you both beg me to touch her.” The heated desire in Evon’s eyes made me grin.
“Is that supposed to be a threat, Evon? Because you’re such a controlling fuck, I figured that was how it would be anyway.” I laughed then, because Liam chuckled at my declaration, and he rarely laughed at all.
“He’s right, you know.” Liam’s chuckle faded to a grin, but his eyes remained all too serious. And there, in that stormy gaze, was Liam’s soul on display. Evon was the strategist, but Liam was the realist. He’d lost his family, grown up hard, the son of a VSS leader. The damn VSS. Our own internal enemy. Worse than the Hive, in a way, since they were Vikens—traitors—who wanted to see a return to civil war, to separate nations now united by the three kings. They’d already tried to assassinate the heir, the Princess Allayna, and return Viken to chaos.
Liam’s father was a leader of the Viken Sector Separatists, one of the men behind the attack on the new princess. By then, Liam was already long gone from the VSS influence. When Liam landed in prison as a teen, and then volunteered to serve in the Coalition Fleet battling the Hive, his family disowned him. He had no blood left, for even his mother hadn’t spoken to him in years. And in Sector 1, family was everything. We were his family now. His only family.
Liam lifted his hand to rest on Evon’s shoulder. “We know you, Evon. You get one look at a mate and you’ll start barking orders like we’re back on Noerzen 5 facing down Hive berserkers.”
That battle had almost killed us all, but Evon had held the team together. We’d fought like Atlan beasts because he ordered us to, because he led the charge, and we’d survived.
“I will adapt. We’ll all adapt.” Evon’s argument was weak, and we all knew it. I grunted in disagreement as Liam spoke.
“No. We won’t.” Liam shook his head and his long hair swung in a dark curtain past his shoulders, hiding the rest of his expression from me. But I could hear the desire in his voice, and the despair. “We’re too different, brother. If you really want a mate, you will have to find warriors more like you. Hell, we all have different needs. My cock gets hard thinking about my mate’s upturned ass, watching as it’s stretched open as I slide into her, one sweet inch at a time. I like to see my handprint turn pink on her pert ass cheeks.”
Liam elbowed me in the ribs, I assumed to encourage me to second his opinion, but I ignored him. I was half a head taller than both of them, and much larger. They had called me the Bronze Beast in our unit because of both my dark bronze hair color and my size. I was big for a Viken, and impulsive. Sometimes I felt out of control, like a beast in Mating Fever. Massive warrior loaded with weapons and a bad attitude? Not exactly a good combination. I’d gotten in a lot of trouble when I was younger, a fresh recruit. Now, I counted on Liam and Evon to rein me in and keep me in line. On the rare occasions when I was pushed too far, when I lost my head, one of them was always there to step between me and trouble.
“Why are you elbowing me? I know what gets you off. While a willing ass isn’t something I would walk away from, I have simpler tastes.”
Evon laughed, slapped my shoulder. “Exactly. Tastes. You’ll eat pussy for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
I couldn’t help but grin. “Damn right.” I thought of the dream, of the female who’d come from my mouth, then my cock. Shit. She’d been bound, but I wouldn’t need my mate bound for her to part her thighs, not unless Evon pleasured her first. I was getting hard again and had to adjust myself in my uniform pants. “You’ll have her tied to a bed, at your mercy.”
Evon shook his head. “She’ll give me her trust. The greatest gift.”
“It’ll never work,” Liam grumbled. “A matched mate for one of us is bound to be a little wild. But meet the needs of all three of us? Impossible.”
I stood and sighed. We’d done the tests. I was the last of the three of us. Now we waited. And waited, because there was no way on Viken, or any other planet in the universe, that there was a female that loved to be fucked and sucked, controlled and commanded, bent over and completely claimed in public. Nor one who could put up with my impulsive nature, or Liam’s dark, brooding silences, or Evon’s need to be in control, command every detail of every moment, every encounter. He was relentless, the sun burning in a desert. He never stopped. Never rested.
Even if a female could satisfy us sexually, it would require a truly miraculous event to find a woman who could accept us as men, as true mates. No female could love all of us. To hope was a mistake. I realized that now.
“Then let’s get back to work,” I said. I wanted to go back to my quarters and take my hard cock in hand, get rid of this excess tension. I needed the dream wrung from my system, but that wasn’t going to happen. We had work to do.
“Yeah, we might have been tested, but a match? Fucking impossible. I should have told you two to find another third. I will ruin the chances for both of you.” Hearing those words from Evon made me depressed. Since he liked control, perhaps he was the most eager for the match. It was a logical step for a male his age. Mate. Procreate. Neat and tidy. It wasn’t so simple up North and it wasn’t so simple for Vikens who were attempting to mate as a trio. But Liam and I were also his age. Yes, we wanted a mate as well, one that all three of us would share, who would be perfect for us based on the Interstellar Brides Program matching, but we weren’t as jaded. Were we? The testing dream was fading, and so was the dream of a true match.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“Impossible?” the doctor asked. “It seems not.” We’d all but forgotten about him. He turned to face us, excitement in his eyes. “No female in the universe to meet your every sexual need? Wrong. There is one.” He looked to Liam. “One willing to display her acceptance of what a Sector 1 mate can give.” Next he looked to Evon. “A woman willing to surrender control only those from Sector 2 demand.” Then he glanced my way. “Content to lie back and enjoy your brand of attention, Rager, from Sector 3.”
My heart skipped a beat even as my mind struggled to keep up with what he said. “Doctor?” I was shocked to discover my hands now shook.
He smiled. “Congratulations, warriors. You’ve been matched.”
2
Isabella Martinez, Planet Viken, IQC Array, Transport Center
Warden Egara had said it would seem like a nap, the whole transporting across the universe thing. She asked me if I’d had my wisdom teeth pulled and I’d said yes. When I was fifteen, they’d put me to sleep and I’d woken up with gauze wedged in my cheeks, no memory of the two hours it took them to hack out my impacted molars. Thank god.
As I blinked now, I recalled that conversation and tried to figure out where I was. There was no weird, loopy drug in my system. No oral surgeon leaning over me with a light on his head, or the taste of blood in my mouth.
No. When I blinked my eyes open after being transported from the Miami Interstellar Brides Processing Center to Viken, I saw three large men all watching me with an intense interest that made me squirm.
Aliens. They were aliens.
And I was in a land far, far away from Earth.
They had to be aliens, or I really had been given some good drugs, because
