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  “Hey, I know it’s the guy—or guys—who are supposed to fall asleep after sex…” I yawned and stretched. “But we’ve been tramping through the jungle all day followed by mind-bendingly intense three-way sex.” I blushed a little as I said it but I didn’t stop. “I’m tired,” I told them. “Actually, exhausted. Can we…do you think we could just lay down for a little while and take a nap?”

  “A good idea.” Drace yawned too. “What do you say, bond-mate?”

  “I’d like to rest—with Rylee between us,” Lucian said. “Maybe we could finally rest peacefully instead of tossing and turning as we did last night without each other.”

  “Definitely.” I sighed. “Come on, let’s get, uh, untangled so we can get comfortable.”

  They slipped out of me and we all crawled under the furs, snuggling like sleepy children with Drace on my left and Lucian on my right. I let out a little moan of pure contentment as I felt the two big bodies on either side of me and then I closed my eyes and drifted off.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Lucian

  “Lucian, wake up. Come on—wake up, bond-mate.” A hand was shaking my shoulder and a familiar voice was murmuring in my ear.

  “What? What is it?” I sat up, disentangling myself carefully from the sleeping Rylee. At first I didn’t know where I was but then I looked at the fur covered bed and the dim, oval shaped stone room and the events of the last few hours came back to me. Bonded—I was bonded to another Alpha and our shared female and the bond was sealed.

  We’ll be together for life, whispered a stray thought in my head. A tingle of joy filled me at the thought. Finally, I was no longer alone. Finally I had a female I loved and a mate I cared for to share her with. It was beautiful…perfect…unspeakably right. I felt whole, complete for the first time in my life.

  Then my bond-mate’s next words ruined it.

  “The Claw,” he said. “It’s free now. I mean—I can touch it. Look.”

  He was standing naked in the middle of the cave-chamber—none of us had bothered with any sleep clothes before our nap. Now he walked to the small pedestal which held the long, golden claw with its four, sharp-tipped points. Earlier it had been hovering in midair, clearly held there by some force beyond our understanding. But now it was lying on its side on the stone pedestal and the glow around it was gone. Drace picked it up carefully and showed me.

  “See? No more force field, or whatever it was. It’s ours now—we can have it.”

  “Oh. Of…course. That’s good. So we can sever our bond whenever we want to.” The words tasted sour in my mouth but I made myself say them anyway.

  “Yeah. Of course.” He looked down at the implement in his hand as though it might bite him. “How…” He cleared his throat. “How do we use it, I wonder?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I didn’t see any directions on the wall.”

  “I don’t either but…hey—look!” He came back to the bed and sat beside me, holding out the Claw. “See? Look on the shaft of it.”

  I bent to look at what he was talking about. Tiny black letters and symbols in the ancient tongue which decorated the walls were appearing up and down its golden sides.

  “What does it say?” Drace asked me.

  “It says…” I cleared my throat, reluctant somehow to read them, to speak the fatal words aloud. But that was foolish—we wanted to be parted. It was the point of our entire quest! I made myself go on. “It says:

  “To sever a bond the Goddess has wrought

  Is wrong and brings nothing but pain

  But if you must, put the Claw to your heart

  Draw blood and be lonely again.”

  Drace cleared his throat. “Um, okay. I guess that’s pretty clear—we just scratch ourselves on the left side of our chest, right over our heart.”

  “I guess so,” I said dully. It wasn’t lost on me that the instructions on the claw mentioned the word “lonely.” It was exactly how I had felt all of my life—and how I would soon feel again. “Do you want to go first or should I?” I asked.

  “Uh…” Drace didn’t look any more eager than I felt to break our newly formed bond. “Maybe…maybe we should wait,” he said at last.

  “For what?” I demanded. “I thought you wanted us to be free of each other? Why else wake me from a sound sleep to show me the instrument of our separation?”

  “I just happened to wake up and see it lying there—I didn’t go looking for the fucking thing,” he growled defensively. “Okay then, you want me to go first?”

  “If you like,” I said coldly. So much for bonded bliss—we’d barely been together an hour or so (depending on how long we’d been napping) and we were already going to sever our newly sealed bond.

  The prospect made my chest feel tight and I felt a deep unhappiness coming from Drace as well. Could it be, he didn’t want to sever the bond any more than I did? But then why had he called my attention to the Goddess-damned Claw in the first place?

  “Neither one of you is going first!”

  Drace and I looked over and saw that Rylee was awake and sitting up. The furs were pooled around her waist, leaving her lush breasts bare and her hair was wild around her face. I couldn’t help wanting her and I felt an answering surge of lust from my temporary bond-mate. Hmm—I hadn’t thought of him as “temporary” for a while—the return of that word made me feel melancholy all over again.

  “What did you say, baby?” Drace asked her, because Rylee was glaring at us both.

  “I said neither one of you is going to break the bond—not yet!” she exclaimed. “What if we meet those damn horse-panthers again when we leave this place? What are we going to do if they decide to go for me because we’re all unbonded and they can somehow smell it?”

  I felt a rush of relief.

  “Of course, Rylee is correct,” I said. “We cannot break the bond until we bring her safely out of the jungle.”

  “You’re right!” Drace also looked relieved. “Damn—can’t believe we almost did that! Sorry, baby,” he added to Rylee. “We weren’t thinking straight.”

  “So you’ll hold off—on severing the bond?” She looked at us anxiously. “Because I have to be honest—I feel much safer now that the three of us are linked. It’s like…like we have a layer of protection we didn’t before when we were only sort of half-way bonded.”

  “I agree,” I said thoughtfully. “We’re stronger together than we are apart.”

  “Absolutely.” Drace nodded. “Fine—we’ll just take the Claw with us and use it…when we decide to.”

  “A good plan,” I agreed and then my stomach rumbled.

  Rylee grinned. “Hey—sounds like somebody’s hungry.”

  “Well, we did work up quite an appetite earlier,” Drace said. “I mean, that was some hard fucking work.”

  “No pun intended?” Rylee asked dryly. “And are you actually saying that making love to me was hard work?”

  “I was talking about the hike through the jungle and standing off those damn kr’awn,” Drace protested. “Honestly, baby.”

  “All right—I forgive you.” She laughed and slapped at his shoulder playfully. “Come on, let’s get some food out of the packs. And please tell me you brought something besides hairy spaghetti and eyeball oatmeal.”

  “Actually, I simmed some of the Earth delicacies you call ‘sandwiches,’” I said, answering her question. “Drace was making the clothes with the clothing sim, so I took charge of packing the food.”

  “Look at you two, working as a team! In more ways than one.” She blushed, her cheeks going rosy under her creamy brown skin tones.

  “Sharing you with Drace was incredible, ma 'frela,” I murmured, reaching over to brush my knuckles over her hot cheek. “I hope you were able to accommodate us without pain.”

  “Not a bit of pain,” she murmured, blushing again. “You guys, uh, prepared me really well. But how…” She cleared her throat. “How was it taking turns being the Beta? Did it bother y