AUTHOR APOLOGY: Unfortunately, somehow this chapter was published early and out of order last week. I'm so sorry! This is its correct position. Because you've already read it once, I'm publishing two chapters tonight, so enjoy another chapter in 30 minutes!

ELRETH

Elreth sighed, and stared at her dad. "I asked Aaryn if he though Dargyn would treat me well if I gave him the signals," she said, then frowned. "Why are you scowling like that?"

Was this a male thing? Did they not want females to talk about these things with them?

"You asked Aaryn… if Dargyn was a good choice?"

"For my first, yes," she said, her cheeks pinking about saying this to her father. But it was a longstanding joke in her family that she was following her mother's footsteps as a "late bloomer," and she didn't know who else to go to. Except maybe her brother Gar, and she hadn't seen the lights on in his tree for days.

Her father looked at her mother then and something passed between them in the way they'd always had when they could talk to each other without using words.

It was something she understood—she and Aaryn had been that way, even when they didn't sign, checking each other to see if the other had remembered a joke, or maybe a previous conversation that they didn't want to share.

But she didn't understand why her father looked angry, and when she turned, her mother seemed to be warning him.

"What?" she asked impatiently when neither of them spoke.

"Elreth," her mother said with a final glare at her father, "I'd be less concerned about who you choose," she said carefully, "and more concerned with why you'd choose them."

"I'm not even sure I'm going to. But Aaryn got really angry at me, like I was doing something wrong even thinking about it!"

Her father, who was walking slowly over to join them—still limping from their fight that afternoon—huffed and Elreth shot him a look.

"What, Dad?"

"I have opinions, but your mother believes I should not share them," he said, his voice a low gravel.

"I want to hear the male perspective on this," Elreth insisted. "I usually understand when Aaryn gets mad, even if I disagree. But on this… I'm lost. He said I deserved better—but he's mated I-don't-know-how many females, and he never talked about deserving anything. So it sounds to me like that Alpha-male bullshit Mam'Amora used to always talk about when you got your… tail in a knot, Dad."

He shot her a look for what she hadn't said—the usual saying didn't use tail—but then he looked at her mother and whatever he saw there, made him sigh. He ran a hand through his hair, then dropped his big hands on the tabletop, playing with a scratch there with one fingernail.

"It's true, Elreth, that these things are different for male and female, though not as different as many would want you to believe."

"If you start telling me that I shouldn't have sex because I'm a girl—"

"No, that's not the reason," her mother jumped it. "If you were… a different personality, I think you would have already… explored this. Found you true mate, even. Who knows? But you're a lot like me in this way, Elreth. And I think… I think Aaryn can see that. You're different to him."

"How?!"

"He mates with his body. You would mate with your soul," her father muttered and Elreth stopped cold.

"What?"

Her father looked up from the tabletop and locked eyes with her. "When I met your mother, she hadn't ever mated with anyone."

"Yes, yes," Elreth dropped her face in her hands. Her parents had told she and Gar this story so many times. "You were a man-whore, she was innocent, and it was all beautiful right from the beginning. Creator's blessing. Blah, blah, blah. I really don't need a recap."

Her father's lips thinned. "The thing I have never told you, Elreth, is that after mating with your mother I realized what I'd been missing."

Elreth looked at her mother, who was smiling softly to herself. "I thought she was… inexperienced."

"She was. It wasn't about that. There was something that passed between us when we mated that went so much deeper than the physical. The more I did it, the more we became intimate in our thoughts and feelings, as well as our bodies, the more I wished I'd never shared any of that with anyone else. Because everything else… paled by comparison."

"You can have sex, Elreth," her mother said, "Or you can make love. And even though you kids all laugh when we use that term, there's a reason we do. It means more, what we do. It means more than what Aaryn has done with those females. And I suspect he knows you well enough to know that when you do finally take that step, you're going to be like me. You won't be able to keep your heart out of it. It won't be only physical. You will… connect with whomever you choose. And even though it sounds like perhaps he didn't deliver it in the best way, I am glad he spoke up. It shows he's thoughtful of you personally. He's trying to protect you from something you don't understand yet."

Elreth shook her head.