No action in this chapter, sorry about that.

The Veterinarian

Not much time later, Oberon walked back inside the room, a small bowl and a spoon in his hands.

"I... I told you I'm not hungry"

"This is more of a tonic" he said "It should help you recover"

Ara didn't reply, and so Oberon moved to her side, sat next to her and brought her up, making her lean with her back against the bedframe, then covered her chest with her coat. Though Ara's face was already -or rather, still- as red as it could get. He brought a spoonful of what seemed to be soup to her face, and after a rather long hesitation she took it in her mouth. It tasted bitter. She felt like a little child, which wasn't really a good thing. The bowl was rather small, so it didn't take that long to finish it, which wasn't really that great of a consolation. Then, as he stood up, she spoke.

"O-Oberon, could... you..."

"Taking the belt off now would be rather pointless, wouldn't it?"

"That's... I mean..."

But even in those conditions she couldn't bring herself to ask him to sleep with her. Or at least to masturbate her. He broght her back to a lying position, then walked out, leaving her to her frustration and her inner groans. He stopped right out of the door, reflecting. He had an idea of what Ara was trying to ask of him, and the reason he had avoided the subject was that he was... scared might be a bit excessive of a word, but it probably conveyed the right idea. He could picture that morning in his mind so clearly he could almost relive it. He had liked that, greatly, though he wasn't sure why. But he had lost control of himself, and that had never happened. The thought of that occurring again was... unpleasant. As he walked away, he wondered just how could she confuse him that way, since she wasn't even trying to do so. Was it some sort of odd talent?

Ara woke up in the same position she had fallen asleep in. The first thing she did was try to move, and to her sweet relief her limbs answered her orders. She stood up, threw her coat on her back and adjusted her cut dress to at least give the impression of it covering her breasts. Or at least that was her intention, as she noticed that the cut had been sewn close. Her bra had been repaired as well. Did Oberon really fix them while she was sleeping, without even taking them off? She decided not to think about it.

She ran out of the room, still barefooted. Her tails were quickly wagging behind her as she ran to the kitchen, the tingling between her legs getting stronger as the soreness of her body faded, her fluids running down her thighs, dampening her pantyhose through the chastity belt. She slammed open the door, and while Oberon was nowhere to be seen, an abundant and still warm breakfast was already on the table. Aroused as she was, Ara did skip dinner the previous day and due to that she was really hungry. She ate everything as quickly as possible, paying little to no attention to how anything tasted like, before she started looking all over the menagerie for him, going to pretty much every room at least twice, but he had apparently vanished. Exasperated, she searched all over the place one more time, this time looking for the key itself. She didn't really think he had left it somewhere, but she had nothing else to do. After nearly four hours and having searched everywhere barring the domes -going there alone didn't seem like a good idea to her-, she went back to her room, and out of pure frustration searched there as well. She found neither him nor the key, though the opposite would have surprised her.

What did surprise her was that the anal plug was missing as well. Because Oberon decided to wash it, though she didn't know that. She then started walking everywhere in the menagerie while going nowhere, walking fast, simply because she couldn't think of anything else to do, her hands occasionally scratching against the belt, sometimes with too much strength. She kept wandering around, her tails waving behind her, her hears standing right up most of the time, and at some point she started running. And she didn't stop until around midday, when she went back to her room and dropped herself on the bed, panting. Maybe it was the tiredness, maybe the time which had gone by, or maybe simply having done some exercise -if running in circles counted as an exercise, that is- but she was calmer now, a bit at least. Though she was still moist underneath the belt, one of her tails had disappeared, the remaining four resting on the sheets next to her.

After having caught her breath she sat in a corner of the room, hugged her legs and tried to think of how she could spend her free time. And while the... wrong kind of thoughts -wrong given the current circumstances as they made the tingling even more intense- did pop up every now and then, she overall managed to keep herself distracted. On the other hand, she still failed to come up with any way to really kill some time. Sitting on the floor thinking about random things wasn't exactly her definition of fun. She did have some money, but... truth is she wasn't used to being alone. Either Eun or her brother, but there had always been someone at her side, and ever since the Fox left, she felt somewhat... lost. Well, Oberon was there, but maybe due to the peculiar situation she was in and the role he had in it, she had some trouble trying to casually spend some time with him. She did ask him to teach her how to cook, but still... which reminded her she was hungry. Just as her stomach growled, Oberon walked in, making her jump to her feet, her tails and hears standing straight up.

"Where the he- where were you?!"

"Grocery shopping"

"For the whole morning?!"

"I had a few other things to do as well. Lunch is ready" he said as he casually placed the plug -actually, it wasn't the same one as before- on the table "You should come down"

"B-before that... well..."

"Your cheeks are red"

"Of course they are!"

"I guess" he replied before turning around and leaving.

Ara ran after him, but stopped on her tracks when she passed next to the plug. Her hand reached for it, but then she decided to go after the key instead and hurried after it -or rather, the one having it-, and found him already in the kitchen.

"The key! Hand it over, right now!"

"Quite amusing" he replied as he handed her something to drink, talking about how Ara hadn't asked yet exactly how much money it costed her to take the belt off.

"For you maybe!" she said back. But Since she had sweated quite a bit in the morning -for several reasons- and was quite thirsty, she didn't refure the drink. Then, as Oberon was walking in front of her and she was gulping the... that wasn't water but she didn't really care at the moment. Anyway, the door opened.

"Hello" Rena said, stopping on her tracks the moment she saw Oberon wasn't alone.

Ara choked on half of what she was drinking and spit the other half out, over Oberon as he was still in front of her. The elf tried to hide her chuckles.

"W-w-wait, why are you here?! And... uhg, ah, ehr... s-sorry!"

He casually took a napkin and started wiping himself.

"Don't worry"

"What are you doing here, Eu... no, Ara?"

"That's what I wanted to ask you!"

"I work as a veterinary here, for some time every year. You can think of it as a periodic health check. ... you know what I'm talking about, right?" she then added, since she actually didn't know if Ara was aware of the lower floors, though her mere presence there most likely meant she was.

"Y-yes..." she replied.

That... well, made sense. She had always thought Oberon took care of everything, but she could see Rena being more knowledgeable about animals -they could be called animals right?- than him.

"What about you? And why are you... like that?" the elf asked as she walked in.

"Ehr, this is... well..."

Ara hid her tails behind her, not that it helped, as she thought of what to say. Telling her what she did there was out of the question.

"She works as an entertainer. She started this month" said Oberon.

"An... entertainer?" the elf inquired, confused, but got no further explanations about it.

"About the key..." Oberon started saying.

"Which key?"

"It's nothing! Really, nothing at all!" Ara shouted. Then she realized Rena had no way to know what said key could unlock, but asking Oberon to give it to her at that point meant having to tell the elf something, and she couldn't come up with any plausible lie at the moment.

And so they started eating, the two of them at least -Oberon had gotten something ready in the meantime-, and Ara told Rena about Eun leaving. As for her current appearance, she avoided saying exactly why she was like that, though all that talk was helping her keeping her mind away from the tingling.

"Do you have a swimsuit?" Oberon then asked while reading still the same book.

"Eh?"

"You might need one in a couple of days" he told Ara.

"Oh, in which dome are you taking her?" asked Rena.

"The lake one" he replied.

"So you help with them too? I'm curious to see what you do" she said, as "entertainer" wasn't something she had immediatly associated to them.

"No!" Ara shouted as she got up. Then she realized what she had just done "I-I mean no, I don't have a swimsuit..."

"Ara, your face is all red. Actually, it's been red ever since I walked in. Do you have a fever?"

"I'm fine, really" she blatantly lied.

"Then how about we go shopping today? I can unpack my stuff later"

"About that..." she replied as she looked at her tails.

"Oh, right. I guess you would stand out far too much looking like that" she said. Rena's long hears were already enough to draw a lot of gazes when walking around the city, so she could easily picture what would happen were Ara to go around with tails and fox hears "Well, I can buy you one. Your measures are still the same right?"

"Yes, they are..." she replied while looking at the elf's chest.

Rena's presence was somewhat relaxing for Ara, mainly because the elf was the only one in their group with larger breasts than her and that helped her being less aware of her own... endowment, which always drew gazes.

"You arrived early" Oberon then commented.

"True" she replied "I was supposed to come here around next week" she then explained to Ara "But I've heard from Eve that the fair was going to be held earlier than usual, and I'm a bit curious about it"

"Earlier? As in..." Ara asked.

"In a couple of weeks instead of next month"

Then she stood up.

"I'll be off now, there are a few things I need to buy besides your swimsuit"

"S-sure"

Then she walked out. Or rather, she tried, but as she was about to grab the door handle someone else opened it from the other side. Ophelia stepped aside as Eve herself walked in. Oberon, who was previously sitting down reading the usual book, had already gotten up from his chair upon hearing his mistress's footsteps in the hallway.

"Oh, Eve. Hi"

"Were you heading out?"

"Yes"

"You can take Ophelia with you if you need"

"No thanks, I don't have that many things to buy"

And so the elf walked away. Ara looked at Eve, with a mix of anger and fear in her eyes. And mostly embarassment.

"How is your work going?" the owner of the place asked as she sat down while Oberon started preparing some tea and Ophelia went to cook something for her.

"My work?!" she shouted in reply as she jumped off her chair, slamming her fists on the table, her tails waving wildly behind her "This isn't work, you're using me as a p... a pr... a pros... as a courtesan for... for animals!"

"I don't see how could something like that not qualify as a job. Besides, are you sure you aren't enjoying it?"

"Of course I'm not!"

"I'll take that as a yes" she replied. While Ara wasn't aware of it, every single thing that happened inside there was filmed, and Eve could see the recordings whenever she wanted.

"I said no!"

"Has Rena told you about the fair?" she then asked Oberon, who nodded in reply "Good. Since I'm here already I'll check on how much we have stored. Wouldn't want to disappoint the regulars"

Then she started eating. Ara, on the other hand, left the kitchen. She stopped right out of the door though. Oberon still had the key, but after arguing like that with Eve she couldn't just go back in... sighing, she walked back to her room and tried to sleep, an attempt at getting some relief from her own arousal. After an hour or more of rolling around on the bed, however, she got back up, and her gaze fell on the plug which Oberon had left in her room and which she had somehow forgotten about.

Eve had left Ophelia to clean up the kitchen and was now checking the menagerie's stocks with Oberon.

"Mistress, may I ask something?"

"Go ahead" she replied while they walked from a room to the other, Eve making a mental list of everything.

"It's unusual for you to come visit here so often. Is something special planned for this year's fair?"

"It is, yes" she answered as she stopped and turned around to face him "I've rented a certain building for the third day of the fair, and I was planning on putting Ara on display there. With tails, ears and the different hair color, adding a mask should be more than enough to make sure nobody recognizes her"

"You mean making her mate in public?"

"Pretty much, I know of certain people who would pay unreasonable sums to get to see something like that live. You will be there in case something goes wrong, though so far she has had no problems"

A brief silence.

"You know, you seem worried" she said then.

"My apologies"

"Since we're already on this subject, I'd like to know what happened that morning" she said.

Of course he knew menagerie was filled to the brim with hidden cameras, there's no way Eve wouldn't know what happened inside there, but maybe he still hoped for her not to talk about that.

"I lost control"

Eve smirked.

"I know Ara is really good at flipping people's switches without realizing it, but I thought you had no switch to flip in the first place"

Oberon wondered how -and if- he was supposed to answer that as Eve turned around and started walking to a certain dome.

"With him?" he asked as they walked to the antechamber of a certain dome.

"What better match is there for a fox than another fox?"

Logic. ... sort of, since Ara wasn't really a fox. And he did think almost the same thing shortly after she had started working there.

"I'll give you more instrunctions at most a week before the beginning of the fair, make sure to not make her mate with him until the exhibition. And don't let her out of the menagerie either until then"

He simply nodded.

Ara looked around for a short while, found the lotion lying under the bed -how did that end up there?-, placed it on the table and poured some of it on the plug, then pulled her pantyhose down while resting her weight on the chair. She placed the plug againt her butt and pushed it in, not even that slowly. It was definitively bigger than the previous one, as Ara could feel it stretching her insides, but she could take it. Just as she was about to start moving around, however, someone knocked at the door.

"Ara, are you there?"

She almost shouted and jumped in surprise as panic took over her, for a brief second at least, then it got replaced by... less strong panic? She pulled her pantyhose back up, nearly ripping it in the process, and pushed her skirt down. Then she literally threw the lotion away from the table as that was right in front of the door a few moments before Rena walked in, carrying a few small bags with her.

"Ara, are you alright? You screamed as if... I don't know, you screamed" she said as she left her buys on the table.

"I'm fine! I'm totally fine! Really!" she replied. Thankfully the bottle of lotion had somehow landed back under the bed.

The elf looked at her. Her face was even redder than it was at lunch, she was sweating a bit, her ears -her fox ones- were twitching, and her tails were waving nervously. For some reason, she was also holding her hands behind her back.

"... no really, you don't look fine"

"A-a-anyway, how did your shopping go?"

She knew Ara well enough to know she was the type to hide nearly all of her problems from others, and putting pressure on her wouldn't have convinced her to speak. So Rena decided to go along with it and let her change subject, for the time being at least.

"Nicely, I found everything. Oh, and here it is" she said as she took a one-piece swimsuit out of one of the bags and gave it to Ara.

It was black with a few amber decorations here and there, and completely covered the back as well as the front.

"Want to try it on?"

"N-no, thanks"

"Why not?"

Because I'm wearing a chastity belt and a plug at the moment...

"N-no particular reason, really"

Rena was better at reading animals than she was at understanding people, and while she could tell what the way Ara's tails and ears were moving was usually associated to, she thought that she was wrong. She had to be wrong, as she really couldn't see Ara possibly being in such a state -that is, in heat, or strongly aroused since humans didn't go on heat-, Eun's influence or not. She probably had some sort of cold or something like that to cause her fox parts to move that way. Rena had never had the chance to study the habits and behavior of someone with fox features after all, so she might very well be associating that to the wrong thing.

"B-by the way, where are you going to sleep?"

"Well, with you, at least for tonight. Oberon wasn't warned that I'd arrive earlier than usual so there isn't a room ready. I hope it doesn't bother you"

"N-not at all"

Of course it does!

"... Ara, you're still red. And your..." she said as she attempted to bring the conversation back to that topic.

"I'm fine, really" she replied, forcibly plastering a smile on her face.

The plug's straps hadn't been fastened and the only thing preventing them from hanging down was her pantyhose. On top of that, since she was just about to masturbate -anally and for the first time at that- her arousal, which had previously calmed down a bit, had gone back up, and with the plug inserted the tingling between her legs felt even more intense than before.

"Listen Ara, you're making me worry a bit"

"I-I'm going to the bathroom!" she said as she sprinted out of the room.

"Hey!"

Ara went to the other room and locked herself inside, then tried to masturbate using the plug, but as that wasn't what it was meant for and she had no idea how to reach orgasm with that kind of stimulation the only thing she got out of it was more frustration. Eventually Oberon called her for dinner. Eve, Rena and Ophelia were all already in the kitchen, one of them already sitting at the table while the elf was still taking a seat. Rena decided to ask Ara what had gotten into her later on. As for Ara herself, she hesitated a bit before sitting, Eve's mere presence making her rather uncomfortable.

"Say, Eve" Rena asked as they started eating, Oberon and Ophelia acting as waiters "What's Ara's job here?"

"They didn't tell you?"

"They said she's an entertainer, but..."

"An entertainer" Eve repeated the word as she looked at both Oberon and Ara, the latter averting her gaze "I guess that's a way to put it"

"Yes, but what does that mean exactly? I mean, here?"

"You'll probably see for yourself soon enough"

The conversation reminded Ara of her arrival there. Sadly. That said, after that they talked about more normal stuff, and as soon as she finished eating Eve stood up.

"I'll come back before the fair to check on things again" she said before leaving, Ophelia following her.

As for Ara and Rena, they were still eating. Oberon, on his part, had taken a seat and started reading again.

"So, why do you need a swimsuit?" Rena asken after a while.

"I'm... not sure I understand what you mean" Ara replied.

"I guess you'll have to dive into the lake since Oberon brought it up, but it's not like there's someone else there watching you. I thought you went naked when you took a bath"

"How does this count as there not being anyone?" she asked back while pointing at an indifferent Oberon.

"But he doesn't care, so what's the problem? I mean, are you embarassed when a cat sees you without clothing?"

"He's not a cat!"

"But he's just as interested in your body as one would be, isn't he?"

Ara knew that Rena had a... different opinion about several things, mostly due to elves having a different culture -probably?-, but that whole conversation was rather surprising anyway.

"That's..." she replied, her mind going back to that morning yet again "N-no, I guess he's not..." she said, confused.

Well, it's true that even in that situation they didn't go all the way but... actually, could Oberon even have sex? Eve could, sure, but she had been designed to replicate most humans functions. Oberon, on the other hand, was a model designed for battle so...

"Ara, you're turning even redder than you were before..."

"Ah, s-sorry!"

"What are you apologizing for now?"

"Ehr..."

And apparently the conversation ended there. Rena finished eating before Ara and went to Ara's -momentary their- room saying she wanted to sort out some of her stuff before going to sleep.

"Is there a reason she's so sure you're not... well..."

"Did you try the plug?" he asked, avoiding the question.

A brief silence.

"Y-yes, I did..." she replied. She had left it in the bathroom before coming down for dinner though.

"If you don't feel prepared yet you should keep it on during tomorrow's session"

"I see..." she replied, sighing.

When she went back to her room she found Rena in the middle of changing into her night robe, and shortly after the elf went to sleep. As for Ara, she waited around half an hour, hoping for Rena to be really sleeping, then recovered the lotion from under the bed and went to the bathroom, where she put the plug back in, proberly fastening the straps. She went back to her room, took off only her coat while keeping her clothes on to make it less likely for Rena to see either the belt or the straps of the plug were she to wake up before her and slid under the blanket, lying down facing Rena to avoid having her tails bother her. She counted them. Three.

"Sigh..."

That said, she remained awake for probably more than two hours, the presence of someone else in the same bed while she was in that state making her too nervous to sleep.

Since it sorta went unmentioned, Rena is wearing the Night Watcher outfit, thought I should mention it somewhere.

Thank you for reading.