Page 29 of Monstrous Hunt
Deliberately, I said my words out loud, so Natalie knew the full picture. “Ourmate is not a liability nor inferior. If you say such things again, I will fucking rip your spine out of your body and give it to her to wear as a necklace.”
A soft sound of shock escaped Natalie’s mouth.
Axxol snorted, shaking his head with disdain. But he couldn’t fucking meet my gaze. He might be alpha, but he knew the truth. If shit went down, he wouldn’t have just me to deal with. The rest of the squad would attack along with me, and there was no way short of jumping off planet for him to escape us.
Lohr stared out over the ocean, his tongue aimlessly trailing up and down her thigh. “The first squad that attacked wasn’t sent to eliminate us because we went rogue.”
Snryx nodded grimly. “That squad was assembled to assassinate us before we ever set foot on Earth.”
“Because we supposedly failed to eliminate a deposit of mrions, right?” Rizan stretched out his arms, letting the breeze ruffle his feathers. “So that means there must be a second crash site on this planet that wasn’t included in our coordinates. One that will proceed to replicate until humans are wiped off the face of this planet.”
“Somewhere close to the first,” Lohr replied. “But small enough to evade notice.”
“I’ll start going over all the scans we took of the entire area and see if I can find another crash site.” Rizan gave himself a shake and noticed the cables still in his hand. “Oh yeah. But first, let me show you something.”
He turned toward us, and one outstretched wing buffeted Axxol hard enough he took a step back. I was still pissed and too worried about protecting Natalie and our youngling to laugh, though I appreciated anything that knocked our former alpha down a peg or two. My raptor paced restlessly in the cage of my body, ravenous, furious, and so fucking protective it wanted to scoop her up and race at full speed to somewhere safe.
But where could we go? This planet and my squad were fucking doomed. Nobody messed with DSC. They owned entire star systems and the most cutting-edge technologies ever made. Their net worth was incalculable. They basically owned everything of value in the entire fucking universe, and they had no reservations about allowing this entire planet to be exterminated by our enemy.
If I lost her…
Barely, I bit back a shriek of furious agony that would likely break her eardrums.
“Can you adapt an implement for this connection?” Rizan asked Snryx, holding out a cable. “It’ll be easier to do this if we can temporarily bring the device onto the grid.”
“Uh, sure.” Snryx stared at the cable with distaste for a moment and then muttered, “After I sterilize it.”
Rizan plugged another cable into the wall and the machine beeped and hummed while he fiddled with a stack of white paper in the back. “Okay, I think we’re ready. Let’s print a test image.”
He manipulated files on the grid in a blur, too fast for me to really grasp what he was doing. A piece of paper slowly worked its way out the other side of the machine and he handed it to Natalie.
“Oh my god.” Eyes wide, she looked up at me, tears shimmering. “Our baby.”
Pain flooded my system again, but this was a good pain. A pain so good that I never wanted it to end.
“It looks nearly identical to a ten-to-twelve-week-old human embryo,” Lohr said. “There are a few measurements that are different, like increased heart rate and limb length, but at first glance, it’s very comparable.”
Snryx didn’t say anything aloud, but his reservations reverberated on the grid.:On the surface, they may be similar, but this youngling is nothing like a human embryo. I don’t want her to feel mislead.:
“Can you show us where our youngling is special?” I asked aloud. “Tell me what images to capture.”
“Of course,” Lohr and Snryx said at the same time, making her laugh.
“I’ll focus on basic anatomy, and our medic can demonstrate the finer details.” Lohr tipped his head at Snryx, lowering his voice to a loud whisper. “He can get a little long-winded at times.”
“Right,” Snryx drawled out with a glare. “Don’t ask a xenobiologist a question if you don’t have a full day to listen to him.”
Ignoring him, Lohr pointed to the fetus’s head. “The shape is mostly human but it’s measuring twenty-percent larger than a human embryo of comparable size.”
“So she’s going to be very intelligent,” Rizan said. “Just like her mother.”
Natalie stroked a finger over the picture, and I noticed her hand trembling. I wrapped her closer, wishing yet again that I could hear her thoughts and feel her emotions. Was she afraid? Relieved? Happy? I wasn’t sure.
:Did I upset her?:Rizan asked frantically.:That wasn’t my intention.:
“That’s the nicest thing anyone other than Kroktl has ever said to me.” She burst into tears, though she was smiling at the same time. “Especially since I’m soinferior.”
“Only alphas who are blind to their own inferiority would ever dare say such a thing,” Snryx said. “Your resiliency has been remarkable.”
