Page 43 of The First Omega Made
Our child wouldn’t be pure Naleucian, would have small parts of human and Tal in him from Gorm, but Noel felt like hewould look enough the part that it wouldn’t matter in time. And that made me happy. It made Gorm happy, too.
“Sorry I can’t be part of your mate thing. I see that love you got going on and I envy it, but I—” Gorm glanced from the egg to me. “I’m not the settling down type.”
Sarge chuckled and leaned in to give me a kiss. “Thankfully, from what I remember, couples with donors aren’t much of a rarity. Not everyone was meant to throuple.”
“Too right. I was meant to be a man w-h-o-r-e.” Gorm grinned, proud of himself for not swearing until he spit out an F-bomb right as Nexus tried to climb him like a tree to perch over his shoulder.
“Egg!” The little one beamed, very proud of himself.
“That’s right. And us betas gotta stick together, yeah?” Gorm ruffled Nexus’s messy dark-blue locks and grinned. I wondered what color our Noah would be, as his skin was still translucent in the 4D scans we’d taken.
“Unca!” Nexus affectionately rubbed into Gorm’s hand and grinned, his little needle-sharp teeth glinting until he leaped onto the bed and sniffed about my plate for an uneaten morsel. Finding something, he nibbled away with lip-smacking pleasure. “Mea!”
Noel’s sweet smile broke through his monotony, a truly beautiful thing that made me jealous. He looked like some sort of elven prince when happiness dominated his face. The way his ears pointed, eyes glistened, and perfect lips upturned…
“Stop that!” I shooed at Noel, making him raise a brow.
“What is it that I have done?” Noel plucked Nexus up and held him, head tilted.
“Being cuter than me. Not fair.” I stuck my pointed tongue out with a flick, and Noel rolled his eyes.
“Once we reach Paradise, you’ll see how very drab I am. You are the beautiful one. I’m sure your babe will be no different.”Noel smiled and stalked off, his tail swishing as he did so. And if I wasn’t mistaken, a buzz of something came off of him, hitting my receptors like the tiniest bond—our connection. A bond of friendship.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sarge
The 4D showed us all we wanted to know as every day our little one grew, his yolk shrinking and face becoming clearer. I treasured the way he sucked his tail and curled up even more than I did the colors that we could see. Orange like my own scales, but his stripes were blue like Doc. According to the documentation, bicolors were regarded as being very beautiful, much like humans regarded red-haired people. It also meant that he would not be a beta. Betas couldn’t carry two color genes. And when spines failed to develop, it meant he wasn’t alpha, either.
“A little omega,” Doc said, his voice cracking. Of all the things that Noah could have been, an omega was the best. When we reached Paradise, he’d be accepted so much more readily than Gorm or Noel. From what I could gather from Shafa, Noel’s existence would be considered a shame on his patrons. And their mateships would be excused with ignorance. The Naleucians were forgiving people until it came to those who harmed their own kind. The Colthraxians and their near-extinction were good indicators of that. As far as I knew, they were the main reason for the largest part of our demise.
My biggest worry was that they’d reject me. What I was could be considered an abomination to them. Though, unless anyone knew my host before, it was unlikely I’d be discovered. I could claim memory loss and that a Colthraxian was removed from me. They’d not find a Colthraxian body to blame, at any rate.
Our navigation had been tricky. The planet was in a known part of the universe, two black hole jumps away from StarbaseDelta, but the planet itself was obscured by technology that I had a bare understanding of.
Merriel helped us decode the cloaking with software he wrote himself—illegally. With it, we were able to see a planet that was still obscured but discoverable once we were within its orbit. Paradise was closer than it’d ever been.
I’d woken that morning to jerking twitches in our bed and rolled over, swatting around to see if Nexus had snuck in through an air vent. It was not an uncommon thing, but the motion was not from him. Doc woke with a snort and sat up, drawing my attention to our egg.
“Noah?” Doc’s breathless words preceded the wet crunch of tearing eggshell. A little orange hand fought free of the shell, followed by a leg as albumin leaked onto our sheets.
A sharp mew of frustration bubbled free of our egg, and my heart skipped a beat as I reached forward to tear the rest of the eggshell away. Instinct told me to help my young, and that I did, pulling him out with a wet yawn. Beautiful black eyes with blue irises like Doc’s had been before the change blinked up at me. “Noah…”
He struggled, fat tail wiggling until Doc pulled the wet young one into his arms to hold his sticky little form. “Sarge. We… We have a baby… It’s our baby…”
The breathless sobs that broke free of Doc’s lips made my heart swell and tears flow freely. I didn’t care if I was less of an alpha or seen as weak for it, because the tears were mine to shed.
I was the luckiest Colthraxian in the galaxy. The universe, even.
“Congrats, dudes! It’s a space lizard!” Merriel chimed above us, and a celebration song played over the speakers, letting everyone on the ship know that little Noah had been hatched.
A strangled growl told me that our young one would be hungry soon and Wallace would be one of the first to see ouryoung. If the song above didn’t have him making something, the early breakfast rush would have.
I let Doc love on our little one as I snuck off and got a wet towel to clean him. And I thanked the stars that baby Naleucians only eliminated over water when prompted and didn’t require diapers. We weren’t responsible enough for that.
So, when we finally emerged from our bedroom to carry our newly-hatched little one, it was more than Wallace that had woken. Vil and Noel had greeted us with Gorm, arms outstretched. And Doc let him hold Noah first. “Bana’s little accident!”
Noah, who had no idea what Gorm said, chirped excitedly and snuggled into his hold and curled his tail in with a yawn. He’d change his tune when meat got involved, but that was enough for us.
