The morning I'd been dreading had finally arrived, and I stood in front of my executioners with all the resolve I could muster.

Well, one executioner, anyway. The previous good-will Camus had been showing me had vanished completely. He obviously disliked me again, was making no effort to hide the fact, and frankly, if not for the Law, I'd be worried about what he would do. Clana, thankfully, found my bumbling love life hilarious, and seemed determined to give us her full support. Meanwhile, wherever Cluma was, it wasn't within range of my [Mana Sight].

"Good morning," I tried, on the basis that a polite greeting had minimal potential to go wrong.

"Morning," replied Camus curtly, skipping the good.

"You always look so nervous," giggled Clana. "You go and fight terrible monsters with nary a care, but can't even stand in front of your future in-laws without your ears trying to hide behind your own head."

I poked at the top of my head, where my fake ears were indeed attempting to abandon me to my fate. "I just don't like talking about this sort of thing," I muttered.

"Yes, and so you ignore it," complained Camus. "Ignoring a problem does not make it go away. Mating season is approaching, and Cluma is already... there's not even a word for what you did. In human terms, the closest description would be 'married', but that's obviously not the case here. You've bonded somehow. Marked each other as mates, which shouldn't be possible, yet you haven't even asked what that means, let alone made plans to deal with it. You hope that if you never mention it, mating season will pass by without incident with no effort on your part."

"Wait, what? Bonded? I haven't done anything! I have no idea what you're talking about!"

"That's hardly a surprise. You accepted the advances of my daughter, and... then what? You've done nothing. Taken her out for a meal or two, and a stroll along a beach. You've had no serious conversations about your future, your plans, or anything. As far as I've been able to extract from her, you've completely avoided the topic of your relationship."

I kept my mouth shut, because I wasn't sure I could make a comeback. It was true enough. Yes, we'd discussed professional plans, but, housing aside, not personal ones. I was still waiting for some indeterminate point in the future when the idea stopped freaking me out.

Camus looked on with something bordering on disgust, apparently taking my silence as agreement. "For humans, marriage is a mere word, something you do to make a public statement at some arbitrary point in a relationship. For beastkin, it's far more clear-cut. To accept each other as mates is a physical change. You might not be able to smell her, but it was hardly possible for us to miss the change in her scent when she returned from the Serpent Isle dungeon."

Serpent Isle? What had happened in the Serpent Isle dungeon?

"Nor your own change," giggled Clana. "And let me tell you, there were many boys in this town disappointed to find that someone else had got to Cluma first, not to mention their confusion at how someone managed it before her first mating season. A couple of girls, too. My daughter sure has an extensive fan club."

I'd never quite digested the fact that my [Xenophilia] trait meant I gave off beastkin pheromones, but from the moment Cluma noticed the change, I knew they must have noticed too. Again, I'd just never mentioned it, because it was too embarrassing to think about. How was I supposed to deal with the fact that Cluma needed to wear a heavily enchanted orichalcum earring just to hug me safely?

...Or used to. She'd said something about smelling me yesterday. She'd been in my room with the enchantment disabled, and it hadn't bothered her. Nor had she been bothered in the dungeon recently. I couldn't remember her being affected by my smell ever since the time she'd described me as no longer available.

Camus gave a deep sigh, and I realised my ears had drooped. As much as I liked them, having my emotions so easily read was something else I wasn't happy about.

"You are like far too many other humans," he stated flatly. "You see some fluffy ears and decide they're cute, then try to pretend that's all beastkin are. Humans with cute extra features. We aren't, and you behaving as if we were is a massive insult to all of us, most of all the one you claim to love. How you managed to bond successfully with that mindset is beyond me."

Dammit—he was right again there. How many times had I thought of the other races as nothing more than humans with extra bits glued on? But whatever their appearances, I knew that wasn't true. Harpies laid eggs. Demons were as much mana as flesh, and had fundamentally different internal biology than us. What fairies were like beyond their elvish appearance, I had no clue, but I'd never seen a male fairy, so they obviously had some decidedly non-human arrangements of their own.

Beastkin weren't just humans with animalistic ears and tail. Their senses were different, their mating habits were different, and above all, their culture was different. Our day-to-day lives were compatible. They had to be; of all the races, humans and beastkin were the only ones that had been created together within the same original settlement. But they celebrated different festivals, favoured different food, tended towards different jobs. I knew that beastkin mythology stated that they were descended from humans. That obviously wasn't true of Erryn's creations, but she'd just copied species that had previously existed. Maybe the story was true.

"I'm sorry," I said, clenching my fists. "I know I've messed up, so please stop insulting me, and just tell me what I need to know."

"Oh? Going to stop running? Do you promise to start respecting Cluma's needs, and stop treating her like a human?"

"How superficial do you think I am? It's her personality I like, not her species."

"That doesn't mean her species is something you can ignore."

"Look, I have problems of my own!" I snapped. "You know I have another lifetime of memories, and they make relationships here hard. I was... what would it be in this world's years? Twenty-four or twenty-five when I died the first time around, so half of me still sees Cluma as much younger than me. That part screams pretty loudly that this whole relationship is wrong."

Camus grinned, as if he'd just won some game. "Exactly. And do you know just how far Cluma was planning to go to accommodate you and ensure you don't feel uncomfortable? Yet you've done nothing of the sort for her."

What? Had she? Hanging around in my house in a skintight leather outfit hardly seemed like she was trying not to make me uncomfortable. More like the exact opposite.

"And you don't even know what you're doing to her, do you?"

Dammit, I had a brain, and I needed to bloody use it; I didn't want Camus at my throat forever. Obviously I'd missed something. "Of course I don't! That's why we're here! This is obviously all about summer, but she said she'd be fine if she kept her earring active. Was she wrong?"

Clana pulled a difficult face. "That was before you accepted each other as mates. Although, even now, it's not technically incorrect. It's not like she'd be in any danger. It would just be, to steal your favourite word, uncomfortable."

"More like two weeks of hell," muttered Camus.

Two weeks of hell? What was that supposed to mean? Because we'd 'bonded', whenever and however that had happened, spending the start of summer on her own would be hell? But she'd never been particularly bothered by it.

Or had she? Again, we'd never really talked about it, but the couple of times it had come up, her reaction was more wistful or disappointed than anything else. I'd never seen her looking fearful.

Clana sighed. "It's not that we don't understand where you're coming from. So yesterday, I asked if Vargalas could prepare twenty of these, just in case."

She put a vial on the table. From Vargalas? A potion?

Potion of Sedation (Quality: 50)

- Effect: Sleep (10 Hours)

Twenty? That would be enough to keep her asleep for the full two weeks! There was no way that was healthy!

"You want to..." I blurted out before managing to stop myself. Of course they didn't want to use them. "Sorry," I finished up with, lamely.

Obviously, that earned me another glare from Camus. But what was so bad that they were considering sedating her for two weeks. That made no sense at all!

"Look," I started, trying not to lose my temper. "You're accusing me of avoiding the subject, but you keep doing the same thing. The last I heard, sitting out the start of summer wasn't something that would hurt her, and she'd just need to stay indoors for the duration to avoid the storm of pheromones everyone else was throwing around. And then she told me she wouldn't even need to stay indoors, thanks to her earring. So, I can guess that this 'bonding' changed things, and now sitting it out will hurt her somehow? How was I supposed to know that?"

"By asking," said Camus. "Or at least by not acting so uncomfortable about the subject that Cluma doesn't stop telling you things you need to know. You can't even bring yourself to say the words!"

"I'm asking now! Please, just tell me about... about... mating season."

There. I said it. Would that keep him happy?

"Let me start at the beginning," said Clana, finally deigning to give me useful information, and giving the distinct impression I was stuck in a good-cop/bad-cop interrogation. "Like humans, beastkin usually take a single mate, and do so for life."

And with her very first sentence, she dragged out the incongruity between here and Earth. With a divorce rate approaching fifty-fifty, it was hard to claim Earth humans usually married for life. But here it held far more truth. Why was that? It wasn't as if all divorces were acrimonious. Sometimes people just naturally grew in different directions, regardless of their own will. Shouldn't that happen here, too?

"Unlike humans, that entire aspect of our lives is compressed into a two-week period each year. During mating season, those without a mate look for one, and those with one... Well, I'm sure you can imagine the effect of cramming a year's worth of human sex into two weeks."

Okay, forget good-cop/bad-cop. This is just two different varieties of bad cop.

"Often, someone knows who they want to mate with beforehand. Sometimes they don't, but the drive to find one can be a bit strong, especially in the young, so perhaps two people who'd never considered it before end up sleeping together for a couple of weeks, and then go back to being friends. It happens, and is normal. Or sometimes the complete stranger they end up in bed with becomes a lifelong partner."

From the way she was glancing at Camus as she said that, I could guess that was how they met.

"In Cluma's case, she's never wanted to surrender to her impulses like that. She was planning to stay indoors to avoid being exposed to the pheromones of anyone else, and pick her partner outside of mating season. As you know, she picked you, which only increased her resolve not to get involved with anyone else, even temporarily."

"And that changed now that we're... what? Mated? Bonded?"

"Yes. And that's where you cheated the usual process. At the end of mating season, those who resolve to stay together for the rest of their lives, who accept each other as mates, change. Their scent advertises that they're no longer available. The change is celebrated on the last evening, in our equivalent of marriage, but it's purely a celebration of what has already happened. So you can see where we're coming from to describe the pair of you as half-married."

Given how much I disliked talking about relationship matters, I was needing to try very hard not to freak out completely. You can't accidentally get married, drunk tourists in Las Vegas aside. That's just insane!

"And yes, for those who have taken a mate, to be in heat without their partner is... unpleasant. I'm not sure how to put it into human terms. It's a powerful drive, like thirst or hunger. We can ignore it, but imagine trying to go two weeks without sleeping, or without eating. While there are no health effects like there would be for starving yourself, it's still not something you would willingly do. Normally."

"Like being trapped in an oven, it burns to move, to even breathe, but you have to move. You have to find the one that can release you. But it doesn't matter how hard you look, how far you go, because she isn't there. There's no escape from the burning. Cluma has no appreciation for how bad it will be."

I looked at Camus, surprised at his graphic outburst, only to find he was shaking. Then I once again realised how slow I was being; he was speaking from personal experience. They were married, and Clana had forcibly separated them. It had obviously been an awful experience for him, and supposedly Cluma would have it worse, being younger. Nor would she have the benefit of the monk class.

When mum gave me the sex talk, she hadn't half missed out a lot of pertinent information.

I'd been amazed that Clana and Camus had got back together after their split. Was this why? But that would imply that this bond couldn't be broken. How was that fair, when we'd made it accidentally? It was based on feelings? I'd been an emotional wreck when I'd accepted Cluma's confession. My feelings had been all over the place.

"So you can't break this... bond? Whatever it is."

Both Camus and Clana looked at me in utter disgust. So, that would be a yes, but presumably with connotations far beyond that of human divorce. Still, they at least understood the concept, so it wasn't forbidden by Law.

"I'm not suggesting I do that to Cluma," I added hastily, causing Clana's expression to relax, while Camus continued looking at me like I was excrement on the side of a road. "I'm just trying to understand the situation. I don't understand how this mating thing happened in the first place."

"It's possible, but... The bond between mates is for life, and ends when one side dies. Deliberately breaking it is like telling your partner that you wish they were dead."

So, they believed hard in 'till death do us part'. Well, I certainly didn't wish Cluma was dead. It seemed like a sensible workaround for the situation to me, but that was my human common sense talking. Beastkin common sense apparently didn't agree.

Wait, how could it break when one side dies? How did it know? Did they need to see the corpse? Sniff it? What if one of Camus or Clana had died while they were separated? There had to be more to it than that.

"I fail to understand how you formed a bond either," said Camus. "Even putting aside the way you managed it out of season, it should require both individuals to accept their partner wholeheartedly and completely. You quite obviously have reservations."

Urk... I think I had enough information now to guess where it had all gone wrong, and admitting it was going to make Camus hate me even more, but it was best to get it over with. They'd long since impressed on me that the situation was serious, and holding back to protect myself at Cluma's expense wasn't something I was going to do.

"I think I can see what happened. Something happened at the end of winter that... shook me, for want of a better description. It left me confused. It was in that state that I accepted Cluma, but she wouldn't have realised because of her enchanted earring. The next day, she asked if I meant what I said, given my emotional state. I said yes, but that I couldn't guarantee an immediate physical relationship. It wasn't until sometime later that she disabled her odour suppression and noticed the change in my scent, so she must have assumed I'd made up my mind in the meantime and been too shy to talk about it."

As expected, Camus fumed at hearing I'd accepted Cluma's confession as part of an emotional rebound.

"I see," said Clana, sounding disappointed, but not angry. "So, the two of you saw the same events, but in a different order, and that small change completely reversed the meaning. You do intend to mate with her in the future, in later years?"

I winced, as usual uncomfortable about the thought, but a nebulous 'in the future' was easy enough to deal with. "Yes."

"Then I will not give my approval for breaking your bond, despite it being accidental. If I left potions like these with her, and she became too distressed, she could take one at will."

So, they were planning to sedate her for two weeks, just because I was, essentially, a prude. Dammit. That wasn't how I wanted this relationship to go! I just... I don't know. I couldn't think what I wanted. But this definitely wasn't it. It wasn't fair to Cluma, and it wasn't fair to Camus and Clana. But they'd made one serious miscalculation.

"As uncomfortable as I might be, do you really think I'd let my discomfort hurt anyone, let alone Cluma? If she really ended up in a bad enough condition that sedation would be better, I'd... I'd... solve it myself."

She should have just told me, but of course, she couldn't. The damn Law. It made her too nice. Or maybe that was her real personality; without using [Soul Perception] at the point she was thinking about it, I couldn't tell. Either way, she knew I was uncomfortable, and so she wouldn't admit the problem. Perhaps she underestimated how bad it would be, or perhaps Camus was overestimating. Clana certainly didn't seem as disturbed by the experience as he was, but if my communication problems were causing real pain, then I needed to deal with it.

"She can stay with me. But thanks for stepping in. This was a far better way to find out about the problem than watching Cluma suffer, however briefly it would have been."

Clana grinned the grin of someone who'd just won not just a game, but the entire match.

"Looks like I was right," she said, but this time it was to Camus rather than me. He was still frowning, but now looked surprised, rather than as if he was about to eat me.

Too late, I realised her phrasing. She'd asked Vargalas if he could produce the potions. She'd never said that she had asked him, and the potion she'd shown me had a quality rating that was too low to have come from him. She hadn't miscalculated in the slightest. But I couldn't believe Camus' anger wasn't genuine. If they were betting on whether I'd agree...

"Right about what? If this is all some sort of setup..." I said, trying to keep my voice under control and not scream.

"Not at all. Camus just needed to hear it directly from you that you were prepared to put Cluma's needs above your own. What I actually asked Vargalas to make was this."

She put another vial on the table, this one containing a thin purple liquid.

Potion of Contraception (Quality: 70)

- Effect: Fertility loss (1 Season)

I stared blankly. How was that supposed to help? No, once again, I needed to think. For humans, sex drive and fertility weren't heavily linked. For beastkin, they were. If you prevented one, what happened to the other?

"That would stop her going into... into heat? With no side effects?" Whatever was going on here, I could at least stop treating the word 'heat' like I was allergic to it.

"I wouldn't say no side effects, but it's a perfectly safe way of skipping her first year."

"It's a year's reprieve. Nothing more," said Camus. "That's all I'm going to give you. You leave her hanging again next year, and for Cluma's sake, I'll insist on you severing this incomplete bond you somehow managed to make."

Which, by their own earlier description, implied he'd prefer me to be dead.