Wizard's Heir (A Bard Without a Star, Book 1) by Michael A. Hooten

fairly solitary, so we feel inclined to mate when we get a chance to.
But we are not driven to it, and no matter how much I wanted your uncle, I
respected his right to say no. Anything else would have violated my principles.”
    “And then there are humans, who
are not supposed to mate unless bonded first, in marriage, preferably.”
Gwydion watched the river below for a while. Finally he stood and shook
himself. “It’s all too much for me right now.”
    “You are dealing with a lot,”
Ruchalia said. “And I don’t know how much time you have to figure things out.”
    “Days,” Gwydion said. “Not
decades.”
    That night, as they lay
together in their pine bower, Gwydion said, “My uncle will be here soon, I
think.”
    “How do you know that?”
    He shrugged. “It’s a feeling,
mostly. Kind of like a storm that’s gathering.”
    “Is going home so bad then?”
    “Not at all,” Gwydion said. “It’s
just that this time with you has been more instructive than any I have known,
and I will be sorry to see it end.”
    She rubbed against him. “I don’t
think your instruction is quite complete, do you?”
    “You don’t ever give up, do
you?” he said.
    “Should I?”
    He began rubbing back. “No,”
he said, nuzzling under her chin. “No, you shouldn’t.”
    They made love several times,
including once as humans, at his request. Ruchalia said she enjoyed it, and
Gwydion didn’t doubt it, but he was sure that she preferred mating in her form
just as much as he preferred mating in his.
    He said as much to her while
sunning themselves in a meadow. “What would you expect?” she replied.
    “It never occurred to me when I
was a deer or a wolf.”
    “Did you ever consider those
mates as capable of taking another form?”
    “No,” Gwydion answered.
    “And they never considered it
about you, either,” she said. “I have seen you in several forms, and I have
seen you in the most enticing of all: as someone who has trusted me with your
pain, and your hopes, and your secrets.”
    “Is this love, then?”
    Ruchalia did not answer for a
long time. When she finally did, she asked him, “What would you give to stay
here with me?”
    The question was not what he
expected. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never thought about it.”
    “But you do have
to think about it,” Ruchalia said. “If it were love, the answer would have
been immediate and unequivocal.”
    “And I would have given
everything to stay.”
    “Maybe, maybe not. But you
would have known.” She spent a few minutes scratching an itch. “Love is
usually uncompromising, and has as much to do with sex as digestion does with
eating.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Digestion and eating are
certainly connected, wouldn’t you say?” she asked. “But while digestion is why
you eat, it has nothing to do with the pleasure of the palette. And in a
similar way, you could savor food and spit it out, and digestion would never
happen.”
    “So love follows from sex…”
    “Not quite. It’s not a perfect
analogy.”
    “But sex and love can be
intertwined?”
    “Yes, and they often are,
especially when it’s not just sex, but mating,” she said. “How many girls do
you think you have bedded?”
    “What? I don’t know. Maybe a
couple of dozen?”
    “And was it about making them
feel good, or about making you feel good?” When Gwydion didn’t answer, she
nodded. “I’m not judging you. Just showing you that you were not looking for
a physical expression of your deepest feelings, you were looking for fun.”
    “So what about us?” Gwydion
said.
    “There is love,” Ruchalia
admitted, “but probably not how you conceived of it.”
    “Why not?”
    She turned to him, and once
again he was impressed with the weight of her age and all the experience that
entailed. This time, however, she did not stop, but forced him to see himself
next to her, very callow and immature, and very, very young. He squirmed at
the recognition.