The carapace of a changeling isn't hard and cold. You know that; the fact that you're sleeping in your bed with the Queen of the race - and that her carapace feels like warm, soft leather - proves it, beyond a shadow of a doubt. You've got a hand over her ponylike barrel and she's snuggling up into your touch because she honestly can't get enough. A chuckle escapes you as you remember the first time you touched her. It was totally by accident; you and she were passing each other as you both went through the hallway of your small Ponyville cottage; you to work on what would eventually be the basement and storage room of your home and she outside. It was an accidental brush, the softest touch of human hand to alien carapace, and she'd shrieked and jumped as if shocked by a live wire, because she'd never experienced anything like it before. Insectoid as they were, changelings as a whole weren't big on physical contact, thus your touch - the sensations it had generated within her nerves - had startled her. After analyzing the sensations she'd felt, a few days later, she'd asked you to touch her again, and so you had. Eventually, she'd grown to adore your touch and had turned into a real cuddle-bug, always nosing her way under an arm or looking to cuddle when the days were rough. And rough they had been at that start of it all.
Changelings feeding on love is true but the way they do it - sucking it out like some kind of vampire - is all horse shit; it's all stories made up by those whom would demonize your beloved and what's left of her race. The truth is, Changelings don't work like that since love isn't a tangible thing; instead they feed off the psionic energy generated by the emotion, drawing it in from the background; ergo the more sentient beings there are wherever a Changeling resides the more powerful they'll be able to get. You... you utterly adore your beloved Chrysalis and thus, powerful indeed she has become. She wasn't the one who'd impersonated Cadance and attacked the wedding; that had been a usurper of the throne; one drone who'd glutted on stored love to become powerful than had gathered an army of like-minded fools. Truth is, poor Chrysalis hadn't even been able to enter the city; one look at her appearance had branded her a demon in the eyes of the Canterlot Elite and she hadn't even been able to get near the Royal Palace, let alone beseech the Princesses for aid. The Badlands of Equestria - where she and her hive had lived - were a blighted desert; nothing lived there and thus there was no love. Thousands of her beloved people were dying every day but that blasted land was the only place the Changelings might call home; the hideous appearance of her people gained them niether sanctuary nor friends in other lands; thus poor Chrysalis had made a final attempt to come to Equestria and beg for aid.
And she had failed. It was shortly after you'd taken her in... that she felt the last of her kin die. She'd been utterly insensate for days, bumping into walls, eyes glazed over, unable to comprehend a thing; it was as if she'd suffered a crippling stroke. Your touch had brought her out of it, but then she'd attacked you, screaming and cursing and fighting and blaming. You understood. Oh, Faust, you understood and your heart wrenched within your chest as you realized she wasn't blaming and hurting you; she was doing it to herself. All you could do was be there for her, though the long sleepless nights, the suffering and tears, the times when she'd stay up night and day calling, calling, calling for any of her hive whom might hear her alien crooning-clicking-warbling. All for naught; in the end she'd given up, crawling into your shared bed and weeping softly, the sound of her two-toned cries hurting and haunting you to this day. You'd held her close, vowing to do what you could for her... and you did.