Verdigris Ravine skin

Yes.

There was relief; she knew she could ask no other to do this with her. There was surprise, too; Candle had not expected him to agree without further questions but flushed with joy when he did, and perhaps that should have been her first hint to the last thing she found in her heart. Most of all there was love; for the one who had brought her to S'ari, the one who had given her the gift of language and stood by her and S'ari even as The Tribe crumbled away around them.

Was he her mate now? And what about S'ari? She knew of these things but only through gossip, secondhand stories passed down by sisters with lives before the House. Candle had been born to it. She knew nothing about what it meant, nothing of love except that she felt it. But it didn't matter what they called one another, she decided. Zoug was her friend first. Now he would help her bring children to The Tribe, and she hoped that he would pass to them all of the things that made her love him.

Candle didn't know how to say these things. So she brushed her nose briefly against his and, as she had once before, made that sound that meant home. That was what they were to one another, what they would always be, in the same way that S'ari was home.