Page 44 of The First Omega Made
It didn’t end with Gorm, as most of the ship wanted to hold the new one, making Nexus bark with jealousy at people, holding his little hands up in want ofuppieshimself. Wallace ended up putting Nexus on his shoulders while he cooked, handing the little one bites to taste test.
Part of me wanted to be afraid of all the people around holding my young. Doc should have been scared, too, but everyone had lunar cycles of experience being uncles, already. They openly accepted the new little hybreed as part of the community. We were a family.
I tried to tap into memories from my body’s original life, trying to recall what children had been like before.
I recalled eggs and omegas, but never children running about, no laughter or little ones scampering—in place of that, only sadness. Shafa had never had a live young. Families were so spread apart that he’d never had the experience of holding his own young.
And his memories had abruptly ended shortly after leaving Paradise. He’d entered stasis and been infected before ever waking.
“Sarge?” Doc rested a hand on my arm and stared me down as a few hot trails slid down my face and landed on my chest.
“I never had a family. Not until now. Not in this host or myself. I never knew my parents.” Few Colthraxians ever knew their progenitors.
“You have one now,” Doc said, pushing up onto his toes to kiss me. Our tails entwined playfully, a gentle version of the mating lock that had lost the edge of carnality. It was something more than that, really. It was a hug, a kiss, a comforting touch. “And I have one, too.”
When little arms wrapped around my leg, I glanced down and smiled at Nexus’s bright eyes staring up at me. “Mea?”
“Yeah. Let’s all have some meat.” I sniffed and picked him up with far more love and understanding than I’d had ever before. Nexus gave Vil and Noel just as much joy as bringing Noah into the world had done for me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Doc
The entire crew gathered in the cockpit as the planet came into view, dread sinking into our stomachs as a collective.
“Maybe it’s just the cloaking,” Vil said. His throat cracked, dry and helpless. “Or we’ve got the wrong place.”
I stared out at the growing orb, and Sarge shook his head slowly. “No, it’s the right place.”
When an inhabited planet sprawled as proficiently as Paradise was supposed to be, lights were supposed to span the surface from infrastructure. Nothing shone back at us. Fading signals beeped back in response to signals, a welcome to land in the Naleucian native language, welcoming home their prodigal sons.
A soft voice, like Noel’s and mine, spoke. An omega, I assumed. “Welcome to Paradise, Naleucian sons. You have been missed dearly.”
The recorded message played back as a beacon signaled for them to land at a specific place—a capital.
To save on fuel and time, we agreed to wait a few hours to land, for the face of that side of the planet to turn toward us. The waiting did us no favors as we broke into whispers of confusion.
“Guys, I don’t think there’s much life left here.” Merriel’s timid tones gave it gravity as Vil ordered the air quality, viral load, and other things to be tested as we approached. He launched a probe toward the surface that had us all biting our nails over the course of an hour.
When it came back safe, we prepared for a landing. Noel and I clutched our young and went to a safe place to wait for landing while everyone else mentally prepared themselves to meet the gods they’d been made from.
The time slipped by too fast as Noah napped with Nexus between Noel and me with gentle pats to their rumps. A cranky hatchling was the least desirable thing we wanted.
“Do you think it’ll be safe?” Noel looked to me like I had answers. He’d been taken from his kind so young that he was as clueless as I about most things.
“Any male on this ship would die to protect us.” I rested a hand on his thigh and nodded once. “We have to be safe.”
And neither of us could understand why we had to come to Paradise, but our bodies craved it.
“I hope so.”
“Sarge said things were fuzzy, but he thinks we’ll be okay.” Noel stroked over Nexus’s head and took shaking breaths, the only indicator of his anxiety, and even then, I wasn’t certain the origin of it was his own. Vil may have been channeling it to him.
“Hold on to your tails, guys. Batten down the kiddos because we’re going in!” Merriel’s jovial tones piped up in an attempt to soothe us as we did all we could to count down the hours and minutes until we landed. Every thousand miles we drew closer, another indicator that no vessel was coming to meet us.
Merriel counted down the time, gently reminding us of every moment while the ship shook and rattled.
“Can our vessel withstand this?” Noel glanced around, but he didn’t tense up.
