Page 23 of The First Omega Made
His mouth unhinged, jaw open wide, descending over mine. The kiss of life and plenty. A Colthraxian’s greatest pleasure to experience. And it was.
Euphoria coursed through me as sweet liquid touched my lips. I couldn’t bear to imagine what it was or where it came from. I knew. He was attempting to reproduce.
I wouldn’t reciprocate, but my true body writhed in pure bliss, undulating in my chest as the wormlike carapace of what I truly was partially hung from my body and thrashed.
He bathed my insides in potential life, and when my oviducts didn’t contract or flood—I knew I’d succeeded. Still, my body reacted as if I were being flooded with his reproductive cells.
With a harsh jerk of his hand, my neck snapped, and he dropped me to the floor, staring at me with bright eyes full of color. What color it was, I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t even blink. Red maybe? I was looking at it, but nothing came to mind.
I wasn’t seeing with Sarge’s eyes. My connection had been severed, and the withered eyes of my true body peeking from Sarge’s chest watched in slow motion.
“Filthy fucking piece of shit that was my godsdamned husband, you fucklord!” Doc’s shrieking voice reached an octave and ferocity I’d never heard before. He was little more than a streak in my vision, followed close in tow by Noel, descending on him like a pack of lyrets on a palmetto bug.
Don’t ask me why cockroaches survived space travel. They did. And bedbugs.
Doc swung his fist, piercing needle in hand as he stabbed the syringe into Shafa’s chest and depressed the plunger. Noel grabbed the male by his head and slammed it into the metal wall so hard it left an indentation and a smear of magenta blood.
Magenta?Sarge’s eyes were working again. Shafa laughed and choked as his body shook and bile spilled over his lips.
“Too late. I bred him. Colthraxia noa!”Colthraxians eternal.
“I think he impregnated Sarge before we got here.” Noel stared down at my prone form.
I wanted to laugh, but my partially connected body only managed a wiggle. “I desexed myself.”
The words came from my true form’s lips, a whisper from a tubular mouth.
Doc fell to his knees. “Sarge. Progenitors’ sake… Sarge…”
And true to his promise, he slid his newly scaled hands into my—Sarge’s chest cavity, carefully separating his nerves and my connection points with the most delicate care. His hands were softer than I ever imagined, so warm, firm. If I was going to die, it was a great place to do so. Poetic, almost.
He lifted my pale, white body to his lips.
“Space leech.” Noel stared down at me, his endless eyes full of sadness.
“Ph—F-fuck you, s-space slut.” The words croaked from a mouth that was not meant to speak common tongue, or really speak at all. It was a skill I’d mastered out of boredom.
Noel laughed. I didn’t hear the noise from him often, but I triggered nerves along my body to stimulate a smile in the corpse I no longer inhabited.
Doc gave a cough of laughter too and brought me to his chest and sobbed.
“Clos-ser,” I choked out the word. I was close to death, but that didn’t mean I had lost my sense of playfulness.
Doc lifted me as I urged him to bring me to his ear. “Lis-sen.”
As his newly pointed scaled ear presented to me, I trembled with effort to say three words. “I love you.” Then I extended my proboscis and licked his ear in a long swipe, a familiar gesture I knew he hated, at least in my human form.
He flinched and pulled me away with a swear, and I couldn’t hear anymore after that. The breath left me. The cold hurt me. His hands—they were warm.
I’d gone to heaven.
Chapter Twelve
Doc
“Perfectly good corpse, here.” Noel grabbed Shafa by his ankle and hefted him messily, dragging the male back toward the lab as I sat there holding the parasitic remains of the only love I’d ever known.
He’d gone out with a laugh, died right in my hands as I kissed the top of what Ireallyhoped was his head.
