Into a willful, clever, free-spirited young woman, like any teen

"Dad, can we go to the beach today?" Eris asked her father nicely, the very picture of innocence. Aires knew better of course. Even at only 13, Eris was far from entirely innocent. She knew how to get what she wanted and she was currently trying very hard to do just that.

"Why's that?" he asked, keeping a slight smile on his face that betrayed nothing.

"Oh, no reason. I just thought it'd be fun. I got a new swimsuit last week and haven't had a chance to use it yet." She was fiddling with her blonde hair, feigning disinterest. She preferred it that color most of the time, to match her mother, but changed it occasionally.

"Oh, the orange and yellow one?" Eris nodded enthusiastically, blonde hair bouncing wildly, sensing progress. "I remember, it's very cute. And you were very insistent on getting it last week. I seem to recall you pestering Evelith quite a bit about it." That lessened her enthusiasm, as did the firm look he gave her. "Tell you what, I have some work to do today, but we can go tomorrow, okay?"

"No! That'll be too late!" Eris exclaimed, then froze, then sulked as she realized she'd given away the game.

"That's what I thought. What's so important about today?"

"You're bad at pretending, Dad, you already know," the princess sulked, looking away from her father now that she knew he wasn't falling for her ploy.

"Heh, okay, I do know. But why do you?"

"It's all over the Internet. They're all going down there to have a big party and become Gifted, like they do every year. But I don't get it. It's not such a big deal. Most of them don't even get magic powers. They just go crazy for a week." Aires laughed silently, making sure his daughter couldn't see his amusement. She might be new to being a teenager, but she already had the arrogance down pat. That might have partially been his fault too though.

"That's true, but the magic isn't the point. There's a lot more to it than that."

"But you won't tell me what it is! Aren't I supposed to know what's going on?" Aires sighed a little, glad Eris was taking an interest in her duties as a princess but a little annoyed at where she chose to focus that interest. Maybe he should know better.

"I'm not sure I can really explain it, that's just not how it works. You have to experience it yourself to really understand."

"I can still try!"

"Yeah...how about this? You wait a little longer and your mom will explain things to you. Had she explained the difference between boys and girls yet?" Eris shook her blonde head. "Just hold tight then. It'll make more sense then."

"What about futas? Jenny in my class says she's a futa, but she just looks like a girl."

"She'll tell you about those too."

"You always push things off on Mama," Eris said, spirits not lifted in the slightest, though Aries laughed in response.

"You're right, I do. Because she's a lot smarter than me."

"Hmph!" Eris snorted, turning away and stomping off. Aires watched her go, amused but also glad he had managed to avoid the conversation. Eris was still too young to be informed of the full effects of the Contagion, especially since she was only barely entering womanhood. From what little research Owen had done on the subject of Contagion-born children, the effects of the virus varied and had no real pattern to them. The only consistency was that none of the children expressed a predisposition to perversion or anything like it. How that would change would remain to be seen; Eris was on the leading edge of the initial offspring resulting from the Contagion's spread so not much could be known about anything past her current age. Aires was sure it would be interesting though.

As for the event at the beach that had initially pulled Eris' interest, that was the new version of Spring Break. For the past few years, the first week of April was the unofficial time for everyone who had turned 18 in the last year to go and become Infected, or Gifted as being afflicted with a sex virus became the norm. He wasn't even sure how it started, only that people had taken to the tradition with gusto. Just another oddity baked into the inherent nature of humanity, sex plague or no.

His musings were interrupted by the mental voice of his wife echoing in his head. 'Why is our daughter suddenly asking me about the differences between boys, girls, and futas?' she asked and Aires winced. He probably should have seen that coming.

Eris was bored, like she usually was when she had to sit in court. It was part of being a princess and a royal and a Divine and whatever else, but it still sucked. Every other week, she had to waste half her Saturday listening to people's requests, which inevitably could be narrowed down to one of two things. She wasn't even sixteen yet! What was the deal with pushing so much responsibility on her? Youth was a time to make friends, gossip, and mess around, not sit on a fancy chair and listen to people begging for idiotic things. To make things worse, those wasn't even much variety; everything else got pushed to other days. And by everything else, she meant the interesting stuff. Stuff about the Contagion.

She knew what it was now. Not intimately, but she'd gotten the talk from her mother and teen hormones weren't about to stop affecting her just because her parents were the root cause of a sex plague. But it all seemed rather distant still. All the people in school, even the teachers, were either underage and so exempt from the Contagion's power or Pure. In court, most of the grievances related to it were handled when she wasn't there. The closest she got to it was when she would go to one of the other districts for something, usually with her parents, but even then everyone kept their distance from her. It was infuriating and annoying. To be 15, so close but so far from coming of age at 18, was all the more agonizing when she had just an inkling of what things would eventually be like.

"Next." A servant at the door quickly opened it and led the next supplicant into the throne room. Atop her own throne to the side of her father's much larger one and dressed to impress, she was sure she presented an imposing image, but it was really all she could do to keep herself from slouching. She wasn't even sure if she could, really; her mother's lessons about posture had been drilled into her for years. "Speak," the princess ordered.

"My princess," the young woman who had come in began. She was unassuming, clearly Pure and probably boring, with an equally boring request. "It's about my husband. We live in the Pure district together and always said we didn't want to become Gifted..."

'Shame,' Eris thought to herself, 'maybe if you did, you'd be less bland than a piece of toast. Her husband is fucking another slut, isn't he?'

"...but I found out last week that he'd been talking to one of those cows in the Hucow District! Visiting her all the time, talking for ages! I always knew that bitch was a slut, and that's fine, but this is too much!"

"'That bitch'? Is it someone you know?"

"Well...yes...it's my...sister. She volunteered, turned herself into a cow as soon as she was old enough. Always boasted about how hot it was going to be getting fucked by all those bulls. But that wasn't enough, she went and seduced my husband too! When he came home four days ago, I barely recognized him! Huge and muscly! It was terrible! I bet that fat titslut pushed him down and fucked him like a beast until he turned too! He'd never break our promise! Please, princess, would you turn him back? I can barely think of him as my husband anymore!"

Eris sighed, unsurprised. Half of what she got to deal with when she held court was shit like this, people delusional about the reality that their brother or girlfriend or daughter or whoever had, in all likelihood, become Gifted of their very own volition. She had used to try and break it to the petitioner gently, help them see the truth, but that got old fast and she definitely wasn't in the mood for it today.

"Let's get one thing cleared up first. Your husband turned himself. The hucow pens are specifically designed to keep the girls from breaking out: poor things wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they did, so we keep them secured for their own safety. Doubly so if they're meeting with someone Pure, they're kept secured and have their breasts capped to prevent them from turning someone like you describe. And frankly, most of them aren't smart enough to consider getting out of those in the first place. But the bonds really aren't that hard to get off, so anyone could do it. And plenty do, usually those who want a chance to get with a hucow.

"Your sister didn't attack your husband, it was probably actually the other way around. And I don't blame him, looking at you. Probably wanted something to spice up his life. Let me guess, you're relationship isn't based on such carnality? Doesn't change what a guy wants. And when he met your sister, he saw the other side of the coin. In the end, he got sick of you never sleeping with him and figured the grass was greener on the other side of the fence. I think it's your own fault what happened and now you have to live with the consequences."

"Bu...wh...what am I supposed to do then?! I want my husband back!!" the woman sobbed, tears running down her cheeks.

"My recommendation: go find your sister, apologize for being a bitch, and take a nice big drink. Then you can share your husband. Monogamy is so outdated anyway." Eris waved her hand and the young woman was escorted out. "Next," she said and the servant at the door showed in the next person, an immaculately dressed young man who looked just a little older than her. His suit was perfectly suited to his lean, toned body, his shoulders filling out the top part of his jacket a little too well. A young man in the middle of turning into a proper one, dressed to the nines and bowing in front of her could mean only one thing, and she sighed. This was the other half of the kind requests she heard and they were the ones she really hated.

"Princess Eris, my name is Edward von Grolman and I have come to request your hand in marriage," he said like he was reading off a card. Eris didn't bother to hide her groan of annoyance. There was just so much wrong with this. None of her aspiring suitors were in any way interested in her, just the throne she was the heir to. Which was stupid, since her parents were effectively immortal as far as anyone could tell. Second, this attempt was a guy. She was pretty sure at this point that she wasn't into guys. People told her not to entirely write off such a massive chunk of the population, but she couldn't help it that she thought girls were cuter.

"My family can-"

"Nope," she interrupted quickly, not wanting to waste anyone's time with this farce.

"-offer a...what?" he asked, voice cracking as he broke his prepared speech. Eris resisted the urge to snort.

"I'm not marrying anyone, thanks. You can see yourself out." She waved him away and he hurried off with some apparent relief. She wondered if he had been **** into asking just as much she had been **** into listening. She'd asked Aires and Aphrodite why they even allowed such requests to get to her, but they'd just given her some excuse about it being good impulse control and said she could change the policy on princess proposals once she was of age. It seemed like everything was waiting for her to turn 18.

Sighing even more heavily, she quickly called out "next," hoping the line was getting short and she could get to actually enjoying her Saturday.

"Sooo....it's my birthday next week," Eris said, munching on a piece of bread that made up part of her dinner. Though Aires and Aphrodite didn't strictly need to eat, the three of them tried to eat dinner together as much as possible.

"Yep," Aphrodite said, picking at her own food.

"My eighteenth birthday."

"Mhmm. Going to do anything fun?"

"I dunno, Mom, you won't tell me what's going to happen to me. Kind of hard to plan around your life changing in an instant, especially when your parents won't tell you what it's going to be like."

"Eris, you know every as well as we do that children of Gifted parents are all different. Not to mention you're a special case. There's really no knowing what might happen," Aires said, mostly focused on his food.

"Okay, sure, but can we at least talk about the sex? Sable, Bea, and Lia turned 18 and haven't left their room in three days. I can hear what they're doing. You're not hiding anything from me. Would you please just tell me what's going to happen to me? What it's like?"

"...no, we won't," Aphrodite said with a charming smile. "The fun part is experiencing it for yourself. But once it happens, we'll be here for you if you need it." Eris **** down a shudder at imaging her parents that way. Even if neither of them looked their age, perpetually appearing to be in the prime of their mid-twenties, they were still her parents. Aphrodite seemed to catch on to her distaste and changed the subject. "Or maybe your friends? How many of them are holding out for you?"

"Mom..." Eris mumbled, cheeks flushed. "It's not like that."

"Have you told Vera that? I know she at least likes you. And she's been very interested in the Contagion, and turned 18 a few months ago and hasn't been Gifted yet. Sooo..."

"Mom, please...just...not right now."

"Alright, I'm sorry," Aphrodite said with a sly smile aimed towards her husband. Their daughter would be **** to be honest with herself very soon anyways. "Just remember to distance yourself from anyone you want to protect for yourself if you feel anything."

"Doubt I can, given how many times you've told me."

"It's every parent's job to protect their children from themselves. Most don't have it quite so literal."

"Lucky you."