Don't be like the sun: please review the rating and warnings for this book before crossing this line. I only aim to scar those looking to be maimed.

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"Kovu! Eeeeee!" We fall lightly among the wild grass and let the gentle blades stroke along our fur. She's still laughing when I wrap my paws around her middle and pull her back against my stomach, turning us over to look up at the glowing late afternoon sky. She leans her head back to nuzzle against my cheek. The day's hunting and patrolling is over and the rest of the pride is so far away – there are no cares in the world to be found. All we need in this moment is each other and the love we've built together. "You're too sweet."

            "You're too much."

            "That's not what you said yesterday. Or what you'll be saying in five minutes." She rubs her lower back against my stomach and I nip at the back of her neck playfully.

            "Of course not, when you're teasing me like that." She rolls back against me, slower and more forcefully than before. "Come here."

            "Eeeeee!" I lock my paws back around her and we turn back over, almost making it back to our feet before she scrambles away and takes off without me. "Come and get me!"

            "You act like you don't like me!"

            "No, I like you too much! Come on!" We soar across the billowing grasslands and toward the rocky outcropping we spend way too much time resting and reposing in. It's our hideaway from the rest of the world. No river-drinkers, no prey, no hunters, no trees, no vegetation, no audiences. Just us and the sun on a waterless beach.

            She leaps down from the shadows and lands partially on top of me, tugging roughly at my ear while we wrestle in the sandy soil, nails clawing at the smooth rock walls and powerful jaws carefully nibbling at each other's necks. Eventually, she gives in – mostly out of the pity her desperate urgency inspires – and she drags her paws across the sand, swishing her tail to lure me closer. I oblige and press my weight down against her back, immediately bringing my hips forward to meet hers and tightly gripping the ruff of her neck between my incisors. It doesn't matter that this is our fourth time today. The passion never fades away.

            Less than thirty seconds, and no more than a hundred lunges pass before the friction gets to be too much and our moaning comes to an end. I carefully unhook my teeth from her silky orange fur and I sprawl over on my side, falling over to lay next to her and hold her against me again. Our breathing slowly settles and she buries her face in my mane, nuzzling back and forth against me for what feels like hours.

            This is our paradise.

---

            "A little bird told me I would find you two here."

            "AAAHHH!" Kiara awakes with a start and jolts up to her feet, hackles raised, claws revealed, and teeth bared. I am on my feet, but my fear response isn't anywhere near as violent. Simba saunters into the clearing, his paws leaving dusty pawprints in our perfectly flat, untouched sand. He has a casual smile on his face, a smile that others might consider charming. I would rather be anywhere else than here. "We aren't late. Yet."

            "No, you aren't late– not in coming home, anyway." He walks toward the rocky wall on Kiara's side, slowly circling back toward us. I don't like this situation.

            "We'll be home soon. The sun just went down a little bit ago," she insists, probing to see if he has any intention of going back home without us. His body language and continued circling tell me that he does not.

            "There's no rush. I just wanted to come check up on you two. You've been away from Pride Rock a lot recently." I let Kiara try to desperately keep the conversation going. I can hope that at least one of us is getting out of this tonight. I pray to the Kings of the Past that he somehow forgot.

            "We've been exploring. We found this place, and a new zebra herd, a-and the watering hole down by the Southlings' border? It got refilled from the r-rain season!" She puts on a thin mask of excitement but it isn't helping. It never helps, and it definitely makes no difference in times like this.

            "That's great. You'll have to tell me all about it tomorrow." He walks past her and slowly circles behind me. I can't fight the urge to sit down and wrap my tail around myself.

            "H-how about now? I don't want to forget about it. Daddy?" He ignores her and looks directly into my eyes knowingly, and I know the day I've been dreading is finally here. "Daddy?"

            "We can talk with Zazu about it tomorrow. We need to talk about the deal we made when I first let Kovu into the Pride Lands." I see her glance down at my bottom half and, not for the first time, I wonder if she forgot about it entirely. I wish he had forgotten so easily.

            "We stayed within the borders! We didn't go back to the Outlands!" She tries to put on a winning grin but all she's managing to do is stall us for time. A flicker of irritation shines through Simba's smile. This is one of the first times that I wish I had tried harder to get her to leave her pride and join ours – as an adult, she should be able to go wherever she wants and be able to fight back against dictators like her father.

            If I could kill him, I would.

            "Not that agreement. Your time has come. You're in season." As it sinks in, Kiara also automatically sits in a feeble attempt to shield herself against him.

Together, we could kill him with no problem.

            Come on, Kiara. Come on! Get him! We can take him down!

            She doesn't read my plea in my eyes and her ears flatten down as her head sinks down by her shoulders.

            "Do we have to do it... this time?" He gently flicks the tip of his tail to brush against her nose, circling again in an even tighter circle. He's closing in on us. I should have tried to make her leave three days ago when the heat started settling in. Now, we're both going to pay the price.

            "Yes, Kiara. We have to do it every time. It's my Right as King, and it's your duty as a member of the pride. Do you remember what the Right of the King is?" He looks expectantly at her and she gulps down what I can only imagine is the bile rising in the back of my throat. I can't believe we're going to sit here and just let him do this to us. But I can't take him on on my own. "Do you remember?"

            "The King is entitled to the first mating cycle of every female in the pride."

            "Right. Do you remember what else?" She lowers her head a little more in guilt. "If there are no other royal males in the pride, then every mating cycle of every female in the pride belongs to the King. Every female."

            "But we did the ceremony. With Rafiki. On the solstice."

            "We let you do the ceremony out of good will. That doesn't change the order of things, Kiara. Every female."

            "Why doesn't Kovu count?" She is pleading with him now, knowing that even though this first season is lost to him, both her future and my body are quickly fading away like the lost sunlight. "We're mates. He's my mate."

            "There's a big difference between a royal male and a maned female, Kiara. You can still call him your 'mate', but that doesn't change our agreement." She looks over at me in desperation, waiting for me to step up and say something to defend us. As the outsider here, I have no place to speak. I don't want to lose my time with her. She's too precious to me. "I sat down with Zazu to tell both of you the terms of our truce when we agreed to let him join our pride. Every female is in service to the King."

            I want to stand up and defend her, take him down, kill him once and for all like I should have months ago when Mother commanded me to. I should have done what I was trained all of my life to do. I should have done the right thing. We would both be free.

            I can't do it alone.

            He's too big. Too powerful. Too prepared.

            He catches me looking at his back feet, my brain involuntarily trying to calculate if I would be able to charge him hard enough to knock him over.

            With a deafening, snarling roar, he swats me across the shoulder and knocks me to the side, mistaking my glance for a plan of attack. While I scramble to sit upright, he leaps against the rock behind me and comes down behind me, two paws digging their sharp claws into my back. I find myself snarling back and trying to escape, but his paws are dragging back toward my hips to pin me in place. He is pulling me back toward him and I can already see that he is unsheathing his weapon.

            "Daddy! No, please don't do this!" His bottom half curls down toward the ground and he gracelessly stabs my lower back and hips as he tries to find the hole I'm trying so hard to protect from him. "Take me! Take me instead!"

            "It will be your turn soon enough. Both of you brought each other into season. You'll take turns."

            "No! No, please! Daddy!" Its bristles comb through my fur as I continue trying to pull away, his wide back legs steadily inching along behind me, only getting closer as I struggle. He's too strong. She helplessly paces back and forth between his back and my head, wanting to intervene to save me but knowing that she can't.

            The pointed spear finds its new sheath and it rips its way inside. I see red streaks across my vision as it plows its way inside, the sharp spikes unfolding one row at a time as it enters.

            It feels like it stretches on forever. More and more of it unfolds and swells out of his body and slithers its way up inside of mine. I can feel the tip jabbing up inside of my stomach by the time his hips bend my tail aside and sit flat with my backside.

            "Shhhhh... it's okay. It'll be over soon," she coos, nuzzling up against the side of my head, emotion thick in her voice and she tries not to watch. I feel guilty for screaming in her ear, but the pain is unbearable. The spikes are raking back and forth inside of me and every pass is more painful than the last. I don't know how long it takes, but I don't think I can stand up by the end.

            It throbs deeply inside of me while pulses of his vile fluid unload and spread every last millimeter of space inside of me to its max. The spikes are just as sharp and violent with the thick liquid as they were without it. A waterfall flows behind it as he finally pulls it back out of me, dragging me along with him for a few steps from his engorged lance and my swollen flesh.

            "It's over. It's over. It's okay."

            I can smell blood.

            I wish it was his.

            She leans back on her back legs, standing up to walk around behind me, hopefully to clean it out of me. He stops her before she can take a step.

            "We aren't done." He waves his paw in a circle, telling her to lay back down where she was in front of me. The fear is clear in her eyes.

            "I'm not ready. Please. Please stop."

            "Your season is almost over. There's no time left to waste. We have to do it tonight." He moves behind her and stands up on her back, forcing her hips back down to the ground while she starts to sob again. I can see the thick, yo-yoing fluids from my turn swaying up and down on the bristled head, back and forth while he positions himself behind her and finally mounts.

            Shivering sobs leak out of her mouth and into my mane while she waits for him to find the spot.

            She screams. The sound wavers in volume and pitch as it works its way inside.

            I can feel her pain.

            I can smell her blood.

            I can see her flesh stretch in and out with every movement.

            It stretches more as he picks up more speed.

            I see it pulsing inside when he finally finishes.

            I see it oozing out.

            I smell it mixing with hers and I feel sick.

            She doesn't plead anymore as he circles back around. Large drops of thick white-clear slime drip from it as he passes me, leaving the smell of him and her right next to my head.

            She holds onto my neck to keep me in place while she continues to sob. It stabs frantically at my skin, leaving thick trails of the mixed ooze all over my fur. I can't move when it resheathes and I'm forced to grunt and bear his weight, his strength, and his brutality. Soon I'll be bearing much more.

            Nothing can block the blistering pain out of my mind. All of the soreness from the first round comes back with a vengeance as it opens up all of the old wounds and makes dozens more. It feels bigger, longer, more violent the second time from all of the swelling. A cloud passes across the moon and out of sight before he finishes.

            But he isn't truly finished.

            Her sobs intensify when she hears his paws pad back across the sand and he immediately joins with her again with an audible wet sucking sound, plunging into the gaping cave he dug out of her the first time. Her body shifts back and forth while he works her. The wet noises never stop.

            It takes him longer this time as he slowly runs out of steam. His moans are louder and deeper, just like its movements in her tender spot. She is shivering in pain by the end and we wait, hoping to hear him pad away into the grass and the darkness, or at least to sit down and sleep so that we can recover from his abuse. An escape attempt might even be possible once we're sure we can outrun him.

            He circles back behind me for a third round.

            It's thick with her wetness and it's still dribbling from their joining.

            I feel like I'm going to die.

            It burns so much to even lay here.

            My screams reach a new pitch as he enters again and immediately resumes his seeding.

The vulgar sucking sounds are even louder than before, like a plunger trying to pull my lower organs out.

            Kiara can't cry anymore. She isn't sleeping, just lying in scarred silence and waiting for him to stop. She's bracing herself for the next round.

            It can't move in and out anymore – it just pulls me in and out. I'm too swollen and this is only going to make it worse.

            My sensitive outer flesh is too inflamed and its dragging back and forth across the sharp pebbles on the hard ground.

            No amount of tender licking can erase that pain.

            All I can hope is that it doesn't do any permanent damage.

            When he empties himself inside of me, it feels like all of it just immediately flows out. There's nowhere left inside for it to go.

            We brace ourselves and I hold onto her desperately as he walks behind her again, at first forcing it into the wrong sheath before he pulls it back out and finds the more painful one.

            Her shrill screams cut through the quiet night air. I wonder if they can hear us back at Pride Rock.

            He rocks her back and forth, her entire body being moved toward him then toward me as he embeds his sharp hooks inside of her. His orbs are noticeably smaller than they were the first time I saw them.

            He can't go on forever.

            But it does last much, much longer than any of the other times before.

            She gives pained grunts with every movement as her voice goes hoarse.

            He pistons back and forth impossibly fast and finally... finally fills her one last time.

            He roughly pulls away, the spikes raking their way back out of her as he stands up and slowly walks to lay against the far wall.

            He looks... almost weak.

            "Tomorrow will probably be the last day of your seasons. We need to make the most of it." He sounds also apologetic and hatred fills my heart just that much more. "If you had told me instead of running off and hiding, we could have done less at a time over more days. It has to be done."

            Silence falls over the outcropping before she turns her head away from me just enough to speak.

            "How much more?" Her voice is thin and tremulous from the searing pain.

            "Tomorrow."