by L P Peace
Danielle wrapped the strange breast covering over her and twisted her arms to fasten it before standing and walking over to Aerdan, a small smile on her face. ‘As soon as I’m dressed, I’ll go get my things.’ With that, she raised on her tiptoes and pulled him down to kiss her.
Aerdan broke the kiss a few moments later and studied her. He’d almost expected her to be hesitant and searched for evidence of it in her eyes. Danielle didn’t like to reveal her emotions. She thought it made her weak, but over the weeks it had begun to change and now, all he could see was happiness and acceptance on her face. He realised she’d needed this. Needed the commitment to know that they weren’t using her. Smiling in a way he hoped was reassuring, Aerdan stroked her cheek with his thumb.
‘I want to wake up next to you every day forever,’ he said.
Something inside Danielle shifted, and a look of pure happiness smoothed her features and chased shadows of uncertainty away.
‘Same here,’ Haddis said, still lying in bed. He got up and crawled to the edge where Aerdan and Danielle were standing. She looked down at him and bit her lip. ‘I want this to be our every morning,’ he said. Danielle leaned her head against Aerdan’s chest, still looking at Haddis, and reached out to his face. He caught her hand and brought to her palm to his lips and breathed her in.
Aerdan saw Bedvir coming up behind her. He loosened his grip and allowed Bedvir to pull her back into his arms. ‘Every morning, every day, and every night,’ he agreed.
Danielle leaned back on his chest, her free hand reaching out to Aerdan, who took it and pressed his lips to her palm. ‘Me too,’ she whispered. ‘With all of you.’
The three of them closed in on her, Haddis finding his feet. They all held each other.
It struck Aerdan as strange, suddenly, that he’d never realised they were destined to share the same mate. How had he not known. These males were his closest friends. Closer than brothers. Of course they would share their lives, share their mate, share their futures.
‘But you’re going to have to make some room in your wardrobe for all of us,’ Danielle pointed out.
Aerdan turned to look at the wall of closet space he’d fitted when they’d first gotten Compound Errors. He’d filled it from floor to ceiling with his clothes.
‘You’re going to have to get rid of the clothes you don’t wear,’ she said.
‘I wear all of my clothes,’ Aerdan countered.
‘Then you’re going to have to choose your favourites,’ Bedvir said.
‘They’re all my favourites!’ he complained. ‘Maybe I should turn one of the other rooms into a closet?’
‘A closet and dressing room,’ Danielle said. ‘That we can share.’ She emphasised the word share. ‘That one,’ she pointed at the wall where the door was. It adjoined one of the spare rooms in his… their suite.
‘We can start on that straight away,’ Bedvir said.
‘In the meantime, I suggest taking the clothes you don’t intend to wear anytime soon and putting them in,’ Danielle gestured with her head, ‘the other spare room, so you can make room for us.’
Aerdan stared at the wardrobe again and sighed. ‘There are so many, though. How do I choose?’
Haddis started laughing and backed away, rummaging through the clothes on the floor to find his own and putting Danielle and Bedvir’s on the bed in separate piles as he found them. Aerdan’s were neatly folded on a chest across the room, as they were every night.
‘I don’t really care,’ Danielle said. ‘If you want us moving in today, then get stuff moved. I’m not using another room so you can hog the space all to yourself.’
In his head, Aerdan knew she was right. In his heart, the thought of dividing his clothes hurt him. He sighed and nodded. ‘I do have a lot of clothes, he admitted.
‘Too many,’ Bedvir said. He kissed Danielle on the shoulder then snagged his clothes from the bed and went back to dressing. Danielle, a sweet look on her face, kissed Aerdan.
‘I know it’s hard,’ she said. ‘But it’s not forever. If you guys can get the walk-in done quickly, they’ll be back in no time.’
Aerdan nodded. ‘You’re right, I know.’
Danielle snickered and went over to the bed and finished dressing. As they left, Aerdan opened the doors and tried to decide which clothes would go in the spare room.
Danielle had been on Compound Errors for around two months, roughly. In that time, the only things she’d gathered were the clothes and gifts she’d received on Crassis. It took a couple of minutes for her to gather them all up and put them in a bag she found in the wardrobe in her room. With a quick backwards glance, she shut the door and made her way across the ship, to Aerdan’s suite.
‘Danielle?’
She was passing the stairs down to engineering when she heard Kentor calling to her. She walked in the small door, where there was a little landing that looked down to the door to engineering. Kentor was standing in the doorway, a frown on his face.
‘What’s going on?’
‘We’re moving into Aerdan’s suite,’ she answered.
‘It’s about time. Sidha and I are going to move into one of the other rooms then. The four of you are so loud!’
Danielle felt her face heat. ‘That sounds like an idea,’ she said, choosing to ignore the last part of his statement. ‘Maybe you could knock a couple rooms together. Give you a larger living space.’
Kentor got a contemplative look on his face. ‘Yeah, that’s a good idea.’
Danielle thought about the conversation she and Sidha had a month or so before. ‘You know, I really love you guys. Sidha’s so great, and you two make such a good couple.’
Kentor’s reddish-grey skin turned a deeper shade of red, and a small smile appeared on his face. ‘He’s…’ Kentor shrugged, suddenly shy.
‘You’re going to do good by my friend, aren’t you?’ Danielle asked.
Kentor nodded. ‘I’m going to do good. I love him, Danielle.’
Danielle grinned. ‘Good. He loves you too.’
Feeling happier than she already was, Danielle spun on the spot to leave. Something caught her ankle and before she could stop herself, she was falling back towards the empty stairwell. She screamed as something wrenched in her foot, and she plunged into the open well.
Arms enclosed her, but her foot wrenched again. She screamed as pain lanced through her foot and up her leg.
‘It’s okay. I have you,’ Kentor said. He tried to move her, but she cried out again as the pain, sharp and overwhelming, increased.
‘My foot—my foot is caught on something.’
‘HELP!’ Kentor roared.
Even before he called out, Danielle could hear calls and footsteps racing towards them.
Bedvir was the first one through the door. His face paled when he saw Danielle, held in Kentor’s arm, her leg twisted, her foot caught. ‘Danielle,’ he gasped before coming forward.
Danielle could see Sidha behind him, his eyes round as he took in the scene.
‘Sidha, go to medbay. Painkillers, a blade. We have to cut the shoe off.’
Sidha nodded and disappeared.
‘What happened!?’
Danielle could hear the panic in Aerdan’s voice. His face appeared a moment later.
‘She’s okay, Aerdan. Wait out there. I need to free her before we bring her to medbay.’
Danielle was lying parallel to the floor, Kentor’s arms the only thing that had stopped her from plunging down a narrow set of stairs. She looked to the metal balusters. She could have caught her head and snapped her neck. The thought was terrifying. Worse was the pain. Even when her shuttle had crashed, even when the heating had failed in the last hours when Rebekah had passed out and she was alone in the shuttle freezing to death. Even that hadn’t been as painful as this. She felt like there were bones in places they weren’t meant to be, but she was too afraid to look.
Sidha reappeared, slotting a silver vial into a medspray before handing it to
Bedvir. He lifted up the leg of the pants she was wearing, and she heard the hiss of the spray before the sharp pain tempered into something she could handle.
‘It’s okay,’ Kentor whispered. He stroked her face, and Danielle realised he was drying tears from her face. ‘Everything’s going to be okay.’
Danielle nodded. ‘Thank you for catching me.’
‘Of course. You’re family. Mita. My brother’s mate. Sidha and I will always take care of you when they’re not around.’
Some ancient pain in Danielle rose to the fore and her crying started anew. This one for the family who’d never cared for her. Here she was with aliens from another world and they cared more for her safety than her own parents. Danielle gripped Kentor’s arms in gratitude.
Bedvir used some tool to cut metal away. Some part of the floor that, somehow, had come loose, buckling and trapping her foot as she fell.
When Kentor picked her up and carried her out, she saw three pale faces watching her. They led the way to medbay, Haddis heading straight to the cupboards and pulling things out.
‘Now we have to decide. Do we heal the foot, or cut it off?’ Aerdan said.
Danielle thought he was joking until she saw the deadly serious look on his pale face, his eyes wide. He was shaking with adrenaline.
‘What!? You’re not cutting off my freaking foot!’
‘Why not?’ Aerdan said, his voice not nearly as calm as his words suggested. ‘It’ll grow back.’
‘What? No, it won’t. My foot won’t grow back. Whose foot grows back… wait, your limbs grow back?’
‘Wait,’ Haddis turned, his face panic stricken, ‘yours don’t?’
‘No!’
The room was completely quiet for a few moments as the guys all looked at each other.
‘Get the scanner!’ Haddis shouted. ‘Get the cabinet!’ He pointed at something next to the door. ‘Get… Get everything!’
Suddenly they all burst into motion as doors and drawers were opened. A cabinet was brought, but it was the wrong one and quickly exchanged. Kentor had laid Danielle on the med bed, and the two of them watched her guys become progressively less useful as their panic took hold.
She heard chuckling and looked at the door to find Sidha leaning on the frame laughing. He saw her and held out a hand. ‘I’m sorry. This is too good!’
Haddis turned. ‘You lived on Tessa, why didn’t you tell us!’
‘I’m going to go to the bridge, contact Tessa, and ask them to send everything they have on humans.’
‘Good idea!’ Aerdan said from inside a cupboard.
Danielle shook her head. She could handle the pain; she wasn’t sure she could handle this. ‘What’s the plan, guys?’
Kentor shook his head and, activating a scanner, he ran it over her body, starting with her foot. ‘Relax. I have this.’
Haddis turned, and, noticing Kentor was the one actually treating his mate, he crossed the room and grabbed the scanner. ‘You’re not doing it right,’ he hissed. He looked down at it. ‘You don’t need to scan her whole body, just the…’
He went quiet and almost completely still. Only his eyes running over the screen gave any indication he hadn’t fallen into some bizarre standing coma.
‘Haddis?’
Haddis looked up at her, then down at the scanner. He ran it over her body again, this time going nowhere near her foot.
‘Haddis, what’s wrong?’
Something in her voice brought Bedvir and Aerdan to a stop. Aerdan stood, Bedvir turning.
‘I…’ Haddis’s voice was breathless. ‘I have to confirm.’ He turned and picked up a pad, transferring the data. He read through it and smiled, a breathy laugh escaping his lips before he swallowed.
He turned to Aerdan and Bedvir and showed them the pad.
‘Oh, that’s not on. Come on. What’s going on?’
There was only one reason Danielle could think that her mates would be reacting like this. The words one of them were about to say crawled into the edges of her mind with a prescient certainty.
All three of them turned to face her, wide smiles on their faces.
Danielle bit her lip, feeling her throat closing up. She opened her mouth, the words hovering on her lips. ‘Am I… are we going to have a baby?’ Her voice broke over the last word, fearful they’d tell her she was wrong.
‘Yes,’ Haddis said.
Aerdan broke away from Bedvir and Haddis and rounded the bed as Kentor stepped back, making room for him and leaving the room. He wrapped his arms around her as Haddis and Bedvir came to her other side.
Danielle had never thought about having children. She was too damaged. She didn’t trust anyone. How could she ever think about making children with someone?
But Aerdan, Bedvir, and Haddis had proved she could trust them. Had proved they’d never hurt her or betray her. She reached down to her still flat stomach. She’d never thought about having children. Now, this little life inside her was the only thing she could think about. She thought about her body changing, their baby growing. She thought about their child and holding it, watching her guys holding it and all she could think was how she’d do it the right way. She’d put their child first. Love it, protect it, give it everything it needed and never betray it the way her parents had betrayed her.
A small voice of fear rose in the back of her mind, and as soon as its words were said, the fear grew. She looked up at her three guys. ‘You’ll all love it, right? Even if you’re not it’s biological father?’
‘We’ll all love it,’ Aerdan confirmed. ‘I’ll love it because it’s our child. All of ours.’
Bedvir and Haddis nodded, Haddis smiling. ‘We’ll love this child,’ he said. ‘Though Aerdan’s the father, it’s still our child.’
Aerdan frowned. ‘You can’t know that,’ he said.
Bedvir grinned. ‘Yes, we can. Haddis and I talked about this the night of the first dinner. We started taking tablets to stop us making seed, so our first child would be yours.’
Aerdan’s mouth dropped open, and he took a step back. ‘You did that?’
‘We did that,’ Haddis confirmed. ‘Those are the tablets you caught us taking in engineering when you started that vashni fight.’
Aerdan looked from Haddis, to Bedvir, to Danielle, then down to her abdomen which her hands still cradled. He walked over to her and placed a hand over hers, a huff of laughter escaping his lips. He stared at it, as though he could see the baby within, then turned to Danielle, hooking his hand behind her neck and pressing a passionate kiss to her lips.
Danielle smiled at him. She’d had no idea what the guys had conspired without her and was a little annoyed that they’d made this decision before she’d even made the decision to stay. But seeing the look of pure joy on Aerdan’s face made Danielle’s heart fill with happiness.
A shock of pain reasserted itself into her consciousness, and Danielle hissed.
‘Vrok! Her foot!’ Haddis said, looking down at her foot.
‘Oh, please, no more chaos. Please someone just make a plan and treat my bloody foot.’ Danielle followed Haddis’s gaze and breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it seemed. The three of them looked at her with guilt on their faces. Haddis picked up the scanner and rescanned her foot, while Bedvir and Aerdan began cleaning the medbay.
Danielle lay back. Her body was buzzing from the fear, pain, and emotion of the last few minutes. Her hands still hadn’t left her abdomen, and she closed her eyes, picturing the little one inside.
* * *
Danielle had a nasty sprain. According to Tevin, the head of medicine on Tessa, it was one of the nastiest he’d seen. Tevin demanded to see the scans almost as soon as Sidha had gotten through to his office and put together a plan of treatment and rest.
They’d also shared news of the pregnancy and promised Tevin they would send him regular updates. He was insisting they settled on Tessa for the delivery, which Aerdan was angry about. He agreed with Tevin. There were n
o known human-Temerin hybrids, but he was still angry that the Tessans had never offered his people a place among them when they were protecting so many others of the so-called slave races.
The protectiveness of the guys went into overdrive. So much so that Danielle found herself being tucked into bed. Each of the guys spent time with her so she was never alone, and that was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because she got to spend one-on-one time with each of them just talking and getting to know one another. A curse because she couldn’t so much as go to the toilet without one of them carrying her.
The worst of it came when, a few weeks later, she discovered they weren’t putting her on bedrest because of the foot, but because of the pregnancy!
Finally, Danielle had to contact Tevin and get him to explain that it was actually worse for a perfectly healthy woman to be on bedrest just because she was carrying a baby. Finally, they agreed to back off, but she wasn’t ‘allowed’ to work and they absolutely refused to have sex with her.
Considering they’d been furnishing her with several orgasms a night, to expect her to go cold turkey was much too much.
Even when Tevin had assured them sex was fine, they still refused to cave.
In revenge, each night, Danielle would bring herself to completion, loudly, as they lay next to her in bed, their eyes fixed on her naked body. Then each of them would sneak off to relieve themselves of the aches her actions left them with.
And still they refused to cave!
Danielle had even hosted an anatomy lesson explaining where the baby was and how they wouldn’t be anywhere near it, and still they didn’t cave.
In an effort to remind her guys how amazing the four of them were together, Danielle had ditched her clothes and was walking about the suite completely naked.
When she found out they were going to a space station in Inadiine space where they’d be safe to walk around without fear, she went onto the Quartex and bought several packages solely with her guys in mind.
