Life on the savannah was lonely for Raj. The zebra had lost his mate last spring to lions. His only daughter, Elsa, was growing up, asserting her independence, and beginning to head out into the world on her own. And that terrified him. He knew he couldn't make her stay, so instead he counted his blessings each night that she returned to camp, to nest with him the way her mother once did, because he knew that one day, for one reason or another, she would leave and not return.

It was a frightening world for a prey animal, and Raj had become even more distrustful than usual recently. There were rumors of a zebra luring other prey away from their herds, never to be seen again. He didn't understand why anyone would do this, but it fomented distrust and hardened his heart. It was him and Elsa all alone, and he would protect her from this mystery threat no matter what.

So when he awoke one morning and Elsa was nowhere in the camp, he panicked. He'd accepted that she would go off on her own, but she always told him where she was going. She wouldn't leave while he was asleep like this.

He shouted her name as he circled the perimeter of the camp, searching for any sign of a disturbance or clue to her whereabouts. He knew he shouldn't make this much noise, but he didn't care. He had to find her.

Then something sparked in his peripheral vision. His instincts took over; his vision narrowed in on the threat. A lion, hiding in the grass, watching him. He turned to run, but he was too slow: the lion pounced and sprinted toward him. He needed to evade... but there was nowhere to go. He ran toward the lion at an angle, banking on the predator's inability to turn. It worked, with the lion shooting past him, claws brushing past his face, and the rancid predator breath choking his lungs.

He could do this. He knew the area. There was a river where he could wash away his scent, rocky terrain that would be harder for the lion to give pursuit. The odds weren't great, but he stood a chance of escaping.

And then the lion undid all his thoughts with a single word.

"Elsa."

Hearing the name from such a large creature turned Raj's blood to ice. How did this beast know his daughter's name? He kept running, but his stride was broken.

"I can take you to her. Alive."

He was so gobsmacked by this turn of events that he didn't even see his second pursuer, a lioness, sideswipe him and knock him to the ground.

His head hit the dirt, and a thick paw pushed the wind out of his lungs. He couldn’t breathe, or even think. His body knew better than to struggle. He may have had agility, but the lions had strength.

If he had a way out, it was by waiting for an opening. Maybe these lions were rivals?

Unfortunately, they seemed to be cooperating. The lioness held him in place as the lion took his time approaching. He wanted to ask who these lions were, what they wanted, but his throat refused to open. They were going to kill him, and he would never learn what had happened to Elsa. Raj was a nihilist: being a prey in the savannah tended to do that. So he chose not to pray to his ancestors. He just wanted this to be over with.

The lion circled around him, and then the lioness slowly lifted her paw. "Come with us," she told him. "No sudden movements. We're gonna take you to Elsa."

Really, what choice did he have but to comply?

===

He hoped that there would be an opportunity to escape en route to wherever it was that these lions wanted to take him, but no such opportunity presented itself. But if such an opportunity appeared, would he even take it? The lions said they were taking him to his daughter. That could be a bluff. For all he knew, these lions had already eaten her. But they knew her name. How did they know her name? Zebras were not particularly known for telling lions their names. In the end, his curiosity got the better of him. He decided to see whatever it was that these lions wanted to show him.

The lions led him to a plateau that blocked out the sun as they got close... never a good sign. The wall rising above them was pock-marked with caves. Raj had heard rumors about this place before: the Obverse Fault, a supposedly cursed place that even the bravest animals treated with fear and suspicion. What was Elsa doing here?

And as they approached one of the caves, he saw her. Elsa, his Elsa, wrestling with three lion cubs. One darted between her front legs, one was climbing on her, and the third was trying in vain to suckle at her dry teats.

Raj would have been terrified to be surrounded by this many lions, even cubs. But Elsa seemed at peace.

"She's been sitting for our cubs while we go out hunting. She's pretty great at it too," the lion told Raj. "They love her."

Raj had trouble believing what he was seeing. But the scene continued to unfold in front of her.

The cub trying and failing to nurse from Elsa disentangled herself from beneath her zebra chaperone. "When are Mom and Dad coming back?" she whined. "I'm hungry!"

Elsa gently petted the irritated lion cub. "They'll be back soon, Nika. And don't worry, if they aren't back soon you can eat me! Doesn't that sound good?" Her voice had a playful lilt to it, and Raj was disgusted that she would make such jokes so carelessly, especially after what had happened to her mother.

Nika nodded, no doubt imagining the taste of zebra on her tongue. "Uh-huh. But I dunno if I can eat a whole zebra. You're really big."

Elsa laughed. A sincere, happy, fulfilled laugh. Raj had never heard her laugh like that before. What the hell was going on? "Maybe when you're older, then. Would you like to eat me when you're older?"

A vigorous nod from Nika.

"Hey, no fair!" shouted the cub who had been playing with Elsa's front legs. "I wanna eat Auntie Elsa!"

"You'll both get to eat me, how does that sound, Makena? Hang on, I have an idea." Elsa rolled back so that she was sitting on her rump, making the third lion cub hang on for dear life. She used a hoof to spread her thick equine pussy lips. "Why don't you start small? Lick here and tell me how I taste."

The two lion cubs jockied for position between Elsa's thighs, each wanting to be front and center to taste the zebra girl's sex. Elsa leaned back and took deep breaths, her contentment showing in a wide smile. "Good job, Nika. You're going to eat so many zebras when you grow up, aren't you?"

Nika hummed in the affirmative, which sent pleasurable vibrations up Elsa's body.

Meanwhile, the third lion cub, still clinging to Elsa's backside, climbed up onto her shoulder. "Um, Auntie Elsa?" he tentatively asked. Out of the corner of her vision, Elsa could see his quivering erection poking out between his hind legs and betraying his excitement.

She knew what he wanted immediately. "Of course, Amri. My back's occupied by your sisters, but get down and I'll nibble on you like your sisters are nibbling on me."

Raj was frozen to the spot as he watched all this play out. He completely forgot about the two adult lions keeping him in place, and yet he still made no move to go rescue his daughter. The absurdity of the situation left him at a complete loss. So he only watched as Elsa laid down on her back, the lion cub Amri hopping off of her and curling up next to her face before she took his cock into her mouth and suckled it.

Elsa, his pride and joy, was having sex with three lion cubs at once, and enjoying it.

"Did you have any idea this was where she was going during the day?" the lion asked him.

Still stupified, Raj found himself answering the lion's questions automatically. He shook his head. He didn't turn his gaze from his daughter, sandwiched between three horny lion cubs. She had a paw on Nika's head now, gently pushing the girl into her snatch. She was enjoying this.

Raj first noticed that his cock had begun to slide out of his sheath when he felt the lioness grab it.

He winced, some instinct making him terrified at the thought of a predator having a hold over such a sensitive part of him. No doubt the lioness was strong enough to rip it off if she wanted to. But instead, he felt her tongue press against it, rough like sandpaper, but warm and wet. It wasn't comfortable, and yet part of the contact was stimulating anyway. Conflicting emotions swirled within him, coalescing as a knot in his stomach.

And then suddenly they were moving again, the lioness dragging him quite literally by the balls toward the den. He hobbled to keep up. Some part of his brain that was still in denial was forced to confront the fact that this was real, that Elsa was actually in bed with these lions, and that his daughter was about to see him in a position that was similarly submissive, but felt so much more degrading.

Maybe he should just let the lions kill him to avoid this conversation.

"Daddy!"

The shout came from one of the lions, not Elsa, but it brought back memories of when she was that age too. She used to be so trusting, so loving, before the loss of her mother had hardened both their hearts. Although come to think of it, her heart didn't seem so hard right now. She still seemed trusting and loving, just to the wrong kind of creatures. How dare she show more love to the species that devoured her mother than her own father. For the first time, resentment began to brew within Raj. He wanted answers.

The lion cubs broke away from Elsa and waited at the edge of the cave. "You brought dinner!" shouted Makena. Or maybe it was Nika. The two female cubs had a striking similarity to each other, and they easily could have swapped places since Elsa had referred to them by name.

Raj had never thought much about lion cubs. He'd ever interacted with one before: seeing a lion cub meant there was almost certainly a mother lion nearby, and that meant it was time to get far away, and fast. But now that he was confronted by three of them, he didn't quite know what to make of them. They had the same sort of innocence as a zebra foal, and yet so casually expressed their desire to eat him. Did they understand that he was a creature just like them? Did they understand that he was afraid? Raj had assumed that all predators were heartless, even the cubs. But now it made him wonder: did their conscience go away when they grew up? Or was it merely suppressed?

"Oh, he's not dinner," said the lion. "Raj is here for a special purpose."

They knew his name. Of course they knew his name. Elsa probably told them.

Elsa trotted out in front of the cubs, putting her body between them and Raj. Raj wondered if she was trying to protect him from them, or them from him. She looked overjoyed to see her father here; notably, she did not look surprised. She galloped right at him, the lions stepping aside to let her through. She reached him and wrapped her front legs around his neck in a tight hug, and while Raj had no idea what was going on, he wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to embrace his daughter.

"I'm glad you made it," she murmured in his ear.

"I didn't really have a choice," he said dryly.

Elsa laughed off his response. "Oh yeah, I guess that's true." She gently grasped his neck and examined his face. "Djoba and Niyah didn't hurt you, did they?"

"Who?" He had no idea what she was babbling about. Unless she meant...

"The lions, of course," she explained. 

...and she did. She knew the lions’ names. Raj couldn't think of a single good reason for a zebra to know a lion's name. The more he saw, the less he understood, but the more convinced he was that something sinister was happening to her. The lions knew what was going on. His own daughter knew. But they didn't seem to be in any rush to fill him in on the secret. So when Elsa began trying to lead him into the lion's den, he put his hoof down.

"Elsa, what's going on here?" His words were slow and deliberate.

Elsa seemed shocked, then offended. "Dad, be nice. Here, come meet the family." She tried again to pull him toward the den, but he resisted.

"Elsa, this is madness. Tell me what's happening, now."

He looked her directly in the eyes, and he saw something register in her brain. Her cheeriness faded. "Oh. I was hoping we could ease into it. But we can cut to the chase too."

She turned her rear to Raj and lifted her tail. “I need you to breed me.”

With her backside filling his vision, Raj wasn’t able to avert his gaze fast enough, and he caught the dewey glistening of arousal on her plump equine vulva. Elsa was wet, in a way that Raj had never imagined he would see his own daughter. But of course she was; she’d had two lion cubs eating her out just minutes earlier.

Raj didn’t want to think about this. He turned away, only to remember that Niyah was still holding him in place by the base of his cock. The inadvertent tug, combined with the pussy right in his face, was enough to get his shaft to fully harden, and drew a huff from his lips.

Djoba immediately stepped forward and corralled Raj back into position. He grabbed the zebra's head with his thick lion paws and held him in place. “Look at her, Raj. She gets like this just thinking about you."

"She's not the only one getting bothered," Niyah teased. "You never told us your dad was hung." Confident that Djoba had him on lock, she lowered her head to get a closer look at the stallion's equipment. Her paw drifted down his meat to weigh his testicles, far bigger than any lion's. "I can see why you picked him. You mind if I have a turn when you're done?"

Raj shook his head. “Stop…” He did his best to not react to his rough handling, but it was hard. The scent of sex was thick, no doubt due to Elsa's hormone-laded bits right in front of him. And he couldn't remember the last time he'd been touched down there… not since before he'd lost Elsa's mother.

It was amazing how much Elsa looked like her mother right now.  Somewhere since they’d lost her, the little filly he’d raised had been replaced by a mare. She’d taken her mother’s place in his nest… but not like this.

Else looked back at him expectantly, trying to back up into him. “Come on, Dad. Give me your foals.”

This was wrong. But his body didn't care, and neither did his lion captors. He felt Djoba nudge him toward Elsa, while Niyah put her head against his upper chest and pushed. "Up we go!" she announced as she succeeded in lifting his front half off the ground. Still in a state of shock, Raj didn't push back, even as the two lions helped him hook his front legs over Elsa's shoulders. 

Djoba watched where the two were so close to connecting. Raj's cock was fully deployed and ready to go. It slid against her taildock, and both father and daughter shivered. “What a tease,” Djoba remarked. “Maybe they need some help.” He grabbed Raj’s dick in his sturdy paw and pressed the head against Elsa’s eagerly awaiting pussy.

The sensation of the head of his dick getting wet was like a splash of water against Raj’s mind. He spooked and pushed back against Elsa’s back. “Wait!” he shouted. “Elsa… we don’t need to do this!” But it didn’t matter. Another headbutt from Niyah and Raj’s cock slid all the way inside, and in that moment, both zebras forgot how to breathe. The only thing Raj could think about was how amazing his daughter felt wrapped around his cock.

Niyah was satisfied by her handiwork, and took a break to check on the cubs.

Getting Raj to penetrate Elsa had been easy. Getting him to thrust would be harder. But the muscles in his body knew what to do, and yearned for him to move inside her. He willed them to be still, even as his head continued to swim. “Elsa, please,” he begged her. “These lions are making you do this, aren’t they? For their sick amusement?” He knew that lions sometimes like to torment their prey before eating them, but this was something else.

Elsa snorted, her hoof digging into the ground. “You’re not getting it, Dad,” she said. “This isn’t their idea. It’s mine.”

“She’s right,” Djoba confirmed. “She asked us to do this.”

"I raise my tail for you every time we go to the water hole, and you don't even look at me. We share a nest like mates, but you won’t touch me. I’ve seen how hard you get in the mornings, and you won’t do anything about it, even though I’m *right there*. When I’m with other stallions, I pretend that they’re you. Djoba lets me call him Dad when we fuck, and it’s the best."

Raj had assumed that Elsa was a virgin. How naive he’d been. As she talked, he could feel her insides tightening around him, squeezing him. The liquid essence of her arousal ran down her legs, and his. But he refused to give into the temptation to rut. He saw Niyah returning, the three cubs in tow. It was bad enough she expected him to rut her, but now he was going to do it in front of an audience?

"Alright, pay attention everyone,” Niyah announced as she wrangled the cubs. “We're going to show you another part of the circle of life. Auntie Elsa's daddy is going to put a cub in her belly."

The announcement got a chorus of oohs from the curious cubs. Makena stepped forward and sniffed at the point where the two zebras were connected. “With his thing, right?” she asked. Raj wanted to hide, but with Djoba still holding him in place, he wasn’t going anywhere.

“That’s right. Take a look at his balls,” Djoba instructed his cubs, who got in as close as they could to see. Nika got between Raj’s legs and sniffed at his testicles, her whiskers brushing against his thighs. Finally, she got up on her hind legs and licked his sack.

Raj’s sack responded to the stimulus by tightening and pulling upward of its own volition. The sudden movement startled Nika, who tumbled backwards. “Woah! It just moved on its own!”

“That means he’s got healthy cubs in there and they’re waking up,” Niyah explained. “They can tell that Raj here is inside a fertile female. They might even recognize her! After all, she came from there too, before her dad put her inside her mom to grow and be born! And now one of her siblings is going to grow inside her!"

“That’s awesome!” shouted Amri. “Can I put cubs in Auntie Elsa’s belly too?”

Elsa laughed. “Sorry, little guy. Only zebras can make foals with other zebras. But I’m sure you’re going to put lots of cubs in your sisters one day.”

Amri puffed out his chest. “Oh yeah! Come on, Makena, let’s practice!” He pounced on his sister, his already stiff cock prodding her face.

Elsa looked back at her father. “Isn’t their enthusiasm great? So funny to think they’re going to grow up to be so ferocious.”

Raj’s glare at his daughter suggested that he failed to see the humor.

“Oh, come on. Just roll with it,” Elsa punctuated the statement with a roll of her hips. Raj groaned as he felt Elsa’s insides shift around his now-drooling shaft. 

The two fornicating cubs were quickly pulled apart by their mother. “You two can practice later. Right now you need to watch.”

“But they’re not doing anything,” Makena bemoaned. “He’s just sitting on her!”

“Makena’s right. You might want to start humping,” Djoba told Raj. “Your daughter isn’t going to breed herself.” After a couple more seconds of Raj refusing to thrust, the lion sighed. “That’s fine. We have other ways of making you cum,” he said. He slammed his front paws into Raj’s backside, lowering his rump. Raj yelped as the weight of the lion pressed down on him, and the sharp claws dug into his back. Djoba’s own cockhead poked and prodded Raj’s backside, searching for a hole to penetrate. “If you won’t set the rhythm, I will.”

“Woah, hang on!” Raj shouted. Just when he had thought that these lions had run out of ways to escalate the situation, now Djoba was trying to mount him like a mare in heat.

“*Now* he wants to talk,” said Elsa, laughing. “Too late, enjoy the ride!” She told her father. She wiggled her hips around his shaft.

Raj was now trapped between a lusty mare and a pervy lion, and he gave up any pretense of being in control. Djoba’s cock found it’s mark and pierced Raj with a single powerful thrust, bringing his weight to bear on the zebra and knocking him forward into Elsa so that he hilted inside her. Then Elsa took a step forward, her swollen pussy lips teasing his cock as she slowly pulled away from him, before Djoba slammed into him again to repeat the process.

Raj had never been with a male before. He hadn’t expected his first time would be with a lion. And he definitely hadn’t expected it to feel this good. He could feel the barbs of Djoba’s penis rubbing against his sensitive bowels, but instead of hurting, it was like they were scratching a deep itch, pulling taut on some thread inside him. And all the while, Elsa refused to ease up the assault on his front, her well-lubricated canal massaging his aching cock. Without needing to move a muscle on his own, Raj was being taken for the ride of his life.

Elsa and Djoba seemed to be enjoying it too. Djoba gave a little huff each time he thrusted up into Raj, and Raj could feel how both Djoba’s shaft and Elsa’s wet insides were alive, twitching and gripping, generating friction. Raj felt a tightness in his loins, sooner than he would have liked.

“Watch closely,” Niyah instructed her cubs. “See how his balls are moving like that? That’s his foals trying to be born.”

The cubs scurried forward, and then Raj felt something brush his legs. Glancing down, he saw the lion cubs looking up at the place where he and Elsa were connected. “You’re gonna put your stuff in her, right?” asked the male cub, Amri.

“I’m not!” he protested. But he knew that was a lie. Honestly, his orgasm had been creeping up on him from the moment he’d penetrated her, and thinking about how it would feel to explode inside her only made it worse. He was out of practice, and more importantly, Elsa was surprisingly, amazingly good at this. Better than her mother, although he wouldn’t admit that. Elsa was so eager to take the reins, so eager to push back and make those little movements with her body, like she was trying to draw the seed from his cock. Come to think of it, she probably was. His sack clenched, pulling in close to his taint and staying there as he rode the edge.

“Oh, he totally is,” Elsa told the cubs. “He can’t help it. It feels too good, right Dad?”

Raj refused to answer. But she could see from the way he was sweating, and the way his whole body was tense, that the sensations were nearly overwhelming.

And then Djoba grunted and bit down (gently, not that it made it any less terrifying) on Raj’s neck. The lion tensed, his body going slack as he flooded Raj’s bowels with hot seed. Raj was pinned and pushed deep into Elsa one last time, the tip of his cock kissing the entrance to her womb. And as the warmth blossomed within him, the tension in him broke and he was no longer able to hold back his own orgasm. A primal force moved through him, starting in his balls and running through to the end of his cock. The cubs watched his balls jerk with each powerful burst of seed that he shot directly into Elsa’s deepest reaches.

Elsa reached back and felt his pulsing shaft against her hoof. She pushed his dick against her taint, grinding it. “Oh, yes,” she moaned. 

After he finished, she stumbled forward, his meat sliding out loudly of her and drooping, still dribbling seed. Elsa fell to her knees and rolled over, spreading her legs. She blew a kiss at her daddy. The two males, spent and drained, collapsed to the grass next to her.

Elsa didn’t have the energy in her to get up, but she pulled her father close and cuddled him, bumping her face against his. “Thank you,” she told him. “This is nice.”

Raj had moved past anger into bewilderment and derealization. “No, not nice. This is insane. Why are they not just eating us?”

“I feel that’s pretty obvious, pal,” said Djoba. “Your girl is irreplaceable. You can’t just find another prey who’s down to get freaky with a predator. And boy is she freaky.” 

“You’re one to talk,” Elsa teased back. “You started a pride with your sister, and then taught your cubs to do *that*!” She gestured toward the horny lion cubs who, now freed from their lesson on the circle of life, were getting right to work practicing what they’d just learned. Amri was mating his mother on her back, while Nika rested on Niyah’s stomach, kissing her brother while Niyah ate her out. This was clearly not their first romp. “Like, I’m legit jealous,” she said.

“I keep telling you, the king of the pride gets all the lionesses,” Djoba explained. “We don’t care if it’s family. The only kinky part is that I share the pride with Amri instead of making him get his own.”

Raj listened to the back and forth, amazed at how casual they would be. Maybe Elsa had a point. Maybe zebras and lions didn’t have to be enemies. She and Djoba seemed to get along better than anyone Raj had ever seen before.

Makena, unable to find a partner among her siblings, wandered over to the other group. “Hey Uncle Raj, wanna mount me next?”

Uncle Raj… hearing that name warmed his heart, even as the derealization intensified.

“I think Uncle Raj is all spent,” Elsa answered for him. “But hey, want to see how much he did in me?” She raised her leg, showing off the cum that was now leaking from her. “You can taste it if you want.”

Makena approached and sniffed between Elsa’s legs. “This is the stuff with his cubs in it, right?”

“Hopefully. But I don’t think he’ll mind if you swallow a couple. Eating zebras is what you do, after all. Your belly is as good a place for them as mine. One way or another, they’re growing this family.”

The lion cub got comfortable and began licking at Elsa’s folds. The zebra mare shivered and put her head in Raj’s, looking up at him with pleading eyes. “Please say you’ll stay. They won't hurt you if you're helping me. And we can do this as many times as you want.”

Raj felt like he was watching this from somewhere far away, like the scene before his eyes was a faded, muted copy. His body ached, and his skin didn’t fit quite right. And yet, when he looked into Elsa’s eyes, all he felt was a need to protect his only daughter. She seemed so sincere that he nearly fell for her.

Then, just for the briefest of moments, the fog of his soul lifted, and he saw her for who she really was. A depraved, power hungry soul. An adult mare who had dragged him here, raped him, because she had that power now and wasn’t ever going to feel hunted or denied again. She didn’t need his protection, she was more lion than zebra at this point. She belonged here. He didn’t.

The moment passed. The fog returned. When he looked in her eyes, he saw his little filly again.

“What do you say, Dad? Will you join our family?”

What could he say but yes?