Page 42 of Broken Triad

15

LOLA

The hours drag by in agony.

Is the triad searching for my father right now?

Or did they lie to me? Did I finally let myself get tricked by men?

I sit on the cliff edge, my legs dangling in the air. All my time serving under Paulus, guards would try different tactics to get in my pants. Some would bring me gifts—desserts, baked goods, sweets, flowers, that I would politely refuse.

Some would insist. I’d take it with a smile, then give the sweets to Toa, who had a sweet tooth. Other guards would look aloof and coldly handsome in their uniforms, but their eyes would betray them as they struck a heroic pose, standing unnaturally stoic and straight as they waited to see if I’d glance over at them.

They all wanted one thing. The Aurelian triad wanted it as well, served up to them.

They got it, but I will never be their Mate.

The burlap sack they left had books. One was a murder mystery set in the Toad kingdom, another a romance set way back on Old-Earth, when the times were simpler and we never knew the chaos and danger that lay in the stars. I couldn’t get into them, my thoughts racing, because I know the alien species.

I always knew that escaping to Colossus wouldn’t be perfect. That the chance of being Bonded to a triad was impossibly slim. I had resigned myself to being the favorite woman of some triad, because I would pay that price to live on the most beautiful planet in the universe, surrounded by the pure marble architecture and the beauty of their planet, to be surrounded by the honorable, noble creatures.

These Fanatics are nothing like the Aurelians I wanted to live near.

They’ll forget about me. They’ll leave me here. I will be nothing more than a brief flash in their long, long lives.

They can never love me. Not the way General Ra’al and his triad will love Rachel. Not the way that Aurelians are meant to love their Fated Mate, the only woman in the universe who can bear their sons, the Bond extending her lifespan to hundreds, thousands of years. What love could grow at that pace? Every year, every decade, every century together, the Bond between the four growing stronger and stronger each day.

How long would they find me attractive, as they age at a glacial pace and I turn into an old woman in front of their eyes? In fifteen years I’ll look the same age as them, in another thirty, they would look like my sons.

Would I even get a decade? Or have I simply reignited their dormant desires? Aurelians get the Mating Rage when they smell a potential Mate. I am the first since the death of the one woman who could have completed them to inspire it in them, but there is no reason to think I am the last.

After an Aurelian has sated himself in a woman for the first time, and it is confirmed that she is not his Mate, he loses interest. Sure, they keep harem women around to quench their endless desires, but each time they feel emptier and emptier. Khra was kind enough to keep me in his arms last night, but I woke up alone, and I have to face the cold greyness of reality.

This was a trade.

I made it seem real—even to myself—but it was a trade.

I was vulnerable. First I was nearly killed. Then I was kidnapped. I wasn’t thinking straight. I gave myself to them, my body craving their protective, possessive energy, but I won’t get a happy ending in return. No matter how foolish and naïve I was in the pool, feeling like I was connecting with Khra, I can’t focus on this as anything more than a deal.

If they save my father, it will all be worth it.

All I know is that I’ll never be with another man after the triad. They’re etched in my being now, even without the Bond. No human—no Aurelian, either—could compare with last night, the pure ecstasy of being the only thing that existed to the triad.

But that was a mirage. I cannot be their Mate, so whatever they felt for me will wither away instead of growing. One day a new lust will be ignited by some other woman. It is as Khra said. They are a cursed triad. They are broken, and I cannot fix them.

The only person who could make them whole is dead.

I run my fingers over a gold bracelet that was in the sack they brought me, along with food, the books, and a mishmash of clothing. I didn’t put it on, but I hold it up to the light, turning it slowly. My mother had jewelry like this. It was all sold for treatments, treatments that didn’t work, my father draining every last resource to try to keep her alive. That was a love like no other, a love I will never have, a tragic one, but the time they had together was precious.

I brush my hair endlessly. They brought me a hairbrush with a diamond in the handle, something like what Princess Bitch would have had. I get the urge to rip the gem out and throw it into the water below, but instead I just keep brushing my hair, over and over, until it’s smoother than it’s ever been.

As the evening light fades, I get up from the lip of the cave and go into the tent, opening the burlap sack. I’m wearing my old clothes, the sweatpants and sweater I was kidnapped in, because the clothes they brought for me are a cacophony of different sizes and styles, as if they simply asked someone for one of everything. There’s a formal, deep purple evening gown that looks like it would be taken to an opera, workout shorts made for a woman twice my size, and three different pleasure dresses.

That is what they will want me in, so that is what they will have. I slip on the light blue dress, this one long and flowy, and the tendrils do not tease me into torturous lust, as if they can sense my mood, instead massaging my body ever so gently. I take a necklace from the bag, with an obscene ruby, and put it on.

They brought a few books and some food, but the majority of the things they bought for me were jewelry and dresses, to adorn me. I’m a beautiful, caged, singing bird for them, a place to find a brief escape from the torture of their existence.

They don’t care about me. They just care that I can make them forget, for a moment, what they’ve lost.

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