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“You never thought you’d head butt the Hive Mind either,” Hive said, laughing. “I mean it though. It feels amazing to bleed. I’ve never felt so alive.”
“Didn’t you always feel it?” I asked, still holding the tissue up against his nose. “I mean, weren’t all the Khetar part of you? Couldn’t you feel anything you wanted?”
Hive took hold of my wrist. His grip was gentle and tender, and he moved my hand off of him. I watched closely on his nostril, but no more blood came out. “It’s healed. Khetar heal quickly, Precious. And yes, I could have felt what any individual Khetar felt, but it was not possible to limit anything that I experienced. So while I could have felt one warrior bleeding out after dying in a blaze of glory, I still felt everything else all at once, and both his suffering and his pride at having died in battle were things I only experienced as drops in a very large bucket. When Kaav hit my nose with his thick skull, the pain flared for a second or two, and it wasallI felt. For once, I felt nothing but pain.”
“I’d give up pain if I could,” I said.
Hive shook his head. “And then you wouldn’t be human. What is happiness without pain? Nothing exists without contrast. To have something rather than nothing, things must be different from each other. Happiness has no meaning without its opposites: suffering and pain.”
“That’s some deep shit,” Kaav said. “If you like it so much, I’d be happy to make you bleed again.”
Hive laughed. “There’s something else I want to experience instead. Are you ready to share her, Brother?”
He was asking Kaav, but his eyes never left me. He was judging my reaction, I realized. And I was smiling.
“Here?” Kaav asked.
Hive flicked his gaze toward Kaav. “Would you rather go back to the airlock?”
“No,” I said, eyeing the bed. “Not the airlock. Here. Hive, can I speak to Kaav first?”
“Go ahead,” he said.
I looked toward the door. “Alone, I meant.”
He nodded and reached for the handle. “Come get me when you two are ready.”
He stepped outside, and when the door shut, being alone with Kaav felt suddenlyveryalone, like part of us was missing already. I wondered if he had the same feeling as me.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked. “It’s just…I feel like you’re having to give up more than I am if we agree to this.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand the true nature of the Khetar. TheInseminatorsare outliers. I was going to have you to myself with two bodies, but now that I have only one body, things are very different. I’ve talked to you about the breeding urge, My Weapon, and it’s not just a sexual urge. I’m not just craving the feeling of my thick golden cock plunging into your soaking wet pussy—though I am craving that too—but more than anything I’m wanting to put babies into you. I can’t do that alone anymore. I need a Third, and it might as well be him.”
“I don’t get the impression you even like him.”
“Him being the former Hive Mind is not making it easy, but brothers in a Triumvirate don’t have tolikeeach other. Competition can be good. Instinct will take over once we’ve both started breeding you. Our biology will force a kind of harmony and equilibrium. I’ll probably always hate him a little bit, but we’ll respect each other. We’ll work together. We’ll mostly get along. And you like him. I can see it.”
“I…this is all very confusing and very new to me. I feel like I should be second-guessing everything I’m feeling for him.”
“Humans are naturally monogamous,” he said. “With each other, at least.”
“What? Monogo…”
“It means that on most human worlds, it’s one man and one woman together. You only need the seed from one man to get pregnant, so adding more men—or God forbid more women—just mucks things up for you. Khetar are different. We evolved to share. Your human instinct is telling you it’s wrong somehow, or unnatural, but for us, it’s perfectly natural and normal. So don’t worry about what I want, because I want this. I want you pregnant. I want to share you with him. Even if I think he’s an arrogant piece of shit.”
I took in a deep breath. I’d worried he’d tell me something like this just to make me feel better about it, that I’d doubt he really meant it. The way he spoke though, and the ease in his voice made me really believe it. Still, the thing he’d said about humans being monogy-something must have been what was getting me doubting my feelings. This triumvirate thing wasn’t something that humans usually did.
It was especially difficult to doubt my feelings right now, because they werepowerfulfeelings. Everything in my body was screaming at me to let Hive in. To do what both men were telling me they wanted to do.
“You liked when I hit him, didn’t you?” Kaav asked smirking.
I blushed and looked down.
“That’s something High Command missed,” he said. “Women are less prone to physically fighting each other, and you can write it off as ugly or stupid, but you’re wired to like seeing things that are not part of your nature. The way you took care of Hive’s nose? Even though I was the one who did the damage, I liked seeing you take care of him, because I sure as shit wouldn’t have so much as handed him a tissue.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been understanding that since I got tainted. I was half a person, and now I’m compl—” I put a hand over my mouth. Kaav had just lost half of himself, and it felt wrong to draw attention to that.
“It’s fine,” he said. “Once Hive has put his seed in you, I’ll feel whole again too.”
