Page 31 of I Married A Catman

After cooking a few more portions of the various meats in a way that was suitable for me, we settled at the table so thathe could also enjoy his mostly raw food. While the atmosphere significantly relaxed during our little experimentation, I couldn’t help but bring the focus back on what happened in the Great Hall.

“Should I expect us to always have our meals here?” I asked in a soft voice. “I don’t mind it. But I’m trying to get a sense of what the next few days will be like.”

I immediately felt guilty for upsetting him by stirring things up again. But I needed to know where I stood, especially if he was to go back to work in the morning. Would I have to stay locked up inside the house in his absence for my own safety?

“I’m sorry you had such a harsh welcome,” he responded, making me think that he didn’t know yet if or when it would be a good idea for us to share a communal meal with the rest of the Pride.

“Don’t be. Like I said before, none of this is your fault. Both you and Kayog warned me that there might be some friction. This is not my first time experiencing something like this, although I admit this was one of the highest levels of hostility I have faced,” I said pensively. “With the fundamental matriarchal structure of your society, I’m honestly not sure that they will ever accept me. Especially seeing how quite a few of them appear to want you.”

Gaelec huffed and waved his hand. “They don’t wantme, Gaelec. They just want my seed because I’m a Stellig. It bruises their ego that I am not groveling for their attentions, especially Oluina. So what you said about following me wherever I decide to go means a lot to me. My stay on Molvi truly opened my eyes.”

“How so?” I asked, intrigued.

“I finally understood what it was like to be valued,” Gaelec said, his eyes slightly going out of focus as he reminisced. “The Wardens offer some fantastic improvement programs for free. I studied most of them in my spare time. We do not have access toso much education here. So this was a golden opportunity on top of keeping me in a safer space, and therefore out of trouble with the other inmates.”

“That was clever and beneficial,” I said in an approving tone.

He smiled. “Extremely beneficial. It allowed me to repair a lot of our stuff, upgrade our sector, and generally improve our dwellings, and our lives as a whole. When I left, many of the inmates were genuinely sad. Their lives will get more difficult without me as time goes on. They valued what I had to offer, and they repaid it by whatever means they could to keep me happy.”

“It makes sense. You want to take care of the person who makes your life easier,” I said pensively.

He nodded. “Many wonder how come I’m not maimed or scarred like so many ex-convicts. It was largely because no one wanted to mess with the one person who knew how to optimize our generators and the efficiency of our production units so that we had a lot more power throughout the month at a lot lower cost, on top of increasing our mineral output.”

I frowned, confused. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean by generators and production units.”

“Prisoners on Molvi must earn their keep. The Warden gives us a set amount of energy every month that we need to use wisely to avoid running out. We can buy extra energy by pooling our resources from the credits we earn through our work. Every Quadrant has certain resources that we can extract in exchange for payment. We’re not obligated to do it, but the more we produce, and the more credits we receive that we can then spend on additional energy, comfort items, or to put in a savings account for when we come out. So the quality of our lives is directly linked to how much work we are willing to do.”

“And the optimization you were able to do significantly improved your comfort levels as well as the amount ofcredits everyone pocketed every month!” I said with sudden understanding.

Gaelec nodded. “The work I accomplished will last them a while, but the equipment requires frequent maintenance. Unless they properly train someone else to take over where I left off, they will need to pay a technician hired by the Warden to perform the repairs instead. That will not be cheap. But none of those fools wanted to put the effort required to learn it.”

“That’s on them, and their loss. They will feel the sting of your absence in due time. But I’m really impressed by what you accomplished,” I said with sincere admiration.

He smiled and lowered his eyes in that timid way I found so unbelievably adorable, and his whiskers twitched.

“So upon my return here, it hit me really hard to realize that I was right back where it all started before this whole mess. Here, I’m expected to always give more and more and be grateful for whatever crumbs they throw back my way or for the right to stay. The Matriarchs keep us in our place with the constant reminder that we’re here by their grace. Being paired with one of the Queens or huntresses only grants a temporary reprieve. Our status remains precarious. The sad part is that males keep thinking that they will be the exception. But there will always be a younger, stronger, and more attractive candidate that will swoop in and take your place.”

“You have no idea how much I understand what you’re saying. Although not as pronounced today as it was a few centuries back, it is a lingering problem on Earth. But it’s mostly men doing that to women.”

Gaelec’s ears perked up in surprise. “Really?!”

I nodded. “A woman’s fertility and physical appearance play a large role in her appeal. Men love young women between the ages of eighteen to twenty-five. It’s usually also when we’re at the prime of our beauty and fitness. But it’s stupid since the idealtime for a woman to get pregnant is between twenty-five and thirty-five. And now, thanks to medical advances, women can bear children all the way up to age sixty, but there are a lot more chances of complications the older she gets.”

“It sounds like here,” Gaelec says pensively, but in reverse. “Our females covet males between eighteen and twenty-five. And we usually get discarded by our mid-thirties.”

I shook my head with disgust. “Yep, same thing. Older women have been devastated by their partners of many years suddenly abandoning them for a younger female. But the fools soon learn the hard way that many of those younger women are only in it for their credits. And once they’ve sucked them dry, the old idiots are left penniless and womanless. Then they have the nerve to try to crawl back to the one woman who had been loyal to them and who would have stood by them in their twilight years.”

“I hope those women do not take those men back!” Gaelec growled.

I laughed. “Thankfully, most of them don’t. Their ex-husbands should have recognized their value while they were by their sides. Now they can just eat their hearts out while watching the woman they foolishly spurned live her best life without them. But my question to you is why not just move to the city if you are not treated well in a Pride?”

“Because Pride members are treated like second rate citizens in the cities. To them, we are peasants, borderline savages,” Gaelec said with derision laced with contempt. “Most of the nomads who tried their luck in the city get terribly exploited because they don’t know the laws. They end up trapped in dead-end jobs making barely enough to scrape by. They’re too poor to leave again, so they just work themselves to death trying to survive. And when things get bad enough, they jump on the firstmission offered to them, only to end up getting killed if it fails or to land in jail as I did.”

“But aren’t there placement agencies and other programs that could help them secure a much better job?” I asked, my heart filling with sorrow for those poor males.

“There are placement agencies,” Gaelec conceded. “Sadly, we do not have the types of qualifications they seek. Our education within the Prides is severely lacking. Females learn a lot of the more advanced classes, which would allow them to fare much better in the cities. But it doesn’t make sense for them to leave the comfort that they enjoy within the Pride. They’re the dominant gender here and have full autonomy over their lives and fate. And our government respects the sovereignty of Prides.”

“Right. Why live by someone else’s rules when you’re basically the queen of your own domain?” I conceded.

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