by Elsa Jade
For another breathless moment, he yearned to join them. His back bowed off the rock as the nanites drew inward.
Lehigh smiled, sadly. “I know. I was always on the outside too. But not anymore. We’re a matrix, from the first to the last. The only free matrix in the universe. And we’ll show the galaxies what it means to be beholden to no one except ourselves. By which I mean me.”
He too had thought that, Cosmo realized. He’d been beholden to no one at all. An image of Vic’s Intergalactic Dating Agency profile flashed through his mind. Some beings didn’t need anything else, but so many beings wanted more.
And he was one of them.
“I don’t have a key you can steal,” he growled, readying the last of his nanites.
“True,” Lehigh said. “I’m appealing to your big brain. You know you can’t win. Omegas never win. You just…stop.”
“I’m not just an Omega anymore,” Cosmo told him. “And you can’t take my key because I already gave it away.”
Lehigh frowned. “You can’t have—”
“To Vic.” He took a deep breath, ready to blow his cloud in one terrible shock. He didn’t have enough left for true destruction.
And he was glad of that. The badlands would live on even if he and his brothers didn’t.
But he wouldn’t let a rogue Theta maraud across the universe with a pack of CWBOIs caring for nothing and no one.
He returned Lehigh’s smile and—
“Cosmo!”
Vic’s wild cry tore through him like the yurk’s fangs hadn’t. No, she was too close. If he blew now…
“Get away,” he shouted.
“She can’t,” the Theta told him. “I’m not letting her go either. And anyway, she’s bound to you too.”
No. It was one thing to sacrifice himself. But not his Victoria Ray.
Instead of blowing his cloud in a shockwave that would roll over everything in its path, taking everything it found to expand in an unstoppable cataclysmic apocalypse that could rip a world to its core, he sent out three tiny threads, soft and sly as a trio of barn cats into his three brothers. Aimed at their hearts.
He knew they had them, deep inside, armored by implants and memories of pain.
But no one could resist a soft kitty. Or stop an Omega.
“We’ll always be brothers,” he said, staring up at them. “But I want to be with Vic.”
The thread wrapped tight around Troy, and there, at the edge of his code… Victoria was here.
Cosmo smirked, added a needle to the point of his thread, and stabbed deep.
The Theta staggered, trying to break contact. But they were brothers, and they’d always be. The lone nanites were already fading.
Out of the shadows where their battling had broken the cavern lights, Vic appeared. The data gel cylinder glowed bright in her hands.
She lifted it high over her head, catching Lehigh’s attention.
He spun around with an angry howl.
Cosmo snaked out one hand and caught the fancy point tip of his shoe and brought him to his knees just as Vic smashed the cylinder against the jagged edge of their shattered ship.
The ship had fallen, yeah, but it was still some of the toughest material on Earth. It ripped through the cylinder, spilling gel across Vic and everything.
And the nanites he’d downloaded into the gel swirled back to him.
Renewed—just for a heartbeat or two, he knew—he rose up with a yurk-worthy roar, throwing off his brothers.
Lehigh scrambled back, leaving Mach and Delta to deal with him. But they didn’t continue the attack. They were locked in a subroutine he’d stolen from Vic’s archive and sent through the Theta’s backdoor access into his nanites infecting the other shrouds. It was just a commercial, actually, with a catchy little jingle from the Intergalactic Dating Agency.
Greetings, lonely being of the universe, it began.
The IDA promised love among the stars, and he sort of rolled his eyes. But that didn’t matter because Mach and Delta knew it wasn’t just a promise. And it wasn’t out there somewhere. Their loves were right here, waiting for them. They just needed the reminder.
And all they had to do was break free.
Lehigh howled again, in frustration and pain, as the nanites he’d bound around them snapped back, lashing out. The damage left him grayed while Mach and Delta crashed to the ground like puppets minus their strings.
Spinning toward Vic, the Theta reached out to grab her. With a gasp, she tried to evade him but the gel splashed across the wreckage made her slip.
She went down hard, and Lehigh’s grasp passed right over her.
And Cosmo was there to catch her. “Mine,” he growled.
He and the Theta locked glares for a heartbeat, and he swore he felt the other shroud’s crushing hunger to say the same about anyone, anything, anywhere…
Before Lehigh turned and fled.
Cosmo hauled her close. “Are you—?”
“You came!” She flung her arms around his neck, sobbing something about Stella and kidnapping and something something, oops-sorry-I-figured-out-the-code-but-did-the-opposite-on-your-brothers something something.
He grabbed her shoulders and hauled her back to look at her. “Are you all right?”
Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she said incredulously, “I think I am.”
A distant rumble through the cavern belied that belief.
She moaned. “Tell me that’s not an earthquake.” She rolled her eyes at him wildly. “Are you exploding?”
“No. Lehigh is escaping.”
She bared her teeth. “No way.”
Chapter 13
How could they be so perfectly together?
Side by side, they raced for the cavern entrance, and Vic swore even their hearts beat in time.
He’d done something, used her backdoor access on Troy to sync the matrix, just for a moment. Enough that the Theta couldn’t keep control and Mach and Delta had broken free.
She’d checked them just for a second to make sure they were alive, and when she spun back, Cosmo was standing in the center of the cavern, his heavy features grim, with a ginormous gun in his arms.
She wished it was her in his arms instead, but…
“Follow me,” he told her.
Which was why they were side by side.
But as they burst out from the crack, Lehigh was lifting into the air on the hovercraft.
“Shoot him!” she yelled at Cosmo.
And damn him, he laughed at her. “I like you, Vic Ray.”
“Shooooot him!”
“Oh, I will. But I don’t have enough energy to power the blaster after one shot. I gotta make it count.”
She bit her lip, tasting the lingering flavors of sugar and spice. “I should’ve grabbed the laddoo to convert to nanites.”
Cosmo grabbed her. His mouth slanted hard and perfect over hers. “You’re good enough.”
He grabbed her hand and ran to the valley floor. His sharp whistle pierced her brain, and for a second she thought the wild rush in her ears was her own heartbeat, astonished at his kiss.
The yurk’s wings swooped low over them, and Vic’s head rocked back again as Cosmo hauled her toward the beast.
“Up you go,” he said, not waiting for a reply before he tossed her aboard.
She clung to the harness. “Your Alpha was much more gentlemanly about this.”
“My Alpha is laid out like a non-dancing puppet at the moment, but you can tell him all about me later.”
She leaned back into him as he swung up behind her. “I’ll tell him you’re good enough too. And you make a mean laddoo.”
“Let me taste it again.”
As he kissed her, the yurk hurtled into the darkening sky.
“We have to stop him before he gets too far,” Cosmo said into her ear over the tear of the wind, “or he’ll be gone forever.”
She twisted her head to look up at him. “Should you let him go?”
/> He closed his eyes for just a moment. “No. He’s my brother. And he’s a danger. So we stop him.”
The hovercraft—running dark—was fast, but the yurk was faster. And darker.
When they soared down on Lehigh from above, his eyes widened almost comically. But he banked hard away, gunning the engine until it screamed. The yurk saved her breath, but she struggled to close the distance again.
“He’s running for town,” Cosmo growled. “He knows we can’t be seen.”
“Shrouds have always been outlawed,” she said. “I think he wants to expose you, so the transgalactic authorities will finally do something about the consortium now that they’ve lost control of a matrix.”
His arm tightened around her. “If they found out about us, that would be your chance to get off-planet and share the hack.”
“Except I broke it.”
“Saving me.”
She clamped her hand over his, making him hold her even tighter. “I can rebuild the hack. But we can’t contact the authorities until I can really, truly prove that your matrix isn’t a threat.”
“That’s gonna be hard to do with Lehigh there screaming over Diamond Valley Depot in a miniature spaceship on Christmas Eve.” He chuckled—actually chuckled in her ear, and the sound made her shiver. “Maybe they’ll only put us back in stasis until you have the code.”
“But I need you to do it.” She heard the longing in her voice and tried to dial it back. “I mean, I need your nanites.”
“They’re yours,” he said. “I’m yours.”
Did he mean…? How much exactly was he hers? One hundred percent? Did he count the nanites separately, so maybe, say, two hundred percent of him was hers? She swallowed back the questions. Or maybe just until he was freed…
“It was something Troy said that broke the code for me,” she told him. “When he was looking at the love cipher, he pointed out the dark areas and said they weren’t done yet. But they were. The code has dark spots and quiet zones because even though I was searching for the path to unlock shrouds, when it comes to love, there must be some chains. Those links bind us together, and it’s the connection—even tenuous or sporadic—that matters in the cipher.”
“But the chains must be chosen, not forced. Unwanted chains are enslavement, but absolute freedom means no love. And in the darkness is where we choose whether to claim the bonds between us.”
Her throat seized. “Yes.”
The lights of town glimmered at the end of the valley, all red and green, silver and gold. Over the rush of wind and yurk wings, she caught a faint sound of carols. The town square was full of joyfully oblivious Earthers. God, she needed some spiked eggnog right now.
“We have to stop him,” she said, “And not get caught. I refuse to accept an either/or.”
“I have one shot,” he warned.
“Take it.”
Hunkering low against the yurk’s neck put his big body completely over hers.
“Remember that tantric robot sex?” he murmured.
She shivered. “Really? That’s where we’re going with this?” But she tilted her butt back to snuggle in the crook of his groin.
“We might be heading straight for the end,” he reminded her. “Last time I gave you my nanites and you made something beautiful. This time, can you code something sneaky as I shoot down the Theta? I think he’d appreciate your sense of humor.”
Her mind raced, but the hovercraft and the yurk were going faster yet. “I don’t know…”
With the hand wrapped around her front, he made a fist, popping open his access port. “Kiss me,” he said. “Code me.”
His interface wasn’t meant for an Earther, but when he urged her face around to lay another long, hard, tonguing kiss on her, the flash of desire was once again cosmic.
In the rush, she hardly knew what she was doing, taking the sweep of his nanites and sending them back until she wasn’t quite sure if they’d ever be separate again.
Mine, he whispered.
No wait, that was her voice.
But the lusty laugh in her head was all him. She sighed in bliss, though the sound was lost in the whine of the blaster charging up with plasma and nanites.
The yurk yowled a challenge just as the church bell in the square sounded, and the crowd began to sing.
Against the vast Montana sky, the fleeing hovercraft and the yurk’s black wings were just a couple of tiny scrap of starless night.
Cosmo sat back, bringing the blaster-rifle alongside them. “Hold on tight.”
“To the end,” she murmured.
The yurk banked hard, opening up the sky ahead of them.
Cosmo fired.
The charge blasted across the darkness, impossible to miss.
And it blossomed into fireworks of red and green.
The crowd cheered. From this height, they looked like little puppets dancing in delight. Vic’s belly lurched. Wow, the yurk was really high.
Lehigh in the hovercraft tried to evade, but the blast spread across the sky. And seemed to chase him in streamers of silver and gold.
More cheers, and then more as the hovercraft exploded.
The final stage of the nanites she’d sent through the blaster charge changed the brutal detonation to a grand finale of sparkling white, blazing across all of Big Sky Country.
The crowd in the square had gone completely silent, and the shockwave seemed to reach all the way to the yurk. The battle-beast craned her neck, peering down. Then she let out one pure note of song.
“One more blow,” Cosmo whispered in a ragged voice. “Make them believe.”
“No, it’ll hurt you.”
“I can take it. Whatever happens, I love you, Vic Ray.”
She clamped her hand over his, wrenched his head down to kiss him…
And the last blast of his nanites write across the Earth in the flowing script Vic had designed for the Intergalactic Dating Agency.
And to all a good night…
***
Cosmo woke utterly empty.
Considering he’d thought he’d wake totally dead, that wasn’t such a bad feeling.
Also, he was in a bed, not on the hard floor of the cavern, with something fleecy pulled over his belly and something even softer across his bare chest.
He stroked his fingers through the wavy strands of Vic’s hair.
Good. Better. Best.
This was the best.
He couldn’t hold back a pleased sigh that lifted her head where she lay on him.
She blinked sleepily. “Morning,” she murmured.
The husky timbre of her voice vibrated through him, like nanites coming to life. And he knew somewhere in his implants, his microscopic interlopers were rejuvenating, but for now it was just her and the feelings she aroused in him.
Speaking of aroused…
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep on you.” He nuzzled against her crown, breathing the warm earthy scents of her, complex and wonderful.
“You actually passed out,” she corrected. “Unconscious. Out cold.”
“I’ll do it again if it means I get to sleep with you when shrouds don’t usually need sleep.”
With a partly feigned shudder, she tucked herself closer to him. “You are not allowed to drain yourself that much ever again. I thought… Well, never mind. Just don’t do it.”
“All right,” he said meekly. “I just wanted to save you.”
“You did. And you saved your brothers. And Stella.” She told him everything about Lehigh’s awful abduction and worse plans. She ended with, “You even saved him from making a terrible choice.”
Cosmo wrinkled his nose. “I’m not sure about that part. Maybe it would’ve been better if he died in this crash.”
“I’m sure about you. And maybe this reboot will fix him.” She wrapped one arm around his chest and squeezed. If he’d been a lesser being he might’ve been squished.
But he was an Omega shroud. He could take anything.
And
he’d give her everything.
Before he could tell her that, she sucked in a breath. “When I said you’re not allowed, I mean, you can do whatever you want. I’m not your keyholder. I’m definitely going to rebuild the imprint hack so you can be free.”
He gave her a little squeeze to stop her rushed explanation. “Mach and Delta will appreciate that. But you know Omegas don’t imprint.”
“I heard you tell Troy that I held your key.”
He gazed down at her. “It was a lie.”
She bit her lip. “Oh. I—”
“And it was the most true.”
Her lashes flashed up, the dark brown of her eyes glimmering. “Cosmo…”
“An Omega doesn’t have to know much, isn’t supposed to want anything. But I’ve changed.” He grinned at her. “Took a century and a half, but I know what I want.” And even though he thought he was getting the hang of the dramatic pause thanks to her favorite bad movies, he didn’t make her wait for it because he’d waited long enough himself. “I want you.”
The rush of blood under her skin made her freckles seem to dance in his vision. “But you have the whole world now.”
“And you have the whole universe,” he said.
“And still you want me?” Her voice wavered. “To the end?”
He hauled her up his chest, his nanites singing at the perfect friction. Or maybe that was the yurk crowing out in the yard. As he lowered his mouth to touch hers, he whispered, “To the beginning.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elsa Jade, author of sexy shapeshifting romances, also writes paranormal romance, urban fantasy romance, and science fiction romance as Jessa Slade and sexy contemporary romance as Jenna Dales. In all her incarnations, she believes in the transformational power of love and is thrilled to share her stories with like-minded readers.
More from Elsa Jade
Mating Season: Wolves of Angels Rest
Hero
Joker
Rogue
Warrior
Lost Wolf
Ghost Wolf
Cry Wolf
Fighter
Wish Upon a Werewolf
Beast
Coyote’s Christmas Kiss
Shifters in Love: Fun & Flirty (in the world of Angels Rest)