NecessaryDecision

by A. D. Christopher

  Behind him, Varek groaned softly in his ear and his cock swelled against the small of Gable’s back. “You two are… Damn.”

  Kylar smiled against Gable’s mouth before he pulled away, catching Varek’s eye over Gable’s shoulder. Without a word the two men moved closer, mouths meeting, tongues twining, making Gable’s heart swell. Seeing the two of them reach out to each other, seeing the eagerness with which their lips met and parted and came back together again, was more than he had dared hope for. In that moment, he believed it could happen. They could have their happiness.

  “You’re smiling again,” Kylar said, moving his lips back to Gable’s as his hand cupped Gable’s balls, rolling the skin of his sac, pinching and tugging until Gable’s head spun.

  “I think I have a lot to smile about.” Gable’s words turned to a moan as Varek’s hands kneaded his ass, spreading his cheeks, teasing at the tight ring of his hole.

  Soon the edges of the world blurred with bliss. Gable was dimly aware of Varek and Kylar lifting him, of Varek lying back in a bed of pine needles and pulling him on top of him. He felt the burning perfection of Varek’s thickness shoving inside of him, the strength in Varek’s arms as he moved him up and down on his shaft. And then the wet heat of Kylar’s mouth closed around his aching length, sucking and licking, and all hope of rational thought fled.

  With a sigh, Gable gave himself up to the two men he loved, to the two men who loved him, to the two men he knew were going to learn to love each other.

  Chapter Five

  Five weeks later

  The Grossman home wasn’t the largest dwelling on the Pride lands, but it was one of the most impressive. The gray two-story structure crouched on the top of a rock outcropping and stared out across the valley, perpetually on the lookout for enemies trespassing on Orion Pride lands. Kylar’s father, Baron, had lived in the home his entire life.

  Even after Baron passed the rigorous sexual testing required by the Orion Elders and won himself a female mate—a time when young Pride members were usually eager to move out on their own—he’d chosen to stay with his parents. He’d forced his new wife to move in with his own cantankerous father and cowed mother and done his best to teach his bride to submit to his will in all things.

  Regina, an orphan from the Pride wars who had no one else to turn to, hadn’t rebelled, but she hadn’t submitted either. Instead, she’d maintained a passion-filled silent protest, taking passive aggression to extremes that were torturous for her family.

  At least torturous for her only son.

  There were times—when his father’s temper raged on and his mother sulked and pouted for days—that the fine house on the hill was little better than a prison. Kylar had moved out as soon as he earned his first bonus for service to the Pride, and only returned when family obligations absolutely demanded it.

  “Are you ready?” Gable squeezed his hand, the gentle pressure making Kylar realize how cold his fingers were. Despite the fact that fall had only just begun to burn the edges of the leaves brilliant reds and golds, Kylar felt chilled to his very bones.

  “I doubt I’ll ever be ready.”

  “I can come with you,” Gable said, sliding closer, pressing his slim body against Kylar’s side. Behind them both, Varek’s warmth flared. He had stepped closer as well, silently offering his support, no matter what decision Kylar made.

  Kylar shook his head. He was too lucky. These two men were…everything he’d never dared to hope for. There was no way he could expose them to his father, at least not until Kylar made it clear that behaving cruelly to either of his future mates would be unacceptable. Baron wanted his son to have a female mate, but that wasn’t going to happen now, no matter what threats Baron made. Kylar had penetrated both Varek and Gable, he was no longer fit to continue with the sexual testing. Hopefully, once his father understood that, he would be reasonable about Kylar’s plans for his future…

  Or…not.

  “Come on, let me come.” Gable nudged him in the ribs. Kylar could hear the smile in his voice. “I’m very charming. I’ll have Baron thrilled that you’re taking a slave as your warrior-mate before your mother’s poured the coffee.”

  “Two slave warrior-mates,” Varek corrected, “and I think we all know how ‘thrilled’ Baron is going to be about this decision.”

  “Indeed,” Kylar sighed. Varek’s strong hand fell on his shoulder, offering comfort, strength.

  “Maybe we should wait,” Varek said, “and let another group of three be the first to take advantage of the new law.”

  The new law. Just last night, the council had announced that all matings between three Pride members—whether they consisted of two men and a woman or three warrior-mates—would be legal and valid. The response from the Pride had been varied, but Kylar’s own father had been one of the loudest dissenters, insisting that the new law spelled the end of the Orion way of life. He was going to be about as thrilled to hear Kylar intended to claim two warrior-mates as to wake up and find all his teeth had fallen out.

  Kylar’s jaw clenched so tight his own teeth began to ache. This wouldn’t end well, but waiting would accomplish nothing. His father was set in his ways. Better to break the news now and take comfort in the fact that he, Gable and Varek hadn’t wasted even a small portion of their lives waiting for approval that was never going to come.

  “No, I’m going to go. And I should go alone,” he said, releasing Gable’s hand and stepping away from Varek’s kind touch. “I’ll meet you at the house in a few hours, and we’ll celebrate.”

  “I’m cooking salmon,” Gable said. “And Varek got a bottle of champagne. Isn’t he romantic?”

  Varek shrugged and looked embarrassed. “I’ve never had champagne before…and I thought…”

  “It’s perfect,” Kylar said, laughing at both of their faces—Gable with his mischievous grin and Varek with his full lips set in a stern line. The two of them had become home to him.

  Varek and Gable had only moved in with him a week ago, but it already felt like they’d been there forever. They had filled his house—and his life—with such light and love. There was joy in his heart for the first time, and it was good and right. It didn’t matter what his father said to him tonight. All that mattered was that he knew he was making the right decision.

  On impulse, Kylar leaned in, claiming Gable’s mouth for a long, slow kiss. Within seconds, Varek’s arms were around them both and his full lips joined the fray. The kiss went on for only a few seconds—ten at most—but by the time they all pulled away Kylar’s cock was thickening in his dress pants. His father always required that he “dress for his family”. The thought helped ease the tightness below his belt. It was impossible to maintain a hard-on while thinking about anything remotely connected to that mean old bastard.

  That mean old bastard who would be even crankier if Kylar was late to his first dinner engagement of the evening.

  “See you soon.” Kylar nodded to Varek and Gable before he turned and strode up the trail toward the house, reaching the steep steps far sooner than he would have liked. Today, his strength and stamina were a bane on his existence, allowing him to mount the two hundred steps in a matter of minutes. Before he could quite screw his courage to the sticking point, he was at his parents’ front door, lifting the heavy knocker and letting it drop with an ominous clunk.

  Almost immediately, footsteps sounded inside—dull clicks against the hardwood. His mother was answering the door. Kylar’s skin prickled and the hairs on his neck stood on end. Something was wrong.

  His mother never answered the door. She left that job to his father or simply let Kylar stand outside in the cold until he got tired of waiting and let himself in. Kylar knew his mother found it offensive that he didn’t feel comfortable enough in his childhood home to simply open the door and come inside. But Kylar couldn’t seem to help himself. This place had never felt like home, not even when he was a boy. At least not the same way his own house felt cozy and safe now that Gabl
e and Varek slept in his bed every night. They had brought love to his home, to his life. Kylar hadn’t even realized how frozen he was inside until their fearless care had warmed him.

  Now he drew upon that warmth to calm his racing pulse, to help him stand up a little straighter as his mother wrenched open the door and stood facing him with cold, glassy eyes. They were his eyes, but even bluer, bleached by years of living in a house where she was outnumbered by the enemy.

  “Your father knows,” she said, the lack of emotion in her voice not fooling Kylar for a moment. The more upset his mother became, the more she shut down, muting her external reactions until she was more automaton than human or were. “And he has a few things to share with you. He’s waiting in the study.”

  Kylar nodded, took a deep breath and began to move past his mother into the dark, quiet home. She reached out at the last moment, grasping his wrist and squeezing, shocking Kylar into stillness. He couldn’t remember the last time his mother had touched him. It must have been years ago, before he began the sexual testing as a teenager, back when his cheeks were still soft and his legs short enough to swing in the air when he climbed into his big chair at the dinner table.

  “Don’t believe everything you hear,” she whispered. “Some things might be facts, but that doesn’t mean that they’re true.”

  Kylar shook his head. “I…I don’t understand.”

  “I know.” Her blue eyes filled and—for a split second—Kylar thought his mother was going to weep. Instead, she pressed her lips together and gave his wrist one last gentle squeeze before releasing it. “Just know that I love you. No matter what.”

  The tightness in Kylar’s chest became a clutching so fierce that for a moment he couldn’t draw breath. His mother’s obvious distress, her kind words, her soft touch—they could only mean one thing. His father was angry with him. Very, very angry. So angry his mother feared this evening might end with Kylar no longer being welcome in this home.

  He knew. He must know about Gable and Kylar. In a Pride the size of the Orion Pride, it was only a matter of time before word got around. Still…Kylar had been hoping to break the news to his father himself. But now his father was waiting for him in the study, his intimidating domain, a place where he had always brought Kylar when he wanted his son to feel small, foolish and worthless.

  Kylar forced himself to swallow the lump in his throat and lean over to peck his mother’s papery cheek. “I love you too,” he said, realizing he meant the words with all of his heart. Despite how hard it had been growing up in this house, he still loved his mother. And his father. He knew his father would be wrong to shut him out because of his love for two men, but it would still hurt him to see disgust in his father’s eyes.

  Better to get it over with. No sense dragging your damn feet. Kylar stood up straighter and pointed his feet toward the back of the house. In a few minutes, he had crossed the smooth wooden floors of the entryway and family room and was striding down the carpet-covered hall, bound for the big, wooden door at the end. It stood ajar, daring him to open it and see what horror waited on the other side.

  Of all the things he could have imagined, however, his father sitting in front of the fire with two slaves from the slave quarters was the absolute last. He froze in the doorway, not certain whether to stay or go.

  “Kylar. We’ve been expecting you for half an hour,” his father said, not bothering to rise from his wing chair. “I’m sure you know Hendrix and Job.”

  Kylar nodded in the direction of the large, black man and the smaller man with almond-colored skin and wide, dark eyes. Eyes that held a certain amount of fear as they flicked from Kylar to his father and back again.

  “Yes, Hendrix, Job and I have trained together for years,” Kylar said, leaving out the fact that they’d also fucked inches from each other on more than one occasion. Job had the bunk next to Gable’s. Kylar had caught him watching him and Gable together once or twice, but hadn’t thought much of it. Some men liked to watch, and he didn’t really mind if he was in the slave quarters. If he’d wanted privacy that badly, he and Gable could have gone into the woods or to his home to find it. Sometimes it was even more arousing to get off in a room full of other men getting off.

  At least it had been. Now all he could think of was what Job and Hendrix—who was one of Job’s regular lovers—must have told his father.

  “Oh? So you do know them. Excellent. And you know them to be…honorable?” His father tilted his head, folded his hands over his stomach. “Honest. Do you believe them to be so, my son? Or are they not to be trusted, like most slaves?”

  There was a trap there, Kylar knew it. There couldn’t possibly not be, considering the look on his father’s face, that expression of fury mingled with satisfaction. It was the same look his father had always worn when he caught Kylar doing something wrong as a child—spilling his milk or tearing a hole in the knees of his new jeans, the sort of thing any boy might do, especially a were-panther boy whose body grew too strong, too quickly for him to adjust to it. Awkwardness, clumsiness and injury affected every were child to varying degrees. It was expected. Just as expected as that—around their fifteenth or sixteenth years—the young men would start sneaking off into the slave cabins or asking Old Wills, who ran the small Pride postal service, to let them borrow his nudie magazines.

  But Kylar’s father had never accepted any of the usual young man’s follies from Kylar. He was always there with judgment, disappointment and that look—that damn look. Now the sight of it sent a familiar shot of fear and rage up Kylar’s spine, a sensation he tried to ignore. He was an adult now and he’d made a decision, chosen something that made him happy. He refused to feel ashamed of it. Yes he wanted the chance to tell his father on his own, but if that wasn’t to be, it wasn’t to be. Either way, he refused to fall into whatever trap Baron had set.

  “They’re very honorable,” he said. Despite himself, he couldn’t resist adding, “And I don’t believe that slaves are dishonest as a rule.”

  His father smiled. Shit. “Really? So you believe they’re honest? Transparent in their motives?” His smile transformed to a smirk. “But you would. Wouldn’t you, Kylar?”

  Kylar said nothing. If this was some plan of Baron’s to convince him Gable and Varek weren’t to be trusted, that they were deceptive simply because they were slaves, he wouldn’t listen. Oddly, his father’s smirk helped put him at ease. This was exactly the sort of thing he’d expected. At least he felt as if he stood on familiar ground.

  “Well.” Baron leaned forward in his chair. “These two slaves—these two honest men, as you yourself have just told me—have come to me with a most interesting story. Shall I tell you? Or would you like to hear it from one of them?”

  Kylar’s temper flared in his chest. With difficulty, he stomped it down. “Whatever it is, I wish someone would tell me. I came here to speak to you and to Mother. Can we please finish whatever this is and get on with our evening?”

  “Fine. I shall have Job tell you. Job?”

  Job’s broad face paled. His eyes widened, and his hands clutched at each other in panic. “Sire Grossman, I think maybe—”

  “Job.” This time his father’s glare wasn’t directed his way, but Kylar could still feel the heavy weight of it settling around his shoulders.

  Job swallowed and turned pleading eyes to Kylar. “My bunk in the quarters…I sleep near Gable. Across from him.”

  Kylar almost said, “I know,” but stopped himself. Instead he simply nodded and raised his eyebrows slightly as if to say, “And?”

  “Well.” Job looked at his feet. “A few months back Gable and Varek were talking. They’re together, you know. They have been for a long time. I mean, of course you know. Everybody knows, right? And they’d be warrior-mated if slaves were allowed to take the—”

  “Get on with it,” Baron snapped.

  Job sighed. That pleading look came back into his eyes. “Anyway, I heard them talking a few months ago. About…about y
ou. Well, first it was about Mercy and Caleb and Kerrick, and how they got permission to be triple-mated. They talked about that for a while, I think, saying it was a good—”

  “Job.”

  Job wasn’t usually like this, Kylar mused. Job was pretty direct. Especially in the slave quarters when the lamps burned low. So what was different about this? Why the circular route to whatever he was about to reveal? Was it that awful?

  God, he was starting to get queasy, and a heavy weight built in his chest. He didn’t know what was about to be said, but he knew it couldn’t be good. He already wished he could unhear it, could back down the long stairs and disappear into the forest, grab Gable and Varek by the arms and run as far from the Pride lands as they could.

  “They said they wanted their freedom. And…after listening to them…” Job gulped air and his next words came out in a rush. “Well, it seemed like they figured the best way to get it would be to find a Pride-born who would agree to triple-warrior-mate with them. That way they would be free. They…it seemed like they decided on you.”

  Kylar didn’t understand, not at first. For a few long seconds—seconds he would later desperately wish he could relive, those last seconds before his heart shattered—he didn’t understand why Job looked so unhappy, or Baron so triumphant as he poked Hendrix in the arm.

  Hendrix cleared his throat. He wouldn’t meet Kylar’s eyes either. “I heard them too. A different night. I was in Job’s bed taking a nap and they came in, talking about whether or not they could convince you to be with them both. It was after…” He cleared his throat again and stared hard at a spot on the wall. “You and Gable had already been together, but they needed you to accept Varek too.”