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She laughed. “What time is it?”
“Hm? Why?”
“I’m wondering how much time we have until curfew.”
“Ah. We’ve got about a mark left.”
“Cool. How long have we been here?”
“About a mark.”
“Cool. Want to get out of here?”
“Huh?”
She beamed. “Come on. You and I are all dressed up. Let’s go have some actual fun. We’ve fulfilled our obligations here, haven’t we? We talked to everyone we need to, I pissed off at least three males and five females, and we did the press tour. Can’t we go?”
“Er, well… I guess,” he frowned, thinking. He’d never tried to leave one of these things early before. It had never even occurred to him as an option.
But she wasn’t really wrong either. They’d fulfilled their obligations, and his mother had already turned in ‘his’ contribution to the charity. The press only cared about the beginning of the party – who had appeared, what they were wearing, and what they contributed. No one was going to pay attention to the end of it.
He turned to her. “What did you have in mind?”
***
“I cannot believe you dragged me into this,” Drevor grumbled from the front of the hover as Rane stifled his laughter.
“Hush, Drevor,” Sandy refuted him. “Rane’s not legally allowed to fly, I don’t know how, and I’m not taking Blue or Green with us-”
“Do you mean Orza and Kirs?”
“-so you get to be our chaperone tonight.”
“I don’t get paid for this.”
“Well, when Rane takes back over as head of house, he’ll give you a bonus for previous chaperone duties. How’s that?”
Rane smothered his laughter. Drevor looked back at her briefly before turning forward again. She blinked, looking between them.
“What?”
Rane stifled more laughter.
“You seem to be confused, Tilla Sandy,” Drevor said calmly. “Once you and Rane are mated, and provided Rane is no longer under adult custody, you will be the head of the family.”
“Wha- Me? Why me?” She frowned, looking between them.
“I told you,” Rane took her hand and kissed it happily. “My people are matriarchal. The female leads the family.”
“But…”
“Do you not want to?”
“That’s not really the problem,” she mumbled. “Look, as much as I hate your mother, she does have a point. If I were to have dropped onto this planet without help, I probably wouldn’t be able to take care of myself. I feel like, if we weren’t in this situation, you would have been the one becoming my guardian until I passed the tribunal.”
Rane frowned, that thought not really having occurred to him before. Honestly, the idea of being in charge of budgeting and upkeep and all the other things that a house needed to do to survive seemed like a special kind of torture. He had passed his coursework in school, but only what was required of him. He hadn’t done superbly well. Playing trikball didn’t really require much from him in terms of higher education. He just had to play well, know all the rules, and study the opposing teams and their stadium’s hazards.
But if he had been his own male, if he had been allowed to do all that by himself from the beginning as he should have…
