When the Falcorans landed and shifted back to their human forms, Bubbles did the same, then leapt onto Jon’s shoulder and wrapped herself around his neck, purring her thanks. The moment Jon entered the ante room, Bubbles sprung from his shoulder to Faith’s, then proceeded to rub against her jaw, give her kisses, and purr all at the same time.
“You are very welcome,” Faith said. She looked up at the Falcorans, still smiling. “That was fun to watch. But, it also makes me a little sad.”
“Sad?” Tristan asked, surprised. He reached for Faith’s emotions without thinking. She was happy, but there was definitely a thread of sadness, though it didn’t feel the same as the sadness they’d sensed from her earlier. “Why are you sad?”
“Bubbles enjoyed that so much,” Faith said. “I think it’s something she needs, just like you guys need it, and I’ll be sure that she gets to do it regularly. But, it makes me sad for those
raktsasa
who don’t get to express that part of themselves.”
“Yes, it is difficult for us to imagine,” Jon agreed. “We could never suppress our true natures, or pretend to be other than we are.”
Faith dropped her eyes. She’d pretended to be other than she was for a long time, but had no intention of saying so. “I think I’ll take a shower before dinner.”
“Sounds like an excellent idea to me,” Tristan said, leading the way to the door as he wondered silently about her sudden shift in mood. Jon had been right from the beginning. They had to offer her their trust. Until then, they couldn’t hope to earn hers.
An hour later, showered, dressed and carrying a freshly groomed Bubbles on her shoulder, Faith stood in front of Tristan’s door and took a deep breath before knocking softly. Gray opened the door, then stepped back to invite her in. Faith forced herself to take slow, deep breaths and not stare. The more relaxed she got with the Falcorans, the more her hormones seemed to react to them. The feelings of arousal that were creeping up on her more and more frequently were both disconcerting and uncomfortable. Why did this have to happen? she wondered. Maybe she was getting
too
used to them, another idea that made her inexplicably sad.
“Faith?” Gray asked. “Are you all right?”
Faith pasted a smile on her face. “I’m fine,” she said as she stepped past him into the room. She saw that the food had already been delivered and the table set. “Am I late?”
“No, you are not late,” Tristan said. “We are just a bit early.”
“I suppose you guys are hungry after all that exercise.” Bubbles rumbled from her shoulder and she laughed. “Bubbles is hungry too.”
She took the chair Tristan offered, and smiled her thanks at Jon when he placed a low table beside her for Bubbles. She put the
raktsasa’s
food down and grinned as she watched Bubbles race down her arm and dig in. “You’d think she was starving, but I gave her some packaged food a while ago.”
“Shifting takes a lot of energy,” Gray said. “We’ll try to eat with better manners than Bubbles, but we make no promises.”
“I’ll pretend not to notice so long as you don’t bury your faces in your food like she is.”
“I think we can manage that much, anyway,” Tristan replied.
Faith was surprised by how much food the Falcorans put away, though they did so with perfect manners. Since she was able to eat only small amounts of food at a time, she tried to eat very slowly so that they wouldn’t feel as though they needed to stop when she was finished, the way they sometimes did. Bubbles gobbled her food down, drank a little water, then climbed up to Faith’s shoulder, stretched out and went to sleep.
When they were finished eating Tristan, Gray, and Jon cleared the table, then returned to their seats. “Are you still agreeable to listening to our story?” Tristan asked.
“Yes, I am,” she replied, her hands tightening only a little on the glass of juice in front of her. She noticed that the Falcorans were no longer smiling, and sensed their sudden tension and worry. Her hands tightened more.
“We know that you haven’t finished the book, but we assume that you are aware of what an Arima is,” Tristan began. Faith nodded.
“You are now aware that for many centuries there were no Arimas, and that Jasani males have mated with human women instead. In order for that to be possible, males must drink a potion that forces the mating fangs to descend artificially, and alters the serum in them. After the mating ritual, the woman will no longer age, and will be capable of bearing Jasani sons.”
Faith nodded again, remembering all of this from what she’d read.
“What the book doesn’t tell you is that it has not been easy to find women who are agreeable to mating with us,” Tristan said. “Many women are repelled by the idea of mating with three men at once. They often try to convince one brother to mate with her alone, not understanding that for us, it is not possible to do such a thing. It would be much the same as asking a human to grow wings and fly with us.”
Faith swallowed hard but gave no other indication of her feelings on that subject.
“A few years ago we began to crave a family of our own,” Tristan continued. “After we were named Falcoran Clan Consuls and Grand Admirals of the Jasani Navy, we added our names to the list for Contract Brides. Several months later, we got a response.”
Tristan stopped talking and reached for his wine glass, taking a long drink while struggling to contain his rising emotions. As he drank, he reminded himself of why he’d decided to do this. He set his glass down on the table, one corner of his mouth raised in a half smile. As Jon had said, Faith was all that mattered. Not the other one. He need only think of her.
“After Diane arrived we spent the usual time getting to know her, and she us. She was very quiet, and we assumed she was shy. We told her everything, of course, both the good and the bad of what her life would be like mated to us. No woman is ever asked to make a final decision on mating a Jasani male-set without a complete understanding of all the facts and the ramifications. Later, looking back on it, we realized that she seemed to accept all that we told her a bit too easily. At the time, we were simply relieved that she did not panic and run as so many women do.
“The only concerns she voiced were, first, that we never do magic around her as it frightened her. We agreed. The second, that she was terrified that we would change our minds about her, and leave her alone and penniless on a world so far from Earth. We tried to make her understand that mating is permanent for us. She seemed incapable of grasping that, and eventually became so upset that we gave in, and did as she asked.”
Faith felt the blood drain from her face as she saw where this was going. She’d guessed this might be what had happened to them, but she’d hoped she was wrong. She looked into Tristan’s bright emerald eyes, then Gray’s eyes, then Jon’s, and was nauseated by what she saw there.
“Are you all right?” Gray asked.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, her voice strained. “Please, go on.”
Tristan studied her for a moment, then continued. “We arranged the ceremony to take place as soon as possible once she agreed to it, inviting all Clan Falcorans as is the custom. During the ceremony, right after we had consumed the potion to force our mating fangs to descend and alter our serum, she began laughing at us. She was no longer the same quiet, sweet woman we‘d just spent weeks getting to know. She was vicious and cruel. She thought it a great joke that we had drunk the potion, rendering ourselves incapable of mating again. Then she left, having already emptied the account we set up for her, of course.”
Faith picked up her glass and drank, trying to force down the lump in her throat. This was even worse than she’d thought. This wasn’t a case of a woman changing her mind or getting cold feet. This had been
deliberate
.
“We were in shock,” Tristan went on, surprised at how calm he sounded to his own ears. “While we stood there, still trying to process what she’d done, and understand why she’d done it, a Lobo male-set arrived. The same woman had mated with them two years earlier, but only after they set up an account and placed a large sum of money in it for her. As soon as they injected her with their serum, she laughed in their faces, told them that she found them disgusting, then left Jasan, taking the money, and eternal youth, with her.”
Tristan paused again and finished the wine in his glass, surprised at the sense of relief he felt now that he’d told Faith this story. “The Lobos will never be able to mate again,” he continued. “Not even if they are lucky enough to find their Arima. Diane destroyed their lives and thought it a good joke. Not long after she returned to Earth they became concerned that she might try the same thing again when her money ran out, so they kept tabs on her. Unfortunately, they didn’t learn of her return to Jasan until it was too late to stop our ceremony.”
Tristan fell silent and the three of them waited to see what Faith’s response would be. They felt her horror and outrage, and also a deep, heavy sadness.
“I understand now why you were so angry with me when we first met,” Faith said after a long silence.
“It was an irrational response,” Tristan said. “Blaming all women for what one individual did was an overreaction.”
“Still, I can’t say that I blame you for it,” Faith said. “Tell me, is that woman still walking around free?”
“As far as we know, yes,” Gray said. “We had her stats flagged. No matter what name she uses, her prints and scans will identify her as an extreme undesirable should she ever attempt to visit Jasan again.”
“That’s something,” Faith said. “Not enough, though. What she did wasn’t just dishonest and cruel. It was outright criminal.”
“It is difficult for those who are not Jasani to understand the true depth of what she did,” Jon said. “It’s not that rare for humans to change their minds at the altar, or so we’ve been given to understand. It’s certainly not criminal to end a marriage. It’s not even unusual.”
“But this was different,” Faith insisted.
“Yes, it was,” Tristan said. “Faith, I will not try to minimize what that woman did, or the effect it had on the three of us. Until the day we met you, Jon had not spoken a word in the hearing of anyone save myself and Gray. Even then he spoke only in flat monotones. Gray, who used to talk so much we could barely shut him up, rarely spoke more than one word sentences, and then only when forced.”
Faith remembered Jon speaking in flat, emotionless tones and was surprised to realize how quickly she’d forgotten it. “What about you?” she asked Tristan. “How did you change?”
“I became resentful and suspicious of all women. I should have recognized Diane for who and what she was. I didn’t. Instead, I led my brothers into a trap, failing them, and myself.”
More than anything Faith wanted to reach out and place her hand over Tristan’s. She put both hands in her lap instead. “None of you are like that now.”
“No, we aren’t,” Tristan said. “Your presence has changed our perspective. We now see things differently than we did before meeting you.”
“Because I’m your Arima,” Faith guessed, dropping her eyes to her glass.
“That’s part of it,” Tristan agreed. “But only part. Mostly, it’s because of who you are.”
Faith had no idea what to say. Her own emotions were so tangled and knotted that she couldn’t decide how she felt. But this wasn’t about her, she reminded herself. “I’m glad that you are no longer angry, that all of you have found your way past the pain of what was done to you,” she said. “At the same time, I’m sorry that you had to meet me. I imagine it would have been far better for the three of you had you been able to live out your lives never knowing there was an Arima out there for you.”
Faith stood up, not quite daring to look at the Falcorans. Her body kept telling her to do things that her mind was absolutely against, and it was both confusing and stressful. If she let her guard down for a moment, she was very afraid that she’d do something that she knew she wasn’t ready for. “Thank you for trusting me,” she said. “And thank you for dinner. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’d like to go to bed now.”
“Of course,” Tristan said as they all stood politely. “Good night, Faith.”
“Goodnight,” Faith replied. She turned and left the room, walking quickly, her head down, almost desperate to be in her own room. She opened her door, closed it behind her, fumbled with the lock, then leaned against it with a huge sigh of relief. Then she began to pace.
Now that she was away from the Falcorans, she could relax and allow her emotions free reign. She was furious at the woman who’d played such a cruel trick on the Falcorans. Horrified by how much they’d suffered because of it. But, the strongest emotion was, much to her shock, devastation at the knowledge that they could never claim her as their Arima.
***
“I’m not sure if that went well or not,” Gray said after Faith’s rather abrupt departure.
“Her emotions were difficult to read,” Jon said thoughtfully. “She was confused by them.”
“She was certainly angry on our behalf,” Tristan said. “That’s a good sign. At least she cares that much.”
“Of course she was,” Gray said. “Any decent person would be, and Faith is a lot more than just decent.”