“Avrell,” Lyric murmurs. “Can you, uh, check me too?” She lifts her shirt, revealing her pale stomach. “I mean, it’s not like I’m trying to be. I just…thought maybe you should check… it’s just I’ve felt sick and wasn’t sure if it was leftover from The Rades or…if we’re not, it’ll happen…”
Hadrian is thrumming with wild energy beside her as she rambles. Avrell scans her stomach.
Green.
“…I want it to happen. Hadrian is my mate and one day, we can…” she continues.
Hadrian stops her with a kiss. “We’re having a mortling, fiery one. Us.”
I can’t stop smiling because this feels like a huge victory for our kind. We’re no longer a dying race of ten, we’re a growing family of many. I’m excited to get on the comms and tell Breccan and the others.
“Oh no, buddy,” Zoe hisses. “Do not come over here with that baby wand.”
“Put away the weapon,” Julie teases, urging Avrell to step back and not come any nearer. “That’s enough babies for one day.”
I chuckle, bringing Willow’s hand to my lips. I kiss her, but quickly realize she isn’t pleased. Does she not want to have my mortling? Am I not a worthy mate? Do space fling morts not get mortlings and happy alien mates? Dread pools in my stomach.
“What is it?” I choke out.
“I’m dazed, but…” She blinks several times. “Do you remember what the guy on the comms said?”
“Uvie-Two?” Hadrian asks the copy of Uvie that Sayer walked us through how to install into the prison comms.
“Copy that, Private. Transmission received. Bringing the rain within a fortnight. Over and out.” Uvie-Two’s voice chirps to life to parrot what had been said. She mostly errors out and isn’t artificially intelligent as Uvie is, but she’s a work in progress.
“Theron,” she croaks, her bottom lip wobbling. “He did it. He told them about us—about you all. Oh, God. They’re coming for us.” She clutches her stomach as though she’s worried about someone hurting or taking our mortling.
Zoe and Julie curse while Lyric gasps in horror.
A fierce protective need flares hot inside me. I gently stroke her soft hair. “Willow, my mate,” I murmur. “The Kevins can come, but we’ll kill every last one of them.”
Hadrian and Avrell both growl in agreement, the popping of all three of our sub-bones echoing loudly.
She blinks in surprise. “How?”
“I don’t know, but I am not about to let a group of weak monsters destroy my home. Mortuus is ours and they won’t take any part of it away from us.”
15
Willow
Theron moves inside of me gently, reverently, as though I’m the most precious thing he’s ever had in his arms. I writhe underneath him, tossing my head back and forth impatiently. There are times for being careful.
This isn’t one of them.
“Theron, please,” I whimper.
I want him to ground me into this moment. Blot out everything but the feel of him inside me, above me, around me. To remind me why enjoying this moment is special, vital. So I can forget everything else but him. So I can forget what’s coming.
But he merely smooths my hair behind my ears and places a soft kiss on my brow. “In time, bright star. We’re going to make this last.”
“We have a meeting with Breccan in fifteen minutes. We don’t have time to make it last.” I wiggle underneath him, lifting my hips to impale myself more securely on his cock. He lets me, but doesn’t thrust into me, so I do it again.
His expression is unaffected, which makes me want to growl the way he does. He merely dips his head to kiss along the shell of my ear. “There will always be time for you, my mate.”
Mate.
I’d been so resistant to letting him in, to think of him as anything more than a fling, but now that he is, nothing else could feel more perfect, more right. And I doubt he’ll let me forget it for a second.
“It would take less time if you’d go a little faster. I’m so close.”
“Always in a hurry. Don’t you enjoy the way my cock feels inside of you?” As though to punctuate his statement, he pulls out with aching slowness and thrusts with equal leisure.
I glare up at him, causing his trademark smirk to spread across his lips. I consider smacking it off his face. Instead, I nudge his shoulder with my hand and am slightly surprised when he acquiesces to switching positions so that I am on top.
Then I catch him staring at my breasts and realize why he didn’t put up a fight. Theron is without a doubt a boob mort. He can’t get enough of them. He rests his head on them when we fall asleep, or if we’re spooning, then they’re in his hands like a security blanket. My frustration ebbs, replaced by a wave of affection that brings tears to my eyes.