Pigeon snaps aggressively at the white gryphon again, and I’m taken aback by the hostile, violent feel of the pairing. The white gryphon bites the back of Pigeon’s neck, and she feels pissed and immediately satisfied, which I find confusing as fuck.
Deep laughter rumbles through my mind, and my head snaps around, looking for the source.
Don’t tell me that was the other gryphon.
“It seems they were done being patient with us,” Treno tells me as our gryphons start to do their thing.
“What, how am I hearing you?” I demand, panicked.
I feel like I’m sitting in the middle of some fucked up cockpit with no means of escape while gryphons do the dirty in the background and Treno does some weird ass National Geographic voice-over.
“We’re mates, we can push thoughts to each other like this,” Treno tells me, a hint of surprise in the tone of his explanation. “I would ask if you knew that, but it’s clear that you didn’t,” he adds.
“We can hear each other all the time?” I question, my pitch a little too high and completely giving away the hysteria I feel right now.
“No, only when we push thoughts at each other purposefully. And only like this…” he trails off for a moment. “Although I have heard of mates who could do it when they aren’t shifted, but I’ve never heard you or been able to reach out mentally when we aren’t,” he quickly adds when I mentally clutch my chest and start to hyperventilate.
Oh wait, that’s not me, that’s Pigeon having a really good time.
I rein in my side-eye and try to focus on Treno’s voice instead of what’s happening outside of my head. It’s a little too weird for me to wrap my mind around.
Fuck, is this how Pigeon feels when I’m enjoying myself?
I make a note to ask her later, as she’s very occupied right now. Treno’s words register and I pause, thinking back to the times that it seemed like Zeph could read my mind or would mysteriously react to a thought I was having. Irritation simmers inside of me as I realize that maybe Treno can’t connect with me at all times, but I strongly suspect that another one of my mates can. I shake my head, and a flood of wonder hits me about what he might have heard without me knowing.
How the hell can he do that, yet I’ve never picked up on a stray thought from him?
Treno chuckles again, and I narrow my mental eyes at him. “This is how it should be, flower, don’t worry about it. Our gryphons need each other as much as we do. This strengthens our bond with each other and them.”
“I get that, but how do you not feel like a perv?”
A wave of pleasure crashes through me, answering the question I never thought to wonder about before, that gryphons do, in fact, have orgasms.
“It is a little...different, but we’ll get used to it in time,” he reassures me, and I chuckle.
There’s no use denying the in time part of his statement or pretending that this will never happen again. I knew as soon as I accepted Treno and chose to be intimate with him, I was accepting my connection with not just him but with Ryn and Zeph too. I wait for the worry that I’ve been feeling for a while in regard to my connections with Treno, Zeph, and Ryn to surface again, but surprisingly it doesn’t.
I’m almost tempted to argue with the lack of concern flowing through me that there’s no way to be sure they’ll stay like this, but it’s like my soul has no room for doubt or suspicion.
“Are you alright?” Treno asks, pulling me from my soul observations.
His question throws me off for a moment. Am I?
“Are you?” I slingshot back.
“Yes, our disconnect was killing me,” he confesses.
Empathy washes through me, along with some other things Pigeon is experiencing. Damn, I didn’t know gryphons got down like that, I observe, twisting my head to try and understand the angles going on.
I focus back on Treno and his thoughts. “You know that what happened between the Avowed and the Hidden wasn’t your fault, right?” I ask, and Treno is silent for a beat too long. “Treno, I know you’re questioning everything and trying to understand why you didn’t see things sooner, but you have to consider the circumstances surrounding you too before you decide that you’re the only one responsible for the state of this world,” I tell him.
A screech of joy fills my head, and I focus on Pigeon, quickly wishing I hadn’t.
“Well, that’s certainly one way to use a tail,” Treno comments, a little stunned.
I laugh and then try to scrub the visual away, returning to what Treno and I are discussing.
“The battle about the Vow and the Gryphons started long before you were born, Treno. The Gryphons were barely even free and absolutely not at all recovered from what happened with the Ouphe when the fight for power started between your parents’ generation. You grew up in a brutal time, believing people you loved about the Vow and what it meant for you and those around you,” I point out. “I’m sorry that it took you until now to see the other side of things, but it’s not like the nature of the Gryphons in general is to sit and talk things out, it’s definitely much more of a ‘rip someone apart first and ask questions later’ kind of culture,” I point out.
Treno chuckles a little, and the sound of it makes me feel all warm and gooey.
“I’m not saying that the self-reflection you’re doing is bad or that you shouldn’t feel the way that you do, but at least give yourself some credit. As soon as you saw the other side of things, you’ve been working to better the situation. Not everyone would do that, and you should realize
