Chapter Three
Veryl’s bandaged fist pounded into the punching bag, blow after satisfying blow.
“That’s right, brother. Let it out. Then it’s my turn.” Dez egged him on from his position bracing the bag with his shoulder. Veryl didn’t need his arena partner to elaborate on his own frustration. They were well enough in sync to be aware of the humiliation they’d shared the day before in the arena.
“Take a break, you two,” Cato said, hopping down from his perch at the edge of their sparring ring and walking toward the sheltered section of their practice pavilion. Beyond the other dragon’s shoulders stretched the entire practice arena they’d had built—an almost exact replica of the professional arena they fought all their matches in. But Veryl was beginning to feel like it had been a wasted expense when they got their asses handed to them so thoroughly by a duo.
Three against two should have been a cinch of a match. He landed one more ferocious punch in the center of the bag, then followed it up with a roundhouse kick that had Dez leaping back to protect himself.
“We need a fucking rematch,” Veryl said when Cato reached out to steady the swinging bag.
“You know they beat us clean,” Cato said. “We need to face the fact that the Hot Wings team is better than ever.”
“We need to be better,” Veryl argued. He glanced at Dez for support, and the red-eyed dragon nodded.
“They’re fucking invincible,” Dez said. “You’d never know Bryer spent the off-season recovering from that wicked mauling. They’re even better than they were in the spring, if they can beat a trio as highly ranked as we are in a goddamn exhibition match.”
“And we’ll get there too, with enough hard work. I have an idea.” A devious glint sparked in Cato’s eyes. “Let’s hit the showers and I’ll lay it out.” He nodded for them to follow, already stripping off his sweat-soaked shirt on the way into their private locker room.
Veryl’s dragon perked up at the determined set to the other man’s shoulders. As the trio’s team captain, Cato only had that look and that bearing when he had a plan to take their training to the next level, and it always resulted in an edge when they competed.
Mating would do it, Veryl thought, his gaze drifting down the tight muscles of Cato’s back to the flexing swell of his ass beneath his workout shorts. He’d heard the news of Hot Wings’ mating to the pretty human chef. Contrary to popular belief, it seemed mating had done the opposite of weigh the duo down. That had to be what Cato was about to suggest, and it would be Veryl’s chance to finally make a move and tell his partners how he felt.
Fuck, he had to rein in his libido for now, though. They reached the lockers and he kicked off his shoes and yanked off his shirt while imagining un-sexy things to cool off his raging erection. When he looked up after tossing his sweat-soaked clothes into the laundry hamper, he caught Dez leaning nonchalantly against his closed locker, buck naked and eyeing him with an eyebrow raised.
“Got something on your mind, brother?” Dez asked. “Some sweet little piece of shifter ass? Don’t tell me you’re breaking your vow of celibacy.” Dez’s gaze darted to Veryl’s crotch before sliding back up to meet his eyes.
Veryl’s face heated. He was still half-hard, the proximity of a naked Cato already standing under a steaming shower more than enough to have his cock on alert.
“None of your goddamn business,” he said, giving Dez a dirty look. “And you know I’d never break my vow. There’s too much at stake.”
The other dragon chuckled and moved into the second low stall of the shared showers, turning the water on to full blast and full heat. More steam billowed into the room, diffusing the light and lending a dream-like quality to the atmosphere.
Thankfully Cato had his face angled up into the water and his eyes closed when Veryl moved into the stall on the other side of him.
“We’d be a step ahead if you did have a female on the hook,” Cato said, jabbing the wash controls to activate the soap and darting a look at Veryl.
“You know I don’t. I haven’t been with a woman since we started competing. It’s what we all agreed on.” Veryl eyed his teammate curiously, feeling out of the loop on the conversation.
“I’m not talking about just any woman, though. A mate. That’s got to be how Hot Wings beat us. They’ve never been more in sync. With each other. With their animals. And you saw her on the sidelines. She was fucking invested, the way she cheered them on. I think her enthusiasm drove them harder from the inside out. We need that.”
I need you, Veryl thought, his dragon squirming in agreement, even though it still seemed to want to wait. For what, Veryl wasn’t sure. His feelings for his partners had been an ever-present ache for months, something that had grown bit by bit after one drunken night following one of last season’s many victories. In the thick of booze-fueled confessions, Cato had shared how he couldn’t live without the pair of them. “You two are my heart and soul,” he’d said, and the look in his vivid blue eyes had lit a spark in Veryl’s chest that had burned hotter as time went on.
“I’m all for it,” Dez said, as though the whole idea were a no-brainer. The man thought with either his stomach or his dick, so it was no surprise that the idea of landing his own curvy chef as a mate might appeal to the red dragon.
Veryl chuckled. “Of course you are, but do we really need mates? I mean, outside our trio … the three of us are practically mated in spirit. To each other, I mean. Why not …” He swallowed tightly, his head beginning to buzz with the momentum of the thoughts blasting from his mouth unbidden. It was all coming out now, wasn’t it? “Why not mate each other?”
Once spoken, the words hung in the room, buoyed on the steam like garish balloons he wished he could pop. Cato stared at him, one soapy fist hovering with his wash cloth over his crotch.
Dez let out a hearty guffaw. “You want my ass that bad, you just need to ask, buddy. Or did you want to give me yours? I’m game, but in case you haven’t noticed, our animals are all more content to play. If we were meant to mark each other, it’d have happened by now, don’t you think?”
Veryl frowned, irritated by his teammate’s logic, but unable to tear his gaze from Cato’s eyes. Something was churning in the other man’s mind.
Finally Cato shook his head and turned away so his front was facing the water again. “It isn’t that simple. Finding a mate is like alchemy. All the ingredients have to be in the right proportions. Time and place included, I think.”
“That’s just your theory,” Veryl argued. “We know our animals can be trained to follow commands. Why shouldn’t it work where that’s concerned too? If I want it enough, I can make my dragon want it as well.”
Cato let out a heavy sigh and turned off the water. He toweled off his head and leveled a piercing blue stare at Veryl. “Well, by your logic, I’d have to want it enough too. I love you, Veryl, but what I want is more than this.” He gestured around the shower to the three of them. “What I want is a spot in the Arena League Hall of Fame. What I want is a solid team who has each other’s backs through thick and thin. And what I want is a family. That right there is something we can never give each other, no matter how much we make our dragons want it. Kids, brother. Don’t you want that?”
His words hit like a sucker punch. Cato didn’t wait for a reply, but Veryl couldn’t have given him an answer if he’d tried. He’d only ever thought about family in an abstract sense. Something to think about having someday. After his career, the way every other arena champion did it. It wasn’t even on his radar as long as he intended to continue competing.
But being faced with the question now, and by one of the two people in the world who mattered most to him, he had a sudden ache of longing for exactly that, and couldn’t reconcile his desire for his two friends versus the desire to be a father.
He stood stunned under the shower for several more minutes, only coming out of his head to register Dez’s wet smack on his shoulder.
“We all want it, brother. Not just because Hot Wings has it. Because it’s in our blood to want. Everything good comes from love, from family. You of all people should know that.”
But the question was whether he could love anyone else but these two men who filled his life so completely. He had to be willing to try. If Cato believed in it strongly enough, it had to be worth a shot.
Still a little dazed from the revelations, he toweled off and met his teammates back in the locker room where they were both dressing.
“Where do we start?” he asked.
Cato darted a relieved smile at him. “We have some time off until the official season matches begin. Best way to maximize our time is to head to Earth. I’ll make us appointments with Gerri Wilder. If she can’t find us mates, nobody can.”