““Is exactly what it is. What we does in bed, it’s wonderful and I loves it, but it’s a small part of what being Clan is. We are so much more than fuckin’. Ava, I’se spent damn near every day with Blaise for the past twenty years. Maybe more. Ye knows how many times we’ve had sex?” Ava was not sure if she wanted to know the answer, but her scarred mate kept speaking. “Not a one. Not even when we was boys, and everyone tries everything. We never touches each other, because I knows what’s with us is more important than our cocks and where we stick ‘em. I’se never fucked any of me Clanmates, yet they is everything in me life. I lives for them, I dies for them. And ye. One time I was whipped was when I told Daven I wished we hadn’t Clanned him. We don’t normally get the whip for words, but that was fuckin’ cruel of me, and I deserves what I got there. And he still came and stood there and watched, and when it was over he helped carry me home and bind up me wounds.” Vaguely, Ava remembered him telling her something about that before, but the gritty reality had not sunk in. “But this is different,” she begged. “I’m not Daven. This is about my shame, and I don’t want you to see it.” “But see it we will. And we will still love ye and we will still carry ye home and we will bind your wounds and carry ye to the privy and do whatever the fuck we need to for ye until you’re well again. And we’ll do our best to make sure ye don’t head down such a path again, but if ye does, we’ll turn ye round and bring ye back. And if ye heads down that path ten more times we goes after ye ten more times and we never leaves ye alone because that is Clan and that is who we are.””
