Page 30 of Strays
Jay clears his throat. “Pheromone party?”
“Seems like some books about aegis-nyra bonds might do you guys some good,” she says, still grinning. “It happened just now. I got… uh… very excited about the way you reacted to my career. I think the scent of my… happiness… might have hit you a little too hard.”
She doesn’t look the least bit embarrassed. Her eyes gleam with light and mischief, like she’s enjoying just how much she already has us wrapped around her fingers.
My cock is aching, the bulge in my pants impossible to miss. She looks like she’s about to start laughing again, and I need to do something before I combust. I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind to change the subject. “So, what do you do? You said you work at a hospital?”
“I’m a doctor,” she replies, her tone proud. “Just graduated from med school last year. Busted my ass to get into the residency at Joseph Monson Hospital, and it would suck to have to drop out and go through the selection process allover again somewhere else.”
She looks at me, excited. “But Joseph Monson is in Bridgeport. It’s pretty close to Great Sky, so I think it won’t be hard for us to find a place that works for everybody.”
My brain short-circuits.
Every doctor I’ve ever met was human, and I’ve met a lot of them. I was raised among physicians, psychologists, biologists. All human. If you aren’t human, your career options are limited. Aegis go into the military, law enforcement, cage fighting, or private security. And nyras… Well, nyras stay home.
And this one became a doctor.
It’s so incredible and unexpected I don’t even know what to say. I have never been treated as an equal by a human doctor. They always spoke about me like I wasn’t even in the room, or worse, like I was too dumb to understand what they were saying about my own body.
And now, in front of me, is someone of my species who has reached the same position as them.
“How… how did you become a doctor?” Shane’s voice tells me he’s as much in awe as I am.
“I went to med school, just like everybody else,” she says, then adds, “But I know what you mean. I didn’t have the same upbringing as most nyras. I was basically raised as a human, so when I finished high school, it felt natural to go to college. And once I finished that, I saw no reason not to go to med school and become a doctor like I wanted. So I did.”
“High school?” I blurt.
“Yep. I wasn’t homeschooled like a nyra. I’ve been going to human schools since preschool.” She looks at our puzzled expressions and continues, “My biological father took off when I was a baby, and my mother married a human after that. He raised me like his own.”
I’m so confused.
First — father, singular? Like… only one?
Second, I’ve never heard of an aegis walking away from his nyra. Even my dads, head over heels for Lydia, were there for my mother through every one of her heats.
And Jo’s mother not only had a single mate like a human, but carried on without him… and then found another.
I’ve seen plenty of relationships between human women and aegis, my own brothers are proof of that. And we’ve hooked up with our fair share of human women ourselves. But I’ve never heard of a nyra getting involved with a human man.
I have so many questions, I don’t even know where to start.
My brothers must be just as stunned, because we all stare at each other insilence.
Jo sighs audibly and breaks it. “My father was a solitary aegis.”
ThePortland Chronicle
March 5, 2019
“A Nyra on Campus: Student Lived as Human for Two Decades, Now at Portland-Area University”
By Hannah Stokes | Staff Reporter
PORTLAND. Until last week, Johane Elizabeth Johnson was just another student at the University of Cascadia. But after an unexpected comment during a classroom debate, “Jo,” as she’s known to her peers, has become the center of a story that quickly spread across campus and the local community.
Johane isn’t just another student. She’s a nyra who, for over twenty years, lived as a human.
The revelation came during a seminar on species and civilization. According to witnesses, in the middle of a heated discussion on cognitive differences between humans andgregalis, Johane stood up and said:
