Crystals Three Chosen Mates by Suzanne Graham Page A

every day to tell her they were done with her.
    Her stomach leaped into her throat, and she dry-heaved into the bucket she kept at the side of her berth. Fortunately, she hadn’t eaten lunch yet, and breakfast had long ago digested. She rinsed her mouth with water from a bottle she kept on the shelf above her bed.
    “All right, Crystal. Time to put your big girl trousers on,” she told herself, setting the water bottle down. “Get out there and do the right thing.”
    She sent a message from her datapad to Henri and Stepho to have them leave the lab and meet her at their pod. Then she stepped from her room, straightened her spine, and walked resolutely to meet the men who would help her determine the course of her near future.
    As Crystal approached the door to Henri and Stepho’s pod, they approached her from the other direction of the hallway, coming from their lab. Stepho’s eyes lit with his obvious pleasure, and since he was the only one of the three she wasn’t mad at, she ran into his arms for a full-body embrace.
    “I’ve missed you,” he said simply.
    “Me, too,” she answered, hugging him tighter to her.
    He kissed the top of her head, gave her a final squeeze then loosened his hold on her as he stepped back to invite Henri to the reunion.
    “Do I get one of those?” Henri asked, sounding unsure of his place with her, but one look at his dark eyes and his silky black hair, and those damn dimples that were always just barely present when he wasn’t smiling, and Crystal couldn’t hold back her pleasure.
    She threw herself at him and inhaled his familiar spicy scent as she burrowed her nose in his neck. Tears pricked her eyes as her body relaxed in his hold, recognizing where she belonged.
    “Don’t ever keep yourself from us like that again,” Henri growled in her ear.
    “I won’t,” she promised him.
    “Let me look at you.” He grabbed her shoulders and made her take a step back from his body. His dark gaze studied her face, then skimmed down her body and back up again. “Not good enough.”
    “What?” she protested, trying not to let his words hurt. She’d thought he wanted her back, now she wasn’t good enough?
    “You’re not taking good enough care of yourself, Starlight. You’ve got dark bags under your eyes, and your uniform is loose around your waist. You’re not sleeping and eating enough, and you’re probably working too many damn hours in the kitchen on your feet.”
    She coughed out a relieved laugh at his concern with her well-being, glad he’d explained his comment, even if it was far from flattering.
    She nodded her head toward the pod door. “Is Fisher in there?”
    “Yes,” Henri answered without giving away any additional information.
    She was almost too afraid to ask how it was going between the three men. “Is he recovering well from his injuries?” She eased into the topic.
    “He’s strong,” Stepho offered. “He’s healing amazingly fast.”
    “With the help of some of Stepho’s secret herbs,” Henri added.
    “Secret herbs?” She looked from one man to the other.
    Stepho shrugged. “They’re not secret. It’s just some experimenting I’ve been doing with a variety of floral subspecies from Fourth Quadrant, after finding information in the historical records about plants that aid in healing.”
    “That’s brilliant, Stepho,” Crystal enthused. “I can’t wait to see these plants.”
    “How about waiting until after we all have a little talk?” Fisher asked from where he leaned against the doorframe of the pod.
    Crystal had been so engaged with Henri and Stepho she hadn’t even heard the door slide open.
    She studied Fisher’s face, noting the fading bruises and the healing cuts. She glanced down at his left leg, but couldn’t tell anything about its condition through his trousers.
    “Are you doing well?” she asked as she watched his face.
    He probably had no idea how much information he conveyed through his eyes, and she would never