Rowe settled back onto the pillow and focused on the image the trio reflected in the mirrored ceiling. He saw Paine doing the same on Indigo’s opposite side, keeping a possessive hand on her closest hip.
“She makes me—”
“Same,” Paine interrupted, nodding at their reflection.
The idea that his partner felt as he did comforted Rowe a small bit. His reluctance around Indigo came from having no basis for comparison. Messing things up among the trio was the last thing he wanted, but he had no guidance, except secondhand observing or speaking with the other brides.
“Do you think it will always—”
“If we’re lucky.” Paine rose slightly and turned to speak directly with Rowe. “Hix and the other husbands changed too, you know.”
“I remember,” Rowe said with a frown as he recalled his own reaction to the changes he’d observed in newly matched Phaetons. “I thought they behaved like fools.”
“We both did. We didn’t know any better,” Paine agreed. “Do you recall when Wheaton introduced us to Poppy?”
“Of course,” he snorted. “It was the first time I’d ever seen Wheaton smile.”
“The only time the smile disappeared was when he was glaring at us,” Paine added with a chuckle before sobering. “I understand it now. He was making sure we understood who she belonged to.”
“They’re not animals, Paine. They’re women,” Rowe said with a snort.
Paine frowned at the heavy sarcasm Rowe had laced in his words. “I’m not an idiot, Rowe. I know that. I Just didn’t like it when the others looked at Indigo longer than I thought necessary. Especially Burke.”
Rowe barely kept from growling at the mention of the Brakken. The warrior hadn’t even necessarily looked in their direction at dinner, yet he’d still managed to rub them the wrong way. It hadn’t helped that Burke’s bride had spent a majority of the night talking to Indigo, which meant the annoying Brakken was always near.
“I’m understanding more and more why the Djaromir mark their women as they do,” Paine said, interrupting his thoughts.
“Same.” At first the idea had seemed barbaric, but as Rowe had thought more about it, he saw the appeal. A Phaeton’s claim was only marked by the band their brides wore about their wrists, a smaller version of his own communicator. For Indigo, their old bands marked their claim but didn’t say “Look away, or I’ll break your arm” as clearly as he’d like.
“Do you think she would let us?” Rowe felt his face heat as the question bouncing around inside his head tumbled out of his mouth.
“I am tempted to ask,” Paine admitted with a sigh, his hand tightening on Indigo’s rounded hip. “Do you think she’s still planning on leaving at the end of the trial period?”
Rowe frowned at the doubt he heard in his brother’s voice. It was the same question that filled his own head. “She will stay.”
“You don’t know that.” Paine shot him a worried look before focusing back on the woman between them.
“She’ll stay,” he repeated again, this time with a sureness he was beginning to feel. “Think about it this way. Are you ready to let her go?”
“No chance,” Paine answered firmly.
“Then, she will stay,” Rowe reiterated. “Just like I told Indigo earlier. She will stay because we’ll make it impossible for her to want to leave.”
Paine rolled his eyes. “You’re sure about that, huh?”
“Absolutely,” Rowe shot back. “It’s simple. We keep doing what we’re doing, and she’ll never want to leave. She may not know it yet, but she needs us.”
“She does, does she?” Paine asked, amused.
“Just as much as we need her.” He nodded. “Do you want to hear my plan or are you going to keep questioning our ability to keep our bride?”
“You have a plan?” Paine asked between soft chuckles he fought to control so as not to wake Indigo.
“Absolutely. You’re not the only one with the ability to come up with a plan. In fact, I’m sure mine will be better than anything you’d think up,” Rowe replied firmly. “We’re going to woo her.”
“Woo what?”
“Woo her. You know, woo—make her feel special. Court her. Show her that she’s the only one for us. The only one we want.”
Paine looked at him skeptically. “You think that’s going to work?”
“Why wouldn’t it?” Rowe held up a finger. “You’ve read as many of those magazines as I have. By now you must have at least a portion of the text memorized.”
“And?” Paine gave him a puzzled look.
“Are you serious? Did you pay attention to what you were reading or did you only look at the pictures?” Rowe closed his eyes in frustration. He loved his friend, but sometimes he could strangle him. “Those articles were instructions on how to keep her!”
“What? How?” Paine shook his head. “Buying her flowers or running her a hot bath won’t help us here, Rowe. We don’t have either one of those things.”
“Not those things specifically. But that’s not the point.”
“Then what’s your point?” Paine dropped onto his back and stared at him via the reflection with an exasperated look on his face.
“We need to show her how much we care. How much we want her here.”
“It’s not about the flowers at all,” Paine repeated with a look of understanding.
“Exactly.” Turning his head, he spoke directly to Paine. “That’s the plan. We take everything we’ve read and use it to court our bride.”
Indigo snuffled where she nestled against his side.
Lowering his voice, Rowe kept his volume no higher than a whisper so as not to wake her up. “It will take us a few days to make it back to Phaeton One. We need to make that time count. We keep asking questions. Find out her likes and dislikes and use that information. Make her know how special she is to us.”
“You think it will work?” Paine asked, his breath ruffling one of Indigo’s curls as they talked over her head.
“I hope so.” Rowe ducked down and dropped a kiss on Indigo’s forehead, smiling when she mumbled sleepily. “If it doesn’t, we can always ask the other women for help.”
“You have a point.” Paine settled onto his side, wrapping an arm around Indigo’s waist as she faced Rowe. “They like us. They’ll help if we ask.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Help us,” Rowe begged the women in front of them.
Sitting in a circle in Poppy’s apartments, he looked around at the human females who had gathered to bang this shit out, according to Poppy and her sister, Pixie.
“Please,” Paine added, his voice tinged with more than a just little desperation. “We can’t lose Indigo.”
Lose.
That one word dropped like acid into Paine’s stomach. Simply hearing it made him feel nauseous; saying it out loud almost physically hurt. Pacing back and forth, he couldn’t get rid of the restless energy coursing through his body. Their mission to woo their bride was failing miserably, and they had no idea why or how to fix it.
Which was driving him insane.
The men had called upon as many of the wives as possible for help, activating what Poppy referred to as the First Phaetons Wives Club—FPWC for short. She’d mumbled something about matching jackets before handing him her tiny hybrid baby and calling her sister. From there, the chatter had spread across the ship, the wives of his fellow Phaeton brothers arriving within moments to Poppy’s apartments. The only ones who were missing were Valerie and Andi, both heavily pregnant and kept under strict guard by their husbands.
“Absolutely nothing we’ve done has made her so much as smile at us in the last few days, and I can’t take it anymore.” Rowe dropped down into the only empty chair in the room. His posture slumped as he gripped his head in his hands.
“Same here,” Paine interrupted as he turned on his heel to walk to the opposite side of the room. “We need to see her smile.”
Poppy held up one h
and while the other cradled her daughter. “Start over.”
Paine sucked in a big breath. His chest tightened, which seemed to happen whenever he thought of their problems in wooing.
“She’s not happy,” Rowe blurted out. “No matter what we do.”
“She bounces between anger and sadness, but when we ask her what’s wrong, she says that she just wants to be left alone to sleep.” Paine pulled the locks on his head. The pain redirected his frustration needing an outlet other than yelling at the females in front of him. He’d been pulling them so much with the past few days’ frustrations that he was surprised he hadn’t pulled any out.
“Oh,” Pixie said, her brow wrinkled. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“No,” Poppy said, shaking her head. “It doesn’t sound good at all.”
“Let’s start at the beginning again,” Maggie suggested, twirling one of her earrings around on her finger. “You said things were fine at first. Do you remember anything that could have happened to make her angry?”
“Yeah.” Pixie pointed her finger at each of the men in turn. “Did you guys do something to piss her off?”
“No,” Paine said firmly. “Everything was fine until we stopped in Euphoria for some supplies.”
At mention of the Pleasure Sector, the women exchanged looks.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Poppy said quickly, lifting one shoulder. “Anything happen on Euphoria?”
“No,” Rowe answered with a hint of confusion. “We simply landed long enough to pick up a crate of fruit for the docs.”
“Ahhh,” Pixie said with a laugh that jostled the baby against her chest. “I bet I know why too. Andi’s been craving those weird little plum things, Poppy. Don’t you remember the last time we saw her she’d eaten so many that it had stained her lips purple?”
“That’s what that was?” Poppy shifted her daughter up onto her shoulder, patting her on the back. “I just thought she was trying a new lip gloss.”
“Dork.” Pixie sighed, rolling her eyes. “Okay, so nothing you did on Euphoria could have made her mad.”
“What about the other women? They’re all her friends, right?” Claudia asked where she sat on the floor with Max in her lap. “Maybe she said something to them about what’s bothering her.”
“I don’t think so,” Paine said, thinking back on everything that had happened on the shuttle. “Other than those first few nights, she hasn’t talked to the others much. In fact, she hasn’t really left our rooms for more time than it takes to get something to eat, and even those short visits have stopped. We’ve started bringing food to her to make sure she’s taking in sustenance.”
“We can’t figure out what’s made her shut us out. Everything was going great. She was starting to open up a little about her life before the Pact,” Rowe added. “We spent the first few days together talking, discovering her likes and dislikes.”
“And what about at night?” Maggie asked, her face blushing red. “I don’t mean to be nosey or anything, but did you—erm—ummm—guys? A little help here.”
“Are you asking if we’ve been having sex?” Paine asked bluntly, too worried about his relationship with Indigo for embarrassment to hold him back. “We haven’t.”
“Not yet,” Rowe added.
“We have pleasured her orally though,” Paine said matter-of-factly. “Multiple times.”
“And with our han—”
“Jesus on a carousel, guys!” Poppy yelped, cupping a hand over her daughter’s exposed ear. “Tiny ears! You can’t say stuff like that in front of a baby.”
“Why not?” Paine asked, startled. Looking at the baby Poppy was holding, he tried to understand what she was so concerned about. He didn’t know much about human children, but he’d never heard that language could have a negative impact.
“Hold the fucking phone, Pops. You’re getting onto them for their language?” Pixie snorted, obviously trying not to laugh and failing. “This is hilarious. I’ve heard you curse more today than I did all last week. Plus, she’s just a baby. It’s not as if these munchkins understand a word coming out of our mouths anyways.”
Paine bit his lip as the humor of the situation hit him. He adored Poppy, but her sister was right. Her reaction was incredibly hypocritical, considering she was the one who had taught them almost all of the bad words they now knew.
And he hadn’t even used any of them.
“Sorry.” Poppy gave him a strained smile. “I know I’m acting crazy, but this mom shit is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I don’t wanna fuck it up. You know?”
It took every ounce of Paine’s control not to react to what Poppy had unknowingly said. Looking at Rowe, he saw his friend struggling to maintain a neutral expression as well.
The women on the other hand…
“Fuck all y’all,” Poppy hissed when Maggie’s laughter caused her to slide right off the ottoman she was perched on. Flipping the group off with one hand, the other cuddled her baby close.
“C’mon, Poppy,” Claudia giggled, her laughter complimented by Max who had joined in on the merriment spreading around the room. Clapping his hands, the baby boy smiled wide as drool ran down his chin to soak the bib he had buttoned around his neck. “Don’t be mad. Even Max thought it was funny.”
“Oh shush,” Poppy replied, fighting a smile. “I’m just so damn tired I don’t know if it’s night or day anymore.”
Paine sat back, watching the women tease each other as they held their children. All of them except for Maggie was holding a child close, the visual filling Paine with an emotion he wasn’t familiar with. Shaking it off, he tried to think of anything else he could possibly tell his friends that would help enlighten them as to what could be the problem.
Or, at least, give them advice on what to do next.
“Night.”
Paine looked at Rowe, unsure why he was blurting out random words.
“Night,” Rowe repeated, his brow furrowed in thought.
“Are you okay, Rowe?” Maggie asked as she climbed back onto the footstool to sit.
“Night!” he practically yelled, his face excited.
“I think he’s having a stroke,” Poppy announced. “Someone grab his tongue. Quick!”
“That’s for a seizure, dumbass,” Pixie chortled, tucking her daughter close to her chest. “Rowe, can you please assure my sister that you’re not having a seizure.”
“What?” he asked, looking up as if startled that someone was speaking to him.
“Are you okay?” Claudia asked slowly, enunciating each word carefully.
“Yes.” Rowe nodded, his attention focused on Paine.
“What is it, brother?”
“Everything changed when we began our overnight shifts on the bridge,” Rowe said quickly, his words sparking a memory of the timeline in Paine’s head. “Up until our first night shift, everything had been going so well.”
“You’re right,” he agreed, trying to think of how that change impacted Indigo’s response to not only them but to everything around her. “She began to withdraw after the first night.”
“And it got worse with each one that passed,” Rowe finished, nodding.
“Question.” Claudia held up her hand. “What are you two babbling about?”
Paine didn’t answer, instead thinking back on their days together and their nights apart.
“You’re right.” Rubbing his hands together, he thought for a moment. “I didn’t even think about that affecting the connection we’ve been building. Do you think she is upset with us because of our obligations to the council?”
“If that is the case, what does that mean for us?” Rowe rubbed a hand against his forehead, and he paced within the small confines of Poppy’s living quarters. “We have no control over our missions.
We may have been gone overnight, but we spent more than enough time with her during the day.”
“If she is unable to handle that slight amount of separation, how
will this end up working in the future?” Paine asked the unasked question. He wasn’t sure they were ready to hear the answer, but he’d prefer to know now versus waiting until they were unable to imagine life without her.
As if that hadn’t happened already.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Indigo rolled onto her side, punching the pillow under her head for good measure. No matter how much she tossed and turned, she was unable to get comfortable enough to fall asleep. The tiny shred of hope she’d been holding onto that things would improve once they were on Phaeton One fizzled. She was screwed. It didn’t matter if they were on the shuttle or the mothership. She couldn’t fucking sleep.
The room was too quiet, her pillow was too lumpy, and she wasn’t that tired anyways. Or, at least, that’s what she told herself. The truth of the matter was that she’d fallen back into old habits, including the nightmares that came with them.
The first night hadn’t been too bad—most likely because she hadn’t known she was going to be alone. The guys had teased her to completion just like they had done every night since the first—an experience which she had enjoyed thoroughly—and she’d drifted off into la-la land. She’d fallen asleep between them, snuggled in tight like a bug in a rug.
She wasn’t sure what had woken her up, but she’d opened her eyes, and they’d been gone. Not just from the bed, but also the room. She was awake for the remainder of the night, slightly scared and unable to fall asleep without her protectors.
When morning came, Paine and Rowe had walked in as if it wasn’t their fault that she’d slept only an hour or two the night before. Logically, she knew it wasn’t their fault, but she didn’t care. She’d been struggling to function, and they’d both acted as if everything was fine.
If there was one thing she knew, it was that everything wasn’t fine. Just thinking about falling into the insomnia rabbit hole again was almost too much. Indigo was ashamed to admit that her reaction to their new schedule had been pure bitchiness. She knew logically that they couldn’t help the shift change. They were just soldiers reporting for duty.
Warriors of Phaeton: Paine and Rowe Page 16