The Winner

Eventually all but one female tapped out an eating. Finally it was time to announce the winner of the eating contest! The beast king roared once more to get the audience's attention before announcing

"The winner of this year's beauty pageant has been decided! This year's females is Ivy from the artic wolf tribe!"

The deafening roar of the crowd made Iris's ears ring. Iris was surprised to see someone she recognized from the same tribe as her. Iris, however, was not jealous of Ivy. Being able to eat non-stop for such a long period of time was not something Iris aspired to be capable of.

Ivy proudly stood up as she basked on the applause. Even despite the harsh cold season, Ivy was still quite heavy set. Her many mates had caught a lot of meat in the harvest season and when that ran out she had eaten ten of her mates. Ivy was very pleased to have won the eating contest for the tenth year in a row. After all, she would need new mates to replace the ones who had been sacrificed. Ivy was certainly not in the habit of making her own life more difficult.

After the crowd grew quiet again, they looked to the beast king in anticipation. The eating contest was only the warm up and they were eager to begin the rest of the night's festivities. When the beast king judged the crowd quiet enough, he began to speak once more.

"As with previous years, we shall have all of the females sit off to the side while they wait for their turn. One by one they shall come up and all single males interested in presenting a gift for the female's consideration of becoming mates will line up to do so. Once their turn is up, the females will have to leave the main arena. We shall start with this year's winner Ivy and go in the order they finished from there."

Caspian scooped Iris up into his arms and carried her off to the side. Thankfully he had kept a closer eye on the competition than Iris had so he would know where to stand. Looking around, Iris noticed there were only three others who had finished before she had. It looks like she would be waiting quite a while.

"Let me down, I'll set an animal skin out for us and we can sit down."

Caspian easily complied, but pulled her against him after they sat. He didn't appreciate how many other beastmen were looking at his mate. Caspian's protectiveness was likely not necessary currently, but it would be more than warranted later.

There would be plenty of guards in the city today, but beastmen often grew desperate when they set their hearts on a particular female. While most wouldn't risk a female's ire, some would not stop pursuing a female without being forcefully stopped. Of course, Caspian would happily beat to death any beastman who didn't drop the issue after being rejected, but he'd rather not risk Iris's safety.

Iris was curious about the process of choosing mates and carefully observed Ivy. Ivy sat on a single chair surrounded by all of her mates as single males approached her one by one and presented gifts.

The guards had already carried away everything else in the center of the arena besides a singular chair. This gave off the impression of royalty sitting upon a throne. This was further cemented as single males bowed down and set their gift at Ivy's feet. Each male would state his name, tribe, and power level as they presented their gifts.

Ivy appeared to have many males who were interested in her as a long line stretched through the arena. A good tenth of the males were waiting for Ivy to either shake her head or nod and tell her mates she wanted them.

Thanks to how loudly and clearly each of the males introduced themselves, Iris was easily able to hear what they said. It seems most were only level two or below with many being from meat eating tribes. Iris thought this made sense as herbivores might not want a mate with such a different diet.

As for the power levels, this was a small beast city with only one star required for entry normally. Hearing several beasts announce they had yet to awaken, Iris noted that the city must have made an exception for today's activities.

Ivy had no real interest in weak males, but she did have a quota to fill. Thus she accepted some one star males but any unawakened beasts were treated with disgust. Any three starred males would be an automatic pass, but Ivy was disappointed to find only two of over a hundred beastmen in her line to be at this level.

After what seemed like forever, the last single male filtered through Ivy's line. Her mates split up the work as several carried heavy animal skin bags of gifts while others formed a protective circle around Ivy. Ivy seemed especially taken with a particularly handsome three starred male and she openly flirted with him as she made her way out of the arena.

After Ivy, many others took their turns but they had far fewer males turn up. Some of the males who were rejected by Ivy bought new gifts and went after their second or third favorite female of the day, but most, once rejected, simply left.

Iris watched as the arena's numbers slowly dwindled down. As the numbers approached less than half of it's original number, Ivy began to worry. Some males who had not had room to enter during the eating contest occasionally trickled in, but it was still not enough to maintain a full arena.

By the time it was Iris's turn, there were less than 250 males left in the arena. Glancing back at the other three females who were waiting for their turn, Ivy had to wonder just how many were here for them?