Mated To The Vikens (Interstellar Brides Book 8)(49)
“Yes, I accept all three of you as my mates. I want you to take me home and make me forget everything but you.”
***
Eric
Rolf and I had been pacing, waiting. We’d tried to relax, but it had been impossible. Sure, Gunnar would keep her safe, would definitely fuck her while they were in the club, but time seemed to have moved at a glacial pace. When he’d reached us through the InterCom, we’d sighed in relief. But that had been short lived.
Holy fuck.
We’ve got a sniper shooting at Sophia.
Those were not words we expected to hear, nor in Gunnar’s slightly frantic tone. We’d never heard him frantic before. It wasn’t a word I’d ever use to describe him. Ever.
But now, with Sophia in danger, it was bad. We’d only just found her, our mate, from all the planets in the universe. She’d been miraculously matched to the three of us and now her life was threatened. Again.
We’d leapt over furniture, knocked down people who were in our way to get to them. It took ten interminable minutes to cross Central City and find them. We couldn’t miss the flurry of Vikens leaving the area. People talking about someone being shot, a dead body, had us running even faster. Then we saw the body sprawled on the ground, blood pooling thick and dark on the street. It wasn’t Sophia. Nor Gunnar.
Relief pumped through my veins. It wasn’t our mate. It wasn’t Gunnar. That didn’t mean they were safe. Fuck, we didn’t even know if the dead Viken was Sophia’s mystery man.
We had no idea who he was, but half of his face was gone. Had Gunnar shot him up close?
We didn’t linger since there was no question he was not a danger any longer, only raised our own ion pistols and searched for any others.
And when we found Gunnar and Sophia, my heart finally settled. Shit, I’d never been so scared in my life, and I’d spent years fighting the Hive. Just imagining what had happened to Sophia was enough to put me off a warrior’s life permanently. I was getting too old for this shit. It was time to settle down to a sedate life as a royal guard and come home to fuck our mate for the rest of our lives. Perhaps fill her with a baby or two. A little girl who looked just like Sophia, but first a boy to protect her. As if three Viken warrior fathers weren’t enough.
I glanced at Rolf, saw the relief in every line of his body, too.
Gunnar had quickly confirmed the dead body was the “voice”, but learning it had been Dorn made me furious. I knew who he was, had met him a time or two, but hadn’t had the connection of the club with him like Gunnar.
And after hearing what had happened, I knew the VSS was more insidious than we ever imagined. We couldn’t bring it down in one day. It was a network of evil, creating an ever-growing web that spread through the government, the communities and even the Sectors. We could slow it, and perhaps with Dorn’s death, we had, but it wasn’t over. Like the Hive, the battle would go on.
As for Sophia, her words rung true. She was safe, at least from the VSS. They wouldn’t draw any further attention to themselves for her. She wasn’t worth it. Not with three royal guards as mates. Not with Dorn dead. While she wasn’t any safer than anyone else on Viken from the VSS’s threats, she wasn’t a target any longer.
It was time to make her ours. She wanted it. I needed it. I hadn’t thought much about her thirty-day decision period. I just assumed if she had been matched to three Vikens, surely there were no more good matches. We were it for her. I knew it and now she did as well. It was time to make her ours.
I’d never imagined I’d have a second family. No, Gunnar and Rolf weren’t brothers by birth, but we were ones nonetheless, bound together by battle, by honor, by Sophia.
Sophia.
She was the one who made our family. Without her, we were three warriors. Yes, brothers. But now we were mates, lovers, protectors. She belonged to us, just as we belonged to her. There would be no separating us now. And as soon as we had her alone, we’d claim her completely. The bond would be permanent.
***
Rolf
Back at our quarters, safe within the royal fortress at Viken United, I’d taken Sophia straight to the medical station, despite her insistence that she was not hurt. I growled every time the doctor put a hand on her, even if it had been a clinical touch. The smirk on the older Viken’s face told me he’d found my possessiveness humorous.
We hadn’t told him about Dorn or the VSS. If we had, the man surely wouldn’t be smiling.
Only when the doctor assured me she was all right had I taken her back to our quarters and straight into the bathing room where I stripped her bare and took her into the tub. I didn’t speak, at least not much more than single-word directions. I couldn’t. I hadn’t settled yet. I was the calm one of her trio of mates, but in this moment, I was unsettled. It had been too close, her demise. Again. In the short time she’d been on Viken, she’d had more danger than many Vikens citizens who lived here their entire lives.