My own scales hang in tatters now. The shed progresses faster when aroused, body trying to renew itself for breeding. Sheets of dead tissue catch on everything. The new scales beneath weep clear fluid, so sensitive that air movement makes me hiss.
But rage overrides pain when I smell them marking near her.
I drop directly into their path, all thirty-three feet landing with calculated impact. The ground shakes. Water in nearby pools ripples outward.
“Territory marked.” My hood extends to half—warning, not full threat. Yet. “Female claimed for breeding.”
“Not bred,” S'var counters, trying to inflate his small hood. “Hunt-law states?—”
“Hunt-law assumes typical prey.” I move forward, using size to crowd him. “This female maps territory. Sets traps. Thinks like a hunter. She's mine to claim properly.”
“She smells ready,” K'ret says, tongue flicking rapidly. “Her cunt weeps for eggs. Any male's eggs.”
The possessive rage makes my hemipenes pulse so hard they almost emerge from their pouch. The thought of their inferior seed in her womb, their malformed eggs where mine should grow?—
My tail strikes before conscious thought. K'ret flies into a tree hard enough to crack bark. Not dead. Damaged enough to remember.
“She'll carry my clutch. Forty eggs at least. Maybe fifty if she takes both breeding cycles.” I let them smell my certainty. “Your weak seed might give her ten. Fifteen. Waste of her modifications.”
“Share her,” M'lor suggests, always trying to negotiate. “Multiple males, multiple clutches?—”
“No.” The word comes out with venom spray. Acidic drops that make them stumble back. “Every egg she carries will be mine. Every clutch. Every season until she can't breed anymore.”
They believe violence faster than words. Young males always do. They retreat, but hover at territory edges. Waiting. The smell of her draws them like gravity.
She emerges at sunset, naked except for tactical pants torn at the crotch. Her body shows the modification's progress—skin flushed, nipples dark and swollen, pussy lips visible through soaked fabric. Her body screams fertility to every male in three territories.
But she's built defenses. Deadfalls. Spike pits. Clever placement that shows she thinks like someone planning to fight, not just survive.
I leave supplies at the usual spot. Water. Meat that will sustain her. Fruit for energy. And something calculated—a piece of shed skin still warm from my body. Still carrying my musk, my pheromones, the chemical signature that says breeder, claimed, mine .
She finds them after I retreat. The shed skin makes her whole body convulse. Just holding it floods her with my compatibility markers. She orgasms immediately, pussy clenching in patterns I recognize—her body practicing for my anatomy.
“Bastard,” she gasps, but pockets the skin.
I mark wider boundaries as darkness falls. Claw marks at specific heights. Musk trails that promise violence in chemical language. And something new—I masturbate at each cardinal point, letting my pre-cum paint the trees. The primary leaves thick trails that glow faintly in moonlight. The secondary's contribution is different—thinner, designed to mark rather than lubricate.
The young males will smell it. Will know I'm so aroused I can't stop myself from marking. Will understand the female is claimed by someone whose body demands to breed her.
I don't sleep. Can't sleep.
The shed reaches critical stage. Whole sheets of scales hang like torn fabric. The new ones beneath are baby-soft, pink-raw, weeping lymph fluid. Every movement is agony. Every breath burns. My cocks pulse with need that borders on pain, fully emerged now but still hidden in their pouch, leaking so much pre-cum it runs down my ventral scales in streams.
My body wants to breed. Demands it. Forty eggs wait in my internal chambers, fully formed, ready to plant. They'll stay viable for days, but the pressure builds hourly. Serpents who don't release eggs during shed often die from the backup. Internal rupture. Poisoned by our own fertility.
She's dying too, in her way. Five days of the tonic has pushed her past human limits. She crawls more than walks. Humps everything—trees, rocks, the ground itself. Her pussy stays swollen open, ready, begging for eggs it doesn't understand yet.
The young males multiply. Five now. Two new ones from the eastern territory, drawn by her scent that carries for kilometers. They don't hide anymore. They let her see them. Circling. Tightening. Testing my boundaries.
Tonight. They'll attack tonight.
I mark frantically now. Obsessively. Can't stop myself from spreading pre-cum on every surface. The primary leaves puddlesof it. The secondary creates spiral patterns on bark, practicing the motion it will make inside her. My body prepares for breeding with or without my mind's permission.
I approach her shelter openly.
Let her see all thirty-three feet moving through morning mist. Hood partially extended. Scales hanging in grotesque patterns that show the soft tissue beneath. I look vulnerable. Damaged. Exactly what the young ones are waiting to see.
She emerges to meet me. Naked now except for those ruined tactical pants. Her body shakes constantly—exhaustion, need, fury at both.
