Unbound Soul Side Story: Peter's Celebration (Patreon)

I lay on my front, face smushed into my pillow. It made it hard to breathe, but I'd needed to give [Regeneration] some time to deal with the latest claw wounds on my back, during which it had been the only comfortable position. Now the cause of those scrams and scratches was clinging to my arm, purring in her sleep, with a massive, contented smile on her face, and I had no way of rolling over without waking her.

While I needed to admit to having no prior experience of what the act was supposed to be like, I was fairly sure it wasn't supposed to be that violent. Not that I hadn't enjoyed myself immensely, because I had, once I'd worked out which bit was supposed to go where, but I was fairly certain that not all beastkin had my capacity for healing. There was no way that was normal. Or perhaps telling her to do anything and everything her instincts were pushing her to had been a mistake?

A few minutes later, Cluma stirred, snuggling harder into me as her consciousness gradually booted itself up.

"Huh? Where?" she mumbled. "I was..."

She froze up, then detached from me in a complete panic. "I'm sorry!" she exclaimed. "I wasn't... I didn't... That wasn't me!"

I giggled into my pillow, then rotated to face the horrified, naked catgirl and flashed her my own contented smile. "Really? Who have I been sleeping with the last two weeks then?"

"Don't joke! Oh, your poor back. Why did I do that?"

Her ears twitched and eyes widened, presumably as she recalled the previous two weeks. "Why did I do all that?! I'm so sorry!"

"Why are you apologising? Did you ever see me looking unhappy? Although I would ask for next year, please trim your nails before we start."

Hah. Dad had gained three points of endurance, but I'd gained three levels of [Regeneration], albeit one of them was completely self inflicted. I wasn't sure which was worse. Trying to keep up with a beastkin in heat was... intense.

"But... I hurt you. There's blood all over the bed! And the floor. And..." Cluma leapt out of bed, darting around the house, before heading back in. "I've completely wrecked your house!"

"Our house," I corrected. "Or aren't you planning to join in the celebration feast this evening? Besides, not all the blood was mine."

Cluma glanced at the bed in which she'd produced a thin trickle on the first day, long since washed out. "That hardly counts..."

"Cluma," I said more seriously. "You said yourself that being in heat makes you behave in ways you otherwise wouldn't. That doesn't make you less you. I've had a very enjoyable, if exhausting, fortnight. Until you woke up today, you had too. Don't spoil it for yourself just because you did things you wouldn't have done in your current state."

"Mmm. Thanks, I guess," she said, climbing back under the blood-soaked sheets.

"Huh? Now what are you doing?"

"Cuddling," she answered, stealing my arm back for her own use once more. "We've got hours before the feast."

'Hours that we should probably use to clean up,' I thought to myself, but made no move to dislodge her. I wasn't entirely sure where to start. It might be easier to just burn the place and move to the new house I'd built next to the one that met an unfortunate decay-grenade related fate. It still wasn't perfect, but with my increased skill level and experience of my first failure, it was perfectly liveable.

I'd need to make sure I thanked Vargalas for his potions of potence... And then burn the entire supply and make him promise never to brew one ever again. Those things were dangerous, and responsible for a good portion of the mess.

With my free hand, I poked at the side of my neck where Cluma had inflicted her first wound, long since healed. That one had been with her fangs. I'd previously speculated that our initial bond had been due to me flooding her with my mana, but feeling her instinctively drink mine and force her own into me in return had been... an experience.

One that she may well feel inclined to repeat even outside of mating season. I was officially tastier than a monster core. High praise indeed.

Either way, I was pretty damn certain that however incomplete our bond had been before, it was complete now.

"We should clean up," she said, echoing my own thoughts. "My hair is sticking to the pillow."

"Eww."

"Mmm... So much eww."

"Flame grenade?"

She gave me a Look. Alas, that part of my thoughts apparently hadn't been echoed. "Just go get your cleaning uniform on," she giggled.

"Haven't you seen enough of that these past couple of weeks? Besides, that needs cleaning too."

She paused to poke around in her memory. "Eww."

"Yes. As you said, so much eww."

"Wait, you swore blind you'd never go outside! And then you... That is not how that skill is supposed to be used!"

"I don't believe there are any official regulations on how each skill is supposed to be used," I pointed out. "Besides, it was your idea."

"Only the first part! That other stunt you pulled was all on you. Just... go wash our clothes and bedding, and I'll scrub the walls. Dunno what to do about the carpets, but Mum did give me a second bag for 'after'. Hopefully, it'll have something useful in."

We needed a cleaning crystal. A decay crystal that only touched dirt, grime and undesired fluids, and left the carpet alone. Alas, I was fairly sure such a convenient thing didn't exist. Were cleaning potions a thing? There weren't any that had been downloaded into my head at my skill level. Maybe a real [Maid] would have cleaning skills.

If we successfully beat the Obsidian Spires dungeon before next year, and I got a twenty level discount on completing classes, I'd be able to find out. It was looking possible; we'd passed floor forty already, but the dimension hoppers down there were giving us trouble. Until we beat them, I'd have to make do with water and fire crystals, alongside a box of laundry soap.

As was tradition, we had no visitors until shortly before the feast, but even so, we hadn't completely finished cleaning the carpets. We had at least cleaned ourselves; matted tail fur was not fun.

"Mum! Dad!" shouted Cluma, racing downstairs to the door before they'd even knocked. I hadn't heard them, despite my hearing being no worse than Cluma's these days, but she'd bought [Essence Sight] recently. It turned out to be closest to [Monster Perception] in operation, except that it wasn't limited to monsters, and each person had a unique signature that let her identify them.

She could target [Shadow Strike] through it, too, which raised the local hug threat level to a whole new league. Locked doors and closed curtains were no longer a defence. Enclosing yourself in a steel bubble was no longer a defence if you made the mistake of including a light source.

"You sound happy," commented Clana, cradling little Carla held in her arms. It was nice to see that the baby's hair had finally grown out enough that her cat features looked normal; she'd been born completely bald, her tail a skinny pink tube and her ears a wrinkly mess, like a little sphinx kitten.

"Mmm!" agreed Cluma.

"All ready for tonight?"

"Uh... I think we may need to replace the bedroom carpet. But mostly, yes."

Clana flashed me an impressed look.

"It's mostly blood, not whatever you're thinking," I pointed out.

She sniffed the air a few times, then looked at me dubiously.

"Anyway..." I exclaimed, desperately trying to think of another subject. "How's Carla?"

Clana responded to my obvious deflection with a smirk.

"Compared to Cluma? She's an angel," answered Camus.

"Hey!" complained Cluma.

"I wish I could introduce you to yourself as a baby," sighed Clana. "You'd be in for a shock."

"You can reminisce later about how your little girl is all grown up," pointed out Camus. "For now, that ex-little girl needs to get dressed."

"Right," agreed Clana, handing off Carla to Camus and shooing Cluma back upstairs.

"Then I guess I should, too," I agreed enthusiastically.

I'd never been much of a fan of dressing up back on Earth. What, exactly, was the point of a tie, when you got right down to it? What purpose did one serve? Why was it considered 'smart' to dress in a way that halved the rotary range of your shoulders?

Thankfully, beastkin didn't do smart. I'd never seen a beastkin in a suit, and hopefully never would. Not that I'd ever seen a human in a suit, either. It wasn't a fashion that existed on Erryn's world. All that was traditionally expected was that new couples wore new clothing, which was probably symbolic of something or other, and that they matched in some way. Originality was appreciated, but not required.

Back in the village, I'd once seen a couple turn up in little more than loincloths. That had certainly been original, but I'd wished they hadn't bothered.

I would, thankfully, be wearing more than a loincloth. We were both going in our delver gear, with new suits of armour ordered especially for the occasion. As much as we'd developed brand loyalty towards Adele, we'd skipped over her this time, because our new gear didn't involve anything that her tailoring skills would work on.

As thanks for my continued work with their kids—which had successfully earned one of the unhatched dragons [Natural Mage], and boy was I looking forward to finding out how that turned out, once they finally hatched—Krana and Serlv had donated scales.

We each had a bodysuit of dragonscale, mine red and Cluma's white. In place of the thick leather reinforcement plates, we'd used adamantite, overlaid with larger scales. Hihi'irokane decorations held rank five enchantments. There was, thankfully, no corpusclite involved.

They were, frankly, ridiculous, but thanks to Harry and his team, Grover had been in a very helpful mood this past year. My teleport point at the bottom of the great dungeon helped, too; I could single-handedly manufacture hihi'irokane.

I stepped out of the bathroom, inspecting my fingers with interest. This was the first time I was trying it on—Grover having insisted that the fit would be perfect and there was no need to test it—and the tiny interlocking scales that covered my hands with no loss of flexibility were fascinating. A big part of it was the comfort enchantment, but the skill involved was still self-evident. As he'd claimed, the fit was perfect.

Then Cluma stepped out in her white, scaled armour, helmet off, but her long, beautiful, black hair flowing behind her, braided with daisies, and despite how busy the previous fortnight had been, I had to remind myself next mating season was another year away.

I blamed residual effects from those damned potions.

"Shall we go, beautiful?" I asked, holding out a hand.

She didn't take it. "Who are you, and where is Peter?" she complained. "Peter doesn't do charm."

"Hey! I... Okay, not usually. But this is our damn wedding."

Kinda. It would be more accurate to call it a celebration of a marriage that had already happened, but I was still drawing on some of my human common sense.

She giggled, taking my hand at last, and we returned downstairs, where my parents were waiting by the door.

"Mum! Dad!" I exclaimed happily.

"No hello for me?" complained Darren.

"Darren!" I hastily added.

"You look... impressive," said Mum, eyeing me up and down. They must have turned up while I was changing.

"Indeed," agreed Dad. "Uh... If you don't mind me asking, how much did that cost?"

"A couple of seasons of magic lessons for a bunch of eggs, a week sitting at the bottom of the great dungeon moving mana around, some time playing assistant in the institute, and a (restraining order) against Cluma. There was probably some coinage involved, too, at some point, but it's been a while since I've kept track of that sort of thing."

"(Restraining order)? What's one of those?"

Erryn's world didn't have such a concept, for obvious reasons, but Grover was really not a huggy person. He'd made his aid conditional on Cluma keeping a minimum of a metre's distance from him at all times.

She'd insisted on giving him the next decade of hugs up front, before the condition kicked in. The look of regret on Grover's face had been amusing.

"Come on! We need to get going, or all the good meat will be gone before we turn up," complained Cluma, dragging me out of the door. Our smiling family followed behind. And so followed a boisterous night of booze, meat and song. Mum left early, taking Darren home to bed. Dad stayed till the end, crashing at our place in a haze of alcohol. No-one had quite rediscovered whiskey yet, but things were appearing on the market that were perfectly drinkable, and drink them he had.

For that matter, so had I. I'd realised soon after arriving that it was a celebration of more than beastkin forming mate-bonds. A good few couples were celebrating more lives than two; a pregnancy brought an abrupt end to mating season, so they knew. And I'd spotted Cluma's ears droop when she noticed.

How in the hells had I still not ranked up [Xenophilia]? Or triggered a race change, or something?

No, that was the wrong question. Relying on the System to magically drop a solution into my lap was just an excuse to do nothing and ignore the problem. After all, why wait when I could just cheat and use my admin access? The dragons were keen on not letting me abuse it, but surely they wouldn't consider this abuse. I was determined to make Cluma happy. Or happier, or just plain do my best for her. Whether it was next year or twenty years from now, I was determined to find a solution.