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©Copyright 2023 by -Lilly Wilder All rights reserved.
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Fighting For The Pride
Menage Fantasy Romance
By: Lilly Wilder
Chapter 1
Ava
“Is this really all there is?” I asked. I stood at the window that opened out to the world. A long rope stretched down, a path down to the barren land below. Once this had been a lush world, a world filled with creatures and beasts and delicious fruits, of long-leaved trees that stretched high into the air and provided a canopy of shade, allowing the small beasts to forage and flourish, allowing color to burst before them and make the world look like a painting.
But that was a long time ago. Years had slipped by and little by little that color had been stripped away. Now the only greenery that was left was small slivers of plants that battled through the hard, dusty ground and shot up searching for life. I pitied them, for they were not going to find it. I held my hands clasped behind my back and stuck my chin out, gazing defiantly at the azure sky and the searing light that glowed as it struck the surface of the land, our land.
“This is our kingdom,” he replied. Darrow, the elder, spoke in a droll tone, always convinced that he had the answers. His face was long, his skin almost as dry as the land around us.
“It’s not much of a kingdom,” I scoffed.
I could feel him narrow his eyes at me. “This is our home and we should be proud of it.”
“This is just a place that our ancestors were sent to, but it’s changed. Maybe we should go back and tell the ones who sent us here that things have gone wrong.”
“You seek Orestes? If such a place exists then surely it would be beyond your grasp girl.”
“Nothing is beyond my grasp. And you shall address me as Lioness. Has your mind been so addled by age and the sun that you have forgotten I am in command here?”
He murmured his disapproval and clenched his teeth. “Your father would never have spoken like this.”
“My father was a fool,” I spat, “as was his father before him. I come from a line of fools Darrow, and my only hope is that I can break the cycle.”
“And just how are you going to break it?”
“By finding Orestes,” I said.
Darrow just laughed. “If there are still lions in Orestes, if such a place exists, then they have long forgotten about us. If we were still in their thoughts then they would have sent someone out here to check on us.”
“If they have forgotten about us then it is up to me to remind them. Is it fair that we should be forced to die out here? Because that’s what’s happening. The sun saps the land. The hunting parties have to run out farther and farther to find a scrap of food, and there is no chance for the crops to grow in this dust,” I sighed heavily as I listed all the problems that we faced. “We are dying Darrow. That is the truth of it.”
“As long as we are alive there is still hope. As long as you sire an heir then the pride continues.”
I pursed my lips. All he’d done ever since I had taken my father’s place as leader of this pride was try to get me to sire an heir. I suspected he wanted me to have a son so that he could rush the prince into the position of King and push me away, for he did not like that I disagreed with him.
“And you believe that continuing this,” I gestured towards the land with an open palm, “is all that we can hope for? Do you think that surviving is as good as living?”
“I believe that this is our home and we should do all we can to restore its glory. I believe that pride is more than a description of our community, that it means we should greet each sun with open eyes and refuse to yield, even when the world changes. This place is our home. There is history here that seeps into the ground, a history that we cannot simply abandon.”
“Every place has history Darrow, and the thing with history is that it always gets forgotten in the end. Do you think that anyone will care about history when they walk across our bones and hear the whispers of our regrets on the wind? Everything we are will be buried here along with everything else.”
“That is why you need an heir, so that the pride can continue.”
“Perhaps it shouldn’t continue. Everything has to die someday.”
