The worst thing to say to Roy when he was freaking out was ‘Roy, stop freaking out’, and so I stayed quiet as Roy fussed over me, yanking on my jacket, complaining that my clothes weren’t tight enough, arguing with Mabel’s father as they tried to decide what shoes I should wear.
I was going to meet the first sapien I ever matched with in two hours, and I think everyone in my family was probably just as nervous as me.
This could be it -
The deciding factor of whether I live or die.
There might not be another compatible sapien that came along, and if this one didn’t instantly find me attractive, then I might not make it past the next time I had an episode. It was pure luck that Mabel’s sister had taken that route to work, and had she not been there, had see not been willing to risk grabbing a type A male in crisis as so many wouldn’t, I’d be dead.
And if this particular sapien didn’t want to pursue a relationship with me and make up their mind in the next few weeks that we weren’t compatible…
Than that was likely it.
Up until now I had tried my best and I was still going to give it my all, and if that wasn’t enough, then at least I could say I fought until the very end.
But I didn’t have much to go on to prepare to meet my compatible sapien.
All that was in the sapien’s file was his basic details – he was twenty-five years old, born and raised in River colony but kicked out of it a week ago due to being ‘maliciously mischievous and irredeemably problematic’. He liked cats and worked as a carpenter with his father.
And that was it.
Attached to the file was a picture of the sapien – Gideon.
That was his name.
Gideon Amberchurch.
The attached picture was of a young man with inky black hair and a huge, toothy grin. He was handsome with wild, bright eyes the color of the earth after a rain, dark but rich soil, the kind that smelt like life and growth and nutrients. I could see us growing old together, I think. If we mated and he wanted biological kids, I would love for my children to look just like him, especially with that wonderful smile.
Boy, I hoped he liked me.
I hope he really liked me.
When I was dressed, I had a brief argument with Roy about going alone to meet Gideon, Roy wanting to at least sit in the same restaurant, but I refused. Roy was probably even more anxious about this than me, and had Mabel’s Father not been there to hang onto Roy’s back as he tried to follow me out the door and wrestle my comm out of his hand, I probably would have folded and let him come.
And it would have been a repeat of when our younger sisters went on their first real courtship. My parents were more laid back – totally supportive but giving enough space for us to quietly carve our own futures out, but my brother insisted on tagging along to check out how their dates behaved. He sat in the back of the restaurant and had made sure to introduce himself to their dates before they had a chance to sit down, telling them point blank ‘my sisters are good girls, treat them kindly and I’ll treat you kindly’ before he stormed back to his seat to watch them intently with whatever of his babies he had with him. Usually Little Lawrence, who sat there with the same nasty look Roy wore.
So once I was out the door, I all but ran to the stairs in case Roy overpowered his father-in-law and came after me.
I arrived an hour early at the courting district, where everything was geared toward courtship.
There were hotels geared toward courting couples to see if they were sexually compatible, but also mated pairs that needed a few hours to themselves away from their kids. Shops here sold things geared toward couples and romance – but mostly, there were a lot of businesses for couples to go on romantic dates or to get to know each other better.
Gideon didn’t know how to use a comm yet, but he told his matchmaker he wanted to come down to Liliport to see the city, since Greater Lakes was overwhelming him. His advocate, a sapien distant cousin of Gideon’s mother named Morgana, arranged for him to stay at a hotel here in Liliport for two weeks, that, the train ride down and the city car to drive him to the hotel I paid for as a courtesy for him giving me a try.
We agreed to meet at nine pm at The Fountain, one of the official designated meeting places in the courtship district, where signs all around the area had directions to it.
And then I waited.
I carefully smoothed down the vest of my three piece, grey suit (the jacket of which was left behind) and checked my comm to see it was five minutes til nine. I watched the others sitting around the fountain while I waited, my gaze finding the large marble statues of a mermaid female and a male sapien, surrounded by sharks.
The Little Mermaid was a major favorite tale to a lot of the girls here in Liliport. It wasn’t until college that I learned that the original ending to the story, written pre-novus, was that the mermaid didn’t end up with the prince and in fact turned to sea foam. In all the tales I was raised on, she murdered the sea witch that tried to steal her mate, dragged the prince to a secluded island, and eventually they had a bunch of mermaid children after he accepted her as his bride.
It was always interesting to learn the difference in the old world stories pre novus.
I thought about that as I waited.
After about an hour I began to grow worried.
At eleven, a full two hours after we were supposed to meet, I began to panic that he was lost - or maybe he decided he didn’t want to come, or another compatible novus caught his scent first and stole him.
It as not guaranteed that Gideon would be compatible with other type A novus, but there was always that concern.
Having your betrothed stolen by another novus was a true nightmare, and the only way to react to that was often a battle to the death. Either you were going to die trying to reclaim your betrothed, or the novus that had stolen them would.
And I was not a violent man at all, but I would absolutely fight to the death to reclaim by mate. There wasn’t a corner of heaven or earth I wouldn’t chase my mate to.
But Gideon wasn’t even my mate yet, nor were we betrothed. We hadn’t even met. This wasn’t the uncivilized world where a novus would just take a mate, no questions asked, repercussions be damned as long as the novus got to survive.
In the civilized world, we courted. And this? Even if I was circling the drain, this was still just a date to see if our personalities and life styles were compatible, and he hadn’t even shown up for that.
Maybe he had decided I wasn’t worth the effort.
I could see that being a possibility.
Some sapiens loved a wild novus, the aggressive alpha male that would corner them, claim them, keep them, and do all of that without their consent...but that wasn’t me.
It would never be me.
If he was one of those sapiens that wanted that, I could maybe play the role a little, but I’d never be able to be that person. I needed them to meet me half way at least some of the time, or else I wouldn’t be able to confidently move forward in our relationship.
I never wanted to force someone to be with me…
And if he couldn’t be bothered to show up to our first date, then I guess he thought on it and decided that we wouldn’t be a good match.
I wasn’t surprised, nor was I hurt. I had long become resigned to the fact that this might be my reality-
But then something happened, and everything shifted.
In theory, as a Type A novus you were at the top end of a lot of things. Strength. Speed. Senses. Intelligence. However, just as a type C could randomly possess high end of one of these thing – like Willow being a type C but having an especially sensitive sense of smell that enabled him to pick up on very minor changes in hormones, or some B types being exceptionally fast – Type A could be at a lower range for some things.
In my family, my siblings and I weren’t much faster or stronger than a Type B novus, the same with our senses.
But we had an exceptionally high intelligence, which in my case enabled me to enter a very challenging program at school as well as juggle learning two other languages, learn and work at a job that involved more advance book keeping, and for several years, manage Roy’s wife and her several sisters schedules.
It helped civilize us early, and that, along with duller senses, made it so my siblings and I never felt the need to fight for dominance with each other or other novus, which absolutely contributed to why we had all survived this long with minimal scaring.
However, even with my rather average sense of smell, I was able to pick up on Gideon well before I saw him. Around me there was the smell of the beginning of Fall – rich scents as the perfumes of summer faded, and here in the courting district there was a heavy smell of all sorts of things. Many different foods, expensive fabrics and cosmetics, sex and tears and even some vomit.
And then there was Gideon’s scent, cutting through all of that like a blade.
It was the strangest thing, to.
It was like…
Finally being able to suck in a big breath after struggling to breath for longer than I could remember. The change in my thoughts and my stress was immediate. Colors were brighter, muscles I hadn’t realized were tensed started to relaxed.
The core of my being tightened with liquid heat and it felt good.
I straightened and quickly reached up to push my hand through my hair, forgetting for a brief moment that it was much shorter than I was used to.
All the disappointment and the melancholy over Gideon not showing up evaporated in an instant, and the anticipation of meeting him quickly started to make me sweat. I suddenly felt very anxious and excited, like it was the first day of school and I was about to begin all of the classes I had meticulously selected with my parents over summer.
And then it was five minutes until class, and I was very worried how short I was compared to all the other students, and if the teacher would like me, or if others would think I was weak because Iw as soft spoken, and-
I finally saw him, crossing a street and hopping up on to the curb as he came toward me, his gaze looking around everywhere with a critical sort of curiosity that I saw in Mabel and her sisters – the gaze of a hunter on the look out for something going wrong. He had a very distinct gait like someone that rode a lot of horses and rode them aggressively, Mabel’s Father, previously a horse mounted scout in The Wilds, having a similar gait to his walk even after not having rode a horse in quite some time.
Gideon was far more handsome than in his picture, but that might have been because his scent was waking up all sorts of nerves and senses that had shut down or never had the chance to mature. There was just something about him that was so deeply, achingly attractive, and I couldn’t quite place my finger on it. Sharp features, inky black hair that was mostly swept back, dark circles under his eyes like he hadn’t slept in years. He had a lanky build, but his sleeves were short and his arms were muscular from what looked like the sort of muscle that was hard earned, his waist tapered and shoulders wide.
He was just…
So, so attractive.
I never in my life ever wanted to bite another person, but what I wouldn’t give to sink my teeth into him!
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