Page 122 of Right Next Door
Nowadays, it was all anyone talked about. Mated couples were planning weddings. Those who had been matched were getting closer with the intention of being married. Businesses were starting to cater to those kinds of ceremonies and events.
It happened so fast, it was almost dizzying.
Misty was surprised, but Tsok wasn’t.
It felt like some kind of pressure relief valve he hadn’t even known about had finally, after too long being locked tight, been released.
The kreecharma were famous for denying their mating impulses. But they didn’t do it because they were unloving and uncaring. Far from it. Their only concern was protecting their females. And now they had a way to do it safely, in a controlled manner. So, they were grasping that opportunity with both hands.
If there had been any part of Tsok that had been concerned about this being the right choice, it was completely banished by the reaction of his people. They welcomed this change. They wanted it. They hadn’t known how to ask for it before, not seeing a way out of their mateless existence before True Match. And even after True Match came, there had been hesitancy. An unknown question of how to apply it to their life.
The ceremony was grand and a bit much, true, but it was just the kind of activity that acted like permission to do something they’d all been taught was wrong for so long. It was mostly performative, but that performance was a necessary step, like a ticket needed to purchase to get into matehood.
Tsok’s journal helped too. Documenting his own experiences with his mate, right up to the point that they were mated and the days following, describing something few others experienced, helped to banish the mystery and fear of the unknown. It was rather intimate, and he couldn’t say he was fully comfortable giving everyone that much insight into his life and his heart, but he didn’t regret writing or publishing the book.
Now, the entire world could read about, learn about, and understand mating from the perspective of another. Someone that wasn’t centuries removed from them and long dead. Someone that came from the same place and school of thought as themselves and understood their concerns.
There were still traditionalists, of course. Those that were hesitant to change. Those that believed it was too early to say for certain that this could work. Even those that said that Tsok and Misty’s mating didn’t count because she was human.
Those naysayers could only be disproven with time. As the wedding process became part of their culture, as it was woven seamlessly into the expected trajectory of their lives, that caution and unease would be starved of sustenance and die.
In a generation or two, it would never even occur to his people to question the idea of a wedding. The idea of mating would lose its negative connotation. One day, going to True Match once you hit adulthood would be seen as a normal rite of passage.
Maybe by the time his own kit was an adult.
Yet again, he found his eyes moving to her belly. Misty had stopped caressing it, but he couldn’t imagine why. That’s all he wanted to do anymore.
She caught his eye and smiled. “Want to go snuggle?”
“Yes,” he answered without hesitation, making her laugh.
He had changed in more than one way since mating. It wasn’t just the obvious physical changes – though those had taken some time to get used to. Even just learning the new length of his limbs had been an adjustment. All his old clothing was too small and had to be replaced. He had to learn the limits and ease of his new strength.
One unexpected benefit of his change was that The General no longer attacked him on sight.
They returned to their room in Fellbud Manor where the vicious beast came trotting over with a happy, rumbling purr. He wound his way first through Misty’s legs, then his.
The first time The General was re-introduced to Tsok after their mating, the cat stared at him like he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. Then he sniffed him cautiously for a while. Then went back to staring at him for a while.
The next morning, after he woke, it wasn’t just Misty he was snuggled up with. The General had curled up right over his head, sleeping peacefully. Tsok wasn’t sure exactly what changed, but Misty thought that maybe The General recognized that Tsok was his clear superior now. The General fell under him in their little family hierarchy, and all the fight drained from him as a result.
Whatever the reason, The General was suddenly quite content to love him nearly as much as he loved Misty.
Though, there was still a clear difference in the way he treated them, and it seemed to center prominently around her belly. The General clearly knew she was pregnant, and he liked fighting Tsok for space laying against the growing kit.
More than once, Tsok woke to her petting both of their heads simultaneously because they were flanking her belly on either side. Tsok would push her shirt up in his sleep so he had his headright on her skin, while The General was purring hard enough to vibrate.
Strangely enough, seeing the feline’s dedication to being close to his kit actually made Tsok soften a bit towards the beast. If he thought for a moment his kit would be in danger from the fluffy monster, he’d have insisted that they be kept fully separate. However, with The General’s newfound tolerance for him and his devotion to Misty, apparently their kit already had his affection.
Misty really seemed to appreciate that their animosity had faded as well. That the three of them could all curl up together, warm and comfortable, every night, gathering around the fourth member of their cuddle pile resting safely in his mate’s womb.
His mate.
He loved saying it. He loved feeling the truth of it. He felt he could understand, for the first time, why his people had once adored this so much, even with the inherent risks it posed to their females. The warmth, the contentment, the sense of completeness that came just from being in her presence would have made anything worth having her.
It also gave him a new appreciation for everything his ancestors had sacrificed when they turned against mating. They would have known this feeling better than anyone in his generation, they would have had the weight of culture going back millennia to give it power.
But it wasbecausethey adored this feeling so much that they had given it all up. Do it for Her, his ancestors had cried. Needing to protect their females. Needing to see them safe precisely because of this feeling.
