Descobri: eu não sei por que eu lembrei que a espécie é parecida com um gato (acho que posso tê-los confundido com o hani), mas eu encontrei a cena exata que ficou na minha cabeça. / p>
A espécie é a iduína do Hunter of Worlds de C. J. Cherryh; um trecho da cena que me lembrei segue:
She drew breath: when she went on it was in a calmer voice. “Rakhi could not reprimand my kameth in my presence; I could not do so in theirs. And there you stood, gambling with the five of us in the mistaken confidence that your life was too valuable for me to waste. Were you iduve, I should say that was an extremely hazardous form of vaikka. Were you iduve, you would have lost that game. But because you are m’metane, you were allowed to do what an iduve would have died for doing.”
“And is iduve pride that vulnerable?”
“Stop challenging me!”
It was a cry of anguish. Chimele herself looked terrified, reminding him for all the world of an essentially friendly animal being provoked beyond endurance, a creature teased to the point of madness by some child it loved, shivering with taut nerves and repressed instincts. She could not help it, as an animal could not resist a move from its prey.
Vaikka.
He grasped it then—a game that was indeed for iduve only, a name that shielded a most terrifying instinct, one that the iduve themselves must fear, for it tore apart all their careful rationality. […] A kallia quite literally did not have a nervous system attuned to that kind of conflict. A kallia would want to play the game part of the way and then quit before someone was hurt; but there was a point past which the iduve could not quit.
ETA: E parece que me lembrei de outra coisa: Aiela é kallia, não humana; embora ele tenha sido telepaticamente ligado a um ser humano.