Page 21

LOHR

I took great pride in finally mastering an acceptable smoothie for our mate.

Making sure her diet was as nutritionally balanced as possible was the one special thing I could do for her.

I hadn’t understood her need for palatable food as well in the beginning, but I’d figured out the tastiest fruit and nut butters she preferred to make them as enjoyable as well as nutritious for her.

After coitus, she preferred something light and refreshing, so I prepared a large smoothie in a glass receptacle and placed it in the cooling unit until she awoke from a brief nap.

Returning to the nursery, I peeked into the crib to check on Akylla. Except she wasn’t there.

She’d been sleeping soundly when I left five minutes ago to prepare the smoothie.

I didn’t hear her usual sounds of merriment when she saw me, not even a hint of her breathing.

Though I didn’t have Rizan’s sensitive hearing apparatus.

No matter. She loved to play hide and seek.

Usually I wouldn’t cheat and locate her position on the grid, but given the lateness of the hour, I sought her on our network.

Nothing. I couldn’t find a trace of her in the entire house.

Still not concerned—not exactly—I touched my tongue to the crib mattress where she’d been lying just a few moments ago.

It was still several degrees warmer from her body heat.

It was difficult to trace her activities when she was in the room every single day, muddled up with all of us in and out, touching everything.

But she’d touched the rail just a few moments ago.

The freshest layer of her scent hovered in the air, sprinkled across the floor, to the window.

The open window.

My sensors shriveled up like the driest sands in the Sahara. Frantic, I touched my tongue to the window and outside as far as possible, verifying her recent passage. Outside. The youngling had passed through the window while unattended.

:Rizan, can you pick up Akylla’s signature from the air?:

He startled at my sudden question. Circling above the surrounding jungle, he dipped a wing and spun quickly toward the house.

I couldn’t hear his echolocation pinging off the structure and surrounding terrain but I saw the map drop onto the grid.

All of our locations were clearly marked inside the house—except hers.

:I’ve been in the air for the last hour, constantly scanning the entire property.

I haven’t seen anything moving on the ground other than wildlife. :

Outside on the green expanse surrounding the house, Axxol shifted into his BGR+ and sniffed the air. :Red, we have an emergency.:

Dread quickened my ponderous steps through the house, making my way outside to stand beneath Akylla’s window. Natalie would never forgive me. If something happened to her youngling because of my inattention…

I’d keep on walking. Right into the ocean. Let the waters cover me for all time for breaking her pure heart with grief.

“Akylla!” Natalie cried loudly enough for my inferior ears to hear. She leaned out the window, her gaze frantic. “What happened?” Her tone rose higher, approaching a frequency I’d never registered from our human mate. “Did they take her?”

Shifted into his raptor, Kroktl leaped out of the window. Nose tipped to the night sky, he breathed deeply, his jaws cracked to expose all his sensors. :No ozone. Could someone jump to our location without ? —?:

:No fucking way,: Axxol retorted.

:Negative,: Rizan confirmed. :I would have picked them up even if Big Rig was out cold. Nothing has crossed into our territory.:

:Then she’s here.: Kroktl turned to his mate and brushed her cheek with his. She didn’t recoil from his beast. :She’s playing. She doesn’t understand the danger we’re in. I’ll find her, baby. I promise. I can see through anything, remember?:

Rizan darted toward the rocky shoreline. :I’m picking up movement that might be her.:

Kroktl let out a short bark of agreement and sprinted after him. :The rest of you keep our mate safe. I’ll be back with our youngling shortly.:

Snryx wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. Even Axxol didn’t chafe at taking orders. Someone needed to guard the nest if Kroktl was gone, and who better than our alpha? Certainly not me. Not when I’d been the one to allow the youngling to escape my notice. I couldn’t bear to look at Natalie.

:I’m sure the little menace is fine,: Axxol said gruffly, whether to me or Natalie, I wasn’t sure.

She sniffed softly and my tongue curled up tighter inside my mouth. She wept. Because of me.

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “And she’s not a menace.”

Axxol snorted but wisely didn’t contradict the menace’s mother.

“Lohr, it’s not your fault.”

My head hung lower. :It is. I was guarding her.:

“She went from asleep to hanging off the ceiling fan without any of us noticing,” Natalie reminded me. “I was there. I missed it too. She’s not a little baby any longer. It’s going to be harder to keep track of her. Though I don’t understand why she’s not on the grid if she’s physically here.”

A raptor roar tore through the night—a shout of victory and confirmation. :It’s her. She’s fine.:

Through Krotkl’s eyes, we were all able to pinpoint the youngling’s location.

A sudden burst of energy and frequency sparkled across the grid, and Akylla’s presence popped back up for all of us.

Her glee at successfully hiding. The hunt for her, the best game in the world.

Seeing her father racing toward her as his Tri-R stirred something in her.

Molecules began to shift and rearrange themselves.

Her first shift into dynos came effortlessly, as it should. Outside under the stars in the wild.

Natalie sucked in a shaky breath. “Oh. My baby. Look at her.”

Kroktl scanned her for us, providing a detailed view of his youngling’s shifted appearance. Powerful raptor thighs and head, certainly, with similar red eyes and markings as her sire. Yet her body was shaped differently. Rounded. Parting open down her back to spread into hard shelled wings.

DNA inherited from her mother. Not human.

Myrm.

NATALIE

Stunned horror washed over me, followed immediately by wrenching guilt and shame.

My baby girl. I loved her without hesitation, regardless of what she did or looked like.

Nothing would ever change that. But seeing the bug wings—that she’d inherited from me —gave me an instantaneous ick.

Although the negative feeling was already fading away, I still felt guilty for that momentary knee-jerk reaction.

The Myrm DNA had blended with Kroktl’s to change her appearance. I hadn’t even known I carried fragments when I got pregnant. What did this mean for her?

My heart twisted into a knot and my stomach quivered with dread.

She’d be hunted and hated by DSC even more.

We weren’t just a rebel squad now, or even a random one-off successful breeder in the wild.

We were Myrm Mothers . Both of us. Capable of breeding not just wild dyni but also mrions and drones.

It’d never really connected in my head until I saw her shift.

The combination went beyond appearance with special abilities from both species.

I had no idea what Myrm powers we might have, or how they differed from the squad’s.

I’d been able to use Axxol’s jump and Rizan’s echolocation technologies instinctually.

No training, no real understanding. When I’d needed those powers, they were there and saved us.

What else are we capable of?

Shaken and more frightened than I cared to admit, I watched Kroktl interact with his raptor daughter. Racing each other in the night, letting her win, of course, though she was already surprisingly fast despite only recently learning to walk on her two human legs.

Rizan swept lower, letting the air flutter his feathers enticingly. Her wings lifted, flapping awkwardly, hopping her up and down off the ground.

:Fuck,: Axxol grumbled on the grid. :The little menace is going to be able to fly too.:

Despite my correction earlier, he referred to her as a menace again. This time, though, I sensed a fondness in the word with a touch of awed appreciation.

Fuck yeah. My baby girl will be able to fly too. She needs to be a menace—to stay alive.

:Even more impressive, she can ghost the grid entirely,: Rizan added. :We’d still be looking for her without Kroktl’s specialized vision.:

:How she’d figure that out?: Snryx asked.

:I hide,: Akylla bragged. :I hide good.:

:Yes you do, sweetie,: I told her. :Though you scared us by disappearing. Especially at night when little girls should be sleeping.:

:Sleep is boring. I hunt.:

:Night time is the best time to hunt, at least here on Earth: Kroktl agreed. :Though we should still know where you are.:

:Okay.: She heaved a grunty little sigh. :Hungry, Daddy. Show me hunt.:

Chills crept down my spine but I didn’t say a word. Akylla might only be a few weeks old, but she was dynos.

Which made her a killer.

She needed to hone her skills. She needed to be as fast and strong as possible if another squad attacked.

If that meant kill or be killed, then I wanted her to kill.

I didn’t want her to have my delicate human sensibilities.

As long as she didn’t kill for sport—and I already knew she didn’t have a single malicious cell in her body.

It still made me sad to watch them disappear into the trees while Rizan spun in slow, lazy circles overhead to keep watch.

She’d had not quite three full weeks of innocence.

Mothers probably always thought their babies grew up too fast but I’d only had days with her sleeping in my arms, milk drunk and cute.

:Just wait until she comes home blood drunk from her first kill,: Axxol said.

Snryx’s implements rattled together like swords. “It’s a very good thing you’re too far away for me to skin alive.”

Lohr made a surprisingly fierce growl from his turtle-like throat. :And I’m too slow to run you down.:

A silent, dark shadow swept past the window. Axxol’s giant T-rex head snapped at the blur but Rizan twisted away, dipping one of his barbed wings low enough to tear across his shoulder. I smelled blood.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I focused on not freaking out. How the fuck did I know what blood smelled like? Especially since Axxol was at least twenty feet away?

With my eyes closed, the smell intensified, as if my nose started working overtime.

Hints of ozone sparked in the coppery scent, telling me it was Axxol’s blood and not Rizan’s.

Though thinking of his turquoise feathers and shining green eyes convinced my brain that Rizan’s blood would smell like the jungle.

Fresh green living things. Maybe spiced with tropical fruit.

Now I’m really losing it.

The marks. Kroktl’s and now Snryx’s. I’d tasted their blood when I bit them, which had only intensified everything I felt for them. Of course my brain would start fantasizing about the rest of the squad’s blood. I wasn’t turning into some kind of sex-crazed bloodthirsty maniac vampire.

Right? Right.

Rushing air fluttered my hair back from my face. Rizan landed with a heavy thud right in front of the window. :You can find out what I taste like right now if you wish.:

I couldn’t help but wrinkle my nose at him—even though my mouth watered embarrassingly. “Not while you’re in your?—”

Wings tucked, feathers started melting back beneath his skin.

He didn’t turn inside out so much as simply absorb his dynos shape, with just enough feathers across his head and shoulders to remind me exactly what his creature could do.

Fly. Rake talons and teeth across even a T-rex’s thick hide and draw blood.

Blast waves of echolocation for over a hundred miles, constantly scanning for our enemies.

While effortlessly cobbling together miscellaneous Earth tech to show me glimpses into scientific technology so advanced it might as well be magic.

“Not yet. Not until Kroktl’s back.”

Rizan nodded without a single protest or grumble.

:We can come back now,: Kroktl said. :Akylla has herself a nice little feast.:

Barely, I suppressed a shudder. I carefully didn’t look at the grid to pick up on what poor thing she might have caught. :There’s no rush. Besides, you haven’t been eating much. You should catch yourself something to eat too.:

:I’m fine. I’ll snack on the squad’s kills.:

Deep down in our private connection, I felt a faint yearning, even though he tried to suppress it. The urge to run as fast and silent as possible. Be free. Kill his own prey. Revel in his strength and power that had increased so much since he’d found me.

:You haven’t had time to be yourself since you found me. You spend all your time with me.:

:Without a single complaint from me, baby. I love every second I can spend with you.:

I sent him an image of my head resting on his chest, my arms around his waist. :And I love it too. But it’s okay for you to have time doing other things, too. You absolutely should have time to do all the things you love. You were made for running fast and killing.:

:I do all the things I love to you.: He made a low, wicked laugh rattle the grid. :I’m made to love you.:

:Go,: I said more firmly, though I let a sultry heat flow through me. I knew he’d feel it too. :Run. Feast. Then come home to fuck me as hard and fast as you run.:

He roared in the night, just like when I’d been lost in the jungle. That sound of terror shrilled down my spine, sending my heart rate into overdrive. I shivered, clutching my arms around myself, fighting the urge to run. Don’t run. Never, ever run.

Unless I wanted to be caught.

Axxol’s beast let out an even more terrifying roar that rattled the glass in the window. :When we mark each other, I want you to run from me first. So I can catch you.:

:Bet,: Kroktl retorted on the grid. :She can run from both of us.:

Another prehistoric shriek echoed through the night. Akylla. She raced through the underbrush after her father, little legs pumping, but she wouldn’t be able to keep up with him for long.

:Run, little menace,: Axxol said. :I’m right behind you.: Though for my sake, he added, :I’ll keep her safe while Red runs.:

Wind picked up, rocking the trees on the edge of the jungle back and forth. The air felt more humid despite the breeze. “There’s a storm coming.”

“It’s actually a hurricane,” Rizan said.

On the grid, he displayed a weather radar map showing a spinning red eye headed straight for our little blue pin on the coast. Fucking great. As if extraterrestrial dyni squads hunting us and a giant pod of space whales hurting toward me weren’t enough, now we had a massive hurricane coming too.

I’d seen Jurassic Park.

The dinosaurs had already escaped. Maybe it was time for us to wreak havoc on our enemies in the eye of the storm.