to ensnare her in it all somehow. He had a way with words, a natural charm that he could turn on when he wanted to. Kestra saw it the year before and knew from his gift in her bowl that he’d use it on her immediately.

Walking through each layer of the Crag and doing a thorough inspection would take far too long, eat away at her entire day, and she still might not even find him. What if Kade was in the outskirts? No, that wouldn’t do, either. She was trying to come up with something when the answer walked itself into the Bowl.

Slate.

Slate caught her attention because of the fact that he usually wouldn’t. But, she hadn’t seen him for the past few days: not in the Bowl, not on the tiers; he was absent in a way no adult was during the season. Even those past breeding age, such as Nox herself, who sat on the far side of the caldera, still joined in the festivities. It was a season of community and togetherness, and yes, a lot of sex; but it was a time that no gryphon wanted to spend by themselves, from the Eldest to even the one or two that were asexual.

Slate moved with the precision of a hunter tracking prey, moving from one table to the next to gather the food he wanted, and he quickly ate it. But, Kestra noted, he was also putting together a soup of sorts; the broth being used as a base, then adding seeds, nuts, and berries to it, tucked to his chest. However, he never ate it himself. It was as if, Kestra thought, he was bringing it to someone else.

It could all be a coincidence. Kestra didn’t know all the souls in the Crag, some odd hundred plus gryphons or more of adult age, and maybe Slate was just taking care of someone that was ill for Gareth. But, no. Kestra’s instincts told her that was the right shiny object to pursue, and pursue she did. After about twenty minutes of light conversation and gathering food, Slate turned to head back up, and she followed at a leisurely pace.

The pathing was easy enough, at least at first; Slate moved in the unhurried motion of a male that had nowhere to go, weaving through the assembled gryphons of the first three shelves. But once the pathway up between the third and fourth was reached, that crowd thinned to nonexistence. The crowd was down below, not this high up, and now he moved with more confidence. Not quickly, but steadily. Worse, he paused and looked back occasionally, making Kestra have to slink further back, following after a time by scent alone.

A gryphon’s sense of smell wasn’t their strongest sense - that was vision or hearing, depending on what genetics blessed them with. Smell, while capable, was far from as strong as a pure mammal, that scent passing through the nares of Kestra’s beak. Worse still was finding Slate’s scent over the multiple layers, both females in heat and their stronger scent, and now the male bodies responding in kind, their own scents getting sharper and more noticeable. Kestra wasn’t even sure she was following the right trail, a scent of stone, overlayed with the potency of wolfish musk.

She wasn’t sure if it was luck or providence, but if she was ever asked, she’d call it skill when she emerged on the eighth tier and snaked around the edge of it, toward the portion overlooking the Bowl below. There, she spotted Breck, who had the look of a male who had been asked a question and wasn’t quite sure he liked the answer he was forming, and Slate. The two exchanged one or two words that Kestra couldn’t hear, then Breck stood and made his way toward her. Kestra looked around quickly, then darted into the nearest, empty opening in the cliff face she could.

Breck moved past her, though he stopped outside the darkness she hid within. Her body tensed, and his beak was lifted in the telltale sign of sniffing the air. Of sampling it. His face, what she could make of it from the recesses of the darkness, was one of confusion. He eventually shook his head and moved past her, leaving Kestra to breathe a sigh of relief. She waited a few more minutes, then slipped free of the cramped interior space and moved up the slope. There, she saw Kade eating from the bowl that Slate had arranged earlier.

“There you are,” she murmured to herself, walking up the slope toward Slate, who was positioned in the middle of the pathway. Slate didn’t say anything, didn’t move as she approached, until she directed her body to his right, to move past him. Then, in a slow but deliberate movement, the dense male shuffled to his right and into her path. Kade, just beyond, looked over at this development, curiosity on his features.

“Hello, Slate,” Kestra quipped, her voice seductive honey. If Slate heard, he gave no indication. She moved toward his left, and again he steadily moved in front of her. She considered this, then darted right, using all her feline heritage and agility to try to just rush past. Slate was, somehow, faster, and she bounced off his barrel of a chest, beak impacting his feathers and forcing her to breathe deep of the stone-and-warmth scent of him. It was like he was made of the rock itself.

“Can’t just let a girl pass?” She questioned, and Slate’s expressionless stare was answer enough. This game continued for the better part of thirty minutes, Slate calmly moving in the way whenever Kestra tried to move past, and otherwise not responding. A living wall. She even tried to do a brief, running glide around the edge, and he had moved into a position to intercept her, just past the point of landing, which gave her enough room not to slip off the ledge, but blocked her way nevertheless.

Talons clicked on the stone behind, and Kestra wondered if she had overstayed her welcome. She looked over her shoulder and saw the form of gangly Chuck coming toward the pair. He froze, spotting Kestra before Slate, and looked from her to Slate, to Kade watching it all in a form of bemused resignation beyond. He was carrying, in his beak, a blanket that was partly draped over one of his shoulders; a crude thing, not as well crafted as some of the ones they got from the Flock of the Valley, but a form of warmth nevertheless.

Chuck squared his shoulders and walked forward, head held high, and chest puffed forward in an imitation of Rico’s posture; it didn’t quite work, Kestra noted, but what did work was him passing by. Slate was watching him out of the corner of a dark eye, but didn’t shift to block him. It took a moment for it to register with her, “Huh. So you let males pass.” She noted. Kestra then cleared her throat and opened her beak to yell, and then Slate reacted. His forefoot came up and grabbed her beak; not hard enough to harm, but enough to keep it together, having read her intentions. ‘Can’t talk to him, either. Those are the lines in place,’ she noted. After a moment, the pressure relented, and she shook her head.

“I can still speak without my beak being open. Syrinx and all,” she commented dryly. Slate didn’t comment, but she also knew that speaking and yelling were far different in how they functioned. Still, what she had learned was important. Was valuable. She had a lot to catch Liz up on, she decided, as she turned around and made her way down.

Chuck, who was still walking with the borrowed motions of another, caught a forefoot on a slightly upturned rock and tripped. He managed to catch himself, Kade noted, and afterward the borrowed posture gave way to one that was more himself. He was more careful and controlled in his movements, but not in a way that anyone not explicitly watching would notice; his eyes darting down to watch where he’d step on occasion, rather than looking straight ahead with the calm confidence that came with the familiarity of oneself that Rico wore with ease.

“I know it gets cold up here,” Chuck spoke as he neared Kade, pulling the weight of the blanket off his shoulder and wing, and putting it on the ground between them. “So I made you this. It’s not... It’s not that good, but I tried.” The stitching at the edges was frayed and showed the clumsy talonwork of someone unfamiliar with it, but the gesture brought a genuine smile to Kade’s beak - corners turned up, eyes a soft glow that, despite the silver, somehow managed to appear warm.

“Thank you, truly, Chuck,” he reached for the blanket on the ground and pressed it to his beak, inhaling the scent. It was, distinctly, the scent of Chuck - but the underlying tones held the mesh of a dozen other gryphons, most likely stray feathers Chuck had collected the previous evening. “How long did it...?”

“Uh,” Chuck tilted his head back for a moment, facial expression scrunched up in thought. “About seven hours? Give or take. I tried to sew before,” he lifted a forefoot, showing the talons there, “and managed smaller projects in the past. I know it’s usually a ‘hen’ past time, but it’s...” he shrugged a bit. “It’s comforting.”

“I’m pretty sure the Valley seamsters are male and female, equally, Chuck,” Kade commented, bobbing his head as he looked past Chuck and toward Kestra, who was in the process of walking down the Crag. “I don’t envy her.”

“What? That she couldn’t get to you? For some reason,” Chuck hadn’t pieced together the fundamental difference, the gender, and Kade didn’t elaborate on it.

“No, the feline heritage.”

Chuck tilted his head, clearly confused. Kade pushed on, “Ever wonder why they call all newborns and young gryphons ‘hatchlings’? You weren’t hatched from an egg, were you?”

“Well, I can’t really remember that far back,” Chuck commented, “But no. I don’t think I was.”

Kade bobbed his head, “Exactly. You and I were both born to mothers with canine heritage. Larger frames, wider hips - the felines have evolved in a way that they’re more bird-like. They lay eggs.” With that revelation, Chuck looked back at Kestra’s rapidly shrinking form and clicked his beak.

“Huh. So, if she...”

“She’ll lay eggs after a few weeks, yes. Shorter term than canine-gryphons, because their bodies couldn’t pass a newborn,” Kade confirmed, moving closer to Chuck and, wordlessly, placing a forefoot on the osprey’s hindleg. Chuck, wordlessly, returned to the positions they started the day before. The leg lift first, exposing his sheath that, now, rested heavily just naturally. Kade tucked that information away, for now.

“That seems... easier, doesn’t it?” Chuck asked, shifting that hindleg down after a moment, then adopting the smooth leg-back, three-legged stand of a pedigree male on display.

“Yes, and no. Easier to pass, harder to care for the colder it gets. That’s why you see more canines,” Kade tapped the inside of Chuck’s thigh, and he switched his posture slightly, “this far north. Most eggs don’t survive.”

“Oh,” Chuck’s response was a sound of understanding and sorrow. “How many...?”

“She laid three, from what I overheard of gossip on my first day here. Only one managed to hatch, and that one died of illness.” The two males worked in silence for a time, then, as the sun crested the zenith and started its descent.

---

By the time that Chuck was practicing the pose of rearing up onto his hindlegs, they’d settled into comfortable conversation again, talking in general about what Kade was missing. “So Reed was the first female?” He asked, holding Chuck’s inner thigh once more. He felt the muscle tremble still, and the fuller impact of that sheath to his forefoot. Like prior, he ignored it, focusing on helping, rather than anything more.

“Yeah. Seemingly, Gareth mounted her, right there in the middle of the Bowl after dark,” Chuck commented, adjusting his stance with a gentle direction of Kade’s talons.

“So that is what I saw last night,” Kade commented, then he stepped back from Chuck’s body. The posture and pose were much different than Rico’s, long legs having to adapt to a wider pose. It was distinctly Chuck, and what is more, the wider stance displayed the full, swaying weight of the long-limbed male’s balls far more than it would have had he only followed Rico’s posture directly. Kade kept quiet for a solid thirty seconds, then quipped, “Look down.”

Chuck, who had been focusing on the horizon the whole time, looked down. He took a moment to register that he was standing, on his hindlegs, entirely unsupported. He unfurled his wings ever so slightly, and the pose, Kade noted, was entirely Chuck’s own now. “I... thank you!” The chirp that came was genuine excitement, and he slowly lowered down to all fours again.

“You’ll get every hen in the Bowl with that,” Kade commented with playful confidence, and Chuck’s ears tinted pink at the compliment. Then, he shifted his foreleg in the fashion of a male with a question to ask, swinging it back and forth slowly. An embarrassing question, then.

“What... what if I do?” Chuck asked.

“Do, what?” Kade asked, tilting his head to the side. “Attract a hen?”

“Yeah,” Chuck admitted, lowering his foreleg and then looking down at the ground. “I’m... I’m not the most coordinated bird. What if I screw it up?”

“Screw... what up?” Kade asked, clearly not entirely puzzling out what Chuck was trying to get at.

“It. Mounting. Getting on a female,” Chuck admitted, still looking, squarely, at the talons of his right foreleg, as if it was the most interesting thing in the Crag.

“I mean, I’ve never done it either, but from what I know, it should just come naturally. Your body knows what to do, and for what it doesn’t, you just listen to her. Or him,” Kade offered, and he saw that Chuck’s unease hadn’t settled any with that advice. He thought for a moment.

The offer he made came out more confidently than he felt about it: “You can practice that, too.”

Chuck’s head snapped up, head tilted in genuine confusion.

“I mean, I’m no hen, and I’m a bit bigger than you are, but I’m sure we can manage. You can practice the mounting motions with me. Er...” Kade paused, thinking for a second, “On me, more accurately.”

Chuck’s ears went from pink to nearly as red as Rico’s crest. Chuck focused all the harder on his foretalons then, and Kade went quiet, letting him figure out what he desired. It was a lengthy pause, long enough of a silence that even Slate, watching over the path up, looked over at the two. A brief glance, a click of that black-blue beak, and he was watching the distance again.

“Are you sure?” Chuck finally asked, looking up to meet Kade’s silver eyes.

“I am,” The larger male offered, his voice more confident than he felt. It wasn’t that he was against the practice; he just didn’t want to lead Chuck astray. But he slowly moved toward the edge of the den he had been digging. It wasn’t quite big enough to fit both of them within, but at least it provided a sense of privacy, which Chuck seemed to appreciate by the way his body visibly relaxed.

Kade thought for a moment, knowing he was, by sheer size, the largest gryphon in the Crag. So he lowered his hips and moved into a slightly crouched posture. “Now you just rear up with the goal of landing on my back,” Kade instructed, looking over his shoulder at the osprey. Chuck, for his part, hesitated for a moment, as if wondering if he was really about to do this. He closed his eyes, reared up, and landed on Kade’s back.

“Forelegs around my middle, hindpaws a bit further up,” Kade instructed, and Chuck’s eyes opened as he adjusted the posture. His long limbs felt less burdensome when they were around Kade, the other male’s large frame making them feel less out of place as they tucked into the blend of feathers and fur at the midpoint.

Chuck adjusted with instruction, “Like this?” He questioned, and Kade nodded his head.

“Now dismount, and do it again,” Kade instructed, so Chuck stepped back onto all fours before he reared up once more and landed his weight on Kade’s back. Like before, the initial angle wasn’t right, and Kade thought on this for a moment, even as Chuck’s body pressed into his. The next time he instructed him to dismount, Kade adjusted his posture a bit further and then swept his tail up. Chuck, behind him, had his ears burn with a blush once more.

Kade had, unashamedly, exposed himself in full. The full, heavy hang of the male’s pure-black fur lining the back of those hefty balls, and the tight, flexing rim of Kade’s tailhole. Chuck felt his breath catch, but Kade’s voice cut through a sudden spike of... he didn’t know what it was. “Again,” Kade instructed. Chuck acted without thinking, just to try not to think about what he was looking at.

Two more times, Kade had him mount and dismount, and then on the final time, Chuck was properly seated. Fores around his middle, talons tucked at the curve of his inner thighs; Kade noted that Chuck wasn’t contained anymore. That pale, cream-coloured sheath between Chuck’s thighs had peeled back entirely during all of the motions, and now Chuck leaked precum across the fur of Kade’s rear. Kade managed to keep his composure and didn’t mention it, even as Chuck shifted to get more comfortable. Even as heat met heat as flesh traveled across flesh, directly under Kade’s tail.

Chuck’s scent had shifted with arousal, from the lingering aroma of sea salt coming off the ocean, mixed with something Kade couldn’t quite place, and deepened into a much deeper, warmer tone. It still had the scent of the ocean, but it was backed now by pure, wolfish musk that blended together to create the mental picture of shared warmth on the beach.

Chuck, however, finally noticed as his hips shifted and that red-pink taper of his prodded directly at Kade’s tailhole. Chuck moved faster than Kade had ever seen him, dismounting in a hurry with his ears now the colour of deep, rich fire. A burning shade of red as he blurted, “Thankyouforeverything,bye!” and rushed his way past Slate, eyes low and hard cock throbbing and bouncing between his hindlegs.

Kade, for his part, remained, feeling the sticky dampness of Chuck’s precum against his skin and fur. He stood up a bit straighter, shaking out his body to get his feathers and fur back into place after the repeated weight landing on his back. “Well,” Kade spoke quietly to himself, able to feel a splash of dampness directly across the rim of his tailhole. “The lesson was a success.”

---

Mango finally understood what Rico had told her, in full. Midday, she had felt a sudden itch. A burning, but not a bad burning; partly uncomfortable, yes, but in a way of something being unfulfilled, rather than wrong. The first male she had come across, some hawk mixed with one wolf species or another, had told her blatantly that she smelled nice and started to flirt. It all pieced together in her mind - she was properly in heat.

Now the sun was settling over the western peaks, casting long shadows down into the Bowl, as Mango’s eyes were darting around. From the males performing in the center to those lingering at the edges. She kept catching her eyes wandering, more so now than before her heat started, and each time she felt a wave of embarrassment and shame, eyes darting away to focus on the sky, a rock, some odd shape on the Crag wall. Anything but the low, swaying hang of an arou-

She shook her head again, just in time for someone to take a relaxed, comfortable seat beside her. She looked over and then up at the larger male. Gareth. She looked at him, really looked at him now, in the way a hen in heat does. Not just the somewhat greying feathers of age, or the way the tawny fur of his well-built haunches also had streaks of grey within it, nor the vibrant, golden crest that hadn’t lost any of its luster with age. No, with the eye of a hen in heat, her gaze dropped straight down to Gareth’s heavy balls. The fur there was several shades darker than the tawny, standing out against the pale white that ran from Gareth’s throat to his groin. A rich, deep brown, making the full size stand out.

Stand out to Mango they did, her head unwilling to cooperate as she continued to stare. To examine. Like every male now subjected to the pheromones of a dozen-or-so females, the dark container of his sheath was swollen thick, giving her an appreciation for his total size. Near Rico, she thought, perhaps bigger. Maybe smaller. It’d be hard to know for sure, and a part of her knew that no hen, under either, would really care. She tore her eyes away at least, looking up at the sharp, clever yellow of the male, looking calmly at her. His eyes were rimmed with a dark, brown mask, which just further made those intelligent eyes stand out.

“It’s okay,” he offered, voice thick and warm. “You can look. I don’t mind.” She blushed deeply at having been so obvious about it, but she really had been obvious this time, unable to tear her eyes away. “The body knows what it wants this time of year, young hen. There is no shame in it,” Gareth extended a foreleg toward her, which Mango reached out, brushing it with her own. “I’m Gareth.”

“Mango. I just, it’s my first heat, and I don’t...” she stumbled, not sure how to finish as her eyes darted downward, looking away from his gaze. Unfortunately, they locked onto his sheath. A sheath resting full and heavy on his inner thigh, his posture shifting somewhat to not just make it more obvious, but more accessible to her gaze.

“Follow me, Mango,” he commented, rolling comfortably to a stand. Mango’s body followed before her brain, and Gareth walked calmly along the outskirts of the Bowl, following the path of the inner wall, until he found a small nook. He slipped inside around that corner, and Mango followed, putting them in quite close proximity with a semblance of privacy, even if it wasn’t true. It just hid things from prying eyes a bit better than being in the dense crowd did. “You’ve never noticed a male before, have you?” Gareth offered.

“Really noticed, that is,” Gareth continued as he sat back on his haunches. “You are curious, and there is no harm in that. Every hen is. If you want to feel more of... all of it, you may. At your pace,” he amended at the end, making it sound like it would be her idea, or her desire, and not what he had lured her into.

Mango lifted a foreleg and froze, partially extended to the warm swell of his sheath. She gulped and looked up at his eyes, which were that sharp yellow. There was no overwhelming need in them, and in fact, she found them hard to read at all; but that lack of immediate need calmed her somewhat, and she closed the distance.

Her fore sealed around the weight of one of his balls, cupping it gently with her talons, brushing it side-on, mindful of the sharp tip and razor edge of the underside. She rolled them on her scaled palm, feeling the searing heat of them as Gareth continued to just watch. He hardly reacted; the only tell of any kind from him was the steady swell of his sheath and the sharp spike of his scent. What had started as warm stone and a natural, earthy musk had sharpened several degrees toward overwhelming. Going from a background of warm stone and earthy musk to the forefront of rich earth and animalistic musk.

Mango felt her head swim, her body moving on its own as her fore cupped and squeezed, exploring him. Those sharp eyes never left her body, and he continued to hardly move, letting her explore at her own pace. She squeezed his sheath, feeling the warmth there pulse against her, before she stroked upward, to the entrance which peeled back over the head of his shaft. Deep, dark red and tapered, it drooled precum immediately across her talons as she reached it. Without thinking, she withdrew that forefoot and brought it to her beak, tongue snaking out to lick it clean of his lingering precum. A jolt of raw desire coursed down her spine, and she felt raw, uncontained arousal for the first time.

The canine swell of her cunt filled out, already more pronounced and fleshy than it had been before her heat, and now she was wet. Not just wet, but positively soaked, her hips squirming against the stone as a low whine bubbled in her throat. Gareth watched all the while, unspeaking. Unhurried. Mango felt her heart thud in her ears, felt her body clench around nothing, that spade flexing in the open air.

Gareth's eyes scanned hers and saw the burning need and intensity in them, but behind it was the uncertainty. An uncertainty, he knew, would tip the scales if he pressed. Instead, he offered her a soft way out, “It’s the first day. There is plenty of time to get used to it.”

Mango slowly nodded her head, which still swam under the influence of his musk and the thick, rich taste of salty precum on her tongue. “I-... yeah,” she swallowed hard, trying to bring her rapidly thudding heart under control as she did so. “Thank you, Gareth.” She looked down at the full swell of him and felt her cunt pulse again, squeezing down around nothing.

“Truly, it was my pleasure, Mango,” he stood slowly, confidently, to leave her with all those scents, tastes, and the overwhelming capacity of it all. But more, of the image of a male that acted in her interests, not his. “My den is on the fourth shelf, if you care to stop by one eve.”

Mango’s eyes were slowly losing that glazed-over quality, and she gave a slow nod of her head, “I’ll remember that,” and something told the golden eagle-gryph that she would, quite clearly. Satisfied, he turned and left without another word, leaving Mango with the roar of her pulse in her ears and the unsatisfied need of her body.

---

Slate had done as Slate always did: stay perfectly quiet as Kade came to sit beside him after nightfall. Slate didn’t bring up the earlier practice, nor the warm sea salt scent that now clung to Kade’s own body, though fading. He didn’t say anything at all, and Kade was thankful for it, as it let him puzzle the day out on his own, at his own pace.

The season was fully underway now. Not just one hen being the star of the day, but a multitude. The sounds of pleasure drifted even as high as them, and by nightfall, the breeze carried with it the first inkling of the season up to the eighth shelf. Not yet thick enough to cause a spike in arousal in either male, but enough to start drifting through their brains like a fog.

The moon was now on its retreat, past the full and heading back toward a sliver in a way that only the Elders understood the mechanics of, and the pale light of it highlighted the motions of bodies below. Blurry outlines in movement; the warmth of conversation, the urgency of sudden breeding, or the posing and playful flirting. It would continue until past midnight, Kade knew. Females took their gifts from their bowls and pursued the scent on them, which just made him wonder what had happened to the obsidian shard he had left. Was she, tonight, following a different gift through to the final conclusion?

Kade looked over at Slate and realized, for the first time, that there were actually two trapped on the eighth tier. He had, vaguely, understood it before, but now the full weight of it was present. He looked back out at the figures moving distantly below, and murmured quietly. “Wish you were with that hen of yours tonight?”

Slate was quiet for a moment before he grunted. More quizzical than normal. Questioning.

“The one you mentioned last night,” Kade elaborated. Slate was silent for a moment, and the air was filled with the sudden, keening cry of a gryphon cresting their peak of pleasure, riding their wave of climax. Both male’s suddenly shifted on their haunches.

Slate, then, grunted.

“Yeah. I wish I were, too,” though not whatever female the living stone envisioned. No, Kade saw the warm, red-brown feathering of the female he left the shard for; her image more distorted and frayed at the edges, the rough details - eye colour, height, the curl of her tail - all lost now to memory.

But the core of it remained.

“Why didn’t you tell me right away?” It was just past dawn, and Liz had recently joined Kestra in the hall connecting their specific ‘rooms’ of the den. Kestra, only then, told her she had found Kade the day before.

“Because you would have run up immediately and been immediately disappointed,” The magpie commented, allowing the emotions, heightened by her heat, to fizzle out of Liz. The argument continued for the better part of fifteen minutes before she finally admitted that Kestra was right.

“Of course I am,” Kestra commented, looking at her talons in the early morning light as they stepped out into the Bowl.

Liz rolled her eyes, “You still could have told me. Yesterday was miserable,” She commented, tail lashing at the memory of every male in a five-foot radius practically gluing themselves to her the moment she stepped outside around mid-afternoon.

“I didn’t tell you to go outside; you told yourself that,” Her friend replied as they took a seat at one of the open tables. Their argument had caused them to arrive late, and as such, their usual spot was already filled. Something that Kestra looked annoyed by.

“I got bored,” Liz admitted, turning her head so as not to meet the magpie’s gaze. After a moment, she looked back at her friend, reaching forward to get a few nuts and berries to add to her own clay dish. “Does he... is he okay?”

“Kade? I think so. I wouldn’t say he looks happy, but he seemed okay otherwise.” Kestra stole the berries from her, which earned her friend a glare that Liz couldn’t maintain. She sighed and set about filling a new dish of berries.

“But we can’t see him, or talk to him?” Liz questioned, picking up a blackberry and tossing it into her beak.

“Mm-ope,” Kestra swallowed, “The living wall of Slate makes sure that none shall pass. Unless,” She grinned, waiting, and like a fish on a lure, Liz’s eyes lit up.

“Unless what?”

“Unless you’re male. Chuck showed up and walked right past him. Not so much as a blink or a ‘how do you do’,” The near-opinicus offered, tipping the bowl to her beak and letting the last few berries just run into her maw.

“Unless you’re male...” An idea was forming in Liz’s eyes, and Kestra saw the clarity there. “Where is Chuck?”

Kestra, for her part, was honest, “How should I know? I just know his den is somewhere on the fifth shelf.”

Liz frowned for a moment, then considered the gifts she had left untouched before. She darted away from the table, leaving her food only half finished. Her friend reached over, snatched her bowl, and ate the rest of the berries within as she watched Liz’s hurried pace toward her plain, red bowl. “Go get ‘em, Liz,” she murmured to herself.

The peregrine, for her part, shifted aside the various new gifts and old, until she found one unassuming one that had been left at least two days prior. A seashell. They weren’t uncommon, but the sea itself was quite far from the Crag. She lifted it to her beak and inhaled, taking in the fading scent of sea salt and warmth. She knew Chuck, of course, but not directly; the scent layered on the seashell, though, seemed right. She tucked it in against her chest and turned to leave, before she suddenly doubled back. She darted into the darkness of her shared den, moving to her bedding. She once more nudged the shard free of being under her bedding before she turned it over in her talons.

She then started to rub it against her feathers, intentionally - the feathers around her throat where the scent was strongest, marking the shiny black object with a new warmth. That of hers. She blushed faintly as the thought came to her mind, unbidden, to sit down and rub herself against it; to roll the dripping warmth of her in-heat cunt against it. It would get his attention, part of her knew. It would also send the wrong message.

She wanted to show him that it was her heart, not her body, picking this, and she hoped it was mutual.

She sniffed it once, satisfied that her scent clung to the surface enough, and then tucked it beside the seashell in the feathers of her breast. She then darted up, toward the third shelf.

Breck had been contemplating his conviction all night, and he still didn’t have a clear answer. He had been tempted to just go to Gareth and confront him about it, about how uneasy he was over all of it, but he already knew the older male’s answer - it was for the betterment of the Flock. True or not, Breck knew he would believe it if it came from Gareth's beak. The beak of an old friend, mentor, and someone to whom he owed a debt. Instead, he decided to approach someone from the outside. At first, he had considered Rico, the red-crest male, once more in his element in the center of the display area, but he tossed that aside as quickly as the idea came, as it would be no less biased than Gareth’s answer.

In the end, he knew there was only one individual he could approach about it, and he waited until she was less crowded. He moved toward the ashen-white female and bobbed his head to her in a sign of respect, “Eldest.”

“Young Breck, what brings you to me?” Nox asked, her head turning at that sharp angle that only an owl’s could.

“Can we talk, Eldest Nox? In... private?” He asked, looking down toward those talons of his. The female, who had many years of experience with judging others, decided to hold back the playful tease she might have used for a male approaching her during the season, and instead simply gave a bobbing nod of her head.

“Certainly. Come to my den, Breck,” she turned and led the male up. The one benefit, Breck thought as he followed behind her, was that everyone respectfully moved out of Nox’s way as they moved upward. It was similar to how crowds parted around Gareth, but the feel of it was fundamentally different in a way that he couldn’t quite place.

Eventually, they came to a den on the fifth shelf that, by all accounts, was very plain-looking on the outside. The smell of Nox, a scent of fresh snow and the warmth of a fire against the cold, permeated from within. The only sign, besides that, that Breck was in the right location was the two older females to the right, standing outside of a much larger den entrance. He was, of course, familiar with the Hatchling Den. Within, all the young of the Crag were learning, kept safe, and away from the activities of the season, regardless of whether they wanted to be or not.

Breck turned his attention to the owl as she moved into her den, and he followed after her. The space within was larger than it would have first appeared without, though it was by no means the largest den he had ever been inside. Still, it was cozy, and the hide across the stone flooring provided its own form of blanket.

He considered how to approach the question, and Nox waited patiently, turning back to face him and sitting on her haunches. He looked away for a moment, then back at her, “Did you already live in the Crag, Eldest?”

“Please, in private, you can just call me Nox.” She considered him for a moment, then decided, for the time, to humour his question; to help him ease into the real reason for coming to her. “No. I am actually from the Mountain Flock, originally.”

Breck blinked in surprise, genuinely caught off guard. He wondered if any of the other gryphons knew that. Most likely, some did, but none of them thought it mattered. She was Crag now. “Were you exchanged?” He asked.

“The Mountain exists outside the laws of the Flocks,” She offered, and the look of confusion on Breck’s face encouraged her to continue, “The cold of the north is more than most southern-bred gryphons can handle. To exchange one of theirs for one of the Mountain would be a cruelty. Instead, they send their hens away during their first five to ten seasons, to return once they have bred with another Flock.” She looked up at the stony roof of the den, and he saw strings of sinew hanging down, with talons and claws as decoration.

“Either come back pregnant, or not at all,” she clarified.

“So you didn’t get pregnant, then?” Breck asked.

“No, not quite. I did, but I decided to stay here afterward. The Mountain is isolated in a way that I can never properly describe, and everyone there is family in a way the Crag isn’t, despite our closeness. Breeding between males and females born in the Mountain is forbidden, as a female isn’t sure if the male she is flirting with is far enough removed from her own bloodline to not contaminate it.” Nox explained, with all the patience of a student teaching a hatchling.

“Was it easy? Deciding to stay here?” Breck questioned, and the owl saw as he started to lean the conversation toward what it was he came here for in the first place.

“No. Far from it. Going against everything I’d known, everything I’d ever believed in, was the single toughest choice in my life. But, if I were asked to go back and do it all over again? I’d still decide to become a member of the Crag,” Nox answered, honest and plain.

“Nox, can I ask you something?” He asked, looking down at his talons again as he swallowed a lump of unease forming in his throat.

“So long as you look me in the eye as you do, young Breck,” She offered, and Breck slowly managed to bring his eyes up to meet hers.

“What is Gareth like?” He asked.

Nox looked in those eyes of his, quietly, for a time, before she answered. “Do you want a comfortable half-truth, or an uncomfortable fact?” The answer was enough to cause Breck’s stomach to flip, but he managed to keep his composure.

“The truth. All of it, please.”

The owl continued to look him in the eye, hers yellow, calculated, and probing; then she gave a slow nod of her head, “The truth, then. I will tell you now, I can’t - and won’t - reveal everything. Some of it you must find out yourself. Some of it is not mine to tell,” Nox led with, lifting a forefoot up and running the tip of a talon along her beak.

“I met Gareth during his first year; at the time, I had been with the Crag for just under a decade. Gareth entered his first season with the confidence of a male who knew what he was and what he wanted, and he approached it with a warmth that filled the heart,” Nox started, her eyes closed as she envisioned that younger, more optimistic version of Gareth. “I doubt he ever told you, but we’ve sired hatchlings together. Like most that are feline-heritage, I lay eggs. Only two of those survived to adulthood, over our three seasons together, but those are years I’ll remember fondly.”

The pain that crossed her face next, Breck noticed, was far from a fond memory. “Over time, the season started to warp for him. He got more successful as the older males either retired from the season or passed away, and he secured a monopoly. A possession over the majority of females, and once he realized that he had that, he got greedier and greedier. Worse still, he got colder. Calculating. It wasn’t simple greed - that can be navigated around, but greed with a will behind it. Rico’s arrival nearly reset that back to the beginning, to how it was when he was a young adult.”

Breck could hardly believe what he was hearing, but part of him hoped it was an over exaggeration, “What about protecting the Flock?” He asked.

“Oh, from his view, he is. The Flock he wants is what he is protecting, young Breck. I won’t say more than that, but know - I am aware of why you are, truly, here. Of the situation above us,” Breck’s panicked glance around, as if he expected two Slate-like males to show up and seize him, was a genuine one that Nox slowly waited for to abate.

“I can not and will not get involved directly, for my sake and the sake of the Flock. It would look as if I am abusing my power, throwing it into the affairs of two males, and it would put me in someone’s camp directly. I would no longer remain unbiased, no longer only partial to the Flock itself - but you, young Breck, I see the dilemma in your eyes. You don’t know if your loyalty to Gareth is built on lies.” Nox’s tail flicked behind her, the spotted thing soon curling around one of her hindlegs. “Know this, to him they aren’t lies. To him, he is protecting the Flock and doing his best by his version of it. He never lied to you. That is his conviction.”

Twice now, from two beaks that never could have spoken to one another, had Breck heard that word. Conviction. “I think I understand, Nox. Thank you.” Did he? Not entirely, but he understood the shape of it in the vague way that one understands that they have to do something, anything, but sit idle and watch.

“I hope that you find what you are looking for this season, young Breck,” She commented, a dismissal and well-wishing all in one, and as Breck turned to leave, his mind swirled with even more questions than answers.

As Liz went from den to den, inhaling the scents lingering at their entrances (unless she saw a bowl, and could assume it belonged to a female), she thought that Quill and her written language might be onto something. How much easier would it be if, etched into bark above or near every den, were a name? Alas, it was but well-wishing on her part, and she could do naught but stop, press the seashell against her beak to refresh her memory on the exact scent, and sample the scent from within. It took over an hour of searching, but eventually the scent of the shell matched the scent of a den, and Liz stood tall and entered with purpose.

Chuck, at least, wasn’t doing anything that would catch her off guard. He was examining more seashells, undoubtedly more gifts he planned to leave, to see which ones were best. He didn’t even notice her enter, his focus utterly absorbed with the mundane. “Chuck?”

He nearly jumped out of his feathers, limbs flailing from his seated position as panic made him bolt upright and lose his balance all in one, fluent disaster. “Oh! Um, hello! I was, er... that is, uh,” Chuck took a deep breath to calm himself, and the posture he wore was pure Rico.

Liz didn’t think it suited him whatsoever.

“You’re Chuck, right?”

“That’s me,” he commented, taking a confident step forward. She pushed closer to him, and that confidence melted away, eroding before the oncoming tide of a female with an agenda.

She pushed the obsidian to his chest. “Do you know who left this?”

Chuck was utterly bewildered for a moment, and even taking it gingerly from her talons and pressing it to his beak didn’t clarify anything at all, “Um... you did?”

Liz was exasperated, but also knew it was unfair to take it out on the bewildered male; there was no way for him to have known where the shard originated from if he hadn’t been there to see it placed. “It’s...” she took a deep breath, calming her frayed nerves, “It’s from Kade.”

It all snapped together then. Chuck had seen her alongside Kestra plenty of times and thus was able to steadily piece together the cause and effect that linked her appearance yesterday to Liz’s now in his den. His posture, as a whole, relaxed, and she saw the Chuck behind the persona he tried so hard to put on to impress. It was, to her, an oddly endearing sight behind the curtain. “He gave that to you?”

“He did, back on the second day of the festivities,” Liz confirmed, though she declined to take it back from him. “Can you do me a favor, Chuck? Can you deliver that to him today, and tell him- tell him I’m interested, too.” It was the closest thing to the complicated truth her brain would let her admit.

Chuck, for his part, looked at that shard in his talons and tucked it in against the feathers of his chest, though a sudden hesitation came over him, “I was planning to-,” his argument, or side step, was circumvented entirely by the look upon her face. It wasn’t pleading, no, but it was the look of someone who had reached the end of the line and had nowhere else to go. “I’ll go. Tonight.”

Liz reacted before her brain could catch up, and later, she’d blame her heat for it - she reared up and tossed her forelegs around Chuck, who could do no more than squawk in alarm at the sudden, tight embrace of her. She hugged for longer than she needed, and then stepped back down onto all fours, “Thank you, Chuck. I mean. Can you tell me tomorrow, at breakfast, how it went? How he took it?”

The lanky male looked down at her and suddenly found the full weight of the shard much heavier than it had been moments before. He had been sucked into whatever it was that was going on, something he very much didn’t understand, and now he was being made a vital piece of it all without knowing exactly what any of the rules were. But Kade had treated him well. That, before anything else, was what settled it for him, “I will be there tomorrow with news.”

“Thank you, Chuck, I-,” Liz offered, a warm smile spreading across her face, the warmth of her feathering and fur only further accentuating it. “This means a lot to me."

Breck was still figuring out what Nox had meant earlier and what Kade had meant the night before. Conviction. Where did Breck’s conviction lie? Worse still, Nox didn’t give him the easy answer of Gareth being good or evil; instead, she gave a far more complicated answer that he was still trying to piece together: ‘Gareth believes he is right.’ Breck’s distraction caused him to take a sharp, blind corner on the fourth tier, and in the process, he ended up colliding straight-on with a smaller, or at least shorter, frame. His legs went every which way, and he ended up falling forward as the hen he collided with did the same; momentum put them in different directions.

His beak was pressed into soft, tangerine-orange fur. The scent that filled his senses was one of the most intriguing scents he had ever had the delight to know, though he couldn’t place any of it. It was like fruit, but none that he was familiar with, coupled with the raw, earthy scent of growth and fertility; and behind it all was a richer version of that exotic, unknown fruit, overlaid with female canine. Breck felt a shudder race down his spine at it, and he looked back, across their tumbled-together bodies, and flushed.

His colourations weren’t prone to showing signs of his embarrassment, nor of blushing; the only hint was a slightly askew position of his ears. Mango, for he recognized the vibrant colouration of her feathers, was underneath him. Moreover, the full weight of his balls were, in that moment, draped fully over her cere. She seemed less startled and confused by the situation, and more just processing how to react. That scent of hers got sharper, and despite the pulse of arousal that Breck felt from his proximity to a very much in-heat female, he scrambled to all fours, “I’m so sorry, I was in my head, and I didn’t-,” he took a deep breath.

It took a moment, but the processing look passed, and what replaced it was warm amusement and the softness of laughter. “It’s okay, I didn’t look where I was going, either,” she offered a cheeky, coy grin; the edge of one side of her beak turned up and her eyes a mischievous glint, “Not sure I could have seen that destination coming either way.”

Breck’s ears splayed even further apart.

“You’re with Gareth, right?” Mango asked as she slowly stood, shaking herself off as her mental faculties started to turn back on following the male-induced reboot. “I was actually on my way to see him,” she offered with a slow wag of her tail.

The slim male hadn’t seen the pair together, beyond the very first day, but something in his gut suddenly didn’t sit right. “He’s busy today,” Breck lied, with an ease he didn’t think himself capable of. “I don’t know what, he rarely tells me,” that part, at least, was true.

“Oh,” the dejected look that crossed her vibrant face was nearly enough for him to backstep, to tell the truth. Instead, he swallowed that urge down and thought, “Have you ever seen the view from the ninth shelf?”

Mango thought for a moment, then shook her head, “I’ve been up there, of course, but I can’t say I’ve ever lingered very long. It gets kinda cold,” she admitted. She had longer fur than her tropical colouration would hint at, but it was still shorter than that of others born in the Crag.

“The sun is shining on it directly right now, as it sets; and I can offer the warmth of a wing, if needed,” Breck held up a forefoot, “Only a wing. I’m-,” he took a deep breath. “You just seem like fun to be around.” That, at least, wasn’t a lie.

Mango considered this for a time before giving a nod of her head, “Sure. If Gareth is busy, I don’t really have any other plans. My bowl is,” she looked behind her, and Breck followed her gaze to a brightly coloured bowl that, distinctly, could only be hers, “Well, none of the gifts in it interest me today.”

The two walked in comfortable silence up the pathways to the top of the Crag until they reached that top shelf together. As Breck had promised, the setting sun was focusing the last of the day’s warmth onto the stone at the top, and he led Mango over to the ledge that would allow them to look not down at the Bowl, but over the entire continent to the south of them. The Crag was the tallest of the mountains in the range, though it paled by comparison to the Mountain of the north, Breck knew. However, from their vantage, they could see distant, winding rivers and the rise and fall of the terrain. He wondered, idly, how the other Flocks lived.

“It’s beautiful,” Mango murmured, leaning forward in a way that made him extend one of his brown-and-white striped wings, securing it partly around her to give her not just protection from the wind, but also to anchor her in place as she neared that ledge. Sure, she’d probably be able to glide down safely, but he didn’t want to find out, regardless.

In the process, he looked toward her, however, and he had to keep himself from speaking a cliche, a ‘I know it is’ while looking at her; but he did believe that. Believed that she was one of the prettiest females he’d seen, with her vibrant orange, yellow, and green feathers. Instead, he said, “It’s breathtaking up here. It’s why I like to just... come up here when I need to get my mind off things.” Another truth, though he hadn’t done that since he was a hatchling.

“I can see why,” Mango commented, and her body pressed in against his. Breck’s breath caught in his chest, and for a moment, he didn’t know how to react. He looked down at her, her cheek pressed into the cream-white feathers along his chest, and she seemed totally at ease. After a while, the slim male allowed himself that same comfort, and the two sat in silence for several hours, just enjoying the warmth of each other’s company and the setting sun.

Kestra felt a building warmth in her lower stomach, about an hour after Liz had set off with that seashell in search of Chuck. She had brushed it off as the season getting to her, and continued to think that for several more hours until she couldn’t deny it any longer. A thrill, unguarded and entirely wanted, raced through her as she felt the first, thin line of her own need run down her inner thigh. Yes, she was properly in heat.

As such, she had a date to keep.

She moved with all the grace of a huntress on the prowl, and something in her expression made less self-assured males move to the side, and females eye her with either envy or confusion, depending on how much they knew. How attuned to the season they were, and with their needs; every part of her screamed she was about to get fucked. Hard.

Thankfully, the path to Rico’s was familiar now, and she found his den and entered it, expecting to see him there, only to find the den entirely empty. She wasn’t sure how to process this for a moment; of course, Rico didn’t stay locked away in his den, confined there for whenever a female decided she needed him and him alone to sate her needs, but this unforeseen situation tossed an unwanted pebble into the movements of her day.

She could have tried to find him, of course, but the Crag was large, and while Rico was uniquely, well, Rico in a way that he could be identified with ease, easily apart from any other male, she still wasn’t sure she’d find him. So, she opted for the second option and made herself at home in his den, sprawling out across the blankets that smelled faintly of that exotic spice scent of his - of cinnamon.

She fell asleep at some point and only came to with the gentle nudging of weight against her foreleg. She blinked blurry eyes into the dark, the sun having set beyond. Thankfully, waking to the dark helped her eyes adjust faster, and she looked up to see Rico looking down at her, a look of concern on his beak that eased into something else as Kestra started to wake, and the thick scent of her permeated the confines of the den.

What was more, his scent was entirely his own. It didn’t matter how thoroughly one washed; it was hard to remove the scent of another from their feathers on the same day that one had screwed them silly. Kestra would know; she had tried in the past. “Hello, handsome,” she purred, slowly arching her back as she came to stand.

Indeed, Rico’s crest had begun to rise on its own, now that the concern had faded, and what is more, his at-rest sheath and balls were both becoming decidedly less at rest; her scent weaved through his senses in a way that made him lean toward desire. His scent deepened, and that rich cinnamon warmth curled around Kestra and lured her closer, causing her to push her beak in against the feathers of his neck. She inhaled, then followed with a sharp nip to his throat.

His growl sent a shudder of desire along the length of her spine, that bob tail of hers twitching once as it arched up. Not that it did much to cover anything beneath it, regardless, but now she dripped onto his bedding, and the pair knew they were rapidly closing the distance to that promised event two days prior. “So, the proper Rico,” he rumbled to her, his voice several tones warm, deeper.

Something in that, in him, allowed Kestra to see that he had been off his game for the last few days. Either the scent of him, purely Rico with no underlying claim of another hen (or another male), or perhaps the fact that he had barely been in the Bowl the past few days. Whatever it was, her desire for him and that mutual want had rekindled whatever had smoldered to embers, and he hungrily pushed his body against hers. She let the pressure of him shove her back, legs giving out under her from the motion as she fell, sideways, onto the down-stuffed bedding below.

Rico stood over her, and her eyes wandered the white stripe of his underside, from his chest down to the space between the charcoal fur of his thighs. The hang of that pale sheath was something else, and Kestra felt that teardrop shape of her cunt flex, squeezing on nothing at the view of it. She knew that Rico would be big, would be in a league of his own - or, at least, in a league with very little competition, but the reality of it was as exciting as it was intimidating, as the deep, crimson red of him started to expose itself from that pale sheath.

The first splash of warmth over her fur made Kestra arch in delight as the large male moved down, lying on his belly before her. His talons seized her hips, and he used the sheer size of him to just pull her closer, dragging her over his bedding and onto her back, until her inner thighs were to either side of his head. His eyes met hers, searching, and in the end, they found what they were looking for; his beak pushed forward, and his tongue dragged from the bottom of that drop to the top of it; tongue finding and flicking the small nub there with a precision that spoke of intimate knowledge.

Kestra’s back arched again, and her hindlegs kicked into the air, the feathers of her lower half brushing the feathers of his cheeks while the short claws on her hindpaws scraped over his shoulders. Yet, Rico didn’t stop. Instead, it was almost as if the squirming, the coming undone by him, drove him further. His tongue went from playing with her clit, to delving into the wet heat of her body; even the front of his beak pushed partly into her, a solid object that held her cunt apart as his tongue delved in deep and greedily.

Breck had been a delightful way to take the edge off a few days ago, and she had absolutely no complaints about him.

Rico, though... the red-crested male was a different beast, and she was quite vocal about it. Her tail lashed, hindlegs kicked, and her eyes screwed shut as gasps and loud, airy moans escaped her lungs and parted beak. Rico never relented, even as those taut insides squeezed down around his tongue like a vice, slowing him but not dulling the edge of his desire and attention. Kestra had lost track of the number of times she had cum on his tongue, and wondered, in that warm sense of floating thoughts during sex, which hover at the edge of one’s mind, if Rico would ever tire. Ever stop.

She didn’t know if she wanted him to continue forever or move on to the main event.

In the end, his own building desire decided it for the pair of them, and he pulled his head back, sticky webbing of her arousal streaking his beak, his tongue lolling in a hot pant as he looked over her body. Slowly, he brought himself to stand up and stood in all of his desire and need before her. Her eyes roamed down, along his underside, and that pale sheath with the vibrant crimson taper peeking free was now utterly replaced by the full swell of him. He was, as any canine-gryphon, still mostly sheathed; a thin part of his cock exposed by the bone, but the outline of him...

She had known, from the size of his sheath and the full, low hang of his now more-tensed balls, that he would be a lot of male; now she could see clearly that she had underestimated how big he would be. The size of him sent a raw spark of desire down her spine, and made her wonder, for a moment, how that would even fit inside of her. She was suddenly glad she wasn’t in her first year as Rico grabbed her with his talons and handled her in a rough, on the surface of it, way.

Rough enough to make her feathers puff up and her short bob of a tail lash, not to mention to make her cunt drip with want, but there was a layer of hesitation and care behind it; a softer layer to that grab of his talons on her body, standing her back onto all fours, that told her that he would stop if she told him to. That he was still there, despite the lustful, glazed-over eyes of his. She didn’t want him to stop, though.

She wanted the exact opposite, and jutted her hips up as she pushed her chest toward the ground. She heard his breath hitch, his beak clack, and there was a long, tense moment of nothing before she felt the weight of him moving over her. Not properly mounting - the posture she assumed kept him from grappling her waist, but he just stood right over her and, soon, pressed the weight of his thin cock and full sheath into the feathers of her inner thigh. She felt it drag along her, felt the smear of his precum across her feathers.

She knew, anatomically, that she was at a disadvantage compared to, say, Liz. She didn’t think she’d ever envy her virgin friend, but at that moment, she wished they had exchanged mothers; Liz would have far fewer issues taking that beast of a cock that, even now, was warm and full against her slit. The pulse of his shaft ended with a spray of precum against her heated, damp flesh, and suddenly, she no longer hated the differences in her anatomy.

The effort would make the ending all the more worthwhile.

That effort started almost immediately, Rico’s hips pushing forward, and the narrow taper of him expanding into a thicker piece directly behind. Her body took the first inch or so with ease, but everything past that sent sparks of delight and a dull ache simultaneously down her spine. One of her hindpaws lifted off the ground as Rico’s body pushed forward, and that thick cock of his stretched her wide. When he managed to push forward, the thin shape of his knot stretching that teardrop shape of her, he pushed himself in balls deep. Then he swelled. Not instantly, but gradually; Rico’s cock ended up steadily filling out every inch of free space inside of her.

For a moment, the sheer size and feel of him overwhelmed her, but then a part of her body remembered who she was. What she was. She shoved back, and the noise that left his throat as a result of her taking him with their combined momentum was an unguarded groan. The sound sent a spark down her spine, which left the feathers there ruffled from more than just the press of his chest as he moved over her.

They began to find their rhythm, his pace firm enough to make her hindpaws leave the ground, but controlled, and hers one of raw greed and desire that met those controlled thrusts and escalated them to a new level. Before long, Rico lowered himself over her, his forelegs extending in front of him and the new position letting him move faster, if shorter; it wasn’t long until she felt the tug of his knot, still a manageable swell, against the back of the lips of her stretched cunt, the bulb rolling across something that made her clench down around him.

She knew from experience that it would sting once it fully swelled. She knew from experience that she wanted it in her, anyway.

Her pinned back ears picked up on every impact of his body against hers, the way his breathing was growing more ragged with control that was, steadily, melting away. Instead of adjusting his thrusts to try to coax another airy moan from her lungs or to make those stretched taut walls squeeze around him without any thought or control on her part, he was starting to just thrust. His control began to ebb and was steadily replaced by raw pleasure that made a warmth of a different sort build in Kestra’s stomach, as much as the warmth of arousal had blossomed there already.

Before long, the sounds of their bodies filled Rico’s den, and Kestra’s sensitive ears could pick up not just the wet, squelching sound of his cock, or more accurately the three-or-so inches behind his knot, sliding in and out of a space that was far too tight for it, but also the distinctive splash of their combined mess on every movement back. She looked over her shoulder with glassy, lust-filled eyes and managed to see just some of the details in the dim lighting and shadows cast by his body over hers.

She saw the way the muscles of his hips and thighs tensed with every forward thrust, his hindpaws not still, but shifting from one to the other in a fashion she was familiar with- a gryphon male with a knot trying to work it toward a full tie inside their lover. She could also see sticky webs clinging to the swaying impact of his balls, forming and snapping over and over as those large, warm spheres smacked against her inner thighs.

Rico must have noticed her gaze, as Kestra felt the pressure of his beak on the nape of her neck, grasping her scruff and giving a sharp tug. Suddenly, the magpie no longer noticed or thought, only felt, and her trembling body pushed against him repeatedly as she felt the strain of his knot tugging back at her cunt, stretching her wider and wider from within around that girth. The sting of it became a real thing at the forefront of her mind as he started to swell in full, stretching the teardrop shape of her cunt into a more perfect oval to accept it.

He tugged with that grip on her scruff, and she saw stars; the pain and pleasure surging down her spine from that bite served as a distraction from the knot, now teetering on the verge of tying. She was stretched wide around it, her pussy trembling with the effort of spreading so far, and then he gave a very canine growl into the feathers of her scruff as he pushed forward and settled that knot properly into her. Both of them still, and the only motion that Kestra could feel was the ballooning of his knot and the pulling up of his balls.

His wings unfurled in the way that most males did when they were on the verge of climax, and she was cast entirely in his shadow as he growled into her scruff and those too-tense orbs of his suddenly relaxed with the first searing warmth splashing into her body. She had lost count of the number of times she had cum around him already, but now she had another tally to try and muddle through, as those tight, gripping inner walls started to clench and squeeze with her release, milking him of the warmth he was now flooding her with.

Kestra knew, of course, what that could mean. She knew that their lovemaking could result in far more than just pleasure, every throb and pulse of him inside of her, every new splash of his cum a reminder, and the warmth she felt once more in her core was the furthest thing from worry to her.

The pair stayed like that, panting in the humid, sex flooded heat of the gloom, until finally Kestra’s mind recovered enough to make a comment, “Not a word.”

Rico, his crest slowly relaxing to the top of his head and his eyes gleaming with warm amusement, merely wore the smug, self-satisfied grin of a job well done. He didn’t need to rub in how good he did, the dampness utterly soaking into her inner thighs, and the short fur of his still-tensing balls was proof enough. Like any canine-hybrid of a gryphon, his climax would persist until that knot was freed.

“I’ll say three words,” Rico compromised after a moment, still breathing heavily as he wrapped one foreleg around her middle.

Kestra considered for a second before giving a nod of her head. The large male’s beak nuzzled along the length of her neck, before tucking in to the base of one of her ears, his voice a husky growl as it echoed into it, “Stay the night.”

Kestra tucked herself in against him and decided that those words? She didn’t mind.

Nightfall had settled by the time Chuck had figured out how to approach the... whole of everything. He still found his sudden involvement strange in the way that anyone getting pulled into the vortex of someone with more charisma does. He walked up the pathway and saw Slate, who was a bit more gryphon-like, Chuck noted, and less stone-like. His eyes were half lidded, his feathers ruffled, and his attention, while sharp, was less so than prior. He wondered at the toll on the other male, but shook his head and walked past. Like before, Slate made no motion to stop him.

Kade was at the edge of the shelf, sitting on the ledge and admiring the Bowl and the moon in the sky, both. “I was worried yesterday scared you off,” The large male spoke plainly, recognizing the scent of the sea and the clack of Chuck’s specific talons on the stone.

“I...” The lanky male looked down at his talons and gave a shake of his head, “Not scared off. I just haven’t had time to process it. Any of it. But,” he looked back up and moved to sit beside Kade on the ledge. “Someone asked me to come see you.”

Kade, for a moment, thought it may have been Kestra who had, but when Chuck fished out the shard of obsidian from his feathers and handed it over, a sense of curious hope filled the raven’s chest. “She said to smell it,” Chuck instructed, not that Kade needed such instruction. He had already brought it to his dark, raven beak and was inhaling the scent there. At the surface was Chuck, which was unsurprising, as he had carried the object, but it was simple enough to move past that surface layer scent to the intended one beneath—dried herbs and berries, overlayed with a smoky scent. The latter caught him off guard, and it took him a moment to identify that it was, fundamentally, different from the smoky note of his own scent.

“Thank you.” Kade managed to say, turning the shard over in his talons. Chuck, for his part, started to stand. He wanted more time with the other male, but he also knew two things in that moment - Kade needed time to process, and frankly, so did he; he hadn’t yet fully processed the thing that had occurred the previous day.

“She wanted me to tell you,” Chuck spoke as he turned to leave, “That she is interested in you, too.” It was a simple phrase, but the thump of Kade’s tail against the stone was answer enough. He breathed a sigh of relief that his part in it all had been handled and, from the looks of things, handled well.

“Take care, Chuck - and, thank you,” Kade called after him, as he moved past Slate.

Kade sat there with the shard, moving it between his talons or bringing it to his beak to refresh the mental scent of her. Her image was still frayed at the edges, still a blur of features, but now there was a new detail overlayed in that mental mural. The large male was distracted long enough that he didn’t notice Slate had taken a seat beside him and settled back on his haunches. “For being so large, you’re awfully quiet.”

Slate’s grunt was one of amusement as he tucked the shard into his plumage. The scent of the season had fully reached the eighth tier, and both males now showed all the classic signs of males enduring it - sheathes at rest now several degrees heavier and fuller at all times, and the normally tucked-close for flight weight of their balls now a warm, low hang; a way to show off their virility to prospective hens.

No words were exchanged that night, just the lingering, longing gaze that both males tossed down below - seeing the distant motion of bodies pressing together, of circles of gryphons either laughing or playing.

The life of the season continued to move on without either of them.

The morning of day eight brought a wave of momentary confusion to Breck, who stirred under the light of the sun and not in the dim, comforting dark of his den. His eyes blinked open, and he found himself curled up next to the vibrantly coloured frame of another gryphon. It took a moment for the details of the previous evening to come back to him, but when they did, he remembered the warmth of Mango and the gentle silence of comfortable company as the sun set. Thankfully, the russet-feathered male noted, they had scooted back away from the ledge, as they had both moved in their sleep.

His first evidence of this was Mango’s head pressed into the white feathers of his chest, her warm breathing ruffling them with soft, gentle snoring. His body had tangled with hers, and his eyes roamed along their bodies, meshed in against each other; Breck’s hindleg was over one of hers, and she was tucked between his thighs. His eyes kept following the curve of her, enjoying the feel of her, until his eyes landed on the pink-red of his shaft, pressed firmly in against the curve of her inner thigh.

He breathed deep, trying to calm himself. He wasn’t fully hard, he noted, only partly; half out of his sheath, with the rest of it full in a familiar way; the outline of his knot visible at the base of his cream-white sheath. More so was the small river of precum, connecting in sticky strands from the tapered head of him to the fur of Mango’s lower half.

’I need to move,’ he thought to himself, trying to detach his lower half from hers, and in the process, Mango’s warm, orange eyes parted. They weren’t true orange, he noted in the early morning light, but closer to a spice he had only seen once before - ginger. He froze as she blinked awake and stayed perfectly still as she started to process everything. The flick of an ear, the slow roaming of her eyes downward. Breck braced for the worst.

“Morning, Breck,” she offered with a soft yawn. If anything, she only cuddled in closer to him, easily able to hear the thump of his heart.

“I-,” He swallowed, trying to will himself to calm. Not just the pulse of his shaft, which threatened to slip free into the open air and the warmth of Mango’s thigh, but the beat of his heart. “Morning.”

She looked down again, in the way a blurry-eyed hen does when she sees something unexpected, but not unwelcome. “It’s okay.”

He sat with that for a moment, not entirely sure of how to respond. She said it was okay, but was it? His brain was doing its best to find excuses, but if those excuses were to forgive him or blame him, he wasn’t sure.

Mango answered for him, stretching out beside him with an arch of the spine and a partial unfurling of the wings, working the ache of sleep out of her body, before cuddling into him and moving a forefoot down to where he was pressed in against her thigh. She wrapped her talons around him and stroked to the tip, making his breath catch in his throat.

She wasn’t hurrying the motion, or even trying to direct him away; it was something else altogether, like she was learning the shape of him. She made an adorable chirp as he throbbed in her grasp, and a splash of precum covered her talons. She withdrew her fore and brought it up to her beak, sniffing once at his scent before licking those dripping talons clean.

Breck felt his heart catch in his throat, and he was now fully swollen, throbbing with desire.

Conviction.

It echoed in his brain without warning, and he shuddered as Mango moved with him. Splayed on her back, with him over her. Welcoming. Willing.

He hesitated. She looked up into his eyes with hers and tilted her head slowly, “Do you want to?”

He couldn’t lie to her, “Yes.” But, he couldn’t lie to himself, either. “But, not... not right now.”

Mango’s confusion was evident, and he struggled to explain it, even to himself. ’A possession over the females.’ Nox’s voice echoed in his head. He took a shaky breath and leaned forward to hook the tip of his beak on the oriole’s own. “I want to. I really, really, do. But, I need to figure out... something personal first.”

Mango’s eyes searched his, and found what they were looking for - or the absence of what she wasn’t. “I believe you.” She looked up at him with comfortable ease, and after a moment, Breck moved the pair of them back into a posture of cuddling. If she minded him throbbing against her lower back, she didn’t complain about it. “Do you mind if we stay here for a bit longer?” She asked.

“I’d like that.”

---

Chuck was in the middle of filling his bowl with assorted berries and nuts, along with a rare chunk of fish from the coast, when Liz settled into the space across from him, Kestra at her side. Liz looked exasperated, while Kestra looked fulfilled. “Chuck, please,” The warm-feathered hen commented, making him blink in confusion.

“Rico was this,” Kestra held her talons apart, “big.” Liz groaned, and Chuck, once he caught on, blushed deeply. The fish suddenly became very interesting, and he studied the scales that lined its surface.

The peregine groaned, “Chuck, please,” she repeated, and his ears flicked as he looked up from the very interesting fish to the two hens. One of whom was clearly in the midst of a very explicit story.

“I saw him yesterday,” Chuck commented, and the magpie’s beak shut in the middle of describing the girth of Rico’s knot. Her attention turned to him, too, and Liz’s look of thanks was palpable.

“What did he say?” She asked, using the momentary freedom from Kestra’s escapades to start getting food for herself.

“He said,” he closed his eyes for a moment, thinking. “He said thank you. Um... it isn’t what you want to hear,” he judged, based on the flicker of confusion, or perhaps concern, that crossed Liz’s face. “But, I saw his tail wag. Well, sway once. It-,” Chuck thought for a moment, trying to figure out the right way to phrase it. “It meant a lot, Liz.”

Liz breathed a sigh of relief, taking a few bites as her friend asked generalized questions about Kade that Chuck took the time to answer. It let her process and think, and after some time, she looked at the long-limbed male, “Can you take me there? I know I can’t go past the guard, but I want to see him, and I think Kestra going, too, would cause too much of a scene.”

“What? Me?” Kestra feigned innocence, and as she turned on her haunches to glare at her, the magpie plucked a berry from Liz’s bowl, popping it into her beak.

“I-,” Chuck swallowed, though around the guilt and expectations caught in his throat, not food, “No.”

Liz’s expression was cold fury. For a moment, he regretted his answer, but he steeled himself; he sat up straighter, mirroring Rico's posture, then shook his head and returned to his regular position. “I have something I have to do today, and I need to... to think of,” he waved a foreleg vaguely toward the upper shelves. From their position, they couldn’t make out any sort of movement or life that far up.

Kestra nudged Liz’s side, and she looked at her with that leveled gaze of cold fury... which started to melt when she saw the look in Kestra’s eyes. It wasn’t pleading, but it was understanding, and with a gentle nudge of her head in Chuck’s direction, Liz looked at him. Really looked. Whatever had happened on the shelf had taken a toll on him, as his body showed signs of lack of sleep, and slowly, her frustration melted away. Not gone, but layered with understanding. “Okay. Thank you anyway, Chuck. Will...” She took a deep breath, “Will we see you here tomorrow?”

Chuck hadn’t expected that, but he gave a slow nod of his head. “Yeah, I’ll be here tomorrow.”

Liz looked at the frazzled state of the osprey: at the tired eyes, and silently berated herself. She had taken advantage of him, of his kindness, and even Kestra had noticed it before she had. She shook her head, having decided she needed to start making amends for that.

She reached across the stone slab of the table and rested her talons over Chuck’s own. “I don’t want you to think I’m taking advantage of you, so - I’d like to try being your friend, too.” Chuck’s crest rose at that, and Kestra gave a soft nod of her head from beside her.

“I’d like that too,” he murmured, eyes gleaming with the warmth of those amber eyes.

Her friend nodded her head again, then, being Kestra, cleared her throat, “Anyway, Rico-,” both Chuck and Liz groaned.

---

It was early afternoon by the time Breck left the top of the Crag. Mango’s warmth still clung to him, and each breath he took was laced with the scent of her. His tail was unguarded behind him, swaying slowly to and fro as he moved through the fourth tier, through the tunnel that housed the cluster of dens he, Gareth, and others called home.

He wanted to finally get an answer to everything, and the only place he could was from Gareth’s beak.

Breck moved to the largest den and peered into the gloom. Thankfully, Gareth was home. Unfortunately, he was in the middle of working his knot inside a female. Breck didn’t recognize the hen underneath the older male, and he took a step back, only to stop as, mid-thrust, Gareth’s voice echoed out, “Breck.”

Breck swallowed, torn between retreat and staying where he was, when Gareth’s next line settled it for him, “Come in.” There was no passion to his voice, Breck noticed as he stepped into the gloom, though the female pinned underneath Gareth’s bulk didn’t seem to notice, or care. She was pushing back into Gareth’s controlled movements, trying to work the shape of his knot, settled just past the lips of her spade, which had parted to swallow the girth of him. She was moaning vocally.

He was looking Breck in the eye.

The knot settled deep inside her, and Breck couldn’t help but notice the way that Gareth’s heavy balls pulled up with every pulse. Then, the golden eagle lowered himself across her back and lifted a foreleg, waving Breck closer. His tail flicked behind him, and he took a deep breath to steady himself, which had the ill side effect of flooding his lungs with the overwhelming scent of sex.

“Should I come back?” He asked, eyes darting down to the panting female now sprawled underneath Gareth.

“No need, I’m sure I know why you are here,” He replied, and that answer didn’t help to ease Breck’s unease any.

“I...” The younger male looked up at the roof of Gareth’s den, away from his mentor. Away from the female who was still panting. Away from the way Gareth’s body was twitching in that way of a male climaxing inside of a hen, “I lied the other day. About being sick. I just needed time to figure something out.”

“And? Did you figure it out?” Gareth responded, settling on his hip while his hindleg was up, over the female’s side.

“I-,” He took another breath to settle himself, then looked the larger male in the eyes. Yellow met teal as they looked at one another. “No.” He admitted, and Gareth’s nod meant he had expected the answer.

“You went to Nox.” It wasn’t a question from the other male, and he felt a sudden surge of anxiety. Breck, however, could do nothing but tell the truth.

“I did.”

“You were seen. I don’t mind that you did, it shows more of why I befriended you - you aren’t some brainless lackey.” Gareth shifted his hips, and the female’s eyes, slowly returning to the here and now, glazed over once more as another gasp left her beak.

Breck decided to push forward, then, “I don’t know if I can approve of Kade’s...”

“Isolation?” The other male supplied. He nodded his head. “I don’t expect you to.”

Breck opened his beak, then closed it again. Like Kade before him, Gareth had managed to stun him to silence. Eventually, he found the words to continue talking, “But then why. Why did you separate him?”

“I told you that already,” Gareth offered, lifting a foreleg to gesture toward Breck with it. Then, he used that same fore to rake his talons over the hen’s side, once more rendering her into a world of raw pleasure, and happily unaware of the world around her. “He’s a young, exotic, untested male from the Canyon. Rico’s arrival alone proved what such a thing is capable of.”

“Nox said that you got greedy, that you were... hogging the females to yourself,” He spoke, his body still tense for reasons he couldn’t explain.

“And the female last year? Was that me keeping them all to myself?” Gareth offered, and Breck’s crest rose, then fell at the memory of her. Willing. Welcoming.

Emotionless.

Nothing like Kestra, or even the brief glimpse at Mango from earlier. Sort of like she was doing what she was told, not what she wanted. But, “No, it wasn’t.”

“I will not lie to you, Breck. Not everyone will agree with my methods. Not everyone will understand that what I want is what is best for the Flock,” Gareth clarified, giving another steady rock against the female he had pinned down. The worst part, Breck decided, was that the older male was being entirely honest; that made everything far more complicated.

“I just... don’t think it is fair to him,” Breck offered.

“It isn’t,” Gareth’s reply left him to blink in surprise. “But leaving him unattended would be far more unjust, not just to him, but for the Flock,” The older male shifted his weight with a tug and a low grunt. It was the first genuine emotion he had shown, one of satisfaction as his knot pulled free from the formerly tied female, and the sticky mess of his claim ran down her inner thigh.

“If,” Gareth continued, “you think it is unfair, why not spend time with him yourself? Or would you rather spend time enjoying the season, and leave me to worry about the Flock’s safety?”

It sounded so easy. So straightforward. Leave the politics to Gareth and just enjoy being a male in the midst of the most enjoyable time of the year. “I... you may be right, Gareth,” Breck admitted, ears flicking as he looked down at his talons.

“Of course I am,” The other male offered, his voice honey-warm. He turned to leave, but stopped as Gareth continued, “I have a hen in mind for you, Breck. Not this one,” he amended as Breck turned around, and his eyes darted down to the sprawled out, cum-drooling hen that the older male was now standing up from.

“She’s in her first heat. She’s smart, smarter than she lets on, but her body is currently holding the reins. She’s pretty. Exotic. She’ll stop by tomorrow, or the day after, and afterward, I’ll introduce you two. She’ll be...” He trailed off, looking up at the ceiling of his den before those sharp, yellow eyes met Breck’s teal once more. “Nearly virginal. I think you’ll like her.”

His heart froze. A shard of raw ice sank into his stomach as the shape of it, of the control offered, was put plainly. Was it only because he knew of the female that Gareth spoke of that he suddenly suffered from such a massive wave of unease? Yes, but also no. Those yellow eyes held no emotion. This was the carrot, and the stick was Breck’s loyalty.

He steeled himself, finding that well he had used to lie to Mango the day before, “Thank you, Gareth. I appreciate it.”

“Anything for my favorite. Now, leave us. I have to,” Gareth looked over at the female, lounging and recovering in his den, “clean up.”

Breck was all too happy to step away from the overwhelming, cloying interior of his mentor, his friend’s den. It took a few dozen steps before the air was pure again, and after a moment, he stopped dead. He pushed his beak into his own plumage and inhaled. Mango’s scent clung thickly to his feathers, only unnoticed due to the overwhelming miasma of sex in Gareth’s cave. A part of him wondered what the other male would have done had he smelled her on him. What would have changed, if anything?

Nevertheless, Breck was starting to understand what his conviction was; a small thing, but a simple one for now: protect Mango from Gareth.

---

Chuck was happy to wander through the fourth tier around midday, looking for Rico’s den. It let him calm down after his bizarre, but enjoyable, morning. After promising he’d return at the same time tomorrow, Kestra went on a long tirade about Rico, or more accurately, the larger male’s cock. Liz had looked ready to strangle her, but Chuck picked up on something about it midway through, that this was how Kestra protected and distracted Liz from doing something reckless. Chuck knew that the larger hen had fled the season before, had hidden away during the entire twenty-eight-day ordeal. Left alone with no outlet to sate her building heat, and with her own personal view being one of...

Chuck wasn’t sure, entirely. It wasn’t self-hatred, but part of Liz hated the season. Hated the changes it made to her body and the attention it got her; most likely because, most of the year, she considered herself plain. The lanky male frowned as he turned another corner, stopping to smell at every den entrance as he did so. He didn’t think that fair - most males weren’t sexually active outside of the season, and thus, unless they’re already attracted or have an established romantic relationship, they tend not to seek it during the rest of the year.

Chuck thought she was pretty, but if he told her now, he knew she’d deflect at best, or make some excuse for his attraction at worst. Kade’s isolation was the right catalyst to get past that wall, as he was but a ghost of a creature; something that existed at the edge of memory. He just hoped, for both their sakes, that the in-person meeting would be as good as that memory.

Thankfully, he didn’t need to consider that theoretical anymore, as the exotic scent of spice and warmth permeated from the den in front of him. Beneath that, too, was the near-citrus tang that identified Kestra; Chuck had found the place.

Chuck stepped inside and spotted Rico first. He looked more himself, with his feathers ruffled in that ‘recently had sex’ way that was hard to hide; the scent in the cave was distinctly Rico with a hint of Kestra, but the scent on Rico himself was layered with another, and recently so. As the larger male noticed Chuck, his crest rose for a moment until he identified who it was that entered. It wasn’t a lack of interest, as Chuck read it, but a shift of it; going from the natural posturing into an eased, relaxed state with the same beat of his heart. “You were not who I was expecting,” Rico admitted, honestly.

“I wasn’t expecting myself, either,” Chuck quipped. He gestured toward a free space in the den, and Rico bobbed his head. He moved to sit down, facing the larger male that, for years, had been his role model. He wasn’t even sure how to begin, and Rico seemed to sense this.

“You’ve been watching me for a few years.” It wasn’t a question. Chuck nodded his head in agreement, “I saw you during the first few days. It was like looking into... a broken mirror.” Rico lifted a foreleg for a moment as Chuck’s beak opened in protest.

“Chuck,” The other male continued, “I don’t suit you. I’ve noticed you more, being yourself, than I ever did when you were posturing with my confidence. It was flattering, don’t get me wrong, but I could no more pretend to be Chuck than you can be Rico. I’m not sure where you suddenly got the... self-conscious desire to be yourself, but it’s a good thing. More natural. More you.”

“Kade,” Chuck answered, then he looked around the other males’ den. The first thing he noticed was the torn, and thoroughly so, bedding.

“Occupational hazard,” Rico chirped warmly, before shifting back to the topic, “Kade was helping you with your posturing then?”

He gave a bob of his head, “He was, yeah. First with just lifting my leg in a way that showed off, well,” he gestured at his lower half, and the red-crested male followed along with the motion. His eyes lingered, Chuck noticed, though not with desire. Rather, it was with a sudden realization crossing Rico’s expression once he lifted his head.

“I can see why he’d start there. That’d win over some females by themselves, if you put that,” Rico gestured vaguely toward Chuck’s sheath, “on proper display.” Chuck flushed, his ears going pink in the dim light seeping into Rico’s den.

“Yeah. Then he helped me with rearing up after... after my accident,” The other male, for his part, stayed silent, “and then he helped me with... more.”

“More?” Rico asked, tilting his head in confusion. “I know there are leg extensions, tail hikes to show off, some-,” Rico trailed off as the lanky male shook his head, and that blush had returned in full.

“Have you ever mated with a male?” Chuck asked after a moment.

The older male was starting to understand, “I have, yes. A few, actually.”

“How... did you know? That you were...” he wasn’t sure of the term to use. Sexuality in the Flocks wasn’t quite classified, per se. “That you were into males?”

“An accident during my first year here, actually,” Rico admitted warmly. “I am one of the few males sexually active year-round, and he noticed that around summertime. We had both been assigned to gather berries and nuts from the outskirts, and - let’s just say, the nuts we were gathering weren’t the only ones he wanted to handle.”

Rico wondered if, at the end of all this, Chuck’s ears would just be perpetually pink-red with embarrassment. “It’s... not wrong, right?”

“No, it’s not,” The larger male confirmed, shaking his head firmly. “The season might be focused heavily on the hens, but there are plenty of male couples that form, short-term or long-term. Even some mixed couples that do. While I have no year-round lover, I’ve been a third to a male and his mate before, and even to two hens once. There is no guilt or shame, so long as no one is forced and everyone is emotionally mature.”

Chuck breathed a sigh of relief at that, and his tail gave a slow sway. Honesty with who he is, Rico thought, suits him far better.

“What brought this feeling on? Colour me intrigued,” Rico questioned, and once more that pink-tinge returned.

“I... was worried about mounting,” Chuck admitted, looking down at his talons.

“About mounting?”

“Yeah. What if I had done it wrong?” He started to tap those talons of his on the stone, “So, Kade offered to help. He pretended to be the hen, and let me practice mounting on him.”

Rico shook his head with a playful click of his beak, “I didn’t expect that. I take it you have an interest in being on top of him?” He questioned.

“I’m not sure,” Chuck admitted. “I think part of me likes to consider what it’d be like to... to...”

“To be under him?” Rico supplied, and he nodded his head.

“But I don’t know for sure,” he looked up again, meeting Rico’s warm gaze. “I don’t even know if I’m certain about any of it yet.”

“Well,” Rico offered, shifting his weight a bit. “When you are, if you are, come back to me and talk again. I can give you some advice, and a...” He looked up at the ceiling of his den for a moment, “A gift.”

“A gift? What is it?”

Rico clicked his tongue, “Wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you now, would it?”

Chuck felt a deal of unease slip from his shoulders. He settled in to talk, just as two males with no other engagements for the day, as the scent of fruit flooded the den and the shape of a slim, vibrantly coloured female entered. Both of them looked over at her, and the lanky male noted that Rico’s crest rose on its own accord as the scent of her heat started to flood the confined space. “Also not who I was expecting,” The older male commented warmly.

Mango moved to sit, placing herself somewhat between the two males, and settled down. “I just needed a moment,” she admitted, preening a few stray feathers that were out of sorts as she did so. Chuck, for his part, couldn’t take his eyes off her, and Rico noticed that immediately.

“Everything okay?” Chuck's tone was filled with concern, and the other male decided to sit quietly and let the season work between the two. After all, he wasn’t blind; he saw Mango’s eyes size up Chuck and linger on the weight he sported between those thighs. Yes, she had done the same to him directly afterward, but the gaze that followed was far more carnal, far less warm. Both were fitting for the season, but one had the potential to go further.

“Just...” she took a deep breath, “Was in my head for a bit, that’s all. Figured I’d stop by a friendly male,” she gestured at Rico with a foreleg, “instead of going home by myself.” She then turned to face Chuck directly, and her eyes roamed once more, lingering between his hinds.

Rico noticed. Chuck did not.

“I’m Mango, by the way,” she offered after, her tail slowly swaying behind her.

“I’m Chuck,” the osprey offered, his own expression softening.

The conversation lasted for some time, and while Rico did participate, he largely allowed the flow of it to be between the two of them. It wasn’t quite how he expected to spend his afternoon, but it wasn’t the worst way to, either. The hens would still be there tonight, and for now, he could be the quiet wingman for the lanky osprey.

Or was it for the vibrant oriole?

---

Breck hadn’t expected to take Gareth up on the offer to spend time with Kade, but he was going up the pathway nevertheless. Slate spotted him, and he noted immediately the exhaustion lingering at the edges of Slate’s body. “I’ll be here for a bit. Why not take an hour or two to rest?” The other male examined him, those brown-black eyes seeking any form of deception.

“Two hours,” Slate agreed, standing up and shaking himself off before he started to move down the pathway.

Breck watched until the bulky male turned the corner, then he moved over to find Kade. He was, at that moment, in the middle of digging out the den further. Breck was impressed with the progress, but when boredom was the only company one routinely got, he figured they had to make do where they could. “Hello, Kade.”

“Breck,” The other male commented, mid-scrape against the packed dirt he had managed to expose behind the rock. Kade’s talons were blunted to an extreme, Breck noticed; he had been at this for hours every day. “You don’t have the eyes of the male I talked to the other day.”

“I don’t feel like the male you talked to the other day,” He admitted, moving back as the larger male turned to exit his makeshift home. Breck followed, wordlessly, until Kade sat down near the ledge that overlooked the Bowl below. “I was thinking. About what you said. About Gareth and everything else.”

Kade waited patiently, letting the older male find the words without prodding. “I still owe Gareth a ton. He-,” Breck sighed. “I don’t know where I’d be today if not for him. Perhaps he just saw me as a tool, I don’t know, but part of me wants to cling to it as genuine care. He took me under his wing when I was but a hatchling and taught me the ropes of life. During my first season, he made sure I had at least one female, as he saw I was struggling.” Breck didn’t want to think about her directly. Emotionless. Potentially told to do it, not wanting to.

“I’m not...” Breck gestured with a foreleg toward Kade, then more directly, down between the larger male’s thighs. “You, Gareth, Rico - all three of you put the entire Crag to shame, and I don’t measure up. I knew that from the start. It’s never bothered me, but at the same time, I’m aware that a lot of heat-addled hens, they...”

“They have eyes bigger than their bodies,” Kade provided.

“Yeah. They’ll go for you three over those like me, who, I mean... I’m not small,” He offered, the phrase being almost a question.

“You’re not,” Kade shifted, looking down, then back up again into those teal eyes, “But it means that a hen has to see you, and not just the size of your sheath, to pick you.”

Breck nodded his head, “Exactly. I don’t really do the whole posturing thing like Gareth and Rico, nor do I know how to strut like some of the other males. I’m just...”

“Yourself,” The large male offered during the brief lull in conversation, to which he nodded. A comfortable silence settled afterward, and while Kade sensed that he had more to say, he let the other male collect his thoughts at his own pace.

“I met a female who likes me for me. I... I think,” Breck offered after that silence. “But, Gareth is interested in her, too.”

“Is that a problem?” Kade asked, tilting his head as he looked over at him. “I’d be happy if one of my friends pursued someone I was interested in.”

Breck shook his head, “That’s it. He... I think he just wants Mango for breeding.”

“That is what the season is about, Breck,” The large male commented quietly. Not disagreeing with him, but playing a form of devil’s advocate.

A form of it that forced Breck to finally voice what was really wrong, “He promised her to me if I just... behaved. ‘Nearly virginal’. Untouched by all but him. That isn’t...”

Kade waited a moment, then supplied the missing piece, “That isn’t warmth.”

“I don’t know if I believe him that putting you here is better for the Flock. I don’t know if I can still trust him the same way, but for now, I’ve decided on one small thing,” Breck offered, “I want to keep her safe from him.”

“She might not appreciate it.”

He hadn’t considered that and looked down at the Bowl below. At the vague shapes in the early night, “That’s okay. If I can keep her from... from that, it will be okay.”

Kade considered that quietly, and then joined him in looking at the Bowl below. Clusters of gryphons gathered up to the third shelf, and as the season got further along, activities were far more noticeable. A couple on the second, with a small ring around them, cheering them on, or still making conversation despite the activity in the middle of them. The males in the center, on the stone stage, were still performing for the assorted hens. Two different couples used the same nook for relative privacy.

“Breck,” Kade asked, distracting himself from the swell of his sheath and the sudden spike of longing that had formed in his belly. “Why not tell me about her? This hen that you’re interested in?”

Breck launched into it with an eagerness that, to that point, he had never seen from the other male. Describing in detail the warmth of her, the colours of her feathers, and the tone of her voice. It painted a clear picture, enough for Kade to know it was Mango. He kept that to himself and let the other male paint the picture of his affection.

At some point, Slate rejoined the two on the shelf, and after confirming that no one had fled and that no new scents had arrived after he left, he made his way over to sit down beside Kade. Breck hardly stumbled in his telling of Mango, only stopping long enough to acknowledge the new male’s arrival.

Slate, at least, looked far more Slate-like than prior. His feathers in place, and while there was still a layer of exhaustion that hadn’t quite vanished, he looked better. The scent that clung to him was purely him, and that, along with the full, warm hang of his season-displayed sheath, told Kade that either he hadn’t found his hen, or that perhaps that hen wasn’t yet aware of him.

Breck’s story trailed off after a time, his tail steadily swaying behind him, as all three males looked down at the Bowl. The lovers and their friends were all enjoying themselves down below while all three sat with full sheaths and heavy balls, though a bit lighter in Breck’s case; all at the edge of the season in their own way, rather than in the middle of it.

Kade looked at Slate to his right, then Breck sitting to his left, and decided there were worse ways to spend the night. At least he wasn’t alone.

Dawn’s light had just started to eke through the opening of Gareth’s den when he started to wake. The few, stray rays that slipped into his den highlighted not just his own, greying feathers, but the feathers of the female beside him. She had subtle shifts of grey into white feathers, he noted. She had been the second female in one day, having run into her after Breck left.

He couldn’t remember her name.

Truth be told, it didn’t matter anyway.

He wasn’t entirely heartless, even if this hen might think him so if he ever admitted that. He might not know her name, but he had made sure to bring her pleasure. By the time she passed out against him the previous night, her cunt leaking his seed, she probably had forgotten her own name. His beak turned up at the edge as he preened a few stray feathers.

With that pleasure, he had also brought her a future purpose.

Many could say what they would about him, but Gareth tried to do his best for the Flock, including as a performing male.

He stepped out into the light, watching as those who shared his section of the shelf did the same. Young, conflicted Breck gave him a bowing nod of his head in passing, and other, younger males all made signs of respect- bobbed heads, mantled wings, beaks dipped low.

Kade’s situation had caused more drama than he initially calculated, which was an error on his part. Still, there was nothing to be done for it now; going back on his plan would be a sign of weakness. He had committed and, as such, he had to stay the course. Kade had to stay in his isolation until such a time that he no longer proved a threat to the genetic diversity of Gareth’s Flock.

His tail twitched behind him.

’No longer a threat to the Crag’s Flock,’ he amended quietly to himself, moving toward the winding tunnel that would take him to the main pathway of the Crag. Perhaps his recent successes of the season had lifted his spirits, but he found himself unable to worry about Kade or Breck that morning.

The younger male was questioning, yes, but he was still loyal. Gareth could tell that much, and questioning was good. If he wanted another piece of emotionless muscle, he would have found a second Slate. Breck’s emotional intelligence was something far more useful to him.

It just had to be carefully rewarded and cultivated.

He looked out from the ledge of the fourth shelf, down at the Bowl. Gryphons were assembling for breakfast and a show, as they all did this time of year, and he took a moment to think through his arrival. If it weren’t so crowded, he would have just glided down; that would have gotten their attention in a heartbeat.

His eyes landed on the center, the stone slab that males all used as a performing stage. The stone there had stories to tell, he knew; he had written some of them himself, in years past. In the center of it, with his vibrant red crest, was that strutting rooster, Rico.

A tic of irritation caused Gareth’s right eye to twitch as he turned away from the ledge and started to walk down. He thought Rico was sitting this season out, but something had clearly changed. Nevertheless, he had spent four years working around Rico; he was a quality that Gareth was familiar with. He and those he considered worth it, by his estimates, would still obtain about fifty-five percent of the hens.

Not the best of showings, he had to admit, but a strong number. A number that would ensure the proper genes passed along, and not that of an oversized, egotistical cock.

Or, heaven forbid, an exotic newcomer with no standing and not enough time for Gareth to size him up.

---

Gareth moved through the crowd, or more accurately, the crowd moved around Gareth. He was unhurried as he approached the center, stopping only long enough to scoop a bowl into some sort of broth, grain, or mash; he didn’t remember the flavour when it hit his tongue. Food was fuel, and his body needed it to keep him at the top of the food chain.

Rico spotted him quickly, in the way of a male identifying a rival. It was instinctual. Animalistic. In that one respect, Gareth admitted, he and Rico were alike. The red crested male’s posturing maintained its outward ease after, but there was now a certain edge to it; an edge that he alone recognized, as it was a similar edge he sported when Rico was around. Two males, sitting at the top, are trying to dislodge the other. Not through physical force, but through charisma and attraction.

He stepped up onto the platform and moved himself beside Rico, who was in the process of rearing up to show off to three females in front of him. Gareth knew, absently, that the younger male had him beat in raw attraction. He was, after all, getting older: his plumage duller, his body not moving with the same speed or grace it had even four years ago, when the strutting cock had arrived.

But age came with experience, and as Rico landed on all fours, Gareth reared up and unfurled his wings. His body dominated the center platform, and every eye that had been trained on his rival now cycled onto him, looking at him from beak down to, far more importantly, the weight of his balls. It was not vanity, but he still felt a swell of smug pride at that stolen attention.

He held the posture for a respectable time before moving back onto all fours. A younger, less sure male would have held it for longer. Would have lost interest by showing too much. He kept it by just holding their attention long enough.

“Sun is just right for your feathers today,” Rico quipped, voice loud enough to carry to the crowd. It was kind. Pleasant even.

It was meant as an insult.

Gareth raised his crest nevertheless, playing along and allowing the sun to catch the vibrant gold feathering there, “It is, isn’t it?” His voice was warm, welcoming, and utterly out of place about how he felt about the other male. His crest, when raised, failed to acquire the same shine as the younger male’s in that early morning sunlight.

“I’ve noticed something,” Rico commented, shifting his weight into a three-legged pose, with his fourth stretched back. The crowd’s focus shifted from one to the other.

“I’m sure it will be... educational,” Gareth murmured sweetly, though the tone still carried a dry edge to it. He let the other male hold his pose, waited until the strutting cock’s posture relaxed, before he turned to face his fellow male. Oh, it was all done with a purpose - his tail lifted, arching behind him toward the crowd. Not enough to show everything, only enough to leave it to the imagination. From the sharp intake of breath he heard, he had accomplished that with at least one hen.

“More accurately,” Rico continued, patiently awaiting his turn. They weren’t competing. Not exactly. “The absence of something. Someone.”

“Ah,” Gareth’s tail slowly relaxed as he turned side-on to the crowd, a position that the red-feathered male mirrored. The two males were now beak-to-beak, letting them talk in hushed tones while maintaining an outward degree of civility. “You mean Kade.”

“Did you know that by taking something away,” Rico’s crest lifted in its own vibrant display, the sun gleaming off of it and making it a dark crimson, “you make it far more obvious?”

Gareth’s tail twitched behind him, but he managed to control the outward annoyance he felt. Mostly. “My dear Rico, I’ve been in this game far longer than you. I understand that Kade’s... reputation will precede him, but I am managing the situation as it benefits the Flock.”

“Benefits the flock,” Rico countered, shaking out his feathers as he moved to step off the stage. A short performance, but long enough to linger in the minds of those that watched, “or benefits Gareth?”

Gareth decided to join him in that, stepping off as one or two younger males stepped on, replacing the older, more seasoned ones. “Those are not mutually exclusive.”

The pair of rivals both moved around to one of the tables, both of them dipping their bowls into assorted grains. Rico took the time to savour his, whereas Gareth once more just swallowed down what entered his beak. “I thought you were sitting out this season,” The older male offered, with that put-on warmth still present in his voice.

“Consider me back in the running,” Rico hummed, scooping some berries into the clay vessel. “I’m sure that isn’t a problem?”

It was, but Gareth merely smiled, the edges of his beak turning up. “Of course not. We’ve managed four seasons in the same flock; we can manage a fifth.”

The warmth of that smile never got close to his eyes.

“Of course, of course. I do wonder how you’ll handle the sixth with both Kade and me?” Gareth’s tail twitched as Rico hummed, pleasantly, to himself. “Either way, I have a date this morning. Please, excuse me,” He bowed his head in a form of respect, then turned to approach one of the females who had been crowded around the stage.

Fifth or sixth season. Narrow hips. Dull plumage.

Rico could have her.

“Oh,” Rico stopped mid-stride, turning back around to face the golden eagle. “I was wondering, why the eighth shelf?”

Gareth’s frustration mounted, but he managed another external smile. One that, once more, didn’t reach his eyes. “If you know he is there, you know the reasons behind it.”

“Isolated, unused this time of year, easily overlooked. Yes. But it is also awfully cold. I do hope he doesn’t get ill, or Nox will have your pelt.” His rival’s grin was warm, but there was an edge to it.

“Nox knows better than to get involved in a dispute between males.”

“Of course, of course,” Rico lifted a fore in a placating manner, “So long as he stays healthy.”

“So long as he stays healthy,” Gareth agreed. “He is safe and... comfortable. If you know where he is, you are welcome to see him, if you don’t believe me.”

“Oh, I believe you,” Rico bobbed his head. “I understand your worries, I do,” the tone was purely sympathetic, and for a moment, he struggled to hear if there was a barb behind it. “A young, capable male who hasn’t quite discovered who he is yet - that we two older males instantly identified as a rival. Yes, I understand.”

“I’m glad you do.” Gareth’s words were guarded, waiting for the snare to land.

“And when he finds out who he is, when the Flock shifts from you to him? I’ll be there to watch.”

“My dear Rico,” Gareth sat back on his haunches, tail curling loosely around one of his hindlegs. Not a sign of comfort, but one of ease. “The Flock knows I only do what is best for it.”

---

Rico always had a way of getting under his feathers, though Gareth would never admit it aloud.

He decided to settle his mind by setting more gifts into bowls. He used to never have to do this, but Rico’s arrival had shifted that landscape; even having those younger males who attached to him, like smaller birds following in the wake of a hawk, leave their gifts as a proxy wasn’t working as well as it used to.

So, now he had to get his own talons dirty. He didn’t mind, so long as the end result was worth the effort. Besides, after the first few days, most males stopped their gift giving, assuming that those interested had pursued them already. Gareth knew better - it was never too late in the season to attract a new mate.

He didn’t leave anything fancy, just a simple, polished pebble. He had decided, long ago, that a simple gift with the right scent on it was far more useful than some over-the-top piece of jewelry that still wouldn’t attract a female. Simple, plain, but him - that is all that he needed.

Of course, he was methodical in how he went about giving the pebbles. He skipped bowls of females he had already bred, skipped the bowls of females who already showed obvious interest in him, like Mango, and skipped the bowls of those who he knew were either too old or too infirm to take his offspring to term.

Simple. Pure. Clean.

Of course, even those who might not take his seed to term had a use, in that they could be a very good tool to offer to those males under him. If that male had good genes, such as Breck, he had no issues giving a warm female to them. If that male was nothing but a useful body, however, he tended to divert them to the latter category. They got to enjoy the season, the bloodline of the Flock didn’t weaken, and everything continued as it should, where the Flock is concerned.

Gareth set a pebble in a well-made, plain red bowl and kept moving, thinking of the events of the day to himself. So far, things had gone okay. The strutting rooster being back in the game was a hitch in the season, nothing that couldn’t be worked around. Gareth’s many eyes would, as they always did, follow Rico and let Gareth know which females the ostentatious male was pursuing. Kestra was the name reported the previous night.

Kestra and her feline heritage were a reminder of what the cold does to eggs, to things he had wanted. Gareth’s momentum stopped at that thought, and he felt his stomach do a weird, queasy flip. He took a deep breath. Two.

Nox. He hadn’t thought of her as a hen in a long time, and the thought of Kestra brought back memories of shared warmth and comfort. Life was easier then; his only worry during the season then was who his lover that night would be - no further than that.

A small, quiet voice wondered if he should talk to Nox. He used to respect her wisdom, her counsel; she had become Eldest for more than her age, after all.

It was during this quiet moment of reflection, along the outskirts of the Bowl, that Gareth felt the impact of something small and firm hit the back of his head. He blinked in surprise, lost in his own bubble for a moment, and looked down at his talons. A polished, plain river stone; a pebble.

His gaze turned, landing on the eyes of a hen. If looks could kill, Gareth would have been six feet under at that moment; the fury was palpable. He looked over her reddish-hued feathers and fur, and something slipped into place. “Liz.”

He had never met her, had only learned her name properly after one of his many followers had told him her name, following Breck’s information about the obsidian. This? This was what Kade tossed away his freedom for?

On second thought.

No, Kade had an underlying understanding, it seemed. Her hips were wide, her body strong, fit, and lean. She had a softness to her that didn’t erase the raw edge needed to survive in the north. She would produce strong offspring. A shame, then, that she seemed to have been won over by some gawdy trinket.

Liz didn’t say a word. Didn’t have to, but Gareth filed it away as something quite curious. As Rico had said, the absence of something was noticeable, but that wouldn’t have triggered a response like he was seeing now. Then, it clicked, “Ah, Kestra. Slate mentioned she had found the ledge,” he looked at the lopsided bowl next to the well-crafted red. Most likely the magpie’s. Now he understood.

No matter. Slate had done his job, and no hen was allowed past. That wouldn’t change. Slate’s loyalty to him was as firm as the stone beneath his talons.

“Leave.” It was one word, uttered with a chilling tone that was counter to the red warmth that Liz’s colourations indicated, but matched the icy gaze piercing into him perfectly.

He looked down at the pebble again, grabbed it in his talons, and brought it to the feathers of his chest. He tucked it away there again, “It isn’t personal, I hope you understand,” he offered, as he turned to leave. Liz’s hackles rose, feathers and fur both standing on end.

Gareth knew better than to keep antagonizing her. So, he left without another word, letting her seethe at the edge of her den, with the knowledge, now, that the eighth shelf was a known commodity.

But, Slate held. That was all that mattered.

---

Gareth returned to the row of dens that belonged to him and his followers just before the afternoon sun. He had left six pebbles, and with the exception of one, he noted with dry amusement, none of them had been back. They’d come at their own pace, his status a lure in and of itself.

The situation on the eighth tier, the situation with Kade, was far more complicated than initially suspected. But complications were to be accounted for and adjusted, and so far, it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be fixed. The large, exotic male was isolated, unaware of any female’s interest in him, and those same females couldn’t get past Slate.

As the season progressed, the young male would make a mistake. Gareth wasn’t sure when, or what shape it would hold, but when Kade did, he would use it as leverage to keep that inexperienced male in that cage of his. To ensure that a second Rico didn’t join in and weaken the Flock further.

He was contemplating this, sitting at the edge of the outcropping, at the end of the path of dens, when he heard the approach of talons. Small. Petite. His ear twitched, and he turned his head to look over his shoulder. He wasn’t surprised to see the vibrant plumage of Mango arrive, nor to see the glazed-over look she wore as the overlaying scents of so many males, his the most prominent, got to her.

She was small and compact, but her hips and thighs were quite large for her size. He had to admit that her vibrant feathers, the orange, greens, and yellows, had caught his eye first, which in and of itself was a rarity; he didn’t care what colour plumage his offspring inherited. That didn’t matter. Yet, he found his eye drawn to her, and then figured out that, yes, her plumage did matter.

A son born with it would be more eye-catching than the father, and that had its own merits.

“Mango, it’s lovely to see you,” Gareth’s voice was warm, as warm as the setting sun beating on his feathers, illuminating the gold of his crest. For once, he found he didn’t need to shift his tone.

“I’m sorry,” Mango offered as she stepped closer, “I meant to come yesterday, but... I got distracted.”

He inhaled, and his familiarity with his own section of the Crag let him easily bypass all the unneeded information that his nares picked up. Her scent was pure, unsullied. She was still a virgin.

Good. He had competed for a womb with a male he didn’t count on before, and the situation was... unpleasant. He had every intention to give this little delight to Breck later, but not for a few days. Let his seed take root before Breck’s; not that Breck having a hatchling with Mango was the end of the world.

“It happens with first-time females in the season. The body sometimes has a mind of its own,” Gareth answered plainly. Truthfully. He had seen it more times than he could count. Mango moved in against him, settling against his side, and he let a wing encompass her smaller body, pulling her gently against the plumage of his chest.

He worked, as he always did, with the tools given to him and the knowledge that came with the familiarity of a decade of similar motions. Slow, calm conversation to put her more at ease, her body going from tense and unsure, to far more relaxed. Eventually, her beak pushed in against the plumage of his chest on its own accord, and when it did, he moved a single talon to her cheek. He stroked through the feathers there, pressing firm enough with the sharp, curved tip that she felt it pass over the skin beneath.

A soft gasp left her yellow beak, and those orange eyes of hers refocused with building desire. He turned his head then, bringing it down to her neck; his whole body had to move with the motion, making him sprawl out, length-wise, on one hip, as the curved edge of his beak bit on the nape of her neck. She melted against him.

He was unhurried in his motions, patient on the ledge as his beak moved down the length of her chest. Nipping and nuzzling, producing soft gasps and airy moans as she squirmed. Steadily, she splayed out on her back in front of him.

He didn’t generally enjoy the season’s activities, not in the way he used to. It had lost its heat, its warmth, for him many years ago - but he was swelling in a way he hadn’t for half a decade. Excitement was building, and he felt a genuine want, a hunger he hadn’t felt in a long time.

Maybe he’d keep this one after all.

His tongue found the top of her spade, and the firm lick across it made her moan loudly. Enough that one of the other males on his stretch of the ledge peered out. When they saw him, lying partly over the top of a female, he ducked back in. The right choice. He continued to lick, tongue delving past the Y shape of her puffy sex, into the warmth inside. The scent of her, some exotic fruit and raw fertility, like the ground after rainfall, exploded on his tongue, and he growled.

He gave another firm lick and started to stand; Mango’s body moved on its own, following the motion to get onto all fours. Her curly, somewhat bushy tail arched easily over her back, and Gareth reared up, landing across her.

One foreleg secured itself around her middle, his hindlegs shuffled in closer; the tip of him dripped thick, heady precum over her fur as he angled himself, and his ears flicked at the approach of talons. He ignored it.

The tip caught, and he heard her gasp, breathing in deeply as he lowered his head to growl beside her ear, “Relax...” He waited until her tensed body began to steadily relax, the muscles under his talons loosening.

He began to press forward, and-

“A female got something to Kade.”

He was a moment from penetration, the shape of her spread around the tip of him, a jet of precum marking her interior. He trembled, with arousal, outrage, or something else altogether; he wasn’t sure. He turned his head toward Breck, who was standing there. He didn’t notice that Breck’s focus wasn’t on him, but rather entirely on Mango.

“Got what?” Gareth asked. He hadn’t moved.

Breck’s expression was one of pure torment, which most likely meant he had known about this object for a while, but didn’t know when or how to bring it to Gareth’s attention. He made a note to reward the younger male for it, later, to reinforce that it was the right choice.

“The obsidian shard. Liz sent it to him.”

Gareth was a moment from rejecting the importance of that, and would have, had it not been for Liz’s reaction earlier in the day. That wasn’t the glare of a hen that rejected the shard and had sent it back. No.

His arousal died in the beat of his heart, and with a smooth step backward, he dismounted the bewildered-looking Mango. He shook out his feathers and fur, stepping away from the frozen-in-place hen, and moved toward his student.

“Show me.”

---

Gareth followed behind Breck, who looked somewhere between guilty and overwhelmed. Gareth’s focus, however, was on the events of the day - Liz’s earlier reaction and now Breck’s report of the obsidian shard. He wondered where, and how, it had reached Kade.

The older male stepped onto the path that led to the eighth shelf and found the answer almost immediately; there, talking to Kade, was a lanky male osprey-wolf. Gareth didn’t know his name, but had seen him talking to Liz over food in the morning.

The two seemed deep in conversation about something private. He moved to Slate, who wordlessly stepped aside, and Breck followed along in his wake as the pair approached the two conversing males.

“Leave.”

Chuck’s crest rose in alarm at the sudden voice from behind him, utterly engrossed in the conversation he had been in with Kade. Those amber eyes darted from Kade to Gareth, and back again, and the raven gave a small nod of his head. “Are you sure?” The osprey asked.

“I am,” Kade offered, a forefoot moving to give Chuck’s a soft squeeze.

Gareth, for his part, waited until the lanky male had gotten to all four legs and moved; in the process, he took a large, semi-circle around Gareth, Breck, and Slate as he left. Gareth’s eyes never left Kade’s.

He moved closer, now that the space was vacant of one gangly male, and stood close to the younger male. The two looked at each other in silence, and then he looked up at the stars. “I’ve heard from a certain bird that you,” his gaze lowered again. Predatory, sharp yellow meeting silver, “Have something that doesn’t belong to you.”

Kade didn’t respond, not right away. He shifted his weight, sitting back on his haunches as he had been with Chuck; his posture as if he was holding a polite conversation. “Technically,” The raven corrected, “It was mine in the first place.”

Gareth’s eyes were empty. That wasn’t unusual, but there wasn’t so much as a spark of amusement at the comment. Kade knew he had to shift his tactic then. “You gifted it away,” The older male spoke. Those yellow eyes roamed over the other male, from his raven-dark beak, down to the other male’s talons, and up again. “Where is it?”

Kade took a moment, looking past Gareth to the two males behind him. Slate’s dark eyes gave nothing away, which wasn’t unexpected; and in its own way was an answer. Slate had no idea where or how this came about. Breck, however, couldn’t meet his eyes.

Mango. This had to be about Mango.

Kade inhaled, then turned on the spot. Gareth stayed rooted where he was, watching as the younger male stepped into his temporary den and then returned with the obsidian, clutched in one forefoot. He lifted it up, blunted, chipped talons holding it. Carefully, the older male plucked it from his grasp, rolling it over in his own talons for a moment. The pale moonlight, reflected from a waning moon, caught the shard, making the black, glass-like surface gleam. “Pretty,” Gareth commented.

He lifted it, inspecting it closer. The way it dipped and shifted, rather than being a smooth object. “Exotic,” Gareth commented, turning it over to inspect the other side. He ran the edge of a talon over one end of it and felt the sting. The scaled flesh of his toe beaded with blood. “Sharp.”

He held it, and his gaze returned to Kade. “Out of place.” He then moved the obsidian to his beak, and the familiar layer of warmth and dried berries bloomed in his brain. He rolled it once more before he moved that object to the feathers of his neck. He rolled it across his plumage, applying his unique stone warmth to the object, thoroughly saturating it in his own scent. He held it up again and inhaled. Liz’s scent was there, but so faint it might as well not exist. Gareth tossed the obsidian at Kade’s fores.

It clattered to the ground and was partly shattered, fracturing itself into two along one edge. “Easily broken,” Gareth commented, watching the shiny black object. Several emotions flickered through Kade’s eyes. Grief. Anger. Frustration. In the end, it settled into a cold emptiness that, in a way, mirrored his own gaze. The gold eagle looked over his shoulder at Slate. “Only food, water, and scent powders allowed through. From my runners alone. Any other object is to be taken and tossed off the side of the shelf.”

Slate was quiet for a moment, then he grunted acknowledgment.

Kade’s eyes were downturned. Not defeat, just lingering on the broken shard of obsidian, now carrying the older male’s scent and a faint undertone of citrus. “Cheer up. You’re helping out your new home with your sacrifice here. They may not realize it, or appreciate it, but I do.” Gareth commented as he looked back at Breck and Slate. He nodded his head once.

Gareth left. Breck, after a momentary glance at Kade, who was still lingering on the shard, still just staring, followed after.

“How long?” The older male asked quietly as they descended from the eighth shelf.

“What?” Breck asked.

“How long did you know?” Gareth asked, slowing his pace until the red-tailed hawk was at his shoulder.

“A day,” Breck admitted, looking down at his talons. “I saw him with it when I delivered food yesterday morning.”

“And you told me today. Why?” Gareth wasn’t accusing. Wasn’t angry. He was, instead, figuring out the motivation behind the act of loyalty.

“I-,” Breck looked away. When he looked back, something in his eyes had steeled. Gareth wasn’t sure if he liked the look, but the answer that followed was... plausible enough. “Your offer, of the hen I’d like. I thought about it all day. I couldn’t let you give me her without,” The hawk paused his movement, and the older eagle slowed his own pace as he did. “Without telling you the truth.”

Gareth stopped himself, looking at Breck. Looking for a tell. He saw none, and he clicked his beak. “Ironic, then, that you slowed your own reward with your guilt.”

Breck resumed walking, catching up to Gareth. They matched each other’s pace once more. “What do you mean?”

“The hen you interrupted earlier. She was to be yours. After.”

Breck couldn’t hide the brief rush of grief that came over his expression. Gareth pressed on, “Don’t worry. I’m sure she’ll come back in a day or two, then I’ll pass her to you. After today, that is the least I can do.”

“Thank you.” Breck managed quietly. He looked down, and for the rest of the trip to the fourth shelf, he couldn’t meet Gareth’s eye.

---

He didn’t know the female’s name. Like usual, it didn’t matter. He had her pinned, chest to the wall of his den, as he took out the night’s frustrations on her. She was rocking back against him as his fores gripped her hips. Standing up on their hindlegs wasn’t the easiest position, but he wanted it different. Different from what he almost had with Mango earlier. He grunted, shifting his beak to bite on the female’s scruff, tugging it as he worked the knot her gripping spade, feeling it stretch around the width of him.

He tugged that scruff again, talons on her hips tugging them backward as he shoved forward, and her moan echoed off the walls. His knot settled into that space designed to squeeze, to grip, and after a momentary spark of raw, animal pleasure, Gareth felt his balls tense, and the warmth of his climax blossom from his lower belly, and right into her. He looked straight ahead the entire time, the hen trembling against him as he flooded her womb with his seed.

Rico was back in the game, Liz was aware of the situation above, and his time with Mango had been interrupted. But he had learned something valuable from it, Breck had proven his loyalty, and he was in the process of continuing the genetic strength of the Flock. All in all, he had no complaints.

No more foreign objects. No more hope. No. Kade still had hope, Gareth admitted. But that was also calculated. Removing visits for the same sex would remove that hope, utterly; Gareth didn’t want that. A spark of hope kept things in line, while the removal backed any gryphon into a corner, and turned them... unpredictable.

Gareth shifted his weight, grinding forward to ensure that the hen beneath him gave another, taut squeeze around his knot. Another dose of his cum splashed into her.

Let Kade pine. Let him want. When the older male came back in a few days, he’d promise that for the rest of the year, Kade could be a free bird... pursue his love and romance when no hen was in heat. The younger, inexperienced male would take it. Desperate for the warmth. He’d lock the door to his own cage with his need.

He grabbed the hen and pulled her down to the floor of his den. She pressed in, cuddling in against him. He crossed his forelegs, resting his head on them as he kept one hindleg lifted, her hips tucked between his thighs.

One of his runners stopped then, briefly; the flush and want were evident as their eyes darted to the tied female. He looked until the cold glance from Gareth snapped them out of their desire. No words were exchanged, just a simple shake of the head. Gareth’s crest rose, and the edge of his beak turned up in a grin.

No shadow before the moon today.

Yes, Gareth decided, it had been a good day after all.

Mango’s mind had wandered, almost endlessly, from the previous night. She had gone to her den and struggled to fall asleep, the events with Gareth looping in her skull. She had gone to him with the confidence of knowing what she wanted, and everything looked like it was going in the right direction. The one moment of hesitation she had, when she saw his yellow eyes with an absence of warmth in them, vanished after he nipped at her neck, and the moment returned. Heated. Flushed - full of life. Then Breck had shown up, and the rest was a blur. The edge of penetration, the ache of him just parting the lips of her cunt, had lingered for hours. That edge of want that never progressed. It had left her wondering what she had done wrong the night before - what was so urgent that Gareth had left, not just that he had stopped what the season was for, but that he left without so much as a word toward her? She started to wonder, then, if it was her fault. Was she not passionate enough? Warm enough?

Her confusion and anxieties drove her toward the one den that she might get answers, though she wasn’t aware of it at the time. Her body and her mind were in disagreement; though they had been since the day her heat started.

“Mango?” The voice startled her out of her head, into the present. Her soft, orange eyes fluttered as she looked around at a few tattered and torn blankets, then at their owner. His crest was lifted in curiosity, rather than arousal; a slight difference in his scent gave it away. Wordlessly, Mango moved to sit on one of those torn blankets, and Rico waited.

Mango wasn’t sure where to start, but when she opened her beak, she found that she couldn’t stop. She explained everything. She began with her arrival at Gareth’s cluster of the fourth tier and ended with Breck and Gareth leaving. She left no detail out, and though she saw the moment of Rico being uncomfortable, as she talked in detail about feeling the press of Gareth against her, he paid attention and listened. He didn’t speak or interrupt; he just let her speak and get it off her chest.

“Why? Why did he just... leave?” Mango asked, looking down at her forelegs. “He didn’t even tell me why.” She had waited, afterward, for the better part of an hour before she finally left.

“Because,” Rico offered, then gestured at the spot beside Mango. She glanced at that empty spot, then bobbed her head. Rico scooted himself closer, filling the spot beside her with the warmth of his presence. “The season and Gareth don’t function with the same rules.”

“The... same rules?” Mango asked, confusion etched on every feather.

“The season works on warmth, passion, and desire. Sometimes, it goes to an extreme; some males can’t control themselves. Gareth is the opposite. He works on logic, facts, and certainty.”

Mango looked up at him, and his crest lowered the rest of the way at the pain etched in those orange eyes, “Did I do something wrong?”

The large male shook his head, his wing extended, hovering near but not touching her. She pushed back against it, and then he wrapped her in the warmth he offered, “No. Gareth is... not compatible with the season. Not with how you see it.”

She looked down at her talons again, clicking them against the fragment of blanket and the stone beneath. “I wanted him, though.”

“You wanted him as a hen wants a male,” Rico offered, looking down as he watched her gaze roam from his talons, up along the white path of his underbelly. Her gaze lingered steadily on the weight of his sheath and balls. The short, white fur that covered those two heavy objects was slightly ruffled, in the fashion of a male that had recently enjoyed himself and hadn’t quite groomed everything back into place.

He didn’t comment, letting her think and view. “I want you as a hen wants a male,” she finally spoke, still not managing to tear her eyes away. His laugh was soft and warm, and the exotic spice of him, already so strong, filled the small space even further. He couldn’t help the fact that he was, at least somewhat, aroused by her.

“No, you don’t. You want someone who is passionate and wants you, Mango. Not the hen. You. You may genuinely want me, and I am flattered, but I would be terrible for your first time.”

That snapped her attention, finally, away from the heavy weight she had been so admiring to that point, “Why?”

“Because,” Rico shifted his weight, hip slightly moving away from her, but letting her still see everything she wanted. “Gareth and I are the same, if fundamentally different.”

Mango’s confusion was genuine and warmed Rico’s heart. He squeezed with the wing he had draped around her, “Because, at the end of the day, my main goal is reproduction. Breeding,” he lifted a foreleg before Mango could interject. “That is what the season is for, and I am- I am good at what I do, but I have problems with attachment.”

Her orange eyes met his golden ones, so similar to Gareth’s. Where she had seen cold consumed by warmth the day before, in him, she saw pure desire. A longing that ran deep into Rico’s core. Mango, slowly, started to understand. “I should find someone who wants Mango,” she repeated.

The red-crested male nodded his head in agreement before watching as Mango’s head dipped down, looking at the weight of him again. His sheath had swollen, and the tip of a pre-dripping, crimson head had peeked free. “I can’t stop looking. At...” She lifted a forefoot, gesturing at Rico’s sheath and sac. “Not just yours, but...”

“Any male? You aren’t the only hen that does,” He offered warmly. “It’s flattering, really. It lets us know we have something worth admiring.”

Mango’s blush radiated warm against his side. “It’s embarrassing.”

“I imagine it is, the same way that learning you suddenly like something and have no control over it is startling to anyone. You’ll learn to control it, with time.”

“That’s... that’s good,” she made no move to leave, nor to touch him. She just watched the phases of arousal spike through his body in quiet fascination, and he let her. Giving her somewhere safe and warm to explore that side of herself, without allowing it to go further.

’Mango,’ he thought, ’Will make some male very happy.’

---

Liz knew, before Chuck arrived, that something was wrong. It was an unspoken weight in her stomach, a stone that settled heavily there with the coming of dawn and had refused to leave. Kestra tried to help her, but even her wild, over-the-top stories of sexual escapades couldn’t rile her to frustration. Kestra knew it was bad when she managed to steal Liz’s food, and her friend just automatically refilled her bowl with fresh berries and a side of roast fish without so much as a blink or comment.

Chuck sat down before them and, for a moment, Kestra thought that the other hen’s worries would fade. Instead, they only got worse, “Gareth tossed me out. I was leaving, but I overheard some of it. He- he took the obsidian.”

“Is he okay?” Liz asked, and the lanky male hesitated before he replied.

“Physically. I... I don’t know about emotionally. I didn’t go back, not after Gareth.” Liz couldn’t blame him for that, at least, though she wished he had just gone one day earlier. Then, maybe, they could have figured something out.

She shook her head, “Then, I’ll just have to give you something else to bring him, and-,” Kestra set a forefoot on one of hers. She turned her head to look at her friend.

“If Gareth knew about the obsidian, he’d know about that, too. Eventually,” The magpie quietly offered, handling her far gentler than she normally did, able to judge Liz’s mood with relative ease after so many years of friendship.

“Then-then...” Liz looked down at her food, untouched by her and partially stolen by Kestra. She was lost. That wasn’t her, and she knew it; even last year, she had a plan. Maybe a poorly thought-out one, but she had acted. But this was something entirely alien to her, something that she couldn’t wrap her mind around. She had come to care for a male for his scent alone, and now she was being told that she couldn’t so much as see him as she had planned for that day. That the gift she had picked with her heart, not with her body, had been casually discarded by the one pulling the strings. Her crest deflated, and a swirl of thoughts started to dart through her head. The weight, a stone in the pit of her stomach, only grew heavier.

“Don’t you worry, Liz,” Kestra shifted, looking toward Chuck. “Can you go back tonight? Tell Kade that... that there will be a brief opening tomorrow night?”

The osprey blinked slowly, “Opening?”

“Yes. I don’t want to say more, just in case. Just let Kade know that tomorrow night, there will be...” The near-opinicus paused for a moment, “That someone is going to be there to see him.”

Chuck frowned, the edges of his beak turned down, and his eyes flashed with mild confusion. He hadn’t followed along, but he at least had something he could do. That alone made things a bit better. “I can do that. I’ll go up tonight,” he offered, “and let Kade know.”

“Why can’t we just go tonight? Why wait a day?” Liz asked, following along and, while not grasping exactly what her friend had in mind, was far too eager to escalate the situation. Kestra lifted a foreleg, squeezing her shoulder.

“Gareth just found out about the shard. He’ll undoubtedly have someone watching to see if we rush into things. If things stay quiet tonight, he’ll think we’ve backed off,” Kestra explained.

Liz couldn’t argue that, but she also wasn’t overly happy with it. She pushed a berry around with her talon, a berry that the magpie soon snatched in front of her. The glare that Liz tossed her brought a grin to Kestra’s beak.

“Tomorrow,” She chirped, popping the berry into her beak.

---

Breck was moving slower than he usually did, the previous night’s events playing on a loop in his head. Mango under Gareth, Kade’s expression when the shard broke, the look Kade gave him afterward. One of understanding, rather than pain. In some ways, that made it worse. Hurt and pain he had expected, but the understanding, the acceptance of it, stung in ways he couldn’t explain.

The worst was when he closed his eyes and saw the events play out differently; he arrived too late, and then Gareth warmly offered him his reward for his loyalty. ‘Near virginal.’

Breck leaned over the ledge, and the contents of his stomach splashed down onto the rocks below.

His body was still shaking, stomach still contracting, when suddenly he heard the rapid approach of talons. He had hardly turned when Chuck’s body slammed into his. It was either luck or Chuck’s lanky, still not fully controlled frame that kept them from toppling over the ledge onto the rocks below. The taller male’s eyes were raw, burning with fury in a way that Breck had never seen him before. This was something deep in Chuck’s soul, and from the tremble in his body, every moment of it cost him something.

Talons dug into Breck’s shoulders, lifting him up and then slamming him down with surprising strength. He saw stars bloom before his eyes. “Why?!” Chuck growled, his tone far more canine than avian, as tended to happen with such emotions.

Breck already knew what was being asked, and he looked away, not meeting the other male’s eyes. Chuck used that physical strength, a strength his body was just now learning of, to slam the smaller male down again. Breck didn’t resist.

“You did nothing. You-you let Kade suffer,” Chuck’s body was shaking further, and his talons relaxed their grip. “Let others suffer. Why? Why?”

Breck slowly rolled his head, his teal eyes meeting the osprey’s amber. The anger and frustration in Chuck were real, but there was sorrow there, too. A sorrow that he could understand, but also couldn’t make any better. “I’m a coward.”

The taller male’s expression went from confusion to anger, and back to confusion again. His ears flicked with each expression as he tried to comprehend it. “What... what does that have to do with it?”

Breck looked away again. “Mango.”

That confusion only deepened. “What does she have to do with it? With any of it?”

“He let it happen to protect Mango. I-he... Gareth had Mango in his den last night,” outside of it, technically, but that didn’t matter; the results would have been the same, “I panicked, said the only thing I knew that would get him to leave before he...” Breck swallowed, scooting back rapidly from Chuck as his body vibrated. Chuck was stunned into inaction, and Breck vomited over the ledge once more.

He looked back afterward and found the ledge empty. Chuck had left him without a word, and he hadn’t expected better.

“I’m sorry,” Breck whispered to no one in particular, and everyone.

---

Kade turned over the broken shard of obsidian in his chipped, blunted talons. The smell of Gareth lingered strongly upon it. Kade hadn’t known what to do with it, and finally, emotion won out over anything else. His foreleg flexed, and he flicked the shard, tossing it over the ledge to the Bowl beneath. It bounced several times on the rock face, somewhere between tiers six and five, then Kade lost sight of it. His ears flicked, hearing the approach of talons, and he looked over to see Chuck walk up to Slate.

Slate, this time, didn’t let Chuck pass. Chuck’s discomfort was evident, even from the distance Kade was at. Chuck tried again, and Slate blocked the path once more. When Chuck stopped moving, just staring in disbelief, the compact male stepped forward, then sat back on his haunches as he moved his talons through Chuck’s plumage. Afterward, he nodded his head and stepped aside. The new reality - a search upon arrival.

Chuck approached and said nothing, only looked down at the tiny piece of broken obsidian that lay on the ground, the fracture of the whole that Kade had just flung off the edge. “Breck told me.”

Kade nodded his head, “Is she okay?”

Chuck wasn’t sure which ‘she’ the other male meant, so he took a slow, deep breath, “Liz is- processing. Not happy. Mango is safe, from what I can tell. He-,” He swallowed hard. He hadn’t forgiven Breck, but now he understood. Understood that taste of guilt, as he wasn’t sure he would have done any different. “He found Gareth over Mango, about to-,” Chuck couldn’t finish, and Kade nodded his head in understanding.

“I’m not sure I would have had the strength to do what Breck did.”

“Strength?” Chuck’s crest lifted, then flattened as he tilted his head.

“He stuck with his newfound conviction, even at the cost of those around him: protect Mango. It’s honest and pure, but it’s also...” The larger male looked down at his talons. “I assume he’s beating himself up right now?”

Chuck looked away at that, “He had a little help with it.”

Kade’s chuckle was soft, but understanding. The osprey came closer, and the two sat side-by-side, looking out at the setting sun in the afternoon for a time. Eventually, Kade broke the gentle silence, “You wanted to tell me something yesterday? Before Gareth’s...” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.

Chuck didn’t reply right away, and Kade allowed the silence to return. Finally, he opened his beak, then closed it as he glanced over at Slate. “Can we talk in your den?”

Kade blinked, then he looked over at the still, emotionless Slate, “I don’t think the walls can hear.”

Chuck shook his head, “But they can speak.”

He looked at Chuck for a moment, then nodded his head and stood. The other male stood with him, and the two moved their way toward the den that Kade had spent so much time digging out. While he had stopped the dig over the past two days, letting his talons recover, he had made enough space within that he could fit comfortably. Even Chuck could fit, but their bodies were quite close. Close enough that their body heat comfortably overlapped, filling the usually chilly confines with a newfound warmth.

The long-limbed male looked around, and his gaze lingered on the blanket he had made. “You got to keep that.” It wasn’t a question, but rather a statement.

“I don’t think they care overly about a blanket,” Kade commented as he used a forefoot to tug it out, spreading it to cover the stony, rocky floor of the cave. He gestured to it, and Chuck joined him in lying across it.

“It’s... cozy?” Chuck offered, his tail thumping against one wall while Kade shifted two more blankets around to cover the space and make it as comfortable as he could.

“Cramped,” Kade corrected, before settling in on his hip.

“So, what was it you didn’t want the walls to hear?”

---

Chuck didn’t answer right away; instead, he looked around at everything but Kade. He let this happen, sitting comfortably in silence until Chuck finally found the words he needed. “I talked with Rico.”

“What about?” The large male shifted slightly, finding himself dealing with a stone digging into his hip.

“About me. About you,” Chuck looked down, finding his talons interesting. “Us.”

He stayed quiet, not for lack of things to say, but to let the other male process and speak at his own pace. Eventually, that pace came as Chuck continued, “The mounting practice, a few days ago. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I thought it was just - just an accident. The motions and movement, the season, all combining into...”

“Into what happened,” Kade provided, keeping it as gentle as he could.

“Yeah, but, I-,” Chuck took a slow, deep breath. He then lifted his hindleg, the one he wasn’t resting the weight of his hip upon, and showed the bigger male what lay between it. His pale white sheath was plump, full, and it was partially peeled back, the red tip of him exposed and dripping precum. “I realized it wasn’t just happening then. It happened whenever I thought of you. Of that day.”

The osprey’s ears were visibly pink, even in the rapidly fading light of the setting afternoon sun. “I had a feeling,” Kade offered, softly, as he scooted in closer to the other male. Not quite touching, but close.

“A feeling?”

“You kept coming back. To see me. Rather than being down below, in the season, you spent hours outside of it. With me,” he tilted his head a bit, “I gave you all the practice you needed, but you kept coming back.”

“I- because of Liz!” Chuck tried to defend it, and Kade’s eyes were vibrant. Warm. The silver became a colour he didn’t recognize.

“Chuck,” The raven commented quietly.

“Yes?”

Kade didn’t respond vocally; he reached down, grasping the warmth of Chuck’s sheath and giving it a squeeze. Chuck’s forelegs shot out, a gasp leaving his beak, as talons gripped the larger male’s sides. Not with the threatening energy of Slate, but with raw desire, suddenly being given permission to act. His hips jerked forward, and Kade’s fore stroked down with the motion, that pale sheath pulsing in the warmth of his grasp. He shifted, and he scooted forward until his own sheath, now as warm and full as Chuck’s, pressed into the somewhat smaller male.

“O-oh,” Chuck looked down, blushing, as he saw the two side-by-side. “You’re...” He gulped, “That’s big.” Kade’s sheath was a third again the size of his, and the warmth of the bigger male’s own balls, which now rested heavy and pressed against his inner thigh, was that and more to his own.

“Chuck,” Kade commented, and amber eyes met his. He leaned forward and nipped at the white plumage of the osprey’s throat, and the gasp was answer enough. He started to slowly roll his hips and, after a moment, Chuck joined in, matching the movement. Kade’s talons gripped the smaller male’s hips, slowing those motions, then released. When Chuck’s pace resumed, he gasped out; now grinding up as Kade rolled down, and down as that dark sheath pressed up against him.

In the tight, confined heat of that dug-out den, the sea-salt scent of Chuck had that warmer, sharper note to it that reminded Kade of the warmth of the beach. Chuck, meanwhile, was introduced to the larger males in the most honest way possible - a jet of precum spurting up, splashing across his belly. He smelled of the alpine woods that surrounded the Crag, a hint of warmth and rock, and - stronger than all of it - an animalistic, wolfish musk that almost overwrote Chuck’s entirely.

Both males were hard now, and Kade’s weight shifted up. Chuck watched as Kade’s cock now bobbed over him, and while he leaned up to nuzzle the underside of that thick, surprisingly dark-skinned cock, he was suddenly reminded of the obsidian shard. It was the same colour as that. He was just getting used to the sticky warmth now coating his beak when his hips jerked, an involuntary hump as Kade’s hindpaw came down to rub along it.

There was none of the dexterity that Kade’s fore had, but there was a warmth and softness that Chuck couldn’t argue against. Quite the opposite, his hips jerking upward, rolling the full weight of his cock against the pad of that hindpaw. He humped, pleasure spiking, as he continued to nuzzle the underside of Kade’s cock, which bobbed and throbbed just overhead. Chuck felt sticky strands of precum leak down in gooey ropes, marking the feathers of his crest, which, at that moment, was fully lifted in arousal.

Kade moved after a moment, leaving him to squirm on his back, eyes glazed over and looking up in momentary confusion. The raven hadn’t just shifted to rub against him, but had moved away; Chuck opened his beak to question, when talons tugged his hips. That question dissolved into a squawk, and soon he found himself being rolled onto his belly. Those long hindlegs scrambled underneath him, hindpaws tearing the seams of the blanket he had sewn himself.

Two things happened faster than Chuck could properly process, aside from the sharp spark of pleasure igniting behind his eyes - the warmth of that forefoot encircling his knot, giving it a squeeze that rapidly made it start to swell up with the simulated tie, and then the damp heat of a tongue. A tongue not on his cock, but under his tail, which shot straight up as Chuck moaned. Loudly. It bounced off the walls of the recently expanded den, and he found he couldn’t keep quiet as Kade’s tongue kept lapping over the trembling rim of his tailhole.

Chuck’s talons curled, his tail hiked straight up, and he was torn between humping into the grip around his cock, and the lapping warmth under his tail. The latter drove the point further as the tip of that flexing tongue pushed against, then partly into, that tight hole. His whole body tensed up, and Kade continued his ministrations as Chuck’s hindpaws started to dance, his weight shifting back and forth as his knot filled out to the point of a tie. Then, the larger male tugged firmly behind it as his tongue gave a long, dragging lick from the squirming male’s taint to that trembling, flexing tailhole.

Chuck’s cum splashed warm against Kade’s talons and over the blanket below. The full release of a male who had been through several days of being surrounded by hens in heat and hadn’t had a moment of release. Talons kept stroking and squeezing, tongue still licking under that flicking tail, until the pulses of that cock started to lessen, and the splatter of cum thinned out.

Chuck slumped forward, into a pool of his own mess, which soaked into the brown-and-white plumage of his chest. He rolled over, eyes unfocused, and noticed two things quickly - Kade was still hard, and he hadn’t cum yet. He reached up with a fore, then wrapped it around that thick shaft. He found that it wasn’t just heavy, it was also very warm. Precum flowed constantly over his talons and dripped down upon his soaked, white underbelly.

Chuck continued this for some time, his movement picking up as he recovered from his own release. Kade was panting, beak parted above as he looked down into the osprey’s eyes. The warmth of two males finding the desire for each other, and Chuck decided he very much wanted to make Kade cum. His talon stroked faster, and those powerful hips lost their control, humping into that grip as those dark wings unfurled. The sun had set by now, and in the total darkness, those wings appeared as inky black, even though Chuck knew better. “The knot,” Kade growled.

Chuck didn’t quite follow, but he touched the knot with his other fore, “Behind. Squeeze behind,” Came the growled instruction, whole body trembling above. His talons shifted from the front to the back of that knot and gripped. The result was almost instant, and he watched closely at every little movement. Kade’s growl bubbled low and warm in his chest, crest lifted fully atop his head as those unfurled wings trembled. The thick shape of that knot ballooned further in Chuck’s grasp, pulsing and warm, and the full weight of dark, black-furred balls pulled taut. Then Kade moaned, and Chuck decided he definitely liked that noise.

He felt the liquid warmth of another male splash over his body, and he extended his tongue. Salt and musk rushed through his senses as several spurts coated Chuck’s beak and tongue, though plenty of that warmth coated his chest. Kade came hard, Chuck noted; harder than he did. He didn’t know if that was a quirk of Kade or just a quirk of how... big the other male was.

He decided it didn’t matter.

The larger male’s shaky legs collapsed, and the air left Chuck’s lungs as Kade’s body landed on his. Thankfully, gryphons were sturdy, and he found he didn’t mind the heat of the larger male’s body on his own; nor the still lightly pulsing cock against his, though his was beginning to retreat into his sheath. “That was...”

“Good.” Kade finished, and Chuck nodded his head. Those silver eyes roamed over the mess that was Chuck’s chest, and his eyes, warm and bright in that way of having just recently cum, suddenly had a different brightness surge into them. He lifted his weight partially onto three of his legs, using the fourth and his talons to start rubbing the lingering mess of cum into the plumage of Chuck’s chest. The satisfied osprey stayed quiet, and his eyes asked the unspoken question: What are you doing?

“Tomorrow,” Kade murmured, still working that sticky mess into Chuck’s plumage, “Let Liz smell you.”

“Smell... me?” He asked. The other male didn’t respond for a moment, and eventually Chuck figured it out on his own. “She’ll smell you. Us.”

Kade’s talons kept working that thick mess into his feathers, ensuring that that thick, heady scent of male sex and Kade’s musk would carry. “Is it odd that I find this strangely hot?” Chuck admitted, while his ears flicked and tinted pink. Thankfully, the raven missed it in the dark.

“I do, too,” Kade admitted, before he slowly rested against the warmth of the other male. He pressed his beak in against those feathers and inhaled deeply... then bobbed his head.

“Won’t she... get mad?” Chuck asked, feeling the weight of Kade above him and finding he, increasingly, was enjoying it.

“She might,” He answered, honestly. Chuck looked up at him, then nodded his head.

“I’ll do it.”

Kade’s beak hooked over Chuck’s, that large, broad raven bill resting warmly over the osprey’s hooked one. “Do you mind-,” Chuck’s question was interrupted by the bigger male rolling onto his side, whereupon he grabbed and tugged him in against his underside. Chuck’s mind raced, but mostly, he was comfortable and content. His hips pushed back, tucking his rump between Kade’s thighs, and he found he didn’t mind the weight of that heavy sheath against his ass. That thought lingered, warmly, as he drifted to sleep, tucked against that warmth.

---

Slate sat alone that night, looking out over the Crag. Multiple couples had bred, as was the season, and Slate continued his watch while doing his best to ignore it all. He found it much harder to ignore the noises and scents from behind him, though he mostly managed. The full swell of his sheath, the gray fur peeled back to expose the pale pink of his tapered, leaking tip, showed that he wasn’t as good at ignoring it as the piece of rock he generally resembled.

When the gasping moan of release came, Slate focused hard on the horizon. At the moon. The peaks in the distance. Then came a far more carnal, dominant growl that set even his feathers on edge. He looked back, noted that noise that didn’t belong in the throat of any first-year male, and wondered, idly, which of the two that noise came from.

As the night continued, neither Kade nor Chuck emerged from the den, and Slate figured that there was nothing wrong with that. Nothing had been smuggled in, no hens - he wasn’t told to stop males. Two males can’t reproduce, so Gareth wouldn’t care. He took a moment, looking down at the exposed head of his cock, a droplet of precum oozing down the underside, then back at the den entrance behind him.

Slate couldn’t help but find the bitter irony in the whole situation, that the prisoner got laid before the warden did.

He stood, shaking his body to work out the tension, then decided he’d try to get some sleep while he could.

Tomorrow was another day.