That left her with a feeling of longing. Too many memories were tied to that swing. Times she and Tip had sat side by side, telling each other stories, plotting hunts . . . just being. And maybe that was part of the problem. The two of them had been thrust together. Condemned to association by virtue of their solitude and exile. Hers imposed and Tip’s chosen.

And then there was the bonding with Flute. Always more hers than Tip’s, predisposed as she had been by Rocket, and then by her desperate need to fill the void left by Rocket’s death. In the beginning, Tip had been the leader. It was his country after all. He knew the trails, the wildlife, the best places to trap chamois, fastbreaks, and roos. Where the dangers were most likely to hide.

And he’d taken to Flute and the bonding, though not as well as Kylee. Or maybe even Talina. As if a part of Tip’s body and soul resisted. Sometimes Kylee wondered if it might have been immunological. Tip had never cared, happy to be himself.

That had always been a problem. The boy had no ambitions beyond the next hunt. Wanted nothing more out of life than the next meal.

Whereas Kylee had been raised from day one with the understanding that she would accomplish great things. Follow in her three mothers’ footsteps as a scientist. That expectation might have taken some hard knocks along the way, and seemed impossible at times, but it had been hardwired into her worldview. Cemented by her biological mother Dya’s death the day the treetop terror had speared her and hauled her up into the canopy. Looking back at a life that had more than its share of seminal moments, the day Mark Talbot and her mother died, had been yet another pivotal event.

“Nothing was quite the same with Tip and me after that,” she told herself as she watched the storm intensifying in the night. Maybe that was why, in the last three years, she had taken the lead in their relationship. Like it or not, she had Talina’s memories—all those experiences to draw from. She wasn’t just an adolescent girl feeling her way.

No, more like sixteen mixed with thirty. Not to mention the quetzal instincts. Hard to put them in perspective given that quetzals killed and ate their elders. Figured that she was a fucked-up mess.

“God, Tip,” she told the night. “I’m sorry.”

She’d always expected too much of him. They had shared everything. Looking back, sex had been a mistake. She’d viewed the event through a mature woman’s perspective, having Talina’s experience as a rule and guide. Yes, it was supposed to change their relationship. Make them closer, more like intimate partners, and less like childhood friends. Maybe she thought it would make their relationship more like what she’d known with Rocket. That total intimacy.