CHAPTER 21

Tara

No physical defeat could have driven away the Soorns as effectively as what we did to them.Shocked by the vicarious experience of us just being ourselves, they couldn't bear it.They turned tail and ran.

It's hard to imagine anyone feeling such utter loathing for those who are not like themselves.It makes you wonder how the Soorns even managed to achieve interstellar travel.Beings who can't live with differences usually can't unite their civilization enough to leave their home planet.But we know so little about the Soorns outside of their hatred and aggression.Our best guess is that their fear and prejudice towards any sentient being not of their own species was what united them.If they weren't so murderous and violent towards strangers, I'd almost pity them.

All the same, when the empathic wave swept over Lycia and out from the planet into the system, all battle suddenly halted.The Soorn troops on the planet ceased fire, stopped in their tracks, and retreated back to their ships, leaving their mutated, weaponized creatures for someone else—namely the Colony—to worry about.Their ships in space called to all-stop, powered down their weapons, and set new courses at maximum speed out of Lycian space.The standing order in the ranks of Colonial Defense and the Canis Guard was to stop all battle, break off all hostilities, and let them go.With an unstated addendum of "Good riddance to bad rubbish."By the end of that day, telescopes and satellites around Lycia picked up the last Soorn ships disappearing into the Oort Cloud surrounding the system, and a massive sigh of relief circled the planet.

The next task for the Defense and Guard was to round up the mutated trees and reptiles that continued to stalk the planet after their masters left them behind.The plan was to burn off all the monster vegetation and burn any seeds from them that were found.For the reptiles, they would be humanely kept in secure enclosures and studied until a way was found to reverse the mutation.The creatures weren't responsible for what had been made of them and no one wanted the outcry that would result from just putting them all down.Dealing with them was a problem, but after all not as great a problem as the cause of their condition.

There was never a prouder man than my father after it was all over.In his public appearances and speeches, he was just about the proudest Prime Regent and the proudest father who ever lived, praising his daughter who had saved the world.I considered asking him to tone it down, but it occurred to me that at some point he would seek reelection and the prestige of being the father of the planet's heroine would help him to clinch things and keep the Manor.So I let him bask in this victory, but I also made sure to play up the fact that I couldn't have done it without my three gorgeous wolf men, who deserved every bit of the gratitude and honors that I was getting.And every bit of what I gave them when we retired from the public eye and into my bedchambers.

Kris, Nick, and Lon were all decorated in enthusiastic public ceremonies.My father presented them with the Colonial and United Earth Medals of Honor, and the Canis Guard bestowed on them the Wolf's Eye Medallion for Outstanding Valor—the highest honor that a member of the Canis Guard can receive.I was so proud of them; I could hardly stand it.I attended the Canis Guard ceremonies as their guest, and the howls that went up when they were pinned with their medallions were deafening.

In the midst of it, my mother contacted me from Earth and showered me with her own pride and love.We didn't see or speak to each other nearly enough after Mom decided she didn't want a life as a political wife and my parents divorced amicably.We promised to keep in better touch now, and she even expressed an interest in meeting my three wolf boyfriends.She refrained from asking me which one I would marry; that was a conversation to which we would just have to look forward.

As a so-called Princess who was never really royalty to begin with, I now found myself with a new kind of recognition.People were hailing and celebrating me as a planetary heroine.I was accustomed to the attention, but also a little embarrassed by it, considering just what it was that powered the empathic wave transmission that saved Lycia.We weren't ashamed of sex in this day and age; that kind of shame was something we learned about when we were taught history in school.Still, it felt a little awkward with everyone knowing that the emotional energy created by my relationship with three lycanthropes was what powered the technology that drove off an invasion.I took the praise and adulation with all of the grace that I had learned to show from being the daughter of the Prime Regent.All that I'd ever really wanted was just to enjoy my life, and now I was suddenly more famous than my father.I did my best to keep smiling and take it all in stride.

Kris, Nick, Lon, and I, once the crisis was over, really wanted nothing more than to jump back into bed together and not go to sleep, and not come back out for a couple of weeks.But they had new duties, helping with the mop-up of the planet now that Lycia and I were no longer in immediate danger.So we reserved all that for the nighttime.Out from under the Soorn threat, I was very much under the three of them, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Meanwhile, my father and the Colony began to face the sobering fact that we were not and never had been alone on the planet Lycia.There was the situation with our new "friends," the Caloxi, to deal with.What would we do about them?

The only option was to accept the presence of the Caloxi and learn to live with them.The days of humans settling on someone's land and killing off, or driving off, those who were there first were long behind us.This and the fact that the Caloxi obviously possessed technologies that we knew nothing about, meant that the only solution to them and us being on the same planet was a diplomatic one.The Interstellar Diplomatic Corps was immediately called in, and the first olive branch that we extended to the beings who had helped us save ourselves from the Soorns was the suggestion to change the name of the planet to Caloxia—a combination of Lycia and Calox.Some members of the Houses of Nobles and Urbans objected to the way "Caloxia" seemed to favor one species over the other, but the idea was on the table; and it included a search for other acceptable, and possibly neutral, names.The whole situation, however, brought another twist that I did not see coming and would not have asked for.

Earth needed an Ambassador to the Caloxi.By majority vote of the House of Nobles, the name submitted to the Prime Regent to hold this critical position was…Tara Landon.

To say the least, I was stunned.Flabbergasted and gobsmacked, even.What qualifications for the post of Ambassador did I have?As a so-called "Princess," my experience in public life was about looking good on camera and organizing artistic and cultural events.I had no other administrative experience and certainly no diplomatic background.But as the person who made first contact with the Caloxi, I was the one they named.If I took the position, my job would include brokering all treaties between us and the Caloxi, including which parts of the planet would be inhabited by Earth colonists and which ones would be held by the Caloxi.I felt thoroughly intimidated by the whole thing.

Daddy and I had a long talk about this.I expressed my uncertainties about taking on this huge responsibility.To my surprise, my father didn't share them.He told me that since I first brought Catrox and his friends to meet with him and told him what I'd gone through in getting them there, he had started to see me in a new light, as something more than just his beautiful, sheltered daughter.He had begun to realize how much I had grown up since we came to this planet.He admired the way I handled myself in a situation with so much at stake, and the way I had contributed to saving the world.My father said he thought I could do it, that he believed I would represent the best interests of Lycia—or whatever our world would be called—and the best interests of Earth, and that I would make him prouder of me than he already was.I have adored my father all my life, but I believed I loved him the most when he told me that.

Kris, Nick, and Lon were as sure about my ability to represent Earth before the Caloxi as my father was.The unspoken truth of the matter was that the four of us could not spend all of our time together in my bed, try as we might.Another subject of much talk on Lycia was my very prolific relationship with my three wolf-male suitors.Though I was no longer considered to be in any potential danger, at least one of them and frequently all three of them would escort me to public and diplomatic functions.I smiled politely and discreetly at some of the looks that we got whenever I appeared with them.They would tell me the kinds of things that their wolf ears picked up from other people, the things they whispered about us, and I wanted to laugh at both the kind of imagination some people had and how right some of them were.Nick was now calling the fact of my sleeping with the three of them "the big white wolf in the room," which everyone knew about but most people didn't discuss openly.But when Melanie and I had time alone together, I would tell her almost everything that went on when my three wolves came to my room.I told Melanie I was glad that the Caloxi empathic bridge was no longer in effect.If it were, everyone would have even more to whisper about than they already did.

One night, Kris, Nick, Lon, and I lay sprawled naked and happy in rumpled sheets in my bed after our usual hours of "quadrupling," as we had come to call it.My head was on Nick's chest as he propped himself up against the pillows.Lon lay beside us, fondling my bosom.Kris curled up at my legs, softly kissing my inner thighs.They had done their accustomed delicious job on me.

Something occurred to me."You know, Catrox and the Caloxi empaths must know about the four of us the same as our own people do.Being able to feel emotions and physical memories, they probably know about us better than our people do.But they never seem to let on.I wonder what they think when they pick up those impressions from me.How does it make them feel, being exposed to human sex, even indirectly?"

"Either it's not comfortable for them, so they keep quiet about it," Nick guessed, "or they don't care.I'm guessing they don't care.Being empaths, or having empaths in their lives, they probably figured out way before humans did that sex is natural and healthy."He laughed a little."Wait ‘til they start learning about our history.They'll probably look at all the taboos humans used to have about the body and fucking, and think it's incredible how backward Earth used to be and how long it took us to grow up."

"The taboos that humans used to have," I repeated, looking up at him with a crooked smile.

"Yes, humans," said Nick."Lycanthropes were mature about sex before humans were, after all.It comes with being part animal."

I kissed him on the big, muscular slabs of one of his pecs."Well, we all have to grow up sometime, don't we?"

He answered by lifting my face to his for a long, hot kiss that said exactly what was now once again on his mind.

Lon moved his knuckles sexily along my belly.When I parted the kiss with Nick, I looked down at Kris, who lifted his face from my inner thighs and showed me the gleam of unending desire in his eyes.Unable to resist, he slid a hand to the folds at the entrance of my sex, which was moist and slick from the climaxes of the three of them.

"Breaking protocol, Lieutenant?" Nick asked the recently promoted Kris.

"Beg your pardon, Sir," said Kris."I'm in love and I'm horny."He wore the most wolfish look on his beautiful, masculine human face when he said it.

"Like always," Lon said with a sexy grin of his own.

Nick nodded, agreeing."Like all of us."

"Permission to eat out the Princess and get us started again?" Kris asked.

The "protocol" had changed a little bit since we saw off the Soorns.Now any of them could begin things with me, but Lon and Kris were expected to ask permission to start.

With another nod, Nick said, "Permission granted—with the Princess's approval, of course."

"I approve," I said."Of all of you—always."

Newly aroused, I lay flat against Nick's broad chest and kept my legs open for Kris.Nick wrapped one arm around me and fondled my one breast with the other hand.Lon licked the nipple of my other breast while Kris gazed up at me from between my thighs and said, "I love you, Princess."

"And I love you," said Lon, taking his tongue from my nipple and giving me a tender gaze of his own.

"And I love you," said Nick, now and always their leader.

Sighing, staring down my body at the passion in Kris's eyes, I said, "I love you guys too.Always.Always…"

The last thing I saw before total pleasure overtook me was Kris's face descending upon me, the young wolf claiming his territory once more.

*****

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