by Godiva Glenn
The door creaked open and Troy threw himself down next to Gabe. Gabe had expected it and really welcomed it, since he had unfinished business to discuss with Troy and he really didn’t feel like trekking through the house.
“Thoughts?” Troy asked.
“You first.”
“I asked you.”
“My room, my rules,” Gabe muttered, rolling onto his back.
Troy grabbed a pillow and shoved it behind his head. “How do I tell my mom?” He scoffed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fuck. I sound thirteen again. But seriously. She’s been texting me every day wanting to know about Chell.”
“What have you told her so far?”
“I made the mistake of telling her it went well after that first date. Back before I knew that being with Chell meant leaving the damn planet. Mom wants updates and all I’ve done is be super vague.”
Gabe shut his eyes. It would have been smarter if he’d turned the lights off before he got into bed, but he was too sore to do it now. “Sandra can handle the news.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s not actually unwelcome news. She wants you to fall in love and get married and give her grandchildren. I doubt she’ll care that those grandchildren will grow up to be several hundred pounds of fur,” Gabe reasoned. “Chell never said we can’t visit Earth again.”
Troy sighed, but it sounded like a sound of acceptance instead of his usual sighs of frustration.
Gabe sat up with great effort. “I had a letter for you in my locker,” he said, looking forward rather than directing his words to Troy. “You know what I mean?”
Troy rustled behind him. “Yeah.”
“It wasn’t any good, though, so I burned it.”
“Okay…”
“I guess because I don’t like labels, I avoid them everywhere. The most I’ve ever called you to anyone is my friend, but we both know that’s not where we end.”
Troy’s hand pressed to Gabe’s shoulder. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because it’s not fair to act like I don’t see you. Like I don’t acknowledge that you’re the person in my life that has always been around.” Gabe glanced over. “I spend a lot of time clarifying what you’re not to me.”
“I get it, though.”
“We’re almost a couple,” Gabe said carefully. The words were easier to say than he’d expected. “Maybe I’m not in love with you, not like we could ever be at that level, but it’s damn close. I do love you. I can’t define it, but I should at least admit to seeing and feeling it.”
Troy lay back and pulled Gabe down beside him. “Everything is changing.”
“You’ve decided?”
“Yeah. I think I was always going to choose her.” Troy patted Gabe’s chest. “Should I just tell Chell? Or are you still unsure?”
A bit unsure, but it was a conversation away from closure. “We’ve had a strange day. There’s nothing wrong with taking the night off. Besides, if we spoke to her now, she may try to mark us tonight. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be clawed up right now.”
Troy made a sound of agreement.
Maybe Gabe could go to Solara, but he wasn’t sure he’d be a mate. It was enough for him to stay by Troy’s side. Would that solve everything? No. But it was an option. He wouldn’t tie his life to Chell’s if they weren’t both completely in.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chell
The next morning, Chell sat at the kitchen table sipping tea and staring at the stairs that led to Gabe’s door. She didn’t want to knock. Troy was in there too, and since Gabe wanted to speak one-on-one, there was no sense in waking Troy.
Rain pattered outside, and her current pensive mood interpreted the rain as a dreadful thing. An omen that Gabe was going to say something she didn’t like. Normally, rain made her upbeat. She loved the way it made the outdoors smell. Fresh. Clean. Granted, enough rain made everything smell like mold, but at first, it was a pleasant new scent.
She heard Gabe exit his room and pull the door quietly behind him. He padded down the stairs and sat across Chell and she pushed over the second mug she’d been keeping close while she’d waited.
“Can we talk here?” he asked.
She glanced across the room. “Troy won’t hear us. Valdus is still sleeping.”
He grabbed the tea and took a quick sip. “Thanks.”
“You don’t have to beat around the bush,” she said.
He gave her a look. “I like that about you. You like to get to the point.”
“You’re rejecting me. I’d rather it not drag on,” she mused.
He stared down at his drink, which still steamed. “That’s the problem.”
“What?”
“Even when you’re crying, even when your heart is breaking, you act like you feel nothing.” He frowned and looked her in the eyes. “You heard me tell Troy this very thing, and yet you still can’t bring it up. There have been tiny slivers of time where you open this door to another side of you, but you slam it shut almost immediately.”
The accusation made her bristle and she sat back, but even as denial coated her in familiar warmth, she realized she was behaving unfairly. “What do you want me to say?”
“Do you love us?”
She stared at him, but her focus was beyond him. Did she? She had to, yet it didn’t feel solid. It felt more like a wish. Love wasn’t usually shrouded with apprehension, was it? And doubt?
“Fine… let’s try something easier. Why do you think I should leave my job? What do I get out of it?”
“You’re more than your job,” she said slowly.
“Everyone tells me that.”
“Yet you’re too stubborn to see it.”
“But why should I leave?”
She pressed her fingertips against the warm ceramic mug. “Why do you think it’s your sole identity? Why did you choose it to be?”
A smile crossed his face, though it didn’t last. “Troy always wanted to be a firefighter. Ever since he was six or something. Saw a cartoon, red truck. Black and white dog. He wanted to be the happy hero.”
“And you?”
He drank his tea and his brows narrowed as if he stared into the past. “Out of high school, I thought I would go into the military. It’s where most neglected kids go in an attempt to get our shit together somehow. But Troy got on me about it, and eventually, I saw what he saw. The job that took you in and changed you.” He idly traced the mug handle in front of him. “Suddenly I wasn’t a screw-up or an accident. I had respect. I had admiration. I’m a damn good firefighter, and to have people tell me that, it told me I belonged. I was a hero.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s all you are. Just being good at something, doesn’t mean you do that and nothing else forever.”
“What else am I good at? What would you have me do on Solara, aside from being in your bed? Because I have no clue.”
She reached over and placed her hand over his. “The truth is, I don’t know what you would do on Solara. But whatever it is, I believe you’ll do it well.”
“That’s not enough.”
She turned her head and closed her eyes. “The last time I told someone I loved him, he left. And now he’s back, and I still remember the process as being that… ‘I love you’ and ‘goodbye’ as if… that’s the only way it can be.”
“But you just said it. He’s back. Valdus is right upstairs, and he didn’t leave you.”
“I know,” she whispered. “Maybe I’m broken because no matter how much I see it and say it and realize it, it doesn’t sink in.”
“Maybe we’re both broken.”
She opened her eyes and peered at him. “Why you?”
His dark eyes bored into her. “Because I love you, and I just didn’t want to be the one to say it first, in case you weren’t going to say it back.”
Hearing him say it, honestly, simply, shook something loose within her. The apprehension and fear she held became clear
.
“Meeting two humans caught me off-guard,” Chell explained. “With Valdus, I knew he was the one for me, but we… took our time with it. Largely because he thought I was so young. Shifters… we sometimes try to fight emotions. It’s strange to know something, just know it, without evidence or explanation. And then try explaining that to humans.”
“You always knew?”
“From the moment Troy kissed me, I suspected. And when you touched me in your kitchen that day I… I didn’t understand how my body recognized you in the same way it recognized Troy. I assumed I was confused.”
“That’s why you thought I was him?”
“I believe so. Yet the urge I felt with you two wasn’t the same as what I experienced with Valdus. Maybe because when he and I first met, any mating instinct was clouded by our penchants to disagree and argue.”
Gabe tilted his head, waiting.
“I do love you. I love you and Troy.” Saying it made something click in her heart. The walls she thought she had built to hold were now nothing. “I should have said it sooner, but it seemed a bit crazy.”
“It is crazy.” His shoulders lifted briefly, and his brows knit. “I kept telling myself that I couldn’t fall in love. Not that fast, if ever at all. It was a mantra in my head, but that didn’t mean it was true.”
“I suppose we have being stubborn in common.”
“Seems like it. I think it took you saving my life for me to look at what we had outside of the obvious physical compatibility.”
She grinned crookedly. “The sex.”
“Yeah. Outside that. You’re caring. You’re damn honest. You’re certain. And, I dunno. I can see doing just about anything with you. I can picture a future with you, and I’ve never been able to do that with anyone but Troy.”
“We can do everything together,” she promised.
“And that right there. You accepting us… not trying to pick us apart or analyze what Troy and I have…” He tapped his knuckles on the table. “It still seems crazy,” he said. “In a good way, I mean. I couldn’t have dreamed of finding you.”
“I don’t want to leave you.” She searched his face, looking for a sign. If he loved her, didn’t that mean he was saying yes? Or was it still not enough?
“No one is leaving anyone.” He pulled her hand across the table, forcing her to lean across so he could kiss her nose. “Troy is in. I’m in.”
“That’s it? No more… debating about the job?” She couldn’t believe it.
“I’m going to be a mate, a husband, hopefully, a father… I’m going to be occupied.”
“You’ll be an amazing father.”
“Better than mine,” he said. “I won’t ever have our kids thinking they aren’t wanted.”
“I know.” Her eyes watered, and she slid back into her chair to hide her face as she drank her tea.
“That’s not working,” he commented.
“Hush.”
He reached out and pulled her mug down to the table. “For the record, you’re adorable when you’re emotional.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Valdus
Staring into the mirror, Valdus analyzed the scars that, in all likelihood, were there to stay.
Being a shifter, he’d been accustomed to shrugging off injuries. Only severe injuries taken in human form were even noticeable most of the time. Yet being beaten with a pipe, jabbed with a spear, hit with a taser—all of the things he’d endured at the mercy of his captors—had worn away at his bear’s resistance.
He rubbed a lightly fragranced oil across each mark, even if it was probably in vain. Some of them may have been past the curative stage, but he would still try.
Chell claimed not to care, but he wasn’t blind. Each time her attention lingered on his damaged skin, various emotions flickered in her eyes, none of them pleasant. The last thing he wanted was her pity, and nor did he want her to be constantly reminded of his past. He was trying damn hard to put it behind him.
More than once she’d tried to talk to him about his time locked up, but he couldn’t stomach discussing more than the simple facts. He didn’t want to admit to the periods of time where he’d nearly broken. There was nothing to gain from reliving the entirety of his hell.
Darkness had been born of his time caged. Chell had already seen some of it. It made him rougher with her, as if he needed to claim and command her body. He ached to be gentle, but his blood demanded force. And though he advised her against revenge, he’d thirsted for it. It kept him up at night, even now that he’d taken care of Solomon.
Yet she didn’t turn him away, even witnessing the change in his soul, even watching him kill. He’d always loved Chell, but now it had transformed into something more magnificent than he could comprehend. She saw all of him and accepted him.
Leaning close to the mirror, he rubbed his thumb across his beard then ran a hand through his hair. Tonight, he wanted to look his best.
Mating wasn’t usually planned. It was the type of thing that just happened when two shifters were lusty and committed. Before the kidnapping, he and Chell had put it off, but they’d expected it would happen soon. Now it was on a deadline, and that changed the mood.
He was supposed to walk into a room and just be in the mood to mark her. The notion was laughable, not because he wouldn’t be in the mood, but because it was amusingly indicative of the new Chell. When she’d told the men they had a night to decide, she was thinking reasonably. The end result being they now had scheduled what should have been a meaningful moment of passion.
He wiped the remaining oil onto his arms and dropped to the floor to do a few pushups. His strength was returning but he was miles from where he used to be. Though still a large male, he’d lost a bit of mass and weight over the years.
Chell walked into his room just as he’d hopped up.
“You used to do sit-ups,” she commented.
“When?”
“When you were expecting sex. I’d drop by and I’d see you through your window, doing sit-ups.” She came close and put her hands on his shoulders, her caress sliding down his arms as she continued to speak, “And I knew it was because you were a bit vain and wanted to be sure your abs were perfectly tight. Especially if you were hoping for certain attention down there.”
Her assessment was dead-on, and he recalled what she spoke of with a bit of embarrassment. He narrowed his eyes in faux anger. “Lies.”
She laced their fingers together. “Hmm.”
His jaw worked as he kept from saying what he thought. The urge to ask if she’d thought this through kept pushing forward, but he knew the answer. Of course she’d thought it through, but was she working with the best assumptions of the situation?
Gabe and Troy seemed like decent men, but they were still only human, and humans were generally not that great when it came to matters of commitment. Valdus hated to imagine the situation if the two men would change their minds once on Solara.
He’d heard their doubts and reservations. He didn’t want to end up picking up the pieces if they decided a mate bond and a mark weren’t enough.
He glanced through the doorway, which she’d left open when she’d entered. “Your room?”
“It has the biggest bed.”
“This is strange.”
“I know.” She wrinkled her nose. “I suppose I killed the natural order.”
He pressed his forehead to hers. “Maybe for the best. I think a bed is better than the couch, or wherever else you may have been roused.”
“If it helps, I have been missing you inside me,” she whispered. “Today has been harsh, pretending as if I wasn’t wet and ready.”
He growled under his breath. Even though Gabe had told her his intentions early in the morning, he and Troy took the majority of the day to rest. They had been attacked less than twenty-four hours before, after all. Valdus could put himself in their shoes.
“Everyone is awake.” He could hear the men rustling in their rooms.
“Indeed. So… I’m going to strip and go wait in my room.”
“Why can’t I join you right now?”
She bit the corner of her lip. “I thought the three of you would want to huddle. Make a rough plan. We’ve not all been together before.”
“Ah.”
“I don’t want any of you to be uncomfortable.”
“Of course.”
She kissed his nose then barely brushed her lips across his. The look in her eyes made his bear want to roar and maul her on the spot—in a sexy way. Watching her leave ached.
He listened for her door to click closed then went in search of Troy and Gabe. If they were all in this together, then the first obstacle was obvious. Who got to go first?
Chapter Twenty-Four
Gabe
In his younger years, Gabe had been a scrawny kid. Always tall, but lanky and awkward. Now he’d built his body into a muscled shrine, and very few men had the ability to look down on him and even attempt to intimidate him.
Yet Valdus appeared to be trying. The bear shifter had the upper hand in a few ways, strength and height included. Plus, his scars made him look like a grizzled warrior.
Gabe didn’t want to back down, but he was losing the battle.
“This doesn’t have to be weird,” Troy said in his attempt to mediate the tepid war brewing.
“I won’t be second,” Valdus said for the tenth time.
“You could just go together,” Troy pointed out. “Might take a little more preparation but…”
“Acceptable,” Valdus replied.
Gabe narrowed his eyes on Troy. Sure, they did that, but that didn’t mean he could do it with just any guy. Rubbing one’s own dick against someone else’s was… intimate. Troy glanced over to the door down the hall where Chell was waiting.
Throughout all the discussion of whether or not to tie themselves to Chell, this had never come up, and it should have been obvious, but Gabe had never really thought of it. Sharing Chell with Troy was fine. Chell with Valdus was fine. But sharing with Valdus?
