The Rejected Blind Luna: Relationships at the Start

The narrator has been taught that a mate should offer care regardless of disability, making recognition a moment loaded with expectation. Her grandmother's description of finding a mate through eye contact does not fit her experience, yet scent supplies another route to recognition. Ace's response breaks the expected connection between recognition and care, so the public nature of the encounter intensifies a disappointment rooted in lessons the narrator has trusted since childhood about how mates should behave.

Which childhood expectations about mates are challenged by the narrator's first encounter with Ace?