Page 37 of Monstrous Hunt
She carried a piece of my DNA now. Maybe even Snryx’s, though I wasn’t sure how much of his cum might have ended up on her body. She’d taken Lohr’s too.
The only one left to give her a piece of his essence was our former alpha.
:I’d rather kill him and be done,:Snryx growled.:He’s caused too much damage already.:
Kroktl stroked our mate, his hand gliding over her head, down her back and hip, his fingers brushing my head before starting the trip back up her body.:He won’t have the opportunity to damage her again.:
These sensations were so strange. Touch. Mingled scents and body heat. Closeness. Casual conversation. Lying, resting, in a bed, a temporary nest of our choosing. In all the many cycles we’d served together, we’d never even thought about lying down together. It was quite pleasant and would certainly make it difficult for anything else to harm Natalie.
The mattress dipped as Lohr climbed in beside me. Human mattresses weren’t made to hold so many large bodies at once, and the wooden frame groaned with strain.:They’ll have to get through all of us first.:
:If we’re all going to cram together into a pile, then we should move a couple of these beds together,:Snryx said.:Or at least order something larger.:
:Beds would slide apart at the most inopportune time.:I clicked my beak softly so as not to disturb her rest.:I already ordered a larger bed. It’ll be here in a few days.:
:Will we still be here in a few days?:Lohr asked.
Silence hung on the grid for several long seconds.
:Where else will we go?:Kroktl finally asked no one in particular.
Indeed. That was the question that none of us had the answer to yet. Nowhere would be safe.
17
NATALIE
Ihated lying around feeling so useless. As the days passed, tension ramped up in the house, even though we spent the majority of our time together in the gloriously huge bed that Rizan ordered.
We needed to do something. Be somewhere. Find and stop these mrions from spreading. Guard against other Dynosauros squads that might be sent to eliminate us.
None of which I could help with. I didn’t even fully understand what kind of alien lifeform we were dealing with.
Getting bigger every single day—at an alarming rate—certainly didn’t help.
“Are you familiar with the lifecycle of the common housefly?” Lohr asked.
“Sort of. An adult fly lays eggs that turn into maggots and then they hatch into flies.”
“Very close, though there’s also the pupa stage right before the final metamorphosis. Myrm have much the same life cycle. Mrions are like eggs deposited by an adult Myrm. They don’t hatch but begin replicating once conditions are ideal.”
“Like temperature?”
Snryx grunted softly. “They don’t care about temperature at all. I’ve seen mrions replicating on ice and desert planets alike. All they care about is food.”
My stomach gave a queasy roll. I so very much did not want to find out that Earth was infected with some kind of fly-like alien that was devouring the entire planet.
“It’s more than the presence of food,” Lohr said. “Yes, they want to eat, but they also require enough infrastructure and intelligence to support a full-grown Myrm.”
“The adult breeder, sort of like a queen,” Kroktl added, seeing the confusion on my face. “Just like some of your common insects, the Myrm are ruled by the breeder who can generate mrions and hatch the pupae. They’re very rare now because we eliminate deposits so quickly.”
“How many adult Myrm would it take to destroy Earth?” I asked.
“One,” they said in unison.
My eyes bulged and I gulped. “Just one adult fly is enough to eat over seven billion people?”
“Perhaps fly wasn’t the appropriate analogy.” Lohr let out a wry chuckle. “A fully developed Myrm is bigger than Earth’s blue whale. Even if she fails to hatch any other pupae, a single breeder could easily decimate an entire planet.”
