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Whatever the device was, exactly, over the following days Dain grew more comfortable with its unobtrusive presence. As the schooling continued, Dain also grew more confident with each day that it was working exactly as advertised. Every night that Dain wore it, she woke up the next morning in her supposedly default female form, a form that her body maintained with consistency well into the evening. After a while, Dain became so certain of its functioning that she even dared to wear some of the "in-style" clothes that Eloa had bought for her, which Dain had worried could be embarrassing if she had unexpectedly shifted into the male form. The leggings were still a bit too snug for her taste, but the clothes did allow her to fit in seamlessly with the girls, and Dain was more than happy to have days where she managed not to be obtrusive or the center of attention.

Caure, of course, wore what she always did and didn't much care if she stuck out from everyone else; when a few of the girls had whispered about her clothes behind her back, she'd found out and dealt with it by confronting them directly in the hall in front of most of the class, and all but challenged the ringleader to some sort of duel before a teacher showed up and managed to defuse the tensions. It was the last time that anyone talked about Caure's clothes either way, though. Dain knew that as far as Caure was concerned, Dain could wear just about anything and her friend wouldn't care. There was a part of her that was tempted to just wear something male or generic, as a form of intermittent protest - as much as her female form was becoming unobtrusive, as much as she was becoming comfortable with it and used to its quirks, there was something about the notion of just quietly assuming a default female identity that still didn't quite sit right with her.

That was why, in part, Dain was heartened when she found out the device's other use. Or, rather, a use provided by its absence - after spending a number of continuous days in her female form, Dain discovered that if she left the device off for a night, her body's pent-up desire to shift would take over and Dain would wake up, just as much guaranteed, in his male form for at least a good portion of the next day. It was a fortuitous discovery, as it was just the piece of information he needed in order to meet that not quite explicitly-stated goal: to accept and adapt to his new form without relinquishing the state he was used to, and wanted to preserve.

Once he found out how to manage using the device reliably, he was quickly able to put his pledge into motion: For most of the days at school, Dain would play along and keep to the form she was supposed to be in, but on the last day of school for the week, and the one day afterwards that served as a break, he would make sure to let his male form emerge for as long as it needed. Sometimes, though, it meant sticking with the male side for a while longer until things shifted back on their own; the device only kept Dain in her female form if she was already in it, and there was no feasible way to wear it as a boy. Even with that consideration, though, Dain was soon spending most of her time as a girl - and with that compromise, with that promise to her original male self not to let it become vestigial or fade away, she found that, along with the physical comfort that was already there, that she might even be able to find a way to be mentally comfortable with her situation, too.

The schooling itself, the academic part at least, was easy enough. There was still a lot of testing every morning, but instead of being primarily generic, basic stuff, it was becoming both more complex and more specialized; on top of that, when she'd asked her peers about the tests, she'd quickly found out that unlike before, they were being offered questions about different things. Already, the tests were beginning to sort them, narrowing down the fields of study necessary for whatever their aptitudes, and likely subsequent careers, were intended to be. Dain wasn't quite sure, though, what exactly those tests were steering her to, at least not yet; although, if what Reo and Laeva had said was right, in that respect she would probably have more options than most.

Things also became a little more varied as far as some of the other education was concerned. While Dain's male and female forms weren't that well-delineated, it was enough for his teachers and peers to tell, and once the teachers picked up on the pattern they decided to split his time in the afternoon classes accordingly. Actually, it made sense; as Dain, given his unique situation, would likely have to participate in heats using both his forms, it made sense to learn about the practices and techniques from both perspectives.

While the female classes proceeded normally, as Dain was already used to, the male classes seemed markedly different in both tone and perspective, at least from the point that he started showing up to them. For one, as expected, they were considerably larger, and took place in the main lecture hall rather than the smaller, more intimate room that the girls used. They also, as quickly became apparent, focused on considerably different topics. The female classes, unsurprisingly, focused on how to comfortably deal with heat, the intricacies of the scheduling program and how to negotiate with other girls about it, with things having to do with the act usually a distant third and mostly focused on the techniques that were most beneficial to ensuring pregnancy once actual heat began. For the boys, though, the act itself was front and center, along with the protocol around it - the polite way to show up, how to elicit which techniques their partner wanted them to use, how to check in with the girl as it was happening to make sure she was enjoying it, things that should and shouldn't be done while tied together. It was, in fact, focused just about entirely on female pleasure and respect, which Dain knew made a lot of sense - when it came to being invited to a woman's heat, it wasn't just about taking care of the current invitation, but encouraging subsequent ones. While Dain still didn't exactly understand the intricacies of the matching program, the other boys seemed of the opinion that even flawless DNA would still leave you high and dry if your performance was so awful that no one extended you another invitation.

For most of the boys, though, their true focus was mainly on figuring out how to get invited in the first place, which meant that Dain's unique status ensured, somewhat to his consternation, that he quickly became the most sought-out boy in the class. After all, whatever the teachers said about the process, Dain was able to see the whole thing from the female side, but was still male enough, at least on those days, that the boys felt comfortable asking the kinds of questions that, had they been asked to a normal girl, would have resulted in immediate derision or rejection.

Given Dain's personality, the first class as a boy was a little overwhelming, and while the teachers quickly caught on and broke up subsequent mobs of persistent questioners, every time there was a break one boy or another would sidle up with something they were trying to figure out. Most, of course, wanted to learn whether certain girls were interested in them, which Dain usually couldn't answer - it wasn't the kind of information he consciously listened for, and it didn't seem respectful to reveal what little he knew. Others wanted to know about certain aspects of the process, how girls actually chose who to give invitations to, and those he tried to answer the best he knew how, given that he was still learning himself. There were also the inevitable questions about the kind of things girls, well, liked to do with guys specifically during their heats, most of which Dain mumblingly tried to dodge while blushing awkwardly - it was the last thing he wanted to think about during his time as a boy, not least because there was always the distinct possibility that thinking about how such things felt could rapidly convert him back not just to his female form, but an uncomfortably aroused one at that.

The most awkward situations, though, were when boys that came up to him, before or after class, and asked whether Dain specifically might see fit to invite them to her next heat. While such direct overtures weren't exactly unheard-of, having them happen while he was a guy for some reason made them seem even more desperate, especially from guys that seemed to afraid to even approach while Dain was hanging out with the other girls. At the same time, though, Dain realized that he could, in fact, empathize with them - after all, it had been less than a year ago that he had been in their shoes, wondering if there was even a single woman out their in the world who would show him her favor, and knowing just how possible it was that there wouldn't even be one at all. As a result, seeing the desperation in their faces and hearing it in the way they pleaded had left him feeling very conflicted, knowing how depressing a flat denial would be, but still next to clueless as to how to go about actually choosing who he wanted to, or should, be with during heat.

Again, Dain was left with more awkward, noncommittal answers to give, at least until the teachers caught on to what was happening. The week after they found out, there was a rather pointed lecture on the etiquette of how to go about asking a girl about an invitation (the short answer being that they really shouldn't, not ever), with a special emphasis that such rules applied to asking girls who, as in Dain's particular case, might not be one at the time they were asked. Those specific proposals dropped off after that, and the boys in her class were still too shy to more directly proposition her as the upperclassman had before, so at least in that sense the pressure was off. Still, it didn't stop the other boys from being both more present, and weirdly nicer, than they'd particularly been before. Even Teiya sought out excuses to talk with him, although in that case, Dain wasn't entirely sure if that was due to his own volition, Caure's not-so-subtle pestering, or simply a shared familiarity from their time at the workshop. In a certain way, Dain guessed the increased interest felt... not horrible, but it was still another case of ending up the center of attention when he, or really she, didn't really want to be.

While that class, especially, was considerably different, for the most part, the schooling didn't otherwise change in a way that was contingent on the form Dain happened to be in. The only main difference, on the day of the week when he showed up as a boy, was his inclusion in team sports during the afternoon. The girls had a time where they did exercises, to be sure, but it was more about calisthenics and individual activities, with anything at all approaching contact generally shunned - something about protecting their bodies during the crucial developmental period of their trial heats. Apparently, the same message wasn't passed along to the teachers who dealt with Dain in his male form, or considered such activities in his male form as less of an issue, as on the days he was a boy they didn't restrict his participation at all.

In a way, Dain actually appreciated the opportunity to play - while he hadn't particularly liked the rough-and-tumble kind of stuff growing up, at the same time it was something that seemed wholly and unabashedly male, and when his body took on that form, there was something that just felt... natural about indulging it in that way. Because of that direct, uncomplicated physicality, it was the one time during the school day that he really felt in touch with his own body, and reconnecting with his male self at that deep, instinctual level became an important part of the minority of time that he now spent as a boy.

Of course, as it turned out, the boys seemed particularly eager to play with him for another reason: the possibility, even if it was remote, of him reverting to female at some point out on the field, thereby giving them the slightest of opportunities to have physical contact with a girl without the fear and awkwardness of trying to court one directly. As a result, Dain often found himself as the focal point of many of the games, and, therefore, the one most likely in for getting tackled down onto the grass. When it happened, the grab often lingered for longer than it should have, hands probing into intimate places, and while some seemed disappointed and pulled back quickly when they found a sheath where they had been expecting something else, some others did not, leaving Dain quickly blushing and feeling even more conflicted than ever. After a few weeks, though, Dain realized that he was far from the only one getting tackled for longer than necessary, as it seemed that for a lot of the guys the games were less about the score and more about wrestling on the ground with each other in particularly close ways. Again, though, after a little thought it was something that made sense - while some of the guys would end up invited to heats, or other activities with girls, a good portion would not, but all of them likely had the same desire for at least a certain sort of intimacy.

For Dain, though, the main problem with it were the former, the ones who wanted to chance being with the female version, if only for a moment. The ones without that expectation were... subtler somehow with their closeness, and afterwards Dain didn't feel particularly any different. The other ones, though, reminded him of the way that some of the guys had felt during her heat, close and warm in that particularly masculine way, which meant that the still-confusing feminine part of her started to respond in kind. Ironically, the guys who were so readily disappointed and pulled away probably wouldn't have been if they'd stuck around a little longer - as confusing as their contact had been, it also seemed to shake the resolve of whatever part of him wanted to stay male, and more often than not it was only a few minutes later that Dain reverted to her female form.

Even more confusingly, the reversion was accompanied by a little of the mysteriously subtle female arousal, although on the occasions she ignored the upcoming change and kept playing long enough to get tackled again, the feeling went from subtle to decidedly less so, and immediately less dry. Usually, when it happened, she'd excuse herself before any more confusing contact happened, but sometimes wasn't quite so lucky - and sometimes, just unconsciously thinking about the contact led to her arousal blossoming of its own accord. As awkward as it was, the contact didn't feel... bad, per se, and sometimes reminded her of that one peculiar thing that she'd been missing, somewhere in the corner of her mind: that feeling of intense, physical closeness, a feeling unmatched by anything she'd experienced since, that had come while being tied together during her heat. While it was probably true that she didn't really understand guys any better than she did girls, heat had certainly changed the ways in which she desired both.

Weirdly, though, the feelings that resulted from a change like that, one spurred by contact rather than the specialized device or that occurred naturally, seemed somehow to spur forward more intensely and abruptly once the arousal had taken hold. It seemed, oddly enough, more male in its approach, even as it happened to her distinctly female form. The downside of it, though, was that it was more urgent and aggravating than it usually was. As she was still a little too wary of trying much of anything more deliberate with boys outside of heat, as appealing as it occasionally seemed when her arousal flared up like that, when things got intense enough she occasionally ended up in a stall in the girls' bathroom, with one hand between her legs and the other wrapped around her muzzle to keep any unwanted sounds from escaping as she tried to coax her female form into as quick of a release as it could manage.

Caure, of course, had somehow managed to get wind of that pattern, and while the girls didn't work out particularly close to where the guys did, she managed to place herself in a corner with just enough line of sight to the playing field to see when Dain took off. As a result, when it happened again and Dain was close to feeling some sort of relief, she ended up making a muffled cry of surprise instead when she saw the stall door shake and looked up to see Caure's not-particularly-guilty-looking face glancing down at her over the top of it.

"C-caure! What are you doing?" she'd abruptly yelped, pulling her underwear back up into place and glaring back up with her with a combination of embarrassment and indignation. Caure, of course, had just grinned back.

"Heh, I totally knew you were up to something! So, tell me... which guy is it?"

"W-what?"

"Although you know, it's not like you've gotta be shy about it. Just ask him to meet you somewhere out of the way, and you don't have to worry about trying to take care of things yours-whoooaaa!"

The last exclamation came when Dain, not particularly amused, had finished getting dressed, quickly undone the latch, and gave the door enough of a push to send it teetering away on wobbly hinges. Caure, perched as she was, had been swept out to the side along with it, legs kicking wildly for purchase before she thought enough to let go of the door while twisting away, letting it slam against the stall to the side as she took several stumbling steps to regain her footing.

"All right, all right, I'm sorry, okay?" she'd said when she looked up to see Dain staring silently back at her, obviously pissed. "I dunno, I... guess I just missed the way it felt between us, you know, back when I was in heat, and I just... I really like the way you look, and sound, when you're like that, even if you're a girl at the time. And things have been just so normal between us, that I felt..."

"That you felt like spying on me while I... I..." Dain trailed off, not quite willing to put into words what she'd just been up to.

"Touched yourself? Yeah, I get that you're angry that I saw you like that, but... remember, it wasn't all that long ago that you were actually inside me, as beautifully intimate as it can possibly get. So you can think of it as just another shared intimacy, right?"

"I-it's only shared if both people agree to it, though, not one, you know, watching the other without even telling them..."

"Okay, fine, fair enough! I was wrong. And I said I was sorry, didn't I?" It was an abrupt and therefore unusual capitulation, given Caure's usually determined nature. The about face was quickly explained, though, as Caure reached out to run a hand gently along the curve of Dain's shoulder. "We're both here, though, so... do you want to maybe share something now?"

"Um... n-now? But we're both, um, girls, and I can't even think about changing back until I'm, well, done being aroused as a girl..."

"There's no reason we can't still share something, though," Caure replied. "After all, girls do know the kind of things that satisfy each other far more than boys will ever figure out..." She trailed off, though, her expression suddenly flip-flopping into something entirely different than the odd, uncomfortable look she'd been giving Dain before. "All except for Ekka, of course! I spent all that time with her, trying to get her to, you know... and no matter what I did, I just couldn't, could't quite..."

Caure abruptly reached out, grabbing Dain by her shoulders, but there was nothing particularly sensual about her current posture. In fact, she seemed to be approaching the same sort of determinedly mischievous grin that usually spelled trouble with her.

"That's it! If she's going to be vexingly hard to get to unless she's actually in heat, then you'll have to be the one to do it!"

"Do what?"

"Get back at her! You know... take care of some of that frustration, right? After all, she did embarrass you, and while I get that it's more gentlemanly or whatever to just let that roll off of you, you've still got some frustration towards her, you have to! And since you're already invited to her heat, that's the perfect time to take control once and for all, to show her who's really in charge! I'd do it myself, of course, but I can't shift like you, and she just doesn't, well, respond when she's not in heat. I mean, not at all, not like us, so that's when it'll have to be..."

"Caure, that... sounds like a really bad idea..."

"Really? Why?"

"Um... you haven't forgotten what it's like having people over to your heat, right? Maybe... I guess yours could have been different, but there were a couple of guys in mine who tried to do that, tried to take charge or something like that, and I... kinda clobbered them, and it went downhill from there. Besides, as a guy you're supposed to follow the girl's lead, not the other way around... right?"

All of a sudden, Caure was grinning again. "Wait... you actually punched a guy who was going too fast during your heat?"

"Yeah... and then kinda pounced on him right afterwards..."

Caure finally let go of her, but only because she'd apparently decided to bust up laughing over it.

"Um... it's not that funny, is it?"

"It's not what happened that's so funny, but... oh, Dain, sometimes I don't even know what to make of you! The way you were growing up, if you'd actually been a girl, I wouldn't have been that surprised, and then you somehow both were and weren't, and you've been actually a girl so much lately that I kinda started thinking of you that way, at least a little. But the fact that you actually decked a guy, and during your heat no less... I'm really not sure whether that makes me think that you've still got some serious guy-stuff in you somewhere, or you're not just a girl, bit one who's a serious badass at that! Er... I guess that's good either way?"

"I'm... not sure how to even answer that..."

"Oh, it's not for you to answer, not really! More just a... statement, I guess. Just that every time I see you like this, it seems like I learn something new about you that I hadn't even considered before. I know I keep saying this, but you're the most interesting person I can think of, and I'm not going to let up until I know everything I possibly can about you, and about what you are."

Dain remained silent, not wanting to encourage anything further along that particular line, and as Caure seemed to be in an especially mercurial sort of mood, Dain hoped that she wouldn't dwell on any more prying questions. Luckily enough, her prediction was basically correct, at least in that Caure was still focused enough on her other 'project' to rapidly switch gears back in its direction.

"But... you already know that. Stuff between us, that works, but Ekka... I dunno. I think she's the kind of person who you can only really be friends with when you're also on top, you know? Otherwise, she'd just kinda... out of hand..."

"I dunno if she's that bad..." In fact, when it came to Ekka, Dain's further interactions with her had been somewhere between uneventful and nonexistent. Whatever Caure was up to with her, it had left Ekka either cowed or terrified in Dain's presence, and as Caure had lately made a habit of being wherever Dain was a good deal of the time, Ekka usually tried to avoid them unless Caure intentionally roped her in. In any case, her earlier transgressions were all but forgotten, to Dain at least, and now that Dain's condition was all but normal to her classmates, Ekka didn't have any grounds for further objections. As far as Dain was concerned, she'd already been put in her place well enough by having her own accusations disproven, and it was really only in Caure's mind that it had turned into some sort of vendetta. "Maybe we should just leave it alone, and let her be already..."

Caure's indignant glare told Dain exactly what she thought of that answer. "Grr... How is it that you can be so forgiving, anyway? Wait - don't answer that. I get it. It's because of that guy part of you, isn't it? Let me guess... there's at least some attraction there, right?"

"Well, she is kinda pretty in a certain way... and before all this, I didn't think I was gonna get invited to anyone's heat as a guy, so every invite I did manage to get, I wanted to show how much it meant to me by treating that person the best that I possibly could. Now... I don't even know how it's supposed to work. Like I said, I didn't think I'd even really be in competition, and now there are guys competing to be with me... I know it's coming up, but honestly, Ekka's heat is the last thing on my mind, especially compared to my own..."

"Oh, yeah... it is coming up soon enough. Do you have anyone picked out for it yet?"

"Um, no... what with school and the other stuff that's going on that I'm trying to get used to, I haven't even thought about it much, and Selaue's only just gotten started teaching us the stuff beyond the basics of using the system, the actual profiling and genetic matching and stuff that we're supposed to use to sort it all out, so... I dunno, are you doing any better?"

"Heh, not really... though I've got more time, right? At least the schedule says that we're not overlapping for the next one, so we don't have to worry about competition - and so that I can invite you to mine, of course! That's gotta be interesting for you, though. You're with Ekka as a guy, then a few day's later you're a girl in heat for a solid week, and then back to being a guy with me. But I guess it all works out somehow, right?" She leaned in a little closer, grinning conspiratorially. "You know what? Forget Ekka, and all that other nonsense. I have got to know who you're considering! You're gonna invite Teiya back, right?"

"Um... yeah, sure, I guess... Out of all the guys, I probably know him the best, and the last time, with him, was... comfortable? I still really don't know how to think of it - that whole time I felt in a completely different state, and it seems so strange to think back on it all when you're back to normal, like it was some sort of vivid dream even though you know it actually happened. Trying to take all that... pure sensation and think about it logically, it's like trying to use numbers to write a poem. I mean, beyond not being that interested, maybe, in the guys I ended up having to punch, the rest of them... I don't even know how to make a rational choice. Maybe it was in slightly different ways, but when I was in that state, being with all of them felt really, really good... Outside of heat, though, I don't even know what to feel, or how I feel about them, and growing up thinking I was supposed to be attracted to girls, it's especially confusing. When I look at guys, I think somehow I'm not seeing the same things that other girls do, I mean I can tell if a guy's cute or whatever, but I don't usually feel anything very much. It's only when I see them, uh, doing certain things - or I'm actually in contact, when there's some hint of what I felt during heat, that things start to happen, but even then I'm still not sure really what I'm feeling, or what to make of it. Add to that all the other stuff about guys, genes and interests and psychological profiles, and... I don't know how to sort it out. Which is why I'll probably just invite back Teiya and some of the others, because I already know how I'll be with them, so it'll be easier that way..."

Caure looked a little surprised by the detail of Dain's response, even if it hadn't perhaps been quite what she was looking for. "Hmm... well, you've got a point there. You probably do know girls a lot more than guys, save for the few who worked ceramics with us. If you've got to deal with both, though, I suppose you ought to find out more about them, too. Luckily for you, though, you've got a whole class of girls with heats coming up, so the next few days boys are gonna dominate the discussion. And given how you're kinda both, they'll probably be even more interested in discussing it with you. Or, you know, you could ask me - of course, I still have to figure it all out too! I'm inviting you back, of course, but you were by far my favorite. As for the others, I... really don't know..."

As Caure finished, another trio of girls from their class wandered in, and somehow managed to fall seamlessly into the conversation as they brushed their fur in front of the mirrors. They were more than happy to take up the topic of boys, as Caure had supposed, and by the time they ended up walking back to class together, the others all seemed to be absorbed in comparing stats and, more importantly, notes and stories about the various boys that they'd been with. It still felt a little uncomfortable to Dain, hearing them casually swapping such intimate details, but Caure seemed to be paying rapt attention, surreptitiously withdrawing her tablet and carefully taking down certain anecdotes. Ultimately, though, Dain was happen enough with it, as it provided Caure with something new to focus on, and the earlier awkwardness in the bathroom was seemingly forgotten in light of her new project.

With the days ticking down until the leading edge of girls in their class started their next trial heats, boys did in fact come to dominate both teaching and discussion, if not a particularly strong place in Dain's imagination. True, all he had to do was wait for a shift and look in a mirror if there was any particular curiosity, and there were still all the years in which he'd thought himself firmly among their ranks, at least in most respects. At the same time, though, it was clear enough that there was an odd disjunct of experience that most of the girls seemed to have: intimate knowledge of a boy's sexual form, of his prowess and technique, size and rhythm and manner of closeness, but little else about them, and had mostly nothing to say about their thoughts or personalities, interests or aspirations. In fact, at least among his group of friends, the only boy they really seemed to know much of was Dain himself, and perhaps Teiya to a lesser extent. The other boys, then, still seemed to them largely mysteries, albeit ones with which they were, in certain respects, intimately familiar.

Which was why, she supposed, their coursework with Selaue had taken on a very sharp focus on two specific topics: the most beneficial things to do during heat, and how to get all the invitations sorted out so that each girl would have a solid slate of boys lined up without stepping on any other girl's toes. As such, a lot of the time, instead of focusing on the more exciting and intimate parts of heat, was devoted to the selection app on their tablets, and how to use it to sort through boys in a wide variety of ways and then find clear slots to put them in on the complicated schedule.

While the whole thing seemed needlessly intricate at first glance, the underlying logic of it was soon clear enough, even if the logic of actually making the choice seemed far more obtuse. Selaue had provided some guidelines - boys with a high genetic compatibility were best, boys that you or other girls liked at their previous heats were good too - but for the most part it was still completely the girls' choice, at least insomuch as the boy in question hadn't been completely scheduled by all the other girls first. At least for now, boys were limited to being with one girl per day, which meant that if enough heats overlapped, some girls might be left out with the most popular ones. On the surface, and at least as Selaue had explained it, the system was first-come, first-serve, so whoever selected the most sought-after boys early would get them. In practice, though, it was apparently different - once they'd all gotten into the system, many of the girls were frustrated to find that a handful of particular boys seemed to have already been booked up, or at least locked out from being chosen, even though their names didn't seem to appear anywhere on the schedule. No one seemed to know why, not even Selaue, and while there was some grumbling, the girls had seemed to accept it.

It was the next day, though, just a few days before Ekka's heat and a little over a week to Dain's own, that the mystery of the locked-out names was revealed. Dain had been sitting in her room, playing around on her tablet, when a priority message had popped up, blocking her program. It was from Reo and Laeva, and contained an attachment that did something in the background as soon as the message was opened. The message, for the most part, consisted of a list of names, names that the organization the two agents worked for had "strongly recommended" for attendance at Dain's next trial heat. Unsurprisingly, most of the names on the list corresponded with the ones that had been locked out, and when she went back to check, the names were suddenly unlocked again, although more than just available - when she checked her own schedule out of curiosity, each and every one of them were already slotted into place, leaving only Teiya and a handful of other empty spots left. Puzzled, she tried to remove one of the names, but while she could slide it to other spots on the schedule, she couldn't seem to remove it entirely. Apparently, strongly recommended meant mandatory, but as Dain didn't even know several of the names on the list, she wasn't in the mood to blindly accept them. The contact icon was easy enough to find on the taskbar, though, and true to their promise, a moment after pushing it Reo's face appeared on the screen.

"Oh! Hey, Dain! Actually, I thought you might call. I take it you got our message?"

"Yeah... I'm not quite sure what's going on with it though. It just assigned a whole bunch of people to me, people I don't really even know, and it won't let me take them off..."

"Ah, yes... I suppose I should have mentioned it earlier. I suppose, given that your upcoming heat is a trial one, that this is a trial of sorts as well. As I mentioned when we spoke before, your being a shifter means that your genetic line is of paramount importance in helping to bring our species and civilization back from the brink, and as such, the priority of the system is to ensure that you are provided with the most pristine genetic matches before anyone else, in order to eventually allow for the best possible offspring when your true heat arrives. I know it's too early to worry about that just yet, but because of that priority, you may find that things are scheduled in a similar manner going forward - not for all of your heat, of course, but for certain important individuals. If you really have a problem with any of them, you can talk with us about it and we can take them off if necessary, but the presence of particular individuals at your heat may be critically important in the future. That being said, though, since this is a trial heat, I admit that we... co-opted the system a little. As I said, we want you to become as comfortable as possible with your female form, both in and outside of heat. So, the people we prioritized, in this case, are those who we felt certain would help your heat to go as smoothly and comfortably as possible, boys with very even temperaments and a history so far of being especially gentle, caring and respectful with their partners in previous heats. If it's really a hassle to have them assigned, or if you need room for someone else in particular, I'm sure we can work it out, but we're really trying to do the best that we can for you. Are you all right with that?"

"I... guess?" At the very least, Reo seemed to have resolved to keep her best interests at heart, and for the moment Dain had little reason to doubt him.

"I can understand if you're hesitant, but this process is something that you'll probably need to get used to. Although... you don't have to just take my word for it. If you click on any of the names in the schedule, it'll take you to the boy's full profiles, and you can see that they back up everything I've said. Or just ask around - I'm sure some of your friends have had experience with them. If after all that you think I'm full of it, just tell me and I'll reset everything. Please, though, if you can, give it a chance - I think it will make things easier in the future once you're used to it."

Dain nodded, and let Reo sign off. As he had suggested, she pulled up some of the bios, and his statements seemed to check out - the boys seemed to be good in most respects, and when she brought up their photos, she had to admit that they all looked reasonably cute from her developing female perspective. And for all that, it was certainly a whole lot easier than trying to actually sort everything out herself. There were enough names in place, in fact, that she could just about add in the names of the guys she especially liked in her previous heat and be done with it, with only a slot or two left to fill. None of the other names she put in seemed to conflict, and just like that, she was almost done, with plenty of time to spare. There was still some question about the unknown boys, but unless she heard some warning when she mentioned them to the other girls, she decided to simply go ahead with it and see how it turned out. If they did work well, it would mean that her heat would be even better than before - at the very least, she'd be far more prepared for it this time.

When she did mention the other names, though, the intrigue surrounding them and the other girls managed to bubble back to the surface - especially when some of the girls noticed that the names only became available after they appeared on Dain's schedule. Those concerns, though, were diffused quickly into curiosity once Dain had shown them the official government note on her tables, and the way those names couldn't be removed from her own schedule.

"Weird," Loen had said, looking on at the display in puzzlement. "I don't think I've ever seen that happen before. I didn't even know they could do that. Everyone's been going on and on about how this is our choice, that it's our responsibility to choose wisely, but what's the point if they're just going to choose for you?"

"Except that no other girl has anything like that," Shaie had replied. "I think it could just be... a shifter thing, maybe? If you've got to take care of things as both a boy and a girl, maybe that's how they make it all work out..."

No one seemed to have any better idea than Dain did, though, and she hadn't been eager to bring up Reo's reasoning for it - given that things had been confused enough getting in with the girls, especially after everything with Ekka, she didn't want to make it look as if she thought she was superior or something. The fact was, she didn't feel that way at all - more like she was being singled out for someone else's reasons.

Whatever the need for it, though, it didn't seem that Reo had been misleading. When she'd inquired about the boys on the list with the other girls, they hadn't been familiar with some of them - a few were from the class ahead of them, it appeared - but the others lived up to their billing, getting overwhelmingly positive comments from the girls who had been with them during their first heat.

While most of the comments were respectful, each girl seemed to have a few guys they'd been with that they refused to talk about in any specific detail. It didn't seem to be about the feelings of the guys being evaluated, though - the ones who hadn't done well were denounced in no uncertain terms. Dain didn't really know the reason for the prevarication, and didn't really care, but Caure of course had her own theory: that because of how Dain had caused certain guys to be locked out, they didn't want to reveal which guys were their particular favorites, out of fear that the program might somehow reserve them for Dain in subsequent heats and cause them to miss out. "Don't worry, though," she'd said to her when Dain had brought it up. "You've got me, after all - I can listen in when you're not around and keep you up to speed on any of their secrets!" Even when Dain wasn't around them, though, it seemed that each girl had a few guys they simply clammed up about, and not just because they were necessarily their favorites, but because they just didn't quite know how to talk about them. Eventually, even Caure concluded that there was no conspiracy of exclusion, just a bunch of girls still trying to parse their simultaneously vivid and hazy recollections of their first heats and figure out what it all meant for their second.

Even if the girls weren't eager to discuss certain experiences amongst themselves, Selaue had very different ideas. Now that things were moving along quickly, and the earliest girls in the class had little more than a week until their next trial heat would arrive, their teacher had set aside the basic questions and anatomy lessons and started in on a crash course on precisely what was to be done when it came time for them to be with the next group of boys.

It was no surprise that a lot of the focus was on learning to do things in the way that would most likely lead to conception when real heat arrived. With their barely adequate population, and with some of the lingering effects of the cataclysm being both sexes' tenuous fertility and difficulty conceiving girl children, it was important to maximize their chances; at the same time, though, the act of mating itself was, outside of direct and dangerous medical intervention, the only part where actions could be taken to increase the odds.

Selaue wasn't at all shy about driving that point home in her lessons, although partway through the lecture on "acceptable and prioritized sexual positions," she shut off the slides and went with a more straightforward attempt to get the point across.

"Look," she said, "There are a bunch of scientists that ran a whole lot of studies on sexual positions, and they can probably tell you the precise correlation between the angle of a woman's hips during intercourse and the fractional percentage of potential increase in eventual fertility. The fact is, though, that the effects of different positions are so minor that they might as well not matter. Well, except for one. If you're straddling the guy and sitting straight up, gravity's working all the way against conception, so you probably want to skip that - if you'd rather be on top, just lean over and cuddle with the guy instead of bouncing on top of him. Whatever other position you want is fine, though, and whatever other people want you to do, I would say feel free to ignore their advice and go with what's comfortable for you. Honestly, the most important part is to make sure the knot goes in all the way, and stays there for as long as possible - an hour at the absolute minimum. Since you all seemed to have managed that easily during your first heat, just do it again, and everything should be fine. In any case, trial heats are about getting comfortable and learning what works for you first and foremost, so just try to remember about the knot, and don't take the position and technique stuff too seriously. Finding what, and who, works for you is the part that really matters."

If the instruction for the girls didn't dwell too much on positions and techniques, though, the class for the boys seemed geared to the exact opposite - and while Selaue had seemed focused on fertility as the top priority, for the boys the main focus was even more directly on pleasure, especially that of their partners. As intriguing as it was learning about it as a guy, Dain realized that he was also kind of thankful that all the other guys were hearing it too. Dain, after all, knew firsthand how a guy who wasn't in tune with his partner could make things uncomfortable, and such knowledge was probably the reason that Taore wasn't slotted into the schedule for Dain's next heat.

If there was a primary message to take away from the male instruction, though, it was that there was no one-size-fits-all approach to female satisfaction. As a result, the most important thing a guy could do during heat was listen to their partner and carefully follow their lead, never just trying something that they assumed was right until they knew their partner well enough to actually be certain of it. And if that message was made abundantly clear, it was hammered home even more so when it came to women who went "exclusively" into heat - specifically, those who didn't express arousal outside of it, and consequently had much stronger drives when it happened.

Caure, of course, had her own take on the girls in their class who were like that, and Ekka especially - well, not so much especially as solely and exclusively. As the day approached, Caure's suggestions about what Dain should do with her grew both more frequent and more lurid. Despite Dain's own desire to just let the situation settle down, especially since he was the one who would be in the room with her, Caure wouldn't let it rest. For her, it seemed, the situation was still somehow about... payback, or dominance, even if it seemed obvious to everyone that Caure already had the upper hand. While Ekka was still Ekka, and sometimes spoke out of turn, she hadn't effectively challenged Caure since the initial incident - it was Caure, in fact, who seemed to be constantly on her, rather than the other way around. Whatever her reasons or obsessions, though, she seemed fixated with getting Dain to somehow get her in line, and so she continued to encourage Dain to dominate her once they were together, even if Dain still didn't understand exactly what that meant.

"Oh, you know the kind of thing she'd like... a guy just pinning her down on the bed and giving it to her all primal-like, right?" she'd said offhand to Dain a couple of days before Ekka's heat was scheduled. Dain, for her part, had the decency to look appalled in response.

"I know you guys don't get along, but how can you say something like that about her?"

"Oh, don't be righteous! It's not an insult, anyway. It's totally fine if she likes a guy to just go at it with her, without any niceties or protocol..."

"Do you even know that she does? I mean, the only heat I know about is my own, but... don't you think you're projecting something onto her that's more the kind of thing you want to see happen to her?"

"It's not just me!" she replied, looking indignant. "I've heard stories, from girls and guys both. Girls like that, they go into heat, that's literally all they think about, all they do. They're more like rutting animals than people until it's over. So I'm telling you, you take charge with her and give it to her in no uncertain terms, or she's gonna eat you alive!"

"Really?"

"What, you don't believe I know this kinda stuff?"

"Um, well, if you did know it, if you're actually right about what you're saying... then why did you get me invited to her heat?"

"Because I wanted you to pounce on her and show her who's boss? We went over that already..."

Dain sighed, knowing that it was nearly impossible to win an argument with Caure when she had her mind set on it. "However she ends up being, I'll... I'll make it work. But I'm not the kind of person who's just gonna pounce on someone. All this stuff's easy for you to say, but you're not the one who'll be with her, and you're also not the one who gets blacklisted if something goes wrong."

Caure looked back at her incredulously. "Rrgh... I'm not saying this just because I want her put in her place, okay? Maybe you hated it in your heat, but I'm telling you, it's different with girls who don't get any in between. Yeah, you pounce on someone who doesn't want it, they're gonna get pissed off. But if you don't pounce on someone, who doesn't just want it but needs it, they won't just get pissed, they'll get scary. You seriously don't believe me? Maybe you should go ask that boy you decked just why he jumped on you right away like that. Chances are, it wasn't just him being over-exuberant..."

Dain had just shaken it off at the time, trying to discount it as more of Caure's angry ramblings, but at the same time she couldn't help but wonder a little about it. Plus, it seemed especially awkward somehow to ask Taore about it as a girl. However, when she got home that night, the box with the device in it refused to open, and the app for it wouldn't activate - when she tried, an error message popped up stating that it was locked out until she attended Ekka's heat in order to make it as likely as possible that Dain would be a guy leading up to it. Unsurprisingly, the next morning he woke up in his male form, one that still seemed a little more natural, more comfortable, even though he was now spending only a minority of his time in it. Not that he didn't still look, well, at least a little feminine, but somehow it did give him more confidence in certain respects. No matter that everyone was aware of his status as a shifter, when it came to talking about things like heat and sex and stuff, it was still more comfortable to talk with her female classmates about it as "one of the girls," and vice versa with the boys.

Even so, Taore still flinched back a little when he'd come up to him between classes, a sense of guilt evident in his features, and Dain had felt uncomfortable enough that he hesitated a little too long to head off Taore's nervous response.

"Um, H-hey, Dain, I know stuff's coming up, people's heats and all, and if you're thinking about what happened last time, I'm really, really sorry about that, and I promise, I swear... I would totally understand, of course, if you didn't pick me, but if you do, for sure it wouldn't be like that again..."

Dain sighed inwardly, knowing that Taore's stammering was going to make his question even more awkward. "Well... actually, I kind of wanted to ask you about that. I mean... that wasn't your first time attending a heat, right?"

"No, there... there were a few before..."

"Okay, so, if that's the case, when you did what you did... was it just because you were overconfident and jumped in too early? Or... was it because of something else?"

"I, I thought that was the right way, honest! What I mean is... that first time through, I didn't know what I was doing. I'm still not sure I do, but honest, you're not the first or last girl that hit me or chewed me out over something I did or didn't do." As soon as he said it, he looked Dain over and did a double-take. "Er, I mean, not that I'm saying you're a girl right now! Unless you are, in which case... um, anyway, what was I saying? Oh, right, the heat stuff... I don't know, really. About the only thing I learned is that some girls like it fast, some like it slow, and some like it really, really fast. Like, through the door and into them kind of fast. And if you don't figure out which type they are quickly enough, you're gonna pay, and probably deserve to. So, yeah, I screwed up, and I'm really, incredibly sorry that I did. Next time, if there is a next time, I'll know better. Next time, I'll just ask, and do whatever you tell me. You want me to crouch down on all fours and lick your feet, that's what I'll do. Because... I know it's crazy, after what happened, but out of the... um, people I've been with, you're one of the ones I really kinda wanted to be with again, and that's even after all getting punched out and stuff..." He looked over at Dain, hopefully. "I know it's probably futile to ask now, but if you are interested, even if it's not this heat but the one after that... I had to at least try, right?"

Dain had luckily found a way to extricate himself from the conversation before Taore got even more desperate and over-apologetic, but in a sense, at least, he'd confirmed what Caure had been saying: that when it came to girls and heat, there was a lot of variation, probably even more than had been talked about in class. Now that he was stuck as a boy, though, it seemed especially awkward to ask the other girls about their heat, especially as Ekka's was coming up the very next day. What Taore had said, though, did seem like a better roadmap than anything Caure had suggested: the best approach was probably to just walk through the door, ask Ekka what she wanted right off the bat, and then do whatever that was to the best of his abilities. Dain didn't know everything there was to know about heat, but having actually gone through it, he did at least know that when it happened, there was only one person in the room whose needs were the most important, and that was really the only thing that a potential partner had to keep in mind.

Dain awoke the next day with the same sort of nervousness he'd had on the day of Caure's heat, if not more so. Caure, at least, had been familiar enough from all the years they'd spent together; Ekka, while he knew her at least somewhat from their interactions, was still much more of an enigma, and he really didn't know just how she was going to react when he encountered her in heat. The rest of the preparations were the same, though: another set of formal clothes was set out on the chair next to his bed, and when he'd gotten up the next morning he'd pulled them on reluctantly, still wondering why they were apparently so important for something that took place while naked. He supposed that, ultimately, it was supposed to be about respect for his partner, but in Dain's female experience of heat, at least, the nature of the clothes had mattered less than the expediency with which they'd been removed.

The formal clothes made getting to school a little annoying, rustling his fur around uncomfortably as he walked, and he didn't relish the idea of sitting through class in them - before he'd left, though, Eloa had grabbed a change of clothes to stuff into his pack, so at least he'd only have to deal with the discomfort until the heat. Surprisingly, though, it came sooner than he'd expected; as soon as he'd headed into the morning lecture, the teacher had intercepted him, and pointed him instead straight down the hall to the heat area entrance.

He was well enough aware of his position, at least, that he didn't even hesitate beside the female entrance, instead walking over to the male one. In the place where the card reader would have been, the door was instead equipped with a small intercom system, a camera lens protruding from above the speaker and a large, round button below. Dain pressed it, and the lens swiveled over to examine his face.

"Ah... Dain, right on schedule." The voice on the intercom sounded a little tinny, but the words were still understandable enough. "Once the door opens, enter the room immediately to your right."

The door buzzed for a moment, then clicked and swung slightly open. Beyond it was a narrow white hallway, a more robust-looking door at the end of it, and two doorways flanking him on either side, although only the door to his right was open. He turned and walked in, revealing a bare-looking room with a low metal bench in the center and a bank of lockers set against the far wall. The only other thing in the room was a black square along one wall, which abruptly lightened and faded until it became a near-transparent window. On the other side of it was the face of a teacher that Dain wasn't that familiar with - he'd seen him around, but hadn't actually taken a class with him.

He looked Dain over briefly, bringing a tablet up to his face and glancing at it for a moment before continuing. "Okay, so it looks like you're going to only be with Ekka this morning - just so you know, you'll still be attending your afternoon classes afterwards, so make sure to keep your clothes neat when you stow them."

"My clothes?"

The teacher looked up from the tablet. "Oh, I forgot to mention that part. There are several requests and preconditions that can be specified by those in heat, including that partners be undressed when they enter the room. So you'll need to go ahead and disrobe in here, securing your clothes in one of those lockers before walking over - I'll make sure the hallways are clear before you exit, so you won't have to encounter anyone in that state aside from your scheduled partner. Additionally, I'll reset this window for privacy while you get undressed, and because of that I won't be guiding you directly. Once you're naked, though, just go through the door at the end of the hallway. From there you'll see colored arrows on the walls - follow the ones that are flashing blue-green, and it'll take you to the room where you need to be. Understand?"

Dain nodded. "Good," the teacher replied, glancing down again for a moment. "I'll inform her that you will be on your way momentarily. Go ahead and get ready, and when the light by the door turns green, the hallway will be clear for you to proceed."

The teacher reached out towards something off to the side, and a moment later the window flashed and shifted quickly back to opacity, leaving Dain alone with his thoughts. He knew, somehow, that things would be a little different with Ekka - Caure certainly hadn't ever let him forget it - and maybe this was part of it. Not that Dain minded particularly - the dress clothes really were not entirely compatible with fur, and he'd be more than happy to have them off.

When Dain got down to his underwear, though, for a moment he felt a twinge of apprehension, although it wasn't exactly due to embarrassment, so much as hoping that when he glanced down, he'd find that the right equipment was still there. He was pretty sure that everything felt right, but there had still been occasions from time to time when he'd been pretty sure about his configuration, only to reach down and discover that the other one was currently active. The sheath meant that even as a guy a lot of things still felt internal to a certain extent, and if he wasn't wearing something tight enough against his sheath to make the difference immediately clear, sometimes the change was subtle enough that it was hard to tell just by how things felt inside.

The obligation of heat, though, still seemed to do the trick, and when he glanced down he could see his sheath obviously pushing out in front, and everything remained resolutely in place as he stripped the rest of the way. He was still nervous enough that his arousal wasn't yet showing, which was probably a good thing - clear hallway or not, it would be awkward enough walking down the hallway with his erection sticking out in front of him.

He carefully folded the dress clothes and stored them in one of the lockers along with his pack, and a moment later the light turned green and the door clicked open. His nervousness over being naked made him hesitate for a moment, poking his head out around the doorframe and making sure that the hallway was indeed empty before stepping into it.

It was still strange enough, walking into that ostensibly public space while completely naked. Even stranger, though, was the realization that things felt... cumbersome, somehow, more than they usually were. Because of his situation, the tighter underwear he'd often ended up wearing, along with his sheath, tended to keep things buttoned up regardless of what state he'd shifted into. Now, though, feeling things swaying back and forth between his legs, brushing against his fur with every step, actually seemed a little out of place. An odd revelation, to be sure, and not one he'd anticipated, even with all the time Dain had spent shifted into a female form. Troublingly enough, walking around as a male no longer seemed like the default, but instead the form that felt, while not uncomfortable, nonetheless ever-so-slightly out of place.

Walking down the hall, though, was hardly the time to be thinking about such things - the last thing he wanted to do was end up dwelling so much on his female form that his body might risk changing, Ekka's pending heat or not. He tried to shake it off and focus back on what he was doing, following the arrows and finding the door, although it wasn't just that which he needed to concentrate on - he also had to get into the frame of mind, the male frame of mind, that he would need to perform decently. While Dain knew plenty about heat as a woman from previous experience, as a guy he'd only been with Caure, and with their previous relationship, he didn't really know whether what happened there would translate to... well, to someone like Ekka, who he knew much more peripherally.

Because of that, it took him a few moments of nervous fidgeting before he could find the resolve to reach out and press the door's activation panel. As soon as it slid open, though, his nervousness and trepidation were almost immediately replaced with something quite different.

It was the smell that hit him first, barreling into his nostrils with a pungent force that for a moment felt almost physical in its impact. It was nothing like the scent that had emanated from Caure - well, maybe a little, but only if it had been amplified a hundredfold, the underlying feminine scent all but overwhelmed by the cloying perfume of heat. Almost immediately, it felt like his head was spinning, his chest instantly tensing and adrenaline spiking down his spine and tingling through his extremities. Despite the scent, his breath started puffing heavily, and an almost familiar buzzing settled in between his ears - a little like what he'd felt when heat had started as a female, but somehow more focused, more aggressively prominent. He managed to step forward and let the door close behind him, but steadied himself against it with his hand a moment later, feeling suddenly disoriented as he looked around a nondescript room that seemed oddly fuzzy as its lines crawled along the edges of his confused and overwhelmed senses. Most incongruously, he realized that he was suddenly, completely hard - in what he could have sworn had only been a matter of seconds, he'd somehow gone from being mostly sheathed to fully extended, the knot even nearly swelled and locked in place.

He glanced up, trying to fight through the powerful scent of heat that permeated the air, his vision seeming to narrow even as his eyes, his mind, immediately disregarded every other aspect of the room, focusing only and exclusively on the woman lying prone on the bed and looking up at him intensely.

If Dain had tried to describe Ekka before, at least somewhat neutrally, it would probably have been as someone who was plainer that pretty, but prettier than plain. She was a little shorter than the other girls, but petite rather than stocky, with common, unpatterned fur somewhere between sandy and medium brown. She was, however, every inch a woman, with all of the right curves, including the ones that Dain's female form lacked - including a pair of breasts that seemed to match her figure perfectly, completely undisguised in her topless state, her nipples flushed with heat to a deep, vibrant crimson. The only bit of lingerie she wore was a pair of abbreviated, satiny green panties, soaked noticeably darker where they clung tightly between her legs, their waistband partially replaced with little bows of ribbon holding them together along the sides. From an objective standpoint, Dain had no idea whether Ekka would be considered beautiful, but in that moment, the scent of her heat flaring his nostrils, she was nothing short of absolutely stunning.

Amidst everything else, though, it was the look on her face, when she turned to glance over at him, that finally did it. The arousal in her expression was so clear as to be unmistakable, hints of blush even managing to sneak through the fur just above her muzzle. The way her gaze fixed with his, that unspoken need shimmering in her eyes, and all of a sudden everything Caure had said or intimated about her came flashing back to him unbidden - that her heat was wild, desperate, how it needed to be dominated and tamed, every notion that Dain had rejected suddenly falling into place in his arousal-addled mind, tension and energy coursing through his veins.

He couldn't even remember acting on the impulses that momentarily overwhelmed him, at least not consciously, but the next thing he knew he was abruptly in motion, three rapid, sprinting steps that culminated in a coiled, pouncing leap just shy of the foot of the bed. For a moment, he felt himself in the air, surging with a strange, predatory desire, and then he was on her, against her, his tip already pushing in along the heat-soaked fabric between her legs.

That, however, was the point when his body finally managed to get a handle on the crazed arousal spike that the scent of Ekka's heat had inspired, and he froze in place as a different sort of awareness kicked in. Rather than anything about Caure, or Ekka, this one came from within, from his own experiences of heat in feminine form. Of what had happened with Taore, of how uncomfortable and disturbing that aggression had felt, of what a tremendous faux pas it was for a man to let his own desire take over and deny the woman the ability to direct the pace of the encounter. And yet, thanks to an unprepared reaction to a different sort of scent, and reinforced by Caure's words swirling around in his head, there he was making the biggest mistake of all.

The unusual, unbidden confidence suddenly drained from his limbs, and he tried to get his arms under him and pull himself back off of her, trying desperately to ignore the sensations of closeness that encouraged him to keep going, glancing worriedly down at Ekka's face and desperately stammering profuse apologies as he tried to extricate himself from his current position. To his surprise, though, Ekka only seemed angry as he started to pull away, and suddenly her hands were wrapped around either side of his head, holding him fixed in front of her aggravated glare as her gaze seemed to bore into him.

"What do you think you're doing?" she snarled, although her voice seemed dramatically different, reverberating with a deep, aroused huskiness.

"I, I'm so, so sorry for pouncing on you like that, I really didn't mean to disrespect you, I swear I'll do better, I-" He halted abruptly as one of her hands let go of his head and pressed a finger against his muzzle before returning to hold him in place.

"Not that, you idiot! You were supposed to do that, that's why I was lying on the bed that way! Why are you trying to pull back? You're not supposed to pull back!"

"But I, I thought that, um, that you were supposed to be respectful, and take it slow, not just act on... on instinct like that, but let the woman tell you when it was time for... for that. I mean, that's how I did it..."

The frustration, and arousal, was becoming even more evident on Ekka's face as she continued, her husky voice nevertheless managing to take on an incredulous tone.

"Yeah, because there's the stuff you went through, heat-lite or something like that, and then there's actual, proper heat. Can't you tell how I'm feeling? Can't you see the desperation in my face? Does it look like I'm in the mood for whispered compliments or foreplay?"

"B-but I-" he trailed off again as he felt Ekka's hand's squeeze tighter against his head, her eyes flashing intensity towards him.

"Just... shut up and listen, okay? You want to know what I need you to do, then I'm going to tell you, but I'm only gonna tell you once, because if you're not doing it as soon as I finish you'll see exactly what happens when you spurn a woman in proper heat. Got it?"

Dain nodded, although it was as much due to the motion of Ekka's hands as anything intentional on his part.

"First, you're gonna get back down on top of me, where you're supposed to be. And then you're going to pull off my panties, line yourself up, and instead of fussing around with it or whatever you had planned, you're just going to put it right in. And once you're in, you will hold me tightly, and thrust as hard and as fast as you possibly can. Not whatever amount you think women want, or what you think I want, but however much you're actually capable of. And don't worry about whether I can handle it, because not only can I take it, it's the only thing that's gonna work against this... need. You are going to give it every ounce of power and speed you possibly can. Even if it feels like it's too much for you, even if it feels like you're gonna faint or cum too early, you actually won't so just keep going. And do not, absolutely do not stop for anything, not even if I start screaming which is kind of normal actually, but you do not stop thrusting, you do not stop moving until that knot is all the way inside and you feel me starting to cum around it. This isn't some other girl's kinda-more-aroused-than-usual heat. This is true heat, and you're gonna take care of it. Right. NOW."

Dain nodded, trying to take it all in, but apparently he wasn't acting quickly enough for Ekka's taste. She let go of his head, her hands darting down between them, and a moment later she shoved a wad of fabric up against his muzzle, reeking so strongly of heat that it sent him reeling once again.

"There, I even took care of the first part for you, so stop hovering, get back down on top of me, and get to it NOW NOW NOW!"

She punctuated her statement by wrapping her arms around his back and yanking him bodily back down, his own arms desperately flailing for proper purchase so that he could at least keep the bulk of his weight from landing on top of her. His muzzle ended up pressed into the soft fur of her bosom, and he tried, somehow, to both hold her comfortably, keep enough of his weight balanced off of her, and get his hips down into place. Everything together, though, left him without a hand to guide himself into position, and when his tip pressed in between her legs the first thing it made contact with was fur, meaning that it was nowhere close to where it was supposed to be. He could feel her puffing hot air against his ear, growling softly in frustration, and the uncomfortable sense in his chest, the anxiety that he was somehow managing to screw things up with Ekka more and more, was becoming more prominent even against the renewed feelings of arousal flowing through him from their close, fur-on-fur contact.

He tried to line up more properly, but before he could do anything effective he felt Ekka's own hips moving around underneath him, her thighs pressing against him to either side even as her fur slid along his tip, quickly giving way to warm, wet flesh, skittering along one ridge until he realized he needed to pull back just enough to crest it, sliding down the other side as the twinned ridges guided him naturally to nestle in place against the opening.

Dain had anticipated, at least, that physically things would feel the same as they had with Caure, but with Ekka even that seemed dramatically different. When she'd talked about true heat, she hadn't been kidding - while Caure's folds had been comfortably warm, yielding softly as he'd pushed in against them, Ekka's were truly hot, not to the point of pain or even close, but far hotter than Dain had imagined was possible. They also weren't as passive as Caure's had seemed at first. While his initial thrust was still a little tentative, despite Ekka's exhortations, her folds didn't just yield, but noticeably gripped against the head of his penis, smothering it with heat and copious, gushing moisture even as, subtly but noticeably, they seemed to be actively pulling him further within. The coaxing was all it took to turn his thrust from tentative to deliberate, and once he was all the way in, feeling her flesh tensed all around him and her hot, flushed ridges kissing the base of his knot, the arousal that had rapidly spiked up within him was ready to crest over and take control.

He didn't know if it was that arousal, the scent, or the encouragements that Ekka was all but screaming in to his ear, but it was suddenly more than easy to do exactly what she wanted, to let his thrusts rapidly build up to their maximum speed without even trying to hold back. Not that he could have even if he wanted to - by that point Ekka's arms and legs had both managed to lock tightly around him, her blunt claws raking down his back with a stimulation just barely short of pain, which only served to build his own tension and add the additional speed of desperation to his thrusts.

The faster he went, the more intense everything felt, and Ekka surely felt the same - with each incremental increase in the rapidness of his thrusts, her voice seemed to sound louder and higher, her staccato encouragements losing their coherence and giving way to rapid shrieks and moans that seemed to reverberate through his skull, a fitting counterpoint to her chest heaving against his muzzle and and her breasts rocking rapidly against his chest with each thrust. The intensity of their closeness, the white heat of her folds as they slid and tugged against his shaft, left him not just gasping for breath, but nearly out of it, his vision tunneling further and darkening around the edges as his body desperately tried to keep pace, the exertion forcing him to struggle even as other parts of him hovered barely below the edge of orgasm. The sensations flooded his mind so rapidly it seemed he couldn't even properly process them all at once - one moment the intensity of her fur brushing against his predominated, then the stimulation of his shaft being stroked, then the heat, the feeling of her ridges tightly hugging against his knot as it tried to spread them. It was too much, too fast, to the point he wasn't actually sure whether his body could handle it, feeling ready to burst in a dozen ways at any moment.

As he had with Caure, though, while the sensations held him on the edge, his body stubbornly refused to give in to any of the impulses. He was surely hyperventilating now just to keep up, and an exhausted ache was settling into his hips and thighs from the rapid thrusting, but whatever he might have wanted or decided voluntarily, his body would not allow him to give up. When the sensation of her along his shaft, against his tip, seemed like it would finally be too much, that it would actually take him over the edge, instead his hips vibrated for just a moment before holding him back, dissipating the sensation instead into a different rhythm, and suddenly he was hammering in against her with every ounce of strength, weight and leverage his position could muster. For a moment he worried that it was too much, too hard, but at that point there was nothing he could do to stop it, just hold onto her tightly and hope that it would be all right. Ekka was screaming into his ear nonstop now, but it didn't sound pained, just over-aroused and beyond desperate to receive his slamming thrusts. Her netherlips hugged tighter and tighter, higher and higher, until with one final thrust that seemed to use up every last ounce of strength he had left, they finally yielded around the thickest part and let him sink all the way in, feeling her hug tightly against the knot in shuddering relief as his tip sunk into the softest, tightest, hottest part of her.

He knew he was supposed to hold on a little longer, but his body was already far beyond its limits of stimulation, and as soon as the sensation of his knot surrounded by heat deactivated whatever had been inhibiting earlier, there was nothing he could do but give in and moan into her embrace as the inevitability of orgasm surged through his hips. Then it rolled over into a deep, rhythmic throbbing, spurting heat against heat as the rest of him all but collapsed against her, the exertion overwhelming him all at once. Lying there, cumming inside her, all he could do was let it play out as he felt her own orgasm catching up to his. Ekka's screams pulled shrilly higher, if that was even possible, until they seemed to freeze on one trembling note, as the intermittent squeezing around his knot suddenly synchronized into the now-familiar rapid, fluttering tension that signaled the intense apex of a female climax. It quickly settled into the tight, squeezing undulation that followed, the part pressed against his tip almost seeming to wrap itself all the way around it before pressing down and squeezing the hardest of all, the center part of it spreading to encourage the trailing spurts of his ejaculation to splash directly within.

The motion coaxed the last bit out from what he had left, and he felt his own climax ebb, still panting desperately against her bosom as he tried to regain his composure. Ekka's hands, though, were still dug into his back with a tonic, rigid intensity, her whole body still locked tightly around him as shuddering echoes of her climax continued to flood through her. Like Caure, her climax didn't seem to just fade away, but shifted back to the vibrating, fluttering apex before descending anew into another series of contractions. Unlike Caure, though, where the climax had subsided slowly through a few cycles before relaxing entirely, with each additional cycle Ekka's shuddering apex seemed to get a little longer, and the contractions afterward seemed to squeeze even more rapidly and intensely. The feeling of her climax constantly coaxing at his knot was enough to get him to gasp desperately and fire a few additional spurts within her, but eventually his arousal was so spent that even the continual stimulation failed to faze him. It did keep him all but immobilized, though, even as he began to wonder what was going on as the minutes stretched by and Ekka's climax still seemed far from ceasing.

Trying to figure out what was going on, he tilted his head up the small amount that seemed possible, looking up into Ekka's face. She looked... beautiful, actually, her face intensely flushed in the throes of climax, the most aroused, ecstatic expression on her face as she looked down at him. She tried to speak, although it came out less as words and more as modulations of a long, continuous moan, tremulous and rolling out seemingly in time with each throbbing contraction against him.

"Dain... your knot pressing... so much... I, I can't... can't stop... can't stop cuuuuuhhhhhhh-"

The last part trailed off into another high-pitched, vibrating moan as her body surged back into another fluttering apex. Suddenly, she was hugging him eve more tightly, her insides squeezing desperately around him. Then her whole body tensed, every part of her seeming to vibrate in time with her apex, the moan climbing beyond the range of even his ears before cutting off - and at the same moment, to Dain's consternation and terror, Ekka's eyes rolled up to the point where only the white part of them remained visible, her head flopping nervelessly down against the pillow a moment later. Her arms and legs followed suit, dropping away to either side and mercifully releasing him from their tight embrace. That was the least of his concern, though - it looked like Ekka had fainted dead away, or possibly worse, and he desperately hoped he hadn't done something to her that had put her in serious danger.

Dain desperately cast about for a moment, trying to figure out what to do, feeling her core seemingly seizing beneath him. Then, abruptly, it relaxed, and a moment later her breath returned, the steady, regular rise and fall of her chest reassuring, even as it was at odds with the desperate, panting hyperventilation from just moments before, or the way her heart was still thrumming rapidly in her chest. Most of her, in fact, seemed incongruously relaxed - with the exception of her hips, which still shuddered as they ground in tightly against him, and her inner folds, which had somehow given up on the second part of the climax entirely and now tensed tightly around him in constant apex.

Dain had no idea what was going on, whether something was wrong or not - but even if there was, he realized he couldn't do much about it. He was still tied with her, the fluttering sensation still intense enough against him that he was regularly gasping in reaction. Against all of that, he could barely manage to get out a weak little whimper, much less call for help, and he was too exhausted to even prop himself up on his own arms - trying to carry her, still tied to him, somewhere to get assistance seemed impossible. All he could do was lie there, try to hold and comfort her, and hope beyond hope that she would recover, that everything would be all right. If he'd done something wrong, if he'd really hurt her... shifter or not, he knew he would be in deep trouble. It was more than just fearing the consequences, though - whatever he'd thought about Ekka, he'd never wanted to hurt her, and the idea that he might have was something he couldn't really even bring himself to consider. If he had really hurt her, even unintentionally, he wasn't sure how he'd be able to live with himself.

After a few more minutes of being in that half-relaxed, half-climaxing state, though, the fluttering gave way to a series of intense contractions that squeezed in almost painfully against his knot, before rapidly tapering off over a minute or so more. As they did, Ekka's eyelids finally closed, fluttered for a moment, and then the rest of her seemed to fully relax, her heartbeat rapidly shifting back to normal as its thudding intensity faded away against her breast. And then, just like that, her eyelids inched open again, and she shook her head gently back and forth like she was waking up from a long, restful nap. A moment later, though, her eyes snapped open all the way, seeming to widen when she saw Dain's deeply concerned expression.

"Dain?" she said, her voice sounding strangely subdued in contrast to her loud, effusive climax. "Um, you're looking at me kinda strangely, considering how well it went..."

"Ekka! You're okay! I mean, are... are you all right? If I, if I hurt you, or did something to you, I didn't mean to..."

Ekka looked back up at him, seeming genuinely surprised. "Dain, of course I'm all right! You've been through this and everything, from both sides of it, so I figured you'd know the way it's supposed to look!"

"Yeah, I, um, I thought so, but I've only been with one other person before as a guy, and she didn't go limp with her eyes all rolled up, which is why I thought you were hurt or something..."

"Oh! Ohhh... Yeah, I probably shoulda told you about that, but it's one of those things that takes a perfect storm for it to happen, you know? My heat has to be super strong, which I guess it was, and the guy's knot has to have that one particular kind of shape, the one that wedges in just right to keep everything going like that. I guess now that I think about it, a couple of guys did mention how it looks kinda scary when that happens, and I probably should have mentioned it so you wouldn't be concerned, although the way I was feeling before, I don't think that even crossed my mind. Anyway, not a problem, completely normal, and in fact it probably happens a couple of times with every heat I go through, so..."

"Wait... that's normal for you?"

"Normal-ish, I guess... though I think it's something that only happens to girls who have the kind of heat that I do, where you don't really feel anything outside of it, but when it happens it's super intense. It's really intense no matter what, but sometimes the feeling just builds all around the knot, but because the knot's in there like that there's nowhere for it to go, no way for it to subside, so the stimulation just keeps going, and it doesn't stop until it builds up so much it overwhelms everything you can feel and you just drift away into this perfect state for a while. Maybe it does look weird from the outside, but when you're going through it, you're not thinking about you, or your partner, just this pure happiness and intensity that becomes your world..."

"Oh, w-well, it wasn't weird, um, I mean, you were still, um, beautiful even with all that..."

Ekka stuck her tongue out for a moment, grinning. "You know we're still knotted, right? It went fine, so you don't have to try and flatter me or anything. I know after what happened with us, and with Caure, that maybe you felt a little strange about this, like it was forced on me or something but... it was exactly what I needed, you know? Even if you're a girl most of the time, you're pretty good at this once you get over yourself and really get into it. If I'd known how you actually were..."

She paused, the smile fading a little. "Um, about what happened with us... you know, before..."

"You, um, don't have to talk about that now, ah... I mean, it's fine, really! I think Caure's the only one who's hung up on that. I forgave you for that ages ago..."

"I know... I know you got over what happened. I never got to explain why I did what I did, though, and now that we've both calmed down, now that we're together like this... especially after what I just put you through with that scare and all, I kinda feel like I owe you at least that. Because, you know, it wasn't that I wanted to be mean to you, or that I hated you, anything like that. I didn't even know you then, not really, so how could I have? No, it's... you haven't been a girl for that long, right? Haven't grown up as one?"

"No..."

"Then you've probably never felt that... that pressure that girls have, from the moment they're old enough to understand it. Guys, they want to impress girls, they want to have that chance, but they do or they don't, and they live with it. Girls, though, they have to choose between them all, between all those people trying to constantly get their attention, and not only do they have to choose, they have to make the right choice. This isn't just a game or something, you know, just picking who to have fun with. This is practice for the real thing. The real, important thing. We have to learn how to choose right, to get past all our feelings and choose the person who's going to be the best match, even though people are trying to conjure up those feelings, trying to get us to choose them even if they're not really a good choice. And if we make the wrong choice, then maybe the genetics don't work right, and we don't get pregnant properly, or don't have any girls, or... it's a big responsibility, and it's hard to be objective about it on the best days, because these are actual people you're being with, and the genetic analysis says one thing and your heart says another. Which is why you've got to keep guys at arms-length if you're gonna make it work, and when I thought you were trying to sneak in, to be there with us, influencing us, making it harder to make those choices... that's why I thought it wasn't fair, to any of us. That's why I did what I did. Maybe it wasn't right, and maybe I went to far, but... that's why."

Her response was a lot to take in, enough so that Dain wasn't able to immediately reply, trying to process it all. And that didn't even take into account the surreality of the situation, again somehow drifting into a serious conversation while still so intimately connected, feeling her inner walls occasionally throb around his knot as he tried to formulate a response. The whole thing, in fact, had been surreal from the moment he'd walked into the room, nothing happening at all the way he'd predicted. Put in that context, at least, the conversation at least seemed to be following the general trend of the encounter.

Still, he knew he had to say something, although he wasn't quite sure what - as strange as it was, it would be far worse to be tied together, looking down at her in awkward silence.

"I, um... like I said, all that stuff between us is in the past. I'm still not sure I quite understand that pressure you're talking about, but you're right - I've only been female for a little while, and no one really told me about female responsibilities even then. I only started learning about all that screening and scheduling stuff when they started teaching it in class, and then the people from the government stepped in and all but set up my next heat for me, which meant I haven't really had to think about it much, at least not yet..."

"Right - which is exactly what I thought. If you had gone through all that, you would have understood why I acted the way I did, why I had to say something. You're probably still thinking at least a little like a guy that way - that heat's all about what happens in here, about who you're with and how good it feels, but there's so much more to it, so much planning that has to come first, because otherwise, you'll screw it up, and then there'll be whispers. Whispers that your kids are gonna have to hear, like I did about my own mom, that she chose guys she liked over guys that paired well with her, and that's why she brought a dozen more boys into the world but only one girl, instead of two or three. How you have to hear them growing up, behind your mother's back, and even if your mother never says it out loud, you have to know that she's thinking it, thinking that you'd better get it right, that you'd better make up for her mistakes. And when that happens there's this... pressure, this crazy pressure to get it right, and then you start worrying that you're gonna go down the same path.

"Then when it all happened, and Caure and that crazy promise she had me make... I was gonna go back on it, you know? I was gonna refuse and just take whatever she dished out, because I didn't want to screw it all up. But then I looked into it, looked you up in the program, and discovered that shifters don't match up with everyone, but for those they do match up with at all, that match is one of the highest-priority ones. So the reason you're here is because you matched, which meant that it was a promise I could keep. Not that I found you unattractive or anything, but it is kind of a little hard to tell with you being, and kinda acting, female most of the time. I guess... I just want to do all of this right, and sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who's taking it seriously, that I'm the only one who realizes how important this is, how it's not just fun and games, and when you showed up like that it just seemed like one more way that it wasn't being taken seriously. I know better now - if the government really is trying to dictate your heat, then they're probably taking it about as serious as possible. And it's not like I don't want to be happy, like I don't want to enjoy this too, but it's not just about me. If we don't all do this right, maybe we'll be okay, but the generations after ours, if things don't work then maybe one of those generations ends up being the last one, and our species just disappears. If I can do anything to keep that from happening, I have to try, and that's why I have to do this right."

"Wow, I... really hadn't thought about any of that. I mean, I hadn't really thought about what actual heat would be like, about getting pregnant, or having kids... that's something so far away from what I ever had to think of as a guy that I just never went there, not even after I started shifting. I... really don't know what I'm doing, when it comes to being a girl, so I've kinda just been doing the things that my mom and my teachers and the people from the government tell me are the things women are supposed to do. I knew it was all important, in some abstract sense, but..."

"And they couldn't expect you to know, if it's something that just recently happened to you... although someone should have known you could be a shifter, right?"

"I don't know... my mom probably knew, but I think she was afraid to tell anyone. And my dad left long before he could tell me he was one, so no one except my mom even guessed at it until one day it just... happened, and I went from being a boy to not knowing what I was, not until after my heat when someone finally explained to me about shifters..."

"Hmm... then I guess we're both living with the fallout from decisions our mothers made. I know it's strange to say it now, when we're like this, but hearing about you, about what happened... maybe we actually have more in common than I thought. And when you get right down to it... that stuff I said earlier, about not hating you, there's more to it than that. I still don't know you that well, even if you count this, but I do like you, in general at least. It's hard to interact with guys, especially now that they all have sex on their minds, and the girls... so many are catty, or vengeful, or make nice to your face and then hurt you behind your back. Maybe you don't see it, because you only seem to hang around the people you already knew, or Caure chases the others away, but... you're just not like that, not at all.

"I mean, yeah, you don't exactly have a forceful personality and you kind of seem like a pushover sometimes, just going with the flow like you're trying to be invisible, but at the same time, I'm not sure you have a mean bone in your body. I don't think I've ever seen you try to get at someone, and for a while I thought maybe you just had Caure do it for you, but I know Caure well enough now to know that someone like you couldn't order her to do anything. I know, what I just said, it's sort of a backhanded compliment, but what I'm trying to say is... you're a good person, not like what I portrayed you as before. Even now... I've been with enough guys now, and sometimes when I'm like this, it's just not comfortable, they're just not right, I can feel my skin crawling beneath my fur and I'm just counting the seconds before they get out of me. Or sometimes they're not right in another way, and I just want to grab them and shake the stupid out of them because of how much they screwed up. But with you, it's just... nice, and I'm more than happy to just stay here with you, to be close to you like this, and I think I'd like it even if we weren't tied. I know I got on you a little for looking girly before, but it also means that somehow you're really cute, with a personality to match, and that's something some girls like very, very much..."

"Um... thanks, I guess? I... didn't really know what to think or feel going into this either, and maybe it didn't happen quite how I thought it was going to, but... it does feel nice, and I'm really glad you feel that way too. I know how important it is, from experience, for the guy to get it right, and that I somehow did, that it worked out... I dunno, maybe it's different for other guys, guys who haven't been through it, but whatever I felt, I also knew at least a little what you were going through, and whatever I thought, or whatever Caure said, I was gonna try to do whatever you needed, because I know how much that means. And... I'm really happy you think I was able to do that."

Ekka grinned back up at him. "Wow... you live up to every bit of your personality, don't you? I'd bet that Caure's probably been whispering into your ear the past couple of weeks, saying things about me, trying to get you to get back at me somehow, trying to conjure up anger or some notion of revenge, right?" Dain had to reluctantly nod in response. "Right. So you come in with all of that stuff, and a lesser man... who knows what would have happened. But you just take all that, ignore it, and come in with no other desire than to make me happy. And it's like you're not even aware of how powerful that is. You're so humble about it I can barely even get you to take a compliment! And yet... somehow that just makes me like you more. In fact, from a certain perspective at least, you might just be the perfect guy - I mean, if you weren't actually a girl most of the time. You're the best guy I've had so far this heat, for sure, and I think I want to savor that, since we're, you know, still gonna be together for a while here..."

The strange thing was, he'd actually ended up doing most of what Caure had actually suggested - albeit only because Ekka had requested the same, and even more explicitly. He didn't exactly want to admit that, though, as Ekka probably wouldn't have been thrilled to have Caure be right about something like that. "Ah, okay," was all Dain managed to reply, feeling his back thrill slightly as Ekka reached up and wrapped her arms around him, brushing through his fur and touching lightly against skin that was still a little sore from the scratches she'd left earlier.

"So, um... do you want to kiss, or something like that? Like I said, I've only done this once before, as a guy at least, but it seemed like it made sense to make out and stuff..."

"Mmmh... no, but I think I know where I'd rather have you be..." Her hands slid up to his head, moving him down into place, and he quickly found himself nuzzled back into her cleavage, the bottom of her chestruff tickling the edge of his nose. When her arms returned to his back, though, they seemed... hesitant, somehow.

"Um, now that I think about it, I kinda realize how this might seem to you... you know, considering that particular absence in your female form. I'm really not trying to rub it in, though, it just... it feels really good having you against me like that, and being able to look down and see you nestled in there like that, I can't even begin to tell you how cute it looks. I know it's not something you can take advantage of, in your own heat at least... heh, I guess it is kinda weird to talk like that when you're still knotted in me, isn't it? Even so, though, now I can't help but imagine what you'd look like in heat, with a guy... maybe not quite like what I go through, but I bet it's really something all the same. When you do, though... maybe it's not the same as breasts, but you still have nipples, and that's the most important part. Not sure if they do anything when you're a guy, but as a girl, especially in heat, if you make sure to have the guy rub up against them in any way, it can make things a lot more intense..."

Dain felt her shift under him slightly, feeling her hips nudge in just a bit closer against him. "Oh, and speaking of that kind of stuff, especially now that we're in this part of it... This is a request, but it's also a recommendation for when your own heat comes around, if you haven't tried it already. It's true that when you're tied like this, there's not a whole lot you can do to move around inside, not anything like the initial stuff. I mean, you can't pull out for sure, but you already know about that. What you can do, though, is push in - once you're not cumming any more, just tied afterwards, everything rests back a little from being in as deep as possible, so you can actually push back in that same amount. It's not a huge motion, but because everything's still so sensitive inside, just doing that little extra thrust for a moment before relaxing again... hey, don't worry! I'm not gonna blank out again or anything like that from it, okay? That part of it's way over now, and something like that, it's not gonna get a girl to cum, or anything close to it. Still, when a guy does it you get this feeling of really comfy closeness, and the way the knot rubs back and forth, it gives you an extra little thrill that kinda keeps the sensation from falling off, keeps you interested in being knotted, being together, instead of just being done with it and wanting it to end. It doesn't have to be a lot, maybe once or twice a minute, but once a guy finds the right rhythm to it, trust me when I say you'll be more than happy for the duration."

She hugged him closer, her voice almost purring into his ear. "So, if you want to give it a try, I'm definitely ready..."

Dain tried to comply, although it was a little hard to do because it involved fighting a certain instinct. To build up the force for thrusting in, it was natural to pull back first, but it was a response that had to be restrained - while pushing forward was still apparently okay, pulling the knot back against where Ekka was wrapped securely around it was definitely a no-go. After a couple of false starts, though, freezing his motion in place to prevent pulling back, he was able to get past it - instead of actually trying to thrust, he figured out that he could sort of just let his hips settle down and in, letting gravity do some of the work to bring them closer together. And while there wasn't the overwhelming feeling against him, like there had during Ekka's climax, it was still enough to coax forth a low, contented moan that thrummed through her chest, and the sensation of her inner walls tightening up against him noticeably as he returned to the normal knotted position. After a few moments, though, he could feel them relaxing back from him, bit by bit. He guessed that that had something to do with the rhythm, and when everything felt relaxed all the way back to where it had been, he nudged in again, eliciting a similar response.

The motion didn't do a lot for Dain - apparently, as a guy at least, once the climax was over he was mostly spent in terms of additional stimulation, so while the feeling of her squeezing gently against him was nice, there didn't seem to be any directly equivalent thrill beyond what the closeness itself was able to bring. Ekka, though, seemed to settle into a steady state of contentment, and while it kept her distracted enough that she seemed more interested in cuddling than additional conversation, she also didn't get to a point where she was suddenly and immediately over it, in the way that Caure had. By the time her interest finally began to wane, the knot had receded enough that he was able to pull it out immediately, Ekka's fingers trailing through his fur as she released him from her embrace.

He stood up by the side of the bed, stretching out muscles that were admittedly a little tired from being in that prone, half-propped position for so long. Ekka, for her part, just stretched her arms and legs out to either side on the bed, relaxing there for a moment before getting up. It did mean that she was effectively still spread out, and when Dain turned back for a moment to see how she was doing, he blushed for a moment at the sight of her engorged pussy on display, her outer lips still stretched a little bit apart from being wrapped around his knot, revealing her pink, glistening inner folds. It was an oddly arousing sight, but more so because it was stirring up arousal in two different ways. The sight of her, spread and satisfied, certainly did something to bolster an incongruous sense of male pride and accomplishment, one that he couldn't ever recall feeling before. At the same time , though, Dain could also imagine himself - herself - in a similar position, and how phenomenally good it had to feel, just lying there, enjoying the relaxing afterglow in the most feminine possible expression of satiation.

It was disconcerting enough that he ended up spending a few moments lost between thoughts, staring blankly as his hands unthinkingly cast about for his clothes, before stilling them as he snapped out of it and realized they were still in a locker back near the entrance. There was the same sort of arrangement near the door as there had been in the other room, though, and as he tried to push through his befuddlement and press the appropriate button on it to signal that their encounter had completed, he could hear Ekka moving around intently behind him.

He turned around to see Ekka had already put on her bra, and was pulling on a pair of matching satiny pink panties - not a lot, but on par with the amount Dain had worn during her own heat. Even so, it felt a little odd just standing there naked in contrast, and although he was just about back into his sheath at that point, he still had the unconscious urge to place his hands in front of his crotch to cover himself. Ekka didn't seem to care either way, though - and come to think of it, neither had Dain, with any the partners she'd had.

Ekka walked over towards him, and Dain couldn't help but admire her form - even after the initial feelings had faded, her lingerie still set her features quite nicely, and the nosy intensity that had made her seem disturbing before had been replaced through their intimacy with a softer, calmer regard that let the other attractive aspects of her shine through. Did he... did he actually kind of like her now? Although... it made sense, in a certain sort of way. Being intimate like that didn't just end when the knot came out - some part of that connection still lingered, at least when it had worked.

True, Dain hadn't thought better of Taore, but every other boy at her heat, even now... in her female form, at least, she couldn't help but remember a little when she saw them, couldn't help seeing them with a certain fondness. And with Caure... well, they'd been close before, but afterwards they'd been closer than ever. Now, with Ekka, the same thing seemed to be at work - even though she'd almost seemed to say so while they were together, when she began to speak it was clear that she felt the same.

"Dain, I... I know I said a lot of stuff while we were together. I remember... some of it, at least, but when I get like that I tend to say what's on my mind no matter what it is. Yeah, I know, not like I don't do that most of the rest of the time, too. I'm pretty sure I said some stuff that was good, and some stuff that wasn't so good about you, so I really don't know exactly how I came across. I know, since it's done, you're supposed to get back and I'm supposed to be with someone else, but before you do, I just wanted to make things clear. You did a really good job, and I had a really good time with you. I know things have been weird between us, I know even that's an understatement, and maybe things won't ever be perfect because of that, but... maybe we could try being friends? I didn't know for sure before, but now, after feeling you with me, I know that things aren't beyond hope between us. And if we could give it a second chance, then maybe... maybe it's not too late to start over, to fix things. I mean, if you want to. I know you said you'd forgiven me, but beyond that..."

"Well, um... I mean, it's not just me, you know? Like I said, all that other stuff, it's over, and I think... I think I'd rather find a way to be friends with you than keep going with all the weirdness of how things were before. Being with you, like that, hearing what you had to say, seeing that side of you, I want to be friendly with you, I want to learn more about you. With Caure, though... I'm still not sure where she is on you at this point, and if trying to be friends with you is going to hurt her, then I dunno. But if Caure, if my other friends are okay with it, then... I'd like to try."

"Hmm... all right. I get it - and I probably need to own up to Caure as well, apologize to her as directly as I did to you, and do what I have to to make things right. Honestly, I wish all that had never happened. I wish I hadn't acted on that stupid assumption. But I did, and now all I can do is try to make it better. Maybe I can, but if not, that's on me."

She paused, the pensive look on her face luckily fading, albeit into an expression that looked a little more aggressive, ever so slightly reminding him of Caure, in fact.

"That being said... I don't know how everything else will all turn out, but however it does, I think I'm gonna invite you to my next heat anyway, and not just because the computer says I should. The way some other guys are, you're just too perfect of a counterpoint to pass up..."

Ekka finished her statement by reaching down and giving him a very particular sort of caress, one that set him blushing again even as Ekka apparently noticed the all-clear flashing on the door display behind him. She gave him one final grin, a quick tug on his shoulder to spin him around, and a not-quite expected smack on his bare butt to send him on his way.

And just like that, Dain was back in the hallway, wandering back towards the entrance with his thoughts swirling around him. As good as it ostensibly was, to go from having a problem with someone to maybe even being their friend, once again what had previously been a simple if fractious relationship with someone had now become considerably more complex - and that was even before Caure got involved.

Dain got dressed, in his comfortable spare change of clothes this time, still thinking things through. Even if he could set aside all the interpersonal stuff with Ekka, or the emotional intensity of how it had played out, what she'd said earlier, about the true purpose of heat, was still sticking in his mind. How much more to heat was there? It was true that he hadn't really considered it before, but the pieces of it were beginning to come together: the cataclysm, the need to recover the population, the automated computer-assisted genetic assortation, the note of seriousness that had underpinned things with the government agents who he'd talked with. If Ekka was right, about what she'd talked about, about how important it was... but at the same time, it was still something that was crazy with emotion, that had to work between the two people who were actually a part of it. Ekka had talked about the problem with choosing someone over personal preference or compatibility instead of a genetic match, but she hadn't really mentioned the mirror-image of that: what happened if there was someone you didn't get on with, someone who made you miserable, but they were a perfect match for you genetically? From Ekka's perspective, it seemed like that was just another part of it - after all, she'd agreed to be with Dain not because she'd liked him, which at that point she might not have particularly, but because the computerized system had agreed with the choice. Dain, though, wasn't so sure. After all, heat was really the most intimate of things, and he knew firsthand just how trying it could be if two people weren't on the same page.

He was still trying to sort through it as he walked back into the hallway, only to be startled from his revelation by the sound of students pouring out from the nearby classrooms. It was already time for a break between classes, and as he shied away a little from the rush of people, all of a sudden Caure was right there, practically in his face, grinning enthusiastically as she sniffed the air around him, surely picking up the heated scent of Ekka that now permeated his fur.

"So, it finally happened, huh? Tell me - how was it? Did you do like I suggested, take charge and show her who's the boss? Oh man, if only I could have seen the look on her face..."

"Um, it, ah, wasn't really like that... I mean, it was fast and intense, like really intense, and I guess parts of it kind of went the way you said they should, but that's because she kinda held me down against her and told me that I'd better do it that way..."

"Hah! Bossy as ever, huh? Let me guess - she changed her tune as soon as the knot went in, though, right?"

Dain squirmed a little at that - however it had resolved, it had been disturbing enough at the time that what he'd felt was still sticking with him. "I, uh, really don't want to talk about that part, actually... it all worked out, and that's good enough, right? I did what she wanted, and it worked. I know some of the stuff you said, but... you've been through heat, so you know how important it is for guys to do what you want, and I know that whatever you said, deep down you'd want me to do the same, even with Ekka..."

Caure sighed a little. "Yeah, of course. I didn't, I don't want to... hurt her, not anything like that. I just don't want her to cause you any trouble ever again, and I thought that maybe if you were dominant with her, that if you showed her you were in charge and couldn't be pushed around, maybe that would make sure she wouldn't get on your case about anything else."

"Well, I... kind of didn't do that, but it sort of had the same effect, maybe? While we were still tied together, she apologized - not grudgingly, but really apologized, really explained everything. And I don't know if you want to hear this or not, but it was... nice, being with her."

Caure, surprisingly, didn't seem to mind. "Dain, you were with a girl in heat, having sex with her - of course you enjoyed it! After all, that's part of the reason I pushed for it anyway. Domination or not, she hurt you, so it only seemed fair that she should do something really nice for you in return, and for a guy, getting invited to a girl's heat's about as nice as it can get. I know it's a little different for you, probably, what with your own heat and all, but... don't worry. I'm not gonna be jealous or anything, if that's what you're wondering. I'm glad it went well - maybe it'll help her get the message, one way or another."

"Yeah, about that, um... once it was over, she... well, she asked if we could start over again, maybe try and actually be friends this time. And with her like that... I think she really is nice, once she can get past jumping to conclusions all the time. So..."

"Wait... did you actually say you wanted to be friends with her?"

"Well, I said I wanted to try... but only if you and my other friends were okay with it. And really... all the bad stuff that happened with her is done, and I don't care about it any more. And I'd rather be friends with everyone I can, rather than not be. I mean, I know you probably can't be friends with everyone, but there aren't that many people around anymore to begin with, and... and apparently I'm a good match, according to the computer, which means I'll probably have more heats with her, and I'd rather do that as a friend instead of as whatever awkward thing we are now. But if that's gonna be a problem..."

Caure shrugged. "A problem? Nah, not a problem. I guess I just have a certain sense of justice, you know? She wronged you, and I wanted her to get her comeuppance, wanted to get her controlled, and I guess I got a little obsessed about it. Well, okay, maybe really obsessed about it. But if you got her worked all the way around, then maybe, maybe... I mean, she knows we're not just gonna be instant friends, though, right? Maybe she made it right with you, but I still feel like there's something unsettled between us. Although..." Caure paused, an uncomfortable but typical look of mischievousness sneaking onto her face. "You know what? You can tell her that I'll totally forgive her, give her a second chance with me - with us. There will be a couple of conditions, though. First, she has to apologize to me publicly, meaningfully, to my face, in front of all the other girls. She has to say how sorry she is, how generous I am to forgive her, and how much she owes me for my forgiveness. That's the first thing. For the second thing, she's gonna invite you to her next heat, and she can't complain because the computer wants her to anyway, right? Well, the next time it happens, she's gonna arrange it so that you can have a guest with you. I'm gonna be right there, and watch as you put it to her. I want to see her surrender to you, I want to see the look on her face as your knot takes over her world. And then, once I've seen her like that - then I will gladly forgive her."

"Okay, um, I... guess I'll tell her that..." Dain, of course, hadn't expected Caure to forgive Ekka entirely, or easily, but that... well, whatever obsession Caure had with Ekka, with seeing her having sex for some reason, obviously wasn't quite over yet.

"Oh, don't worry about that - if what you said is true, she'll come to me, hat in hand, soon enough, and when she does, I'll make my ultimatums quite clear. Although, speaking of heat, there is something that we really need to talk about..."

Caure reached out, pulling Dain to the side of the hallway, her expression seeming to fall a little. "Look, I... you know what I said earlier? About our heats not overlapping? Last night, I got a call from the doctor's office on my tablet. Apparently, they mixed up the tests results, transposed stuff or something, and got the dates wrong. I thought I wasn't even going to begin mine until yours was over for a couple of days, but this one is gonna arrive more quickly. It actually starts the day before yours, but... it won't let me schedule you. I asked why, and apparently it works better if you stay a girl for a couple of days before your heat arrives - you're supposed to do that normally, it makes things come on more naturally, I guess, and apparently it can mess things up if you try to force yourself to be a guy, to attend someone's heat as a guy, right before. I really wanted to be with you like that again, I was really looking forward to it, but now..."

Caure's face showed a flash of anger. "Grr... and that's not even the worst part of it! I knew that might happen, so I asked about the other thing we talked about, and they wouldn't let me have my heat together with you! Can you believe that? They said the rooms at the school weren't big enough to do that comfortably, and having guys deal with the scents and sounds of two women at once would be too overwhelming or confusing or something. That's total bullshit, right? But they wouldn't listen, and... gah! I just wanna be with you, why is it so hard for them to understand? But there's nothing I can do about it, so I guess we'll just have to deal with it... somehow..."

She'd trailed off after that, muttering to herself, and as they'd had to get to class a minute later, they'd both gotten lost enough in the curriculum that the topic was dropped for the time being - mostly to Dain's relief, as he'd almost hoped that Caure had forgotten all of the crazy ideas she'd floated during her heat. Being with Caure as a guy had been great, but both of them together in a room, each with other guys... she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to have Caure watching her like that. Or watching Caure with another guy, for that matter. Whatever it was that Caure seemed to see in those sorts of situations, it was something that Dain didn't really seem to get, at least not in anything approaching the way that she did.

As the day went on, and Caure didn't bring it up again, Dain was more than happy to head home and leave Caure to deal with her unsettling suggestions on her own. Instead Dain was happy to focus on his studies - and, shortly before bed, the now-familiar reversion to her female form, which to her surprise actually felt like a comfortable sort of relief after the tumultuous day that had been attached to his male one. It still felt a little strange, intellectually, that she was really beginning to feel like it was actually becoming the new default, but from a physical standpoint, her comfort level with it did seem to be rapidly approaching full acceptance.

Her comfort level with Caure, on the other hand... well, Caure was her friend, and one of the people she really did care the most about, but actually being comfortable around her did seem to vary significantly according to the mercurial nature of her friend's moods. The following day, Caure had actually been better to be around, largely because she'd seemed more pensively subdued than anything, looking preoccupied about something or other and only responding to Dain with one- or two-syllable responses - until, at least, Dain took a hint and stopped trying to get Caure to talk about what was bothering her. Then, after lunch, she'd effectively disappeared, and when Dain had asked the teacher about her absence, Selaue had said Caure had gotten an excuse for a doctor's appointment - one to do with her heat, apparently, and something about a "second opinion."

Then, as Dain had been getting ready to go home, she'd heard her tablet ping, and she'd pulled it out of her pack and activated it, only to see a message in the inbox from Caure. It was set to the highest priority - something that Caure did often enough, admittedly, but coupled with the way she'd been acting, Dain couldn't help but wonder whether it might actually be important this time. The subject line, "OPEN THIS!!!!!!", wasn't any more revealing, but the message inside was concise and clear enough:

"My house. Go grab Teiya and get over here. Before we go into heat, there's something we need to do, the three of us..."