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KROKTL

I ’ve never seen anything more beautiful than my absolutely fucking gorgeous mate holding our newborn youngling on her breast.

Cradling them both against me, I threw my head back and bellowed out a victory roar.

The rest of the squad joined me, raking the ground with vicious claws, screeching a warning to anyone who dared to even think about threatening our mate and youngling.

Except for Snryx, who was still taking care of our mate, closing the neat incision and monitoring her stats.

:You’re scaring the humans,: Natalie said on the grid, wry humor soaking through each word.

Such a miracle to have my little human mate on our cybernetic grid. :The only human I care about is you:

I couldn’t help but bare my teeth at the man who’d left her to die to save his own skin. Wide eyed and pale, Snyder sat on the ground gaping at us, though Lohr did his best door impression to keep our mate shielded.

Our youngling made a ragged cry, snapping my attention back to her. Her little mouth screwed up into a squall, her face darkening from soft pink to red. She was coated in blood and fluid from the warm haven of her mother’s belly.

Rizan hopped over with a bag in his talons, shoving it closer to the medic. :I brought blankets, clothes, and food just in case.:

:Perfect.: Snryx immediately dug into the bag and pulled out soft blankets to drape over both Natalie and the youngling.

He uncapped a fresh bottle of electrolytes for our mate, who downed the entire bottle without pausing.

:We need to get them to shelter. The longer we linger, the more likely it is that we’re spotted. :

“Oh, Nat,” the other human female whispered, squeezing my mate’s hand. “I had no idea you were pregnant when we came to Guatemala.”

“I wasn’t,” Natalie replied softly.

“How is that possible?”

She hesitated, afraid to divulge too much information that might compromise us.

“Please,” her friend begged. “This is all so incredible. I’ve dreamed of making some kind of amazing discovery like this. Are they from a lost civilization that you stumbled into?”

Axxol growled so deep it rumbled the ground.

“Aliens?” The woman asked quickly, her voice shaking. “Some kind of monster from outer space? I’ve got to know.”

“Why?” Natalie asked.

Evidently, her bluntness surprised the other woman. Her eyes flared and her mouth hung open for a moment. “The possibilities. My brain is literally on fire right now. I want—need—to know.”

:Could she have some mrion fragments?: Natalie asked.

:It’s possible,: Lohr replied. :I’m doing a deeper analysis of your DNA to pinpoint the fragments that joined ours and completed the…:

His words trailed off into nothing. Silence weighed heavily on the grid. For once, all our thoughts were blank, stunned by his realization. Our realization.

Completed the Myrm.

Our human mate was Myrm.

Our enemy—that we’d been engineered to destroy.

I hadn’t really had a single moment to stop and think about what had allowed Natalie to jump from the cave to join us here. Let alone free Axxol when DSC had trapped him for decommissioning. She was on our grid, fully connected.

My human mate.

We contaminated her with our Sirian cells we’d been carrying as part of our programming for millennia. We’d been created from the lifeforms we were engineered to destroy, so DSC could maintain complete and utter control of the powerful technology.

Meanwhile, our human mate had already carried a trace of mrion DNA and we hadn’t noticed. Our presence completed the cells inside her, enabling her to join our grid. Jump with Axxol’s technology. Even use Rizan’s echolocation as a weapon to help them escape.

Everything we’d been programmed to believe about the Myrm flickered on the grid rapid fire.

They found sentient hosts to ultimately annihilate entire planets. No lifeform would be safe once they started to spread. Even the nano-particle-sized mrion stage must be eliminated at all cost. Before they could transform into a huge breeder capable of hatching pupae into drones and more breeders.

An achingly soft whimper escaped Natalie’s lips. “Am I going to turn into a giant space bug?”

NATALIE

Oh my god.

I hadn’t really had time to absorb the implications.

A bug-like creature, a Mrym drone, had come to the cave and helped me understand what was happening. It had a weirdly scratchy leg and huge beetle wings.

The breeders—or Mothers—were even bigger. Lohr said they were bigger than a blue whale. One breeder was enough to destroy everything on this planet.

The drone had called me Mother.

My hands shook, my heart racing. Was I already starting to transform? How would I know? How long would it take? I’d gotten pregnant within days of meeting Kroktl despite my birth control shot and then delivered our baby not even two months later.

If I’m going to transform into a huge breeder monster, it’ll be just as fast.

My newborn baby let out another mewling cry, shaking me out of the spiraling thoughts.

I looked down at her, watching for a moment as Snryx gently wiped the goop off her head and face.

At first glance, she looked like a regular human baby.

Her skin had a grayish red tinge—but that could be the stuff that coated her.

Two eyes, squeezed shut as she cried. A cute little button nose.

A perfect rosebud mouth, open and crying.

Blindly searching, her face bumping against me.

I shifted her slightly and her hungry little mouth found my breast.

Ah. Instinct. For both of us.

I’m a mother.

Her tiny little fingers opened and closed, pressing against my skin.

Searching for connection, even though she was only minutes old.

As soon as I touched her delicate palm with my index finger, she immediately wrapped her fingers around mine, clutching tightly.

Instinct, again. The analytical side of my head fully understood how important it was for the baby to imprint on her mother. Especially now.

She opened her eyes and they glowed with a red ring. Just like her very alien father.

“Wow,” Holly breathed out. “That’s so cool. What does it mean?”

Kroktl dropped his chin against my shoulder. I didn’t have to see his face to know he was beaming with pride. On the grid, his emotions brimmed like an overflowing cup. Plus his arms cradled me so gently, like we were the most precious things in the universe. “She’s a Tri-R just like her sire.”

“Tri-R?” Holly asked. “What’s that?”

“Red Raptor Rex.”

:I don’t know how trustworthy she is,: I warned on the grid. :I mean, we got along fine in class, but I really don’t know her that well.:

Axxol blew out a rude snort. :If she’s not trustworthy, we get a nice snack.:

I didn’t remind him of my rule about not eating humans. If anyone tried to betray us... Yeah. Snack time.

:That’s my baby,: Kroktl purred.

:Noooooo,: Lohr drew the word out, startling me.

I dragged my gaze up to his amber eyes. “What?”

:You won’t turn into a bug.:

“But?”

His giant shell shifted back and forth for a moment as he weighed his words—or ran the calculation. Either could be a possibility for the xenobiologist of the squad.

:You are changing,: he finally admitted.

My heart fluttered with anxiety, my mind immediately leaping from nightmare to nightmare. Beetle wings popping out of my back. Another set of weird stick legs poking out of my abdomen. Me turning into a giant space whale flying over Earth, gulping down dozens of people at a time.

I looked down at the little downy head—she had hair like me, unlike her father—and her fist wrapped around my finger.

And I couldn’t make myself care that I was changing. Not if I could have this. Kroktl wrapped around me. The squad complete and whole, dedicated to protecting us.

:This is only the beginning,: I promised her on the grid.

Because she already carried complete Sirian cells, she heard my words, even if she didn’t fully understand their meaning. She blinked up at me sleepily and continued to nurse.

“Axxol, take us home,” Kroktl said out loud.

He bared his teeth at Snyder. :Snacks first?:

:It’s up to you, baby,: Kroktl said.

Maybe Snyder was smart enough to feel his life hanging in the balance. Or maybe he had a true change of heart. I couldn’t be sure. “I had no idea, Natalie. I’m so sorry. I’m just as fascinated as Holly now. Please. Let us be a part of whatever you’re doing.”

She muttered beneath her breath for me to hear. “He’ll keep tracking alien sightings anyway.”

True. Even if we popped back to the lake house, Snyder had seen too much to ever go back to university life. Let alone his drug smuggling ring. Though I was sure he could make more money selling alien stories than drugs anyway.

I didn’t trust him. At all. But that didn’t mean I wanted him dead. Yet.

I gave both him and Holly both a firm, flat stare. “If you come with us, be warned. One twitch that Kroktl doesn’t like, and the big blue rex gets to eat you. Or you can go your separate way now.”

Rizan vibrated with tension, not liking the possibility they could spread news about us if we let them go. But he didn’t object. None of my squad did.

:This is your planet,: Kroktl reminded me. :Your life. Your people. If you want to give them a chance, they’ll get it. But I won’t allow them to betray you.:

“Understood,” Holly said faintly, her complexion pale.

Snyder swallowed hard and gave a sharp nod. He’d seen what Kroktl was capable of at camp when the mercenaries had taken me.

I smelled ozone as Axxol came closer, each step rumbling the ground beneath us. Another deliberate warning to the humans. His jaws gaped open in a toothy, hungry grin. His eyes crackled with blue fire. : Tell the human to come closer, if he dares.:

“We’re going to jump to a safer location,” I said aloud. “You need to come closer to us.”

Holly’s grip tightened on my hand, and she shifted slightly closer, though she stared up at the towering Tyrannosaurus Rex, her mouth hanging open in shock.

Snyder started to stand but took one look at the menacing fangs protruding from Lohr’s mouth and shuffled closer on his hands and knees, keeping himself small. “How close…”

His words fell off into nothing as the blue ring dropped around us.

Now that I carried complete Sirian cells, I could see and feel exactly what Axxol was doing to make the jump.

Energy shimmered around us, creating a sort of flat tunnel through the fabric of space and time toward the lake house.

We moved—but we didn’t. Reality shifted around us.

In the seconds we hung suspended in nothing, there were infinite possibilities.

Stars and planets and galaxies spinning around us, forward and backward through time.

I saw an Earth from millions of years ago like it was a blink of an eye.

Foreign and strange with massive trees and fronds long gone from this planet yet somehow, deep down inside me, I recognized it.

I knew this place as home. Not just long-extinct dinosaurs had roamed Earth.

Shadows blurred and softened the vision.

Hiding. Concealing the others. Like invisible cobwebs.

A jolt broke my concentration as Kroktl stood, shifting us in his arms. Though the feeling of tattered cobwebs lingered in my mind.

He tucked me into our giant, soft bed and wrapped around me, a living wall of heat and muscle that made my eyes heavy. “Rest, baby.”

“Gone,” I mumbled, sinking into sleep.

He kissed my forehead. “What’s gone?”

A soft resonance shimmered through me. An echo I barely heard. We are one.