by Alyssa Hope
‘Karo! My beloved one here knows Cara and Samil, I think.’
‘And why would that make him run? They are lovely people, and Maru is coming close to bearing, so they couldn’t be any happier.’
‘Maru is their third, little ones, and they all adore each other, and they are having a baby very soon now.’
The forward movement came to a sudden halt.
‘Third? What do you mean third?’
‘We bond in triads, little one. Didn’t Cara tell you that? Or maybe he didn’t know it. We bond in triads. Cara, Samil and Maru are a triad. You, I, Cori, we are a triad, we are all one.’
It kept on that way, two steps forward, one step back, until they were safely back in town. Karo managed to examine the human and decree him healthy enough, if underweight, other than some scrapes and bruising, and Una was able to fully breathe again.
‘But I want to see him at the clinic where I can scan him, and make sure there are no hidden fractures or internal damage. Tomorrow?’
Una had some reporting to do, with the official version of what had happened up in the hills, so he reluctantly left his two skittish beloveds at his home, telling them to make themselves comfortable, have a bath in the pool, get something to eat, whatever they wanted. He would be back soon.
Everyone had agreed on their story, which was that Tarran had become lost in the hills and then attacked by Kasu. Fortunately the land stewards had come along just as Una had found the young one, and Kasu had run from them and fallen off the cliff.
No-one was sorry, and no-one asked any questions. The stewards didn’t want to have to explain about birds dropping flowers and ricas that talked to people, so that suited them just fine. Although they agreed the discovery of talking ricas were going to need some serious investigation, to make sure the little ones were protected.
Una got back to his small house to find it sparkling clean, the aroma of some delicious dish cooking in the kitchen, and two exhausted but clean beloveds curled up together in his big bed, fast asleep. He had a quick cleaning himself, and then crawled into bed with them, wrapping himself around both of them, purring happily.
He could feel his morphing hormones beginning to work in his system, and his body was developing, but he was a patient man, once again, and his beautiful ones were tired. So was he, for that matter. Just being able to hold them was such a miracle.
Chapter 5.
He woke up from the best dream he had ever had, and discovered that it was reality, and that he had two lovers curled into him, one purring gently and the other making a soft humming noise.
When they realized that he was awake they nestled closer into him, and Cori asked, hesitantly, ‘How may we please you?’
He kissed first one blue throat and then one pale one, and laughed. ‘You please me just by being here, beloveds.’
‘No, I mean, we mean, how may we, you know, please you, sexually?’
‘Ah. Well, what would please you?’
There was a shocked silence, and then a nervous giggle from Cori. ‘But …’
‘But? Do you know how our people develop, sweet one? We remain androgynous until we are with our triad, and only then do we develop sexually, become hermaphrodites. So I am as far developed as you are, sweet Cori. How can I please you? What would feel good?’
Finally Cori suggested, ‘Maybe if you were to let Tarran nurse on you, so he can heal? Our beloved has a lot of wounds and scars. That’s true, isn’t it, that it works to heal? And it would be fair if I nursed as well, wouldn’t it?’
Una smiled. ‘Exactly. And then maybe I could nurse on you both, to have that pleasure as well, and develop our bond?’
Tarran moved somewhat cautiously to lick at one dark blue nipple, and then took it tentatively between his lips when it puckered. Cori did the same on the other side, with a little more confidence, and then both of them latched on and suckled. Una just about lifted off the bed.
When he could get his breath back he murmured to them. ‘Oh, wonderful, little ones, I think that feels good for all of us, doesn’t it?’
There was muffled agreement against both his breasts, and he brought a hand to the back of each soft head to caress them.
‘I wonder how many ways there are for us to please each other?’
They set out to find out, with touching and stroking, gentle grasping of developing penises, and soft probing of slicked-up holes. Tarran already had a fully developed penis, to the amazement of his two blue lovers, and it throbbed as they stroked it and caressed the soft sac at its base.
He whimpered, and Una drew back in alarm, but Tarran gasped, ‘No, so good, don’t stop. I’ve never been touched like this before, so gently. It feels too good.’
‘It’s love,’ Cori assured him, ‘touching with love is what feels so good.’
Una thought about the scars he’d seen on his beautiful human’s back, and brought his mouth down to lick at the tip of that lovely erection. It throbbed and pulsed when he took it in his mouth, and he took all of it in, sucking gently at it.
‘Love, sweet one, you’ll never be touched with anything but love again. That’s why we are a triad, so there’s always lots of love.’
Cori pushed Una gently out of the way to take a turn, and Una almost laughed at how quickly that one had learned to be assertive. With Cori quite happily busy nursing on Tarran’s erection, Una kissed his way up across the pale torso, from one dark pink nipple to another, and then up the throat to the firm lips which opened to his.
‘Good, sweet one? You can stop us anytime you want, if anything feels wrong to you …’
Tarran responded by sucking on Una’s long tongue, and bringing both hands to the back of his head, pulling him closer, even as his hips moved restlessly under Cori’s loving ministration. The three of them wrapped around each other, rubbing and trying to get closer, until Tarran suddenly jerked up and climaxed into Cori’s willing mouth.
Una felt the joy of that release just as much as Cori did, and relished the beginnings of the bond that let them share the feelings.
‘Love?’ Tarran asked when he got his breath back.
‘Yes, love.’
Una thought that Cori should be the ambassador. He knew what to say, and only said that much.
‘Beautiful ones, now does the triad make sense?’
They purred, and hummed, and curled tightly into each other as they drifted back to sleep.
Throughout the night he was woken up repeatedly by one or both of his sweet partners who had thought of another way to please each other, and him. Their relationship was consummated, their bond become fully developed, sometime in the dark of the night when Una cradled Cori between his legs and welcomed that sweet one’s growing length into his slicked up hole, and Cori found his first ever orgasm with a gasp and a soft cry of delight.
When Cori pulled out he rolled over and invited Tarran to sink his length into Cori’s leaking hole. Tarran probed it gently with his fingers, obviously surprised to find it already slicked up, and then sank his hard length into it, driving in until he too climaxed, and all of them felt the bond lock into place.
‘Beloved!’
‘Beloved!’
‘Beloved!’
Gentle Cori was the one who demanded the final ritual step of sharing blood, and they nicked each other’s throats and all shared with the others, kissing the small wounds until they healed.
Una rolled over on his back and pulled them on top of him, smiling up at them in the moonlight, meeting one set of beautiful black eyes and one set of beautiful brown eyes. ‘We’re one now, forever. We belong to each other, as equals, for life.’
They fell into a happy and exhausted sleep, and didn’t wake up again until the sun was shining through the window. Una had trouble getting out of bed, and being old had nothing to do with it.
Sometime around noon Una made the mistake of going into his office to see how they were doing, and to tell them that he would be taking a traditional bonding week. This to
ok a surprising amount of explanation, perhaps because he had been going camping alone last time they saw him.
Hours passed before he returned home. His sweet ones weren’t there, and for a little while he was amused that they had been brave enough to go out and do some shopping on their own, even though he had left them some credits in case they needed anything. He hadn’t wanted them to think that they were trapped, or enslaved.
Then he got a message that terrified him.
There had been another escape from the home where Kasu’s extended family was supposed to be kept secure, and this was one of the triad who had borne Kasu. Una made it out his front door, then leaned on the wall and tried to breathe. He was still leaning there when Oki found him.
‘Do they blame me? Do they think I killed Kasu? Why would they steal my beloveds, my sweet darlings who have never hurt anyone?’
‘Easy, old friend. We don’t know that they have. Let’s go look for your sweet ones. Neither of them have much range in their mindtalk yet, and they could just be lost.’
Una didn’t believe that, any more than Oki did, but it was better to do something than nothing. Oki had already ordered all ship departures cancelled, and all transports were being searched. They wound up and down the streets of the town, calling out to his beloveds, with a growing chorus of other voices joining them.
Una shook his head to clear the fog. ‘Who are all these people looking for Cori and Tarran? Am I hallucinating now?’
‘No. These are people who you’ve helped over the years, and who are now happy to help you.’
Una started crying, even as his feet kept moving. ‘My beloveds, please let them be safe … Better I die than they be hurt …’
By the time the day was close to ending and they were in the oldest part of town, Oki was holding him up, and he was barely whispering in his mind. ‘Beloveds …’
When he saw his two sweet beloveds coming up the street towards him, one on either side of an old one who was more gray than blue, holding him up, he thought it was an illusion. Oki saw it too, though, and waved off those who would have interfered.
‘Beloveds! Cori, Tarran!’ He could barely whisper in his mind.
‘We’re fine, beloved, and very very sorry we worried you, but there was a bit of a problem. This is Miti, who bore Kasu. He has been lost, looking for his child. Can we talk somewhere quiet?’
They were all crying by the time they got to the bottom of it, even Oki, who was not the sentimental type. An injustice had been done, without anyone realizing it was happening or meaning it to be. After many years of confinement and changes of staff, the orders had become muddled. Instead of those of Kasu’s family group being held under house arrest, kept apart from the community, they had been isolated from each other. Triads had been broken up and not allowed to see each other.
When Kasu had died the triad who had borne him had all felt it, had known the second their child had left this life, but they had been isolated from each other. Whatever damage the drugs had done, compounded by the separation from their triad, had been completed by the loss of their only child. Miti had gone quietly insane, and left the house in a desperate search for his child.
Cori and Tarran had indeed gone into the market to do a bit of shopping and look around, and there they had found Miti, alone, shunned and in more pain than they could walk away from. They had become turned around and lost, and their stress had reduced the range of their mindtalk, so they hadn’t been able to contact Una. They had ended up spending hours in an abandoned house with Miti, sitting on the floor trying to persuade him to come with them to find help. Una’s beloved ones were patient and gentle, and they had waited for the old one to finally venture out, which is when they had heard Una calling to them.
When Una had finished crying and hugging them with relief, he had become angry with those responsible for creating the situation.
‘How did this happen, that triads were separated?’
There was a great deal of finger pointing and excuses, and Una was left feeling sick to his stomach. After a brief discussion with a horrified Council they returned to the house, and brought Miti’s triad, and the other remaining triads of that family there, together in the great room for the first time in years.
‘The intent is and always was that they be isolated from the larger community, but not from the family group, and never from their beloveds. Never.’
Miti shuffled toward his other two, who seemed equally dazed, and they held onto each other, sobbing very quietly. They didn’t seem to want to move, or talk, beyond that. The three pale old ones had just been given the only thing they had left to want, and that was to touch each other once again.
Una held onto Cori and Tarran, and tried very hard not to think about how it would feel to be torn apart from them forever. Tarran looked up at him and, hesitantly, said ‘Beloved? Now I understand what that word truly means. My beloveds, forever.’
Cori kissed both of them and then gently broke loose and went over to the old ones. ‘Miti? There will be a funeral service for Kasu tomorrow evening, as the sun goes down. We’ll take you there, so you can say goodbye to your child. The others from this house will come, too, please. I think you’ve all paid enough.’
Una stared in awe. ‘How did you get to be so smart, sweet one?’
Cori looked surprised. ‘From you, my beloved Ambassador. I learned to listen, and to hear. Let’s go home, and we’ll tell you what happened. And hold onto each other.’
Chapter 6.
Una didn’t know what to expect from the service, and if anyone would even show up. The family had done a lot of harm. Cori and Tarran seated all the old ones from that family next to the grave, and then they watched as half of the people from the town gradually shuffled in, and found places to stand around them. It was apparent to everyone how broken the old ones were, and that there were so few of them still alive. It was hard to hate those who had been left so alone, whatever crimes their family had committed many years ago.
A triad in the robes of Cerulea’s High Council was escorted in, and there was a ripple of amazement. After everything, was this to be forbidden? Oki, standing behind Una, hugged him reassuringly.
The three stood until there was silence, and then one of the Council members spoke.
“Our Holi was one of those taken.” He stopped to catch his breath and pull himself together. “It wasn’t an easy road for him, or us, yet out there in the stars he found his triad. He came home to us with them, and with many children who would not be alive today if Holi hadn’t been there for them.”
He choked, and one of the others carried on.
“We love those ones as much as we love Holi and his beloveds. Are we to say that the universe makes mistakes?” His hand shook. “Can I say I have never made a mistake?”
The third one finished, although they were all crying by this time. He spread a handful of sand on Kasu’s grave, and murmured, “May the gods have mercy on his soul.”
The ancient saying rippled around the crowd, and then one by one the people of the town spread a handful of sand, and lightly touched each of the old ones on the shoulder as they left.
Una felt as old and broken as these old ones, and he knew he had made as many mistakes as they had in his life. Oki helped to return all the old ones to their house, where guards were being replaced by care-givers who would be more compassionate. He hugged Una as they parted.
‘You need a good night’s sleep, my friend. Get some rest, and then we’ll get together and tell stories of when we were young.’
It was meant as a joke, but Una just nodded in agreement. Cori and Tarran took him back to his home, which belonged to all of them now, of course. He crawled into their big bed, thinking he might or might not ever get out of it again.
His two beloveds slipped into bed onto either side of him, and hugged him.
‘That wasn’t you fault.’
When he was silent, Tarran asked, ‘Are you a god, that everything is you faul
t, your responsibility?’
Una opened his eyes in shock. ‘No, of course not. But I should have seen what was happening.’
‘Many people should have, beloved, but you weren’t one of them. You were busy saving us, and preventing wars, and writing treaties – surely enough for one person?’
‘And thank the gods that you played a part in saving us, beloved,’ Cori offered, shivering. ‘If there hadn’t been a treaty between your planet and the one where I was held, I would still be there, or be dead.’
He nuzzled into Una’s throat on one side, and Tarran did on the other.
‘Cara and Samil, and myself, and many others, were rescued from slave traders because of agreements you brought to the Interplanetary Council, beloved. Oki has told us this. You’ve benefited more than just your own people, you know.’
Una let them stroke him, and revive his tired soul. Cori dove under the covers to kiss and nibble his way back up again. Una began to wake back up again, and not feel so old.
‘You are our hero, and many other people’s. But only we can claim you as beloved.’
‘Beloved? May we go to visit Cara and Samil and Maru’s new baby tomorrow? I want to know what one looks like.’
Una was confused by this sudden change of subject. ‘You want to know what a baby looks like, beloved? Why? Have you never seen one?’
‘I want to see one, because I want to have one.’
‘Me too,’ Tarran chimed in. ‘I talked to Caleb, and he shared some things with me, including the differences between a human bearing and one of your people bearing. He loves his triad, although maybe not quite as much as I love mine, and he loves all their babies … I want one too, please.’
Una just about choked, and the two of them helped him to sit up so he could breathe.
‘Babies?’
‘Yes, please. You said that anything that would make us happy would make you happy …’
