Meridian Warriors: Xander and Des (14 page)

“When can we move in, and since the mate’s
house is not done, and we have a lot of bedrooms, I counted five
others on each wing, can we put Sam and Gabby in the west wing
together, and we would all be happy,” Alex asked.

Xander nodded, “No problem, we will ask the
men to help us in the morning, but for now, let’s get back to the
headquarters.”

Alex reluctantly left the home and stared
longingly as they drove away. She never dreamed she would actually
find a home that she loved. When she was small, the house she grew
up in was not a home; it was a monstrosity that she lived in. Her
father loved it because it spoke of his prestige and his ego. As a
child she barely saw him. Thinking back, the house was probably the
same size as this one, however, this was a warm feeling, wonderful
home she could see raising children in with the men she loved.
Wait, what?
Loved
?
Shit, when the hell had that
happened
? With tears in her eyes she looked at her men, Xander
pulled the cart over when he saw her eyes.

“Sweetheart, what is it, are you hurt? Do we
need to call Sage, can you make it back?” Xander said
anxiously.

Des was out of the back and leaning over her,
running his hands over her body looking for something. “I don’t see
anything, but it could be the shift, maybe it screwed stuff
up.”

Alex cried harder and pulled one of their
hands to her chest, which made them pause. “No, I am fine, I just
realized something.”

“Thank goodness, you scared the shit out of
me!” Des said with a relieved tone.

“What did you realized?” Xander said slowly
with a guarded tone.

Alex smiled through her tears and looked at
both of them and wailed, “I love you both.”

There was silence as she continued to sob and
pull them close to her, she didn’t notice the silence for a few
moments and then pulled back and looked at them. Des was laughing
and Xander was frowning.

“What?” she said.

“Not to sound like an ass or anything but
DUH!” Des said, kissed her soundly, and then jumped back into the
back of the cart.

Alex sat there stunned, “Hey, that sounded
exactly like an ass.”

“Was there even a question of that?” Xander
frowned.

“When you are a female, yes. I told you,
I
love you
and now you should be telling me how much you love
me,” Alex said impatiently.

Xander looked over his shoulder where Des was
laughing quietly again. “Why? We already said it,” Xander said.

Alex thought and then frowned, “No you
didn’t.”

“Yes, we did,” Xander argued. “When we had
sex, Meridians do not have sex with anyone other than their mates.
So of course, we love you. We bonded—it is the ultimate declaration
of love.”

Alex shook her head. “Doesn’t count unless
you say it.”

“I love you,” Xander said flippantly.

“Now I don’t want you to say it. Not unless
you mean it,” Alex said.

“We do!” Xander yelled.

“No you don’t, or you would have said it,”
Alex said and folded her arms across her body.

“FINE!” Xander said and made the cart
jump.

Des opened his mouth to say something and
Alex held up her hand, “Not a fucking word.”

The rode the rest of the way to the main
building in silence, when they arrived Alex got out and stomped to
the main floor. She walked up the stairs until she got to the
medical floor and slammed the door of her room.

“What just happened?” Des said, scratching
his head in frustration.

“I have no clue, but we are gonna find out,”
Xander said and walked to where the medical offices were and
slammed open the room. “SAGE!!!”

***

“How in the hell could you fuck up a mating?”
Sage asked, laughing.

“Oh, real funny, wait until you have to deal
with your female mate, then you will see what the hell we are
talking about. This is screwed up. And she shifted,” Xander
said.

Sage nodded and frowned, “Yeah, we have to
take more tests before we can allow her to do that again. Make sure
that she has no lasting effects, how she shifted, why now, all of
it. We have to figure it out,” Sage said and stood. “Why don’t you
go to Cash and Rosul, see if they can do some research about how to
dig yourself out of a hole when you piss off a woman. I will take
care of the rest.”

“On it,” Des said and dragged Xander out of
the room protesting. Des already had an idea of what would make
their little mate turn around.

***

“Now I am dying, just tell me,” Alex said
dramatically and then took another swig of the wine bottle. By the
time Sage had gotten to their room, they had called the chef and
asked for wine. Thank goodness, he got there before she had started
drinking. The blood he took from her, Sam and Gabby was at least
alcohol free.

“You are not dying,” Sage said from the
corner as he tried to make sense of the reports that were spitting
out of his machine.

The women were on the floor behind him, each
with a bottle in hand, each with an empty one next to them. They
were shit faced. Sage was just taking it in stride, although he had
called their mates. However, when the men showed up in their room,
the women stormed out and came into his office. Now he was stuck
with three drunken women who were bitching about men.

“Then what am I?” Alex slurred. “I can tell
you what I am not. I’m not a human. I’m not a rug to be walked
over. Damn it, I’m a woman with needs, and they are being asses. So
until they pull their collective asses out of their heads, this
vagina is closed.”

“Yep, we all have closed vaginas,” Sam said
and held up her wine bottle for them all to ‘cheers.’

“I say, we put a sign on the floor, I mean
the door,” Gabby said. “Casius thinks he can tell me what to do.
You know that is the only time he talks to me, when he is telling
me what I am going to do. My vagina is not going to be opened for a
long time!”

Casius leaned forward into the camera and
then growled.

“Has he kissed you yet, ‘cause I can tell
you, these guys can really kiss,” Alex said and laughed.

Gabby shook her head. “Hell no, he pisses me
off too much.” Gabby looked straight into the camera and growled
back.

The girls giggled and knocked their bottles
together again. Sage shook his head and focused on the results.

“Do you think you could listen and focus for
a minute?”

“Sure can, Dr. Fishman,” Alex said and held
up her bottle.

“Can I invite the men in please? This will
affect them,” Sage said.

“Nope, put them on the screen, Spock, we can
talk from here,” Sam said. “We need space.”

Sage rolled his eyes, and then pushed the
controls on his screen. All of the men appeared on the screen, they
were all in Xander’s office. His King narrowed his eyes as he took
in the scene in the medical office.

“Sage?” Xander said, put his fingers up, and
pinched the bridge of his nose. “Are they drinking?”

“Damn Skippy we are,” Gabby said and laughed
when Casius growled. “You should have been a werewolf, not a
Mermaid.”

“MERMEN!” Casius ground out and the women
laughed.

“Sage, I thought you were running tests,”
Xander said.

“I am, I did, shit, listen, I have the
results back, and I am not sure what is going on, but I only want
to have to explain this once,” Sage said and pointed over his
shoulders and continued, “and they are a bit drunk.”

“Hey, don’t call us drunk. We are slightly
incapacitated,” Alex slurred and lifted her bottle.

“Ha, bet you can’t say that five times,” Sam
said, slapping the floor.

“Moving on,” Sage rolled his eyes. “Alex’s
blood has changed, she is full Meridian now, I don’t know how or
why. However, Sam and Gabby still have partial blood—it may have to
do with the mating, or the water. We are going to have to test the
others to see. First, I have to run more tests on Alex. We have to
make sure that this change is not temporary or anything. We are
talking about new territory. I think the genetic markers have
something to do with this, as well as the mating. We need to figure
this all out, but until then, the women should not shift
again—under any circumstances.”

Xander and the men nodded their heads and
began to ask questions. “What about mating with Alex, I mean it is
kinda a done deal,” Xander said.

“Hey, this VAGINA IS CLOSED!” Alex laughed
loudly.

“Huh?” Des said into the screen and looked at
Alex as she frowned at them on the screen.

“What did I say, buddy. You can’t tell me
that you love me, then that’s it. Figure it out,” Alex growled.

“I did tell you I loved you, damn it,” Xander
ground out into the screen.

“Shit, this is like a real live soap opera. I
need some bon-bons and another bottle,” Sam said and leaned against
her sister.

“Yeah, maybe we should make sure there is
like no gun, you know how the soaps are, shit, someone always gets
shot and then they come back to life,” Gabby whispered.

“Bitches, I can hear you,” Alex laughed. Then
she turned and looked at her men and stuck out her tongue. “And you
said, ‘Duh,’ Des and Xander, I am not even talking about your
response. When a woman says,
I love you,
and you just look
at her with a frown. That is messed up.”

“We explained that,” Xander protested and
looked around at the men who were in the room. “And what the hell
is a soap opera?”

“Hey, don’t know the soaps,
Days of our
Lives
, and
As the World Turns
is fucking real!” Sam
said. “And you two,” she said pointing at Cash and Rosul, “you had
better be taking notes ‘cause seriously, I ain’t dealing with this
shit.”

Cash glared at Des and Xander and said, “See
what you have started.”

“What, we didn’t do anything. How hard is it
from going to part A to part B?” Xander said.

“What? Are you referring to our relationship
like you would
Legos
, are you fucking kidding me?” Alex
roared and tried to stand, only falling back to where she was, and
leaning against the wall. “This is all your fault.”

Sage looked at his friends and said, “For the
love of God, please stop.”

***

Alex rolled over and hit one of her friends
in the side of the head and they both cried out from the pain that
struck their head. “Shit,” Alex moaned, “where did the train come
from?”

Sam and Gabby held their arms over their eyes
and moaned together. “The light—it burns.”

They heard a man chuckling and all of them
looked around. How in the hell had they ended up on the floor of
their room in the hospital wing? Sage was standing over them
shaking his head.

“Well, darlings, you passed out after arguing
about a show called,
Dance Mom’s.
I have no idea what you
are talking about, but the lady who runs the studio sounds kinda
mean,” Sage said and bent down to help them up to their feet.

All of them moaned and groaned as they took
turns in the shower and changed out of their dirty clothes.

“You know it is all Xander and Des’s fault. I
swear men can be so stupid,” Alex grumbled.

“Yes, we could say they were stupid and
ignorant men who should have known better. Or we could say they
were stupid and ignorant men who are aliens that live with fifty
other men and have basically had limited female interaction for
three hundred years. Tomatoes, Tamatoes, I guess. I mean, how dare
they not know how to deal with you, a female mate they never would
have dreamed they would find. Very rude, you should never speak to
them again,” Sage said and leaned against the wall as the
information flowed through her head.

Alex paced and then went into the shower and
thought some more. By the time she was dressed and ready for the
day, Alex was sobbing and needing comfort from her friends as she
wailed.

“I am such a fuck up. I finally found men who
love me—for me—not for what I can do for them. And what do I do?
Act like a demanding, heartless, spoiled, bitchy prima-donna,” Alex
said.

Sage looked around the room helplessly. He
never thought she would start crying again. He just thought she
would think things over, now he was stuck in the room with three
wailing females again.
What the hell had his life become? He was
not a babysitter.

Relief came when Xander and Des pounded on
the door. Apparently, his leader had lost his patience, he needed
to warn them before they walked into the hormonal fest he had going
on.

Before he could reach the door, Alex jumped
up and ran for the door, flinging it open, and then into her men’s
stunned, waiting arms, crying.

“What happened?” Xander demanded, folding the
woman against him as he felt Des push to their side and engulf them
in protection as they looked around.

Alex began mumbling and crying, but neither
of the men could make out what she was saying. They were not sure
how to deal with this—crying—happy—mad.

Sam smiled and nodded then put an arm around
her sister and hugged her. “Oh look, our little Drill Sargent is
growing up,” Sam sniffed and Alex turned and glared at her before
looking up at her men.

“I am sorry,” Alex sniffed.

Xander and Des smiled and said, “We were
wrong, too, apparently. So let’s begin our mating again, shall
we?”

“Can I shift again then?” Alex asked
excitedly and Sam and Gabby stepped forward.

“No!” yelled Sage and they turned and looked
at him. “No shifting until we make sure you will not be
harmed.”

Alex frowned and looked at the men. What had
she missed, thinking back to last night, she frowned. She
remembered being in the office, Sage explaining things.

“So, I am dying?” Alex asked.

“Seriously, can we get off the dying thing,
NO, you are not dying? We are just being cautious, running tests,
making sure that everything is okay,” Sage said.