of its soft surfaces at various heights (a little suspect, the heights. Like they were wondering if we sat according to hierarchy, but Gracie assured me the various surfaces are for comfy sex. She’s a kidder). That Gracie, who is definitely a natural-born leader-type personality, never takes a floor pillow probably has more to do with her supremely pregnant state and not the fact that dominant humans do not sit lower than non-dominant humans. I’m sure the aliens observing us have not received any misguided impressions about where we choose to park ourselves having any correlation to our personality or social dynamic.
For the record, I like the floor pillows. They’re comfy.
But back to Dohrein’s classification of the human stages of relationship grief. Gracie is a total champ and helps his analysis along by providing official terms. “You can call it what it is. This is the whiny bitch stage.”
“Yes, that is the label I have listed here courtesy of your notes,” Dohrein says, still murmuring, and there’s soft tapping as he adds to his notes on this strange-to-him human condition. “Now for the timeframe. It would be helpful to list the common duration of this condition. For science,” he clarifies. “How long would a female in Isla’s situation pine for?”
“Forever,” I mutter.
“Til she gets banged,” Gracie answers, like I didn’t talk at all.
Dohrein remains perfectly professional in his interest. “Does she have to be serviced by the male she initially began her pining for, or—”
“YES,” I say.
“Not always,” Gracie speaks over me easily, on account of her mate sitting like twelve inches behind her, cupped to her back on the sofa, supporting her, sitting sort of sideways with his huge leathery wings flopped over the couch arm.
Dohrein hums thoughtfully. “Are humans like Gryfala where they perish without their males? We’ve encountered the human phrase die of a broken heart, but could find no medical data to support it in Homo sapiens. We would welcome reliable anecdotes. Will one of you perish from pining?”
“I might die,” I moan.
“Fuck no,” Gracie answers. “She gets another twenty minutes to sulk and then one of you helps stand me up so I can kick her in her sorry arse.”
“I’m not sulking,” I complain.
“Moping?” Angie tries to offer helpfully from her spot on the other sofa.
“Brooding,” Mandi suggests. She’s also on a sofa.
“Despairing?” Jonohkada asks, voice tentative. He’s sitting on the floor not far from me. If there was any basis to this human-seating-hierarchy debate, well, you know where we sit.
I point to him, shouting, “That’s it! I’m despairing!” Then I whimper a little, feeling the pity wave roll over me.
All the women in the room groan.
Jonoh is grimacing, clutching his drawing pen or pencil or whatever he’s been using to draw with. “Sorry,” he whispers to his leader, (of course it’s Gracie, who else would it be?). “I thought we were helping to label her—”
“I’ve added ‘despairing,’” Dohrein confirms for him pretty kindly, which is really nice because Dohrein is just a tiny bit standoffish with Jonohkada. He has to know the guy would never dare to make a play for Gracie, plus Gracie sees Jonoh as almost nothing more than a little kid and her personal henchman-boy-puppy. But still, there’s a very real territorial barrier that circles invisibly around Gracie whenever Dohrein is with her and Jonohkada is near. Earlier tonight, Jonoh made the mistake of looking to Gracie for an answer, and he must have looked at her for too long because Dohrein had leaned forward, forcing himself into Jonoh’s line of sight, Dohrein’s jaw brushing Gracie’s face as he silently stared pure warning into Jonoh’s eyes. No longer the slightly absent science-geek scholar; he was a deadly mated male protecting his claim on his woman.
I’d thought to myself Sheesh, just tattoo your name on her skin already.
And then Dohrein’s blue-marked black wings had folded around Gracie with a slap that made her gasp—and when he peeled his wings away, he’d left sparkly marks on her skin. Like a butterfly’s powder gets transferred to your fingertips if you brush against them, his wings had dusted Gracie but with boldly printed lines perfectly matching his wing designs. As if that wasn’t enough of a She Belongs to ME, Dohrein kept staring at poor Jonohkada. A serious, pointed look that had Jonoh immediately dropping his gaze and going back to what he was working on.
Gracie had Dohrein help her up so she could drag her mate to the nearest empty room for a quickie.