by Becca Van
“No, I’m okay. I just feel a bit nauseous, and my stomach has these weird flutters.”
“What? What do you mean by flutters?” Dreab asked as he moved closer to Erup and Sandi.
“I don’t know. It’s like there is something inside me, moving around. Oh my god. Tell me you didn’t,” Sandi said as she covered her mouth with her hand and rose from her stool.
“Didn’t what, little one?” Dreab asked.
“Tell me you did not get me pregnant! You did, didn’t you? Fuck, what have you two done to me? Ever since I’ve arrived on this planet, you two have made choices concerning me without my consent. You didn’t tell me everything about the mating. You didn’t tell me I could get pregnant even though I was using contraception. Why didn’t you talk to me? If you had told me what was happening instead of keeping me in the dark, I would have understood you and your culture better.” Sandi sobbed, pain stabbing into her heart. She felt so betrayed. They hadn’t trusted her, and even though she understood why, she felt so hurt. She couldn’t understand why she was behaving the way she was. One minute she wanted to hug them and love them and the next she was feeling torn and hurt.
They had kept their real home from her, and now she was carrying their child. She loved them so much. They had inveigled their way into her heart and soul. Even though Dreab told her what to do most of the time, she knew it was because he wanted to keep her safe. And Erup was so much more sensitive than his brother. He often talked to her about the problems their clan faced and asked for her advice and opinion. She wanted them to love her for who she was, even when she was being prickly and irrational like she was now, but she knew they didn’t love her in return. They would have trusted her and told her about the real home a lot sooner if they felt any affection for her.
“Now I know you have lied to me. Based on what I’ve seen of your real home, you probably have all the things I will need to fix my ship. You will please get me the parts and tools I need to get off this God-forsaken planet. There is no way I’m staying here and giving birth to…to…to one of your younglings. I have had enough,” Sandi stated without any inflection, turned away, and headed back to the bedroom. She gave a snarl of satisfaction as the door slammed closed behind her.
Sandi had never been so uncertain in her life. One moment she was angry with her mates for concealing things from her and the next she was elated. She loved the thought of having their children. She’d felt it necessary to take a stand against her mates as she couldn’t let them get away with making decisions for her and not discussing issues with her. They had known she was pregnant yet had not said a thing to her. Had they wanted to push the fact she was with child under the carpet? Did they not value the life of their own flesh and blood? She didn’t want to leave them and take their child away. She wanted to stay with them and build a life filled with love, joy, and happiness, and to be able to nurture their child with them by her side. But she had a dreadful feeling time was running out. She knew her colleagues were coming for her. She was going to have to go back to Earth whether she wanted to or not. At least she would be taking a part of her mates home with her.
* * * *
Dreab and Erup followed Sandi out of the room with their eyes. They looked at each other and both spoke at the same time.
“She is going to leave us.”
“How were we supposed to know her birth control would not work against our seed?” Dreab asked with despair.
“I don’t know, brother, but we have a lot of groveling and explaining to do,” Erup said.
“I think we should tell Sandi that we love her. We have not once said how we feel about her, and she may think we are only using her for her body.”
“I think you may be right, brother. I just hope our mate will accept us and our younglings when she has had time to process all the information. She is such a strong-willed female, but underneath that tough exterior she is crying out for our love and affection. She looks at you with fire and love in her eyes when she thinks no one is looking. The pain and yearning on her face is almost too much to bear.”
“She looks at you the same way, brother. Do you think she will ever accept us for whom and what we are, as well as our younglings? I do not like to see her so angry and unhappy. I do not think I could survive without her,” Dreab stated.
“We cannot keep her here if she doesn’t want to stay. I think we should help her fix her ship and let her leave if that is her wish.”
“I don’t think I could continue on if she leaves us, but you are right. She needs to have the choice to leave if that is her heart’s desire,” Dreab said with a sigh.
“Let us give Sandi time to calm down and then we will go and join her and talk to her. I will see about finding parts for her ship, and if we cannot fix it, she can have one of the ships from our fleet.”
“From what I saw of her spacecraft, it will be impossible to fix. Just have one of the ships from our fleet prepared for our mate to depart in.” Dreab growled and stormed from the house.
Dreab wandered the underground tunnels and caverns of his clan’s home. His heart felt heavy and ached in his chest. The thought of Sandi leaving him was tearing him apart.
Chapter Eight
Sandi sat on the side of the large bed and placed a hand over her lower abdomen. She tried to contain her smile of elation at the fact of being pregnant with their child. Maybe she would be able to talk her colleagues from IDSE into letting her stay. She didn’t want her child growing up without all its parents. Even though she had told her mates she wanted to fix her spaceship and leave, she had lied to them. She had let her emotions rule her tongue and said things she hadn’t really meant. She wanted so desperately to stay.
She had never thought she would settle down and have a family of her own. She had dedicated all of her time to her career and her flying. She knew other humans didn’t understand her dedication, but they had no idea what she was really like.
Sandi had lost her parents just after she had started on her career path with IDSE. A forensic investigation had confirmed Sandi’s parents had been killed by an experiment gone wrong in a lab. The explosion had rocked the foundations of the building her parents had been working in, but luckily no one else had lost their lives. But then a letter had been found amongst the rubble. A previous disgruntled employee had killed innocent people just to get back at them for being fired. The perpetrator had taken chemicals and put them in bottles with the incorrect labels. What she had never found out was why her parents’ lab had been targeted. The news of her parents’ death had been spread far and wide. Her colleagues at IDSE had treated her as if she was made of glass and would snap at any moment, not speaking to her unless she spoke to them and giving her a wide berth if they ever happened to be in her vicinity. She could tell they didn’t know how to handle the fact her parents had been killed in a so-called secure facility and knew they felt guilty in some way for her parents’ deaths.
Sandi had learned to close herself off from people and had vowed she would never get married and have children. There was no way she wanted her kids to go through the anger, despair, and grief she had after her parents’ death. She knew now that her emotions had been her way of grieving, but she didn’t want her child to miss out on having all its parents in its life.
Sandi had a lot of questions she wanted—needed—answered, but she wanted to make her mates stew for a while. Hopefully they would seek her out and explain things to her before she had to ask. Surely they weren’t that insensitive. But they were men, after all. Men just didn’t seem to understand the female psyche. They were such straightforward creatures. They always seemed to think of themselves first, and when they weren’t thinking with the head on their shoulders, the small head between their legs took over.
Sandi began to think about what her child would look like and whether she would give birth the normal way. She had a vision of giving birth through her mouth and began to laugh at her overactive imagination. She couldn’t handle the images
anymore and was about to go in search of her mates, but before she could move, the door to the bedroom opened.
“Sandi, we have a meal ready. We thought you might be hungry,” Erup said hesitantly from beside the doorway.
“Yeah, I am starving. While we eat, I have some questions I want answered from you two,” she stated as she jabbed a finger into the air toward Dreab and Erup.
“All right, little one. Come and eat first, and then we will answer all your questions,” Dreab replied from behind Erup. He and Erup moved ahead of Sandi and pulled a chair out for her at the table.
Sandi looked down at the steaming food on the plates on the table, and her mouth began to salivate at the delicious smell.
“What is this?”
“That is what you would call meat and vegetables. We have a food simulator to provide us with all of our needs,” Erup explained.
“You mean I could have been eating this instead of rabbit food all the time? You two owe me big-time for deceiving me,” Sandi said with a scowl. She picked up her utensils and cut into the meat. She groaned with pleasure as the wonderful flavor burst on her taste buds. She didn’t say another word until she had eaten everything on her plate. She sat back in her chair, replete for the first time in days.
“Okay, question-and-answer time, boys. How do your females give birth? And what am I going to be birthing?”
“I imagine you will give birth the way any female does,” Dreab replied as he raised an eyebrow arrogantly.
“And how would that be? Out of my mouth?”
Dreab and Erup choked on the food in their mouths. They coughed until they had tears leaking from the corner of their eyes, took a few deep breaths, coughed some more, and looked at Sandi strangely. “The women on your planet give birth through their mouths?” Erup asked with astonishment.
“No, you big idiot. They give birth through their vagina, their sex. The same way they got pregnant in the first place.”
“Then why did you…” Dreab began.
“I wanted to shock you. It worked, didn’t it?” Sandi stated with a smirk. “What am I going to give birth to?”
“A youngling, of course,” Erup stated.
“Well, of course it will be a youngling. Will my baby be born in an egg and have wings? If so, you better tell me now, ’cause there is no way in hell I’m giving birth to a baby with wings without any painkillers.”
“Our younglings don’t get their wings until they reach puberty. It would be too hard for their parents to keep them safe if they could fly right away,” Dreab explained.
“Well, thank God for small mercies,” Sandi muttered. “How long does the gestation period last?”
“Five moon cycles,” Erup answered.
“Well, that’s good. On Earth our gestation period is nine moon cycles.” She reached back and tried to scratch at her shoulder blades. The itching was driving her insane. “Ooh, would one of you please scratch my back? Oh, that’s better. No, a bit higher, near my shoulder blades. Yeah, right there,” Sandi directed Erup.
She closed her eyes as the itch was relieved. She opened them in time to see Dreab looking at Erup over her shoulder.
“All right, spit it out.” Sandi crossed her arms over her chest. She just knew she wasn’t going to like what they had to tell her.
“I don’t like spitting. It’s disgusting,” Dreab replied as he frowned at his mate.
“Oh, for the love of…What I meant was you have something else to tell me. I could tell by the way you looked at Erup. So tell me already.”
“Um, I don’t…” Dreab hesitated.
“Don’t you dare lie to me. Tell me, now.”
“You’re getting your wings,” Erup stated from behind her.
“What? What did you just say?” Sandi looked over her shoulder at Erup.
“You’re itchy because your wings are beginning to form.”
“And how the hell did this transformation happen?”
“Um, we, I mean…that is,” Dreab stuttered.
“When you swallowed our seed, it began the transformation process. We didn’t know this would happen until it was too late. I’m sorry if you’re not happy about getting wings, Sandi, but we had no idea you would change,” Erup said.
“You were going to tell me this, when?” Sandi asked with a lift of her eyebrow. She had already suspected she was transforming. She had felt different, more alert, and her eyes were becoming better in total darkness, but she loved to have her mates bumbling around, trying to explain their behavior. Especially the arrogantly, overconfident, Dreab. It was so nice to see he wasn’t as confident as he portrayed, especially when she was grilling him.
“Um, I wasn’t. You would have worked it out when your wings formed. I’m sorry if you feel we have betrayed you, but we had no idea you would begin to change. We also didn’t know your hormone wouldn’t work. We didn’t intentionally get you with our youngling, Sandi. We had never met a female from Earth before,” Dreab said as he rose to his feet and collected the dishes and cutlery to dispense of them.
“So, I guess this means you’re not going to help me fix my ship, are you?”
“We want you to stay here with us, Sandi. You are having our youngling. You are our mate. We will never get another chance to have a mate and younglings. Would you take that away from us?” Dreab asked quietly.
“Is that all I mean to you? Am I just a warm body to breed your children for you?”
“No. How could you even suggest such a thing? You’re our mate, Sandi,” Dreab reiterated.
“Hm, so you keep telling me. What exactly does that mean?” Sandi asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Sandi, we love you. We want to spend the rest of our lives loving you, taking care of you. Having younglings with you. You are the light of our lives. We would be lost without you,” Erup said, moving to her, kneeling on the floor at her feet and taking her hands in his.
Sandi didn’t say anything. She looked from Erup and gazed over to Dreab. She knew he had trouble voicing his emotions, but she was determined he would say the words she wanted to hear first. There was no way she was going to make it easy for him. Erup was the more sensitive of the two. He had no problem at all talking to her, telling her how he felt. She was way more comfortable around Erup, but she loved Dreab just as much. He was such an arrogant, self-contained male. She knew he had had to be, being the most senior leader of the Reap Clan, but that didn’t mean he had to keep himself contained around her. She was his mate and expected to be treated as such, not as one of his younger clan members who couldn’t seem to think for themselves.
Sandi watched as Dreab moved toward her. She kept a hold of Erup’s hands but didn’t take her eyes off his brother. Dreab nudged his brother out of the way, bent down, and picked Sandi up into his strong, muscular arms.
* * * *
Dreab gazed down into Sandi’s eyes, putting all the emotion he felt for his mate there for her to see. He bent his head down, rested his forehead on hers, and drew in a deep breath.
“I love you, Sandi. I would be lost without you. You are my life, my heart, and my wings. You are part of my body as I am part of yours. Please, stay with us. Grow old with us, have younglings with us. I love you too much and don’t want to let you go, but if that is what would make you happy, then I will give you the parts you need to fix your broken wings so you can go back to your home planet. And if your ship can’t be fixed, then I will give you one of our ships.” Dreab held his breath, waiting for Sandi to reply, to tell him whether she was staying or going.
“I love you, too, Dreab. I want to stay here with you, with both of you. I just hope my colleagues can’t find me, and if they do, I hope my wings have developed by then. They will be totally freaked out by me even more. I’ll get back to you having a spaceship later. Don’t think you’re going to get away with that one, but I’m not going anywhere, big boy, except to bed. I’m suddenly feeling very, very tired,” Sandi said around a fake yawn.
D
reab didn’t have to be told twice. He practically ran to the bedroom with his mate in his arms, his brother following close at his heels. He placed her down onto the huge bed and took her mouth with his own as he untied the knot of her covering. He heard the door slam closed across the room, and then Erup was on the bed with them.
Chapter Nine
Sandi opened her mouth beneath Dreab’s lips and moaned as he swept his tongue between her teeth, tangling it with her own. She felt Dreab move off to her side, without breaking the connection of their mouths. She thrust her chest up into Erup’s mouth as he sucked on one of her hard, sensitive nipples.
He weaned his mouth from hers, licking and nibbling his way down her neck and chest, then sucked her other nipple into his mouth. She loved what they did to her with their mouths and the touch of their hands on her body. She cried out when Dreab suckled on her tip firmly until he and his brother had her moaning with pleasure. She mewed when he released her nipple with a pop and licked his way down over her stomach, taking the time to swirl his tongue around her sensitive belly button. He moved again, nuzzling his nose over her pubic mound, and Erup moved up to take her mouth. The kiss was so hot and carnal she was in danger of exploding before they were even inside her. She removed her mouth from Erup’s and gulped in air as she looked down her body to watch Dreab.
She sobbed when Dreab slid down until he was lying between her thighs, and she heard him inhale her feminine scent. He smoothed his hands up her inner thighs. He spread her wider, and she helped him by moving her legs apart. She heard his growl of desire when she saw him stare at her wet cunt. He bent his head down, thrust his tongue into her creamy hole, and twirled it around. He slid his tongue back up through her labial folds, flicking it over the sensitive bundle of nerves at the top of her pussy.
She cried out as he thrust two fingers into her wet sheath, then slid them back out again. He set up a fast, deep rhythm, and she cried out, crazy with desire to be filled by her mates. Sandi knew Dreab felt the first flutters of her pussy travel the length of the fingers he had buried in her body when he growled at her. She felt her inner walls clench as he twisted his fingers around in her sheath, massaging the sweet spot hidden in her body. He placed his other hand over her pubic bone to hold down her bucking hips for his ministrations. She felt his flattened tongue lick over her clit, once, twice, three times, and then she screamed out her pleasure. Her cream gushed from her body, and the sounds Dreab made as he lapped it up had her embers stirring again. She moaned as he slowly withdrew his fingers from her cunt and wiped his chin with his hand. She reached over and grabbed hold of Erup’s cock, pumping up and down its length and closing her eyes as Erup devoured her mouth.
