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RIZAN

T he human male stared at Kroktl’s back as he carried our mate toward their bedroom.

For a moment, I thought he’d attempt to follow them, giving me a chance to eliminate him.

I didn’t trust any human except Natalie.

Now that she was on our grid, I had access to all her memories of how the man had treated her over the years.

He’d be extremely lucky if Kroktl didn’t peel his hide off in strips.

One snap of my long jaws and the man’s head would roll. Tempting, for sure. Though that would be too quick of a death for the man who’d betrayed our mate.

Axxol started to command me. :Don’t let him communicate ? —:

:Already done,: I replied, clicking my jaws together, both with irritation and to rattle the human. :Any attempts at communication with external parties will be intercepted.:

Our former alpha’s lips curled back from his teeth, but he didn’t snap back. A feat indeed. He might have come to a bare minimum understanding with Natalie, but that didn’t mean he could go back to running the squad. Everything had changed here on Earth. We’d evolved.

I didn’t need the Big Rig alpha to start throwing his weight around.

“Um.” The other human female stared up at Axxol, her face pale and eyes large. She swayed slightly, her knees wobbling. “What was that?”

He blew out a snort of disgust. :What the fuck are we supposed to do with them?:

:The fuck if I know.: I watched as her knees folded up and she sank to the floor, her eyes rolling back in her head. I sighed. :The humans may need a medic.:

:Busy,: Snryx snapped. :I’m not leaving our mate’s side until she’s out of danger.:

:They’re fine,: Axxol said at the same time that Kroktl growled out, :She’s still in danger?:

:Not immediately,: Snryx amended more calmly.

:But she’s been through a great deal in two short months and endured a cesarean birth in an unsterile, uncontrolled environment.

Her body needs to adjust to the trauma. Her uterus needs to shrink, her blood volume needs to reduce, and I’m constantly monitoring for any hint of infection. :

The human male squatted down beside the female and took her hand in his, patting his fingers against hers. She moaned and mumbled incoherently. “I think she just fainted. Some water might help.”

Ignoring them completely, Axxol disappeared back outside, presumably to scout the area for intruders while we’d been gone. Of course he considered fetching for our unwanted guests to be beneath him, but Kroktl certainly wasn’t leaving Natalie and their youngling alone to go scout.

I couldn’t risk flying without being seen in broad daylight.

Snryx was obviously needed at their side, and Lohr was using the medic’s data to run analytics on the youngling.

How she might develop. Her abilities compared to what we knew of human infants.

Trying to forecast where she might have challenges in this foreign environment.

All very important things I couldn’t help with. Which left me to babysit the humans.

I shifted back into my more human-like shape and retrieved bottles of water from the kitchen. The man stared up at me, his mouth hanging open for long seconds before he finally took the offered bottle. Feathers rippled down my spine in an upright ruff of irritation.

He splashed a little water on the female’s face, and she finally opened her eyes. Supporting her head, he helped her drink several swallows. Then she saw me standing nearby and spluttered water everywhere. “What the…”

Crossing my arms, I stared back at her, letting my eyes flash and burn. Though I didn’t snap my jaws at her.

I got it. I looked way different than her species. Even more different than the other dyni. Natalie hadn’t stared at me with such horrified fascination—which was only one of the many reasons she was our mate.

To her credit, this female didn’t bolt, and after a few moments of awkward staring, she managed to say, “I’m sorry, I missed your name.”

“Rizan.”

“I’m Holly, and this is Dr. Snyder.” When I made no further attempt at communication, she shifted up into a seated position and looked around the room. “Where are we?”

I considered in silence a moment, weighing how much to tell them. “A safe location on the coast of Guatemala.”

“At least half a day’s drive from Creel,” Snyder whispered hoarsely. “Yet it only took seconds.”

“That was a… jump?” Holly asked.

I didn’t see a reason not to answer their questions. For one thing, it gave me something to do, and for another, if they betrayed us in any way, it’d be feeding time. Win, win, in my opinion. I nodded. “Our pilot uses jump rings to take the squad to a new location.”

The male stared off into space a moment, still gaping but at least not directly at me. “So that’s what the blue lights are.”

My eyes narrowed. “What blue lights?”

“The alien sightings I’ve been tracking, trying to figure out what was going on with Natalie.”

“How many have you tracked?”

The human jumped as if I’d taken a bite out of him. “I don’t know without looking at my notes.”

I stared at him expectantly until he dragged a backpack off his shoulder and rummaged around in the bag.

I’d been monitoring news channels for anything suspicious—but primarily looking for sign of Myrm deposits.

Jump rings generally happened low to the ground, disappearing so quickly I hadn’t expected any sightings to be noted.

But if the human had a record of other blue lights that didn’t match with our arrival or the activity in Creel…

There might be other squads deployed to Earth.

Hunting for us.

LOHR

Such a marvel.

I stared at our mate and youngling, resisting the urge to taste Kroktl’s offspring so I could begin my own set of diagnostics.

Snryx had implements monitoring both mother and young, plus the medibot he’d deployed before we’d left for Creel.

Her uterus was still nearly five-hundred percent larger than before pregnancy, even though he’d removed the placenta and umbilical cord.

I’d never been more jealous of our medic’s implements, one of which had been designed to extract and dispose of blood and tissue during surgeries so no part of our technology was ever left behind.

Of course all the data he extracted was immediately available on the grid, but it wasn’t the same.

He held parts of her inside of him. Breaking down that tissue as he studied it—and absorbed it.

A part of Natalie would be inside him forever now.

Snryx activated a brief vid on the grid displaying human newborn care. :The youngling should be bathed and swaddled in warm clothing.:

They both looked at me.

Oh. Me .

They trusted the youngling into my care while they took care of our mate.

My hands trembled as I reached out toward the sleeping youngling, carefully shifting her negligible weight into my palms. She stirred, a soft whimper escaping her tiny mouth. For a moment I froze. My mind completely devoid of any useful input or reference.

Afraid I might drop her, I pulled my arms in closer to my body, cradling her against my chest. She nuzzled softly, her breath sighing out, her body relaxing back into sleep.

No wonder DSC took such care to make sure no dynos ever had our own young. Because I would do anything, kill everything, to keep her safe.

I carried her into the adjoined bathing room our mate used to soak in warm water.

The oval tub was far too large for such a small body, so I decided to use the hand-washing basin instead.

Cradling her in my left arm against my chest, I ran water to the specified temperature in the vid and procured clean, fluffy toweling.

Riz had already stocked the bathroom with an impressive array of infant items, including mild soap and lotions for her skin. Though since she was half dynos…

A fierce spurt of pure glee flooded me. A dynos-human youngling—from a human who we also now knew to be Myrm.

The possibilities were so astounding they defied even my programming to compute.

Her skin might be as impenetrable as ours, which would make any human lotions merely pleasantly scented.

Though I would proceed as carefully as if every epidermal cell on her tiny body was as fragile as our mate’s.

Gently, I eased her into the warm water without waking her and used a small square of pink cotton to cleanse the dried matter from her skin, noting the scientific differences as I cared for her.

Her coloring was pinker than ours, closer to our mate’s soft, perfect flesh.

So using cleansers with the appropriate ph levels would be best. Unlike any of us, she possessed hair follicles all over her body with a fine down on her skull.

Her features were mostly human though her eyes were larger and spaced proportionally further apart than her mother’s.

Her skull was less round and larger, which would have made for a difficult vaginal birth.

In my thick, rough palms, she seemed inordinately tiny but despite such a brief gestational period, she weighed three point eighty-eight kilograms. Much of her weight came from the density of her bones.

She would be strong and no doubt fast like her sire.

Snryx had cauterized the stump of her umbilical cord.

She had human genitals and waste openings, which was a little surprising.

Surely our dyni digestive system was far superior, creating very little waste our bodies needed to dispel.

Though I wouldn’t question the marvelous combination of her DNA.

Riz would be pleased that the cartons of diapers he’d procured would be of use to keep her clean and dry.

She slept through the entire bath. Before I lifted her from the warm water, I couldn’t resist gathering my own data. I allowed my tongue to uncurl and lightly touched the top of her head.

Cleansed and fresh from her mother’s womb, the youngling was wholly unique.

The only creation of her kind. Not quite human.

Not quite dynos. A perfect blending of the two—three—species.

Myrm lived in her too. At first reading, her Sirian cells weren’t as sophisticated as ours, but were closer to what pure mrion must have been before DSC’s experimentation.

Plus she carried Natalie’s curiosity and natural intelligence.

Her emotional capacity for love and empathy.

Kroktl’s brutal speed and enhanced eyesight, his predator skills honed through thousands of improvements to make him impossible to eliminate.

Their youngling would be a force to be reckoned with.

Which meant she would be DSC’s number one kill target. Or at least the second most wanted target. Surely they’d want to eliminate Natalie before she could breed again.

My hands trembled as I fussed with the strange diaper, but forcing myself to focus on its configuration kept the sheer emotion from overwhelming me.

Perhaps this was why DSC kept each squad isolated and so carefully controlled.

Down for re-programming and conditioning or deployed on assignment.

No time to feel. No time to think. To doubt the rigorous controls placed on our existence.

In all the missions we’d completed before Earth, I’d never noticed emotions overwhelming my natural intellect.

The only emotion I could even remember noting before was mild surprise when Axxol ripped off my limb.

Though even then, I understood why he’d done it.

It’d been a serious injury, certainly, but with Snryx’s medical skills, I wasn’t truly in danger. I held no grudge or anger for the injury. Even if Axxol had managed to kill me, I wouldn’t have felt such tension inside. As if my intestines were twisted into an incomprehensible knot.

Dread. Fear. Rage that made me tremble from head to foot.

At the thought of any harm coming to this youngling or her mother.

Losing either of them would incapacitate me more severely than any damage the Big Rig could ever deal me.