I moan as spurt after spurt lands on me. He still has so much to give, even after drinking gulps and gulps of his cum from just a little while before. Kiphians are truly something else.

With a loud thud, Taurek crashes down on the blankets beside me. As we both catch our breath, I scoot over to rest my head on his chest. He wraps the blanket back around us both.

“So…” I look up at Taurek with a smile. “Would you want to go for another round?” He lets out a loud booming laugh. So loud I’m sure it can be heard through the blizzard all the way down the mountain.

“You haven’t had enough, you beautiful, crazy girl?”

“How can there be such a thing when you’re with a Kiphian Prince?”

I happily close my eyes to the sound of his laughter. The last thing I remember before slipping away fully is Taurek kissing the top of my head.

The next morning, I wake up with a jolt. He’s already dressed and out of the blankets, and the sounds of his preparations to move on have me stirring, even as tired as I am.

I yawn and look up.

“Ah. You’re up.”

“Apparently. Um. Something happening?”

“Yeah.”

The blanket falls off me, and I catch Taurek’s mind taking a brief sojourn into the deep valley between my tits.

I raise my eyebrows. “Uh-huh? What is it?”

He jerks his head as if waking himself up. “Right.

“The trail we were taking. It’s not a trail anymore.” He raises his arm and points upward, and I see a tangle of ice and snow, almost like layers of spiderwebs, making the route we had planned impassable.

“Okay. So what are we going to do now?”

17

TAUREK

“We have to keep moving.” As much as I’d like to stay with Zaya alone in this cave a little longer, Hanai needs us to complete our mission.

The blizzard has yet to truly slow down, but that can’t matter. We’re almost there. There is no other option but to keep fighting forward.

“How do we…?” Zaya looks at the mouth of our cave. Snow has piled so high on our planned trail that it might as well be more mountain wall. There is no trekking through it, even on a chordata. “We’re trapped.”

“If I can get a little higher, I could get a better view of what we’re dealing with,” I say.

“How exactly do you plan –” She looks at my crampon talons, which answers her question before she finishes asking. “Oh, right. Just… be careful.”

Kiphians from the Mountain Kingdom are born climbers. This will be nothing but a simple exercise for me.

I position myself at the mouth of the cave. A large shard of ice has formed on the wall just outside, giving me a perfect path up. My talons easily sink into the ice, and I climb up the wall.

With each of my movements, I can feel the ice cracking beneath me as the blizzard’s winds slam everything in its path, including me. One wrong movement, and I could come crashing down.

I stop for a moment to take in the situation. I’m still not high enough to get a good view. I need to get higher.

“Are you okay?” I can barely hear Zaya over the roar of the wind. Still, the concern in her voice registers loud and clear.

“Fine!” Through the wind and the snow, I can barely make out Zaya’s face from here. I am fine. But that doesn’t mean I can’t easily die. But there’s no other choice. Part of surviving here means being fine even in circumstances that are anything but. If you crumble against the first brush with death, you’ll never get out alive.

I keep climbing. The ice gets shakier. The wind gets stronger. The air gets thinner. I can’t even make out Zaya’s figure below anymore.