Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Khesan
Concede?
Shathar will voluntarily leave, voluntarily give up his life here with Fiona so that I may have her? So that I may stay?
My mind is too addled by the zik to fully process this. It is, perhaps, beyond my ability to understand.
“Why?” is all I can say. “Why would you do that?”
Shathar drops his head into his hands. “It will hurt her immensely to have to choose.” His voice is muffled. “So I will take myself out of the equation.”
I decide not to answer right away. I will think over the right thing to say first, which is not my strongest suit.
My eyes have been on Shathar all night. When Fiona left us alone, I was not irritated, as I had expected. Then he touched me of his own accord. The place where his hand coasted over my scales is turning warm again.
Now, as we sit alone together under the stars, I can smell it again: the scent of mate. And yet Fiona is inside, far away. Still, it remains, and I think that at last, it has clicked in my mind what it means.
“Shathar.” My voice comes out strong and sure. “I will not accept this from you.”
He lifts his head, eyes narrowing. “You don’t get a say in it. It is my choice to make.”
“And still, I won’t accept your concession. Because there is no win or lose. There is only…”
I hesitate to say it. Does he know? Does he understand? Does he feel it, too, how all of this was supposed to happen, and Shathar and I were meant to find each other just as much as we were meant to find Fiona?
“What is there?” he snaps, his fans rising in shocking anger. “Vakha, Khesan. The Frahma said it. Only one of us stays. But you are younger. You have more years left to you, years that you can spend with Fiona. Years that you can keep her company, so she’ll never be alone.”
He cracks as he reaches the end, and his shoulders slump.
“This is what makes the most sense, I think,” he says in little more than a whisper. “Then you can be happy, too.”
That’s what he wants for me. He must not realize it, then, that his selflessness toward me is a reflection of the bond we’ve formed.
He is clearly hurting, so I scoot my chair closer to his and loop an arm around his back. He stiffens, but I don’t release him, only bringing him in tighter against my side. After a few moments, it’s as if all the air has drained out of him, because he leans his whole body weight against me.
“I don’t think I would be happy knowing you had gone home for me,” I say to him in a soft tone. “The truest happiness I’ve found is being with you and Fiona. Sleeping together, cooking together, loving together.”
“That is worse,” says Shathar hoarsely.
“Indeed. So you should not give yourself up. Because I want you here, too.”
He tilts his head to look up at me. “That doesn’t make sense, Khesan.”
“You don’t feel it?” I return his gaze intently. “Don’t you smell it?”
He pauses at my question, then sniffs the air. I lean in even closer, so he can get a whiff of me—and all at once, his eyes turn into huge circles.
“Mate scent,” he says, aghast. “That’s what that is. But it’s… different than Fiona’s.”
I nod. It is the same smell, and yet also its own.
“Is that you?” He shakes his head, disbelieving. “Have we—”
“Mate bonded?”
Shathar’s mouth opens and then closes again. His jaw works as he thinks, but he doesn’t pull away from me.
“Perhaps much more makes sense now.” He leans in again, propping his head on my shoulder. “All three of us are mates.”
“I believe we are.”
We are both quiet for a long and heavy moment, lost in our thoughts. When the cold grows too much, though, we are forced to go back inside.
At the door, I stop Shathar, and he turns to me. Raising a hand, I run my thumb along his high cheekbone, and his fans lift in pleasure. When I lean closer, he does, too, until I can feel his breath on my face.
First, we tip our heads and touch our foreheads together. Then, when we’re nose to nose, I kiss him. And what a relief it is when he kisses me back, and we get to enjoy this strange human thing together.
When we pull apart, we are both panting, and I am most certainly erect under my pants. Now I am wondering all sorts of things, like how he would feel under my hands, how he might moan if I were the one licking his cock.
“What of us now?” I ask, stroking his arm. “If we have both bonded, too—”
“You know Earth law. It doesn’t matter whether we are mates or not. Only one of us stays.”
I falter. “But it’s not fair. Not now that we know!”
Shathar smiles fondly at me. “You have so many feelings inside. But the law doesn’t care about fair. In a way, nothing has changed. I will simply be saying goodbye to two of you.”
Fiercely, I pull him against me, wrapping my arms tight around him as his tail winds up my thigh. “I won’t say goodbye to you, Shathar. Not now.”
Instead of arguing with me, though, he says, “I am glad that I know the truth, so I can best spend my remaining time with both of you.”
The sun is just now coming up, and Shathar and I stand there together, hands linked, as we watch the sky lighten.
“I think I may be tired now,” I say. “Shall we go to bed?”
Shathar nods, and we head down the stairs to the room where everyone else has passed out.
We each take our positions again to either side of Fiona, and she shifts and mutters something incoherent as we adjust her.
I rest a hand over her belly, and Shathar does the same, so we are both holding her together.
The following day is the last day we have before Fiona must return to her regularly scheduled job. It is New Year’s Day, I am told, and there will be even more celebrations.
I decide that I will tell Fiona what we have learned. It will make our complicated situation even more so, but I must be forward and upfront with her. My heart is fuller now, more complete, and I want to share that.
Around noon, we say goodbye to our friends before getting in a car to go home, and after tonight, I do feel like they are our friends. I could see last night how Marguerite envied what Fiona and Amara have, and I wonder if perhaps she, too, longs for that everlasting companionship.
I hope she can find it.
Fiona is already sleepy again by the time we get home, so Shathar and I bundle her up on the couch in a blanket and let her nap while we do chores.
I take the garbage out, as Fiona taught me, because collection is tomorrow.
Shathar begins looking through his cookbook for one of his recipes.
When I’m finished, I wash and ask him what he’d like me to do to help.
As we work in tandem, I find excuses to touch him. Now that the door has been opened, I want to follow the trail as far as it will go. I want to explore everything with him, just as I have with Fiona. He leans into me every time, and he even stops me so we can touch foreheads.
“Wow, smells good in here,” says Fiona when she joins us an hour later. “What is it?”
“Spaghetti and meatballs,” Shathar answers. He shows her the page from the cookbook, and she makes appropriately enthused sounds. When she sits down, I pour each of us a glass of red wine.
“The book said that red wine goes well with red sauce,” I tell her, leaning down to peck her nose.
“Very smart book.”
Soon, I have the pot of boiling water going, and I think it’s time. Shathar adds the hard pasta to the water and we set a timer as the meatballs continue baking in the oven.
Finally, I sit down next to Fiona at the table and take her hand in mine. She gazes up at me with curiosity in her blue eyes.
“You look like you have something to say,” she remarks with a lopsided smile. “What is it?”
I glance up at Shathar, who’s watching us both intensely. He nods in affirmation, understanding what I want to do.
“Last night,” I begin, “Shathar and I discovered something. Not only are we your fated mate, but…” I clear my throat. “We are each other’s, too.”
Fiona blinks.
“Wait. Are you saying that you two, um, like each other?” Her eyes widen. “Wait, seriously? Is that true, Shathar?”
“Yes. Khesan and I have also mate bonded.”
Her mouth falls open. “Whoa. That’s…” She trails off, then leaps out of her chair. “That’s fucking awesome!” Her howl of victory fills up the whole house. “Holy shit. I called it. I totally called it.”
Both of us furrow our brows. “Called… what? I did not see you make a phone call.”
“No, no. Marguerite was having an existential crisis last night. That’s why we went to the calm room for so long. But when I came back, I thought the energy was different. I could feel it, I think, that you two had… you know.” She makes kissy faces with her lips. “Mate bonded.”
It’s then that I realize I’m grinning like a fool in love. I get to my feet and throw my arms around Fiona, over the moon that I found such a wonderful human woman to call my own. Shathar rises, too, and embraces both of us at the same time.
My bubble of joy, though, falters when I remember that one of us must go. We do not get to enjoy this forever. But for this one moment, I try to put it in the back of my mind and not consider what will happen at the end of our trial.
Then the timer goes off for the pasta, and Shathar and I rush to get the rest of the meal ready. Fiona is beaming when we bring the plates to the table, and she sips her wine like a queen.
“My husbands are husbands,” she sings to herself as she tastes her food. “Oh my god, this is amazing. What the hell? And you can cook like this, too?” She dramatically falls back in her chair. “I’m a goner.”
I don’t know what this means, but I think she is happy with our meal. Shathar shoots me a smug look.
After cleaning up dinner, all I want is to take my mates to bed and find out what new pleasures await me there, now that Shathar and I have crossed the threshold.
But Fiona is still tired from partying and wants nothing more than to cuddle with both of us on the couch and watch a silly movie until she falls asleep.
I am, unfortunately, quite aroused as the movie ends, and I pick Fiona up to carry her to bed.
“Set her here,” whispers Shathar, gesturing to the far right side. I quirk a brow but don’t ask questions as I do as I’m told, then we work together to remove Fiona’s heavy outer layers. When we’re finished, Shathar waves at me to come over to him.
Before I climb onto the left side of the bed, I remove my clothes, and Shathar’s eyes get bigger as I expose more of myself.
Once I’m naked, he does the same, and my cock is protruding mightily from my slit as he tosses his shirt aside.
His fans flare as I crawl on top of him, already eager to touch him.
His cock has emerged from his slit, and he lets out a hiss when my hand wraps around it. His pupils dilate, and when I squeeze, his eyes close and his head falls back. I think he likes this.
I touch him as I would like to be touched, which is new. Often I am exploring Fiona’s unusual human body and testing as I go, but Shathar is familiar. My hand coasts up and down over his nalopo, which have gained new meaning.
In response, he does the same, fisting me with one hand and then stroking down to the root.
Soon, we tease each other in tandem, and all I want is to feel his body against mine.
As if understanding what it is I want, Shathar pushes me down to the bed, lowering himself so his cock lies across my belly.
He draws his hips back so he drags himself over me.
I bite back a groan when he wraps his hands around both of us, squashing our cocks together, and rubs us both the way we do when we are both inside Fiona at the same time.
Vakha. I could come just like this. But I know what I want to do first. This is what I would want done to me, and with Shathar, I can use that knowledge to my advantage.
I will make him moan my name.