Abrafo savagely ripped into the zebra carcass, nosing for the hot, tasty guts inside. He snarled when the panting lionesses, circling, hungry for their efforts, go too close before he sat satiated himself, face streaked with crimson gore, his pale white eyes glaring out of a bloody mask, hiding the grizzled gray of his chin and the battle scars on his face. This was fine, Nnedi thought as she circled, her paws quick and her head high and alert, waiting for the slightest chance to be allowed some of the kill. She was hungry.

Finally, finally, when the buzzards started circling overhead, their shadows dappling the backs of the lionesses, Abrafo looked up.

“Azara, come here,” he said congenially, in a voice thick with blood. Azara, a sleek golden lioness and his senior wife and huntress strode forward obediently.

“My King?” she said, inching towards the carcass. But before she got far, he reached out like lighting and slapped her hard across the face, drawing blood.

“What did I say about Zebra?” he snarled at her, standing over her. “I asked for wildebeest.”

Since when do Kings dictate what his wives kill, Nnedi thought bitterly as Abrafo savaged his queen—enough to hurt but not enough to seriously damage her ability to hunt. When he’d finished he turned at the other lionesses, who had crept forward in horror and in hunger and he roared at them, bloody spittle flying from his mouth.

“GET OUT OF HERE! NONE OF YOU WILL EAT!” he roared, lashing his tail. “This carcass is mine, and only mine, and the rest of you will hunt something else if you’re hungry. You lionesses close to your heat will stay at the home tree, but the rest of you get out of my sight!”

The hunting party, all eleven lionesses scattered into the grass.

Most went back to the baobab tree where they would complain and commiserate with the nursing mothers, but Nnedi didn’t want to be around the others at the moment, even if it meant defying orders as her first heat was sure to be soon, according to the other lionesses. She was angry, hungry, and wanted to taste blood.

She swiftly slunk off into the golden grass, further away from the camp than would have been expected for her but at the moment she didn’t care. She managed to run some hyenas off a gazelle and was happily crunching on its bones when she caught the scent through the blood—another male lion, and close by.

Immediately she was on high alert, but there was a buzzing in her belly. A challenger! Someone who might overthrow their indolent and wicked King perhaps?