Page 3 of Monstrous Baby
I looked down at the little downy head—she had hair like me, unlike her father—and her fist wrapped around my finger.
And I couldn’t make myself care that I was changing. Not if I could have this. Kroktl wrapped around me. The squad complete and whole, dedicated to protecting us.
:This is only the beginning,:I promised her on the grid.
Because she already carried complete Sirian cells, she heard my words, even if she didn’t fully understand their meaning. She blinked up at me sleepily and continued to nurse.
“Axxol, take us home,” Kroktl said out loud.
He bared his teeth at Snyder.:Snacks first?:
:It’s up to you, baby,:Kroktl said.
Maybe Snyder was smart enough to feel his life hanging in the balance. Or maybe he had a true change of heart. I couldn’t be sure. “I had no idea, Natalie. I’m so sorry. I’m just as fascinated as Holly now. Please. Let us be a part of whatever you’re doing.”
She muttered beneath her breath for me to hear. “He’ll keep tracking alien sightings anyway.”
True. Even if we popped back to the lake house, Snyder had seen too much to ever go back to university life. Let alone his drug smuggling ring. Though I was sure he could make more money selling alien stories than drugs anyway.
I didn’t trust him. At all. But that didn’t mean I wanted him dead. Yet.
I gave both him and Holly both a firm, flat stare. “If you come with us, be warned. One twitch that Kroktl doesn’t like, and the big blue rex gets to eat you. Or you can go your separate way now.”
Rizan vibrated with tension, not liking the possibility they could spread news about us if we let them go. But he didn’t object. None of my squad did.
:This is your planet,:Kroktl reminded me.:Your life. Your people. If you want to give them a chance, they’ll get it. But I won’t allow them to betray you.:
“Understood,” Holly said faintly, her complexion pale.
Snyder swallowed hard and gave a sharp nod. He’d seen what Kroktl was capable of at camp when the mercenaries had taken me.
I smelled ozone as Axxol came closer, each step rumbling the ground beneath us. Another deliberate warning to the humans. His jaws gaped open in a toothy, hungry grin. His eyes crackled with blue fire. :Tell the human to come closer, if he dares.:
“We’re going to jump to a safer location,” I said aloud. “You need to come closer to us.”
Holly’s grip tightened on my hand, and she shifted slightly closer, though she stared up at the towering Tyrannosaurus Rex, her mouth hanging open in shock.
Snyder started to stand but took one look at the menacing fangs protruding from Lohr’s mouth and shuffled closer on his hands and knees, keeping himself small. “How close…”
His words fell off into nothing as the blue ring dropped around us.
Now that I carried complete Sirian cells, I could see and feel exactly what Axxol was doing to make the jump. Energy shimmered around us, creating a sort of flat tunnel through thefabric of space and time toward the lake house. We moved—but we didn’t. Reality shifted around us. In the seconds we hung suspended in nothing, there were infinite possibilities.
Stars and planets and galaxies spinning around us, forward and backward through time. I saw an Earth from millions of years ago like it was a blink of an eye. Foreign and strange with massive trees and fronds long gone from this planet yet somehow, deep down inside me, I recognized it. I knew this place as home. Not just long-extinct dinosaurs had roamed Earth. Shadows blurred and softened the vision. Hiding. Concealing the others. Like invisible cobwebs.
A jolt broke my concentration as Kroktl stood, shifting us in his arms. Though the feeling of tattered cobwebs lingered in my mind.
He tucked me into our giant, soft bed and wrapped around me, a living wall of heat and muscle that made my eyes heavy. “Rest, baby.”
“Gone,” I mumbled, sinking into sleep.
He kissed my forehead. “What’s gone?”
A soft resonance shimmered through me. An echo I barely heard.We are one.
2
RIZAN
