Dylan checked her suit and her air tank when they’d gotten up. “Her tank is low,” he announced.
Aurek joined them, his expression unreadable, which really worried her. Almost as soon as he turned her back to him so that he could check the tank, he began to pull at her hard enough he almost pulled her down several times.
Dylan moved around her and held her.
“What’s he doing?” she asked him uneasily.
“Switching over from the air tank to the splitter.”
Roslyn blinked at him. “Splitter?”
“It will separate oxygen from the hydrogen. For now, we will pack it with ice. Or it can work with a hydrogen dominant atmosphere.”
Oh that was reassuring! “You’re sure it’ll work?” she asked doubtfully.
“Yes.” Aurek seemed to think it over. “It would work best with water, but even if we melted the ice first it would only harden again at these temperatures. The snow will be better, easier to break down.”
“Sure is a good thing we had that for backup, right?”
“Yes,” Dylan responded.
“We will replenish the air tank when we can stop somewhere that has the oxygen content we need,” Aurek said, ever the reassuring one!
She felt a little better when she saw they were all switching over. It made her own predicament seem less dire.
Another thought occurred to her as she watched them power up the gateway. “Where does it get its power?”
Aurek glanced at her. “The stars.”
She didn’t know why that would boggle her mind when she’d already seen what the aliens were capable of—the gateway itself was light years ahead of human ingenuity or understanding.
And the cyborgs.
Unhappiness flitted through her when she thought of them like that, a knot in the pit of her stomach forming and tightening until she had to struggle to catch her breath.
Maybe it was her way of working on acceptance, but she wasn’t sure of what the outcome would be so it seemed pointless to try until and unless it became a fact of her life.
She thought she had been happier when she’d thought they were willing to accept friendship with benefits—and she hadn’t been especially ecstatic about that.
She had reached the point, though, where she was just trying not to think beyond the moment, struggling to prevent herself from trying to see a hazy, indistinct future that might or might not happen.
Almost as if he sensed she was trying to put some distance between them, mentally if not physically, Aurek pulled her close to him and held her as they crossed the threshold.
The world they reached looked almost as bad as they one they’d left. They didn’t linger any longer than it took to reach the next gateway and travel to the next world.
That one seemed to be a world in transition, recovering from some kind of cataclysm, but not sufficiently at that point to really sustain much in the way of animal life. There were plants, scraggly and undernourished, but little else.
She lost count of the number of different planets they explored, at least briefly. After a while, she began to see a pattern. She hadn’t entirely come up with an interpretation of it, but she had begun to see each one as a piece of a bigger puzzle.
On those where they found remnants of a civilization, long gone, even one just recently departed, she began to see a pattern in the development of architecture—or thought she did. There were even many symbols that seemed vaguely familiar or profoundly familiar.
They never stayed long enough, though, for her to really study anything and the trek and pace was grueling until she reached a point where she was so exhausted she just couldn’t think at all.
And then they reached Earth.
She knew this instantly, or almost instantly, because they emerged in her apartment.
Rosyln turned in a slow circle while the entire apartment spun around her and then … nothing.
When she woke later the room was darkened with the approach of evening and she was lying in her own bed.
Stark naked.
Apparently they’d decided the suit was restricting blood flow.
Aurek, Dylan, and Tor were lined up along the wall, watching her.
She lifted a hand to her head. It was throbbing and she wondered if she’d slammed into something on the way down.
She thought she might have wondered if she’d imagined the entire thing, everything she’d been through for the past month and more, except … the guys.
She wasn’t Dorothy and she hadn’t been to the land of Oz.
“What happened?”
“You fainted,” Aurek said.
“You fall,” Dylan followed.
“Fall down hit head,” Tor contributed. “I try catch. Too late.”
“Thanks. Who undressed me?”
“Aurek.”
Nobody was taking the heat for that one. When she glanced at them, she saw Aurek was glaring at them.
“I need a bath. Desperately,” she hinted. When they didn’t leave, she struggled to sit up and then get off the bed.
She was still a little wobbly, she discovered, and sat back down.
None of the three, contrary to what she’d come to expect of them, approached her. Instead, after what was clearly an uncomfortable few moments, they left.
She discovered when she got to the bathroom that they’d clearly beaten her to the hot water. There were towels everywhere and the mirror was steamed up.
“I sure am glad they weren’t too damned upset when I fainted,” she growled irritably, moving to the shower to turn it on.
To her surprise, she actually got hot water.
She bathed until the water ran cold and finally got out, reluctantly, and grabbed one of the damp towels to dry off since there weren’t any that hadn’t already been used. She had her room to herself when she returned to it and she’d begun to think the guys had used the diversion to take off by the time she got dressed.
She found them in her kitchen, studying the contents of the refrigerator and cabinets. “Help yourself, guys,” she said with just a touch of sarcasm, vaguely annoyed that they’d made themselves at home even though she didn’t begrudge them anything they wanted.
“There is little,” Aurek said neutrally.
Roslyn bit her lip. “Sorry. I forgot. I always clean the kitchen out before I leave on a … project. Since I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”
She studied them. “I can go get stuff. We need supplies … don’t we?”
Aurek slid a look at the other two.
“We have brought you home.”
The nearly overwhelming urge to cry burst upon her, making a hard, painful knot in her throat. Her eyes and nose stung. “Yes. I noticed that.” She even dimly recalled that he’s said something to that effect when he’d explained that he and Dylan and Tor were guardians.
“The prime directive … requires a choice.”
Roslyn stomped her foot angrily. All he did was speak in riddles, damn it! She was tired to death of trying to figure out what the hell was going on! “I don’t care about the damn prime directive! I want to know! What was this all about? Why did I just go through weeks of pure hell? Why did the others have to die? And so horribly! I’ve been cold and hungry and scared out of my wits and nearly eaten alive and I don’t even fucking know what this exercise was about!” It damned well hadn’t been what she’d thought if they’d brought her home to dump her!
“What was that bullshit about the mating pod?”
She saw that question roll over all of them like a tidal wave of shit. They paled, something flickered in their eyes, but she was damned if she understood what.
Some comprehension that she might be pissed about being used and then disposed of?
“The prime directive,” Aurek began again after a moment, “is that a female most be chosen of superior genetic disposition—as a target to pass the superior DNA we carry to her to refresh the human gene pool. Cataclysmic events have repeatedly reduced th
e population to extinction levels, thereby reducing diversity in the surviving gene pool and increasing incidents of genetic defect and disease. We carry no defective markers. That is our primary function.”
Roslyn stared at him, trying to absorb that. “Who’s the target?”
“You.”
It was like a slap. And Roslyn recoiled as if she’d actually felt the blow.
It was soul crushing. But she hurt so badly at that moment that she couldn’t figure out why that was. It was much later, when she managed to catch her breath, that she realized she shouldn’t have felt so wounded and wouldn’t have if she hadn’t cared about him—about them. She might have been angry or disgusted, but not hurt. “I see,” she managed to respond after some moments, feeling her lips as uncooperative and stiff.
She actually felt more than a little faint.
And nauseated.
“You will not harm yourself? Or the … off spring?”
That reached through the pain. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why would I hurt me? I feel like hurting you, you asshole! I’d punch you in the nose except I don’t want to break my hand on your face!
“I do not understand your anger. It is a gift of the gods.”
“I don’t want a god damned gift from the gods! I wanted …. Never mind. It doesn’t matter now.”
“Explain so that I understand.”
“You’re a fucking machine! How the hell would you understand?”
She stalked off, missing the look that crossed his features, but, as with her, anger swiftly followed the pain. He strode after her, caught her, and whipped her around none-too-gently, shoving her back against the wall and then pressing her tightly to it with his own body.
“I feel all that you do,” he ground out.
“Obviously no ….”
He drowned out the end of that snide comment by capturing her lips beneath his in a kiss that was so hot it curled her hair.
She resisted, but the moment she felt him begin to pull away, she clutched at him, grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt.
He caught her hands—to push her away, she thought. “I love you with all my heart,” she said. “I need to know if you feel anything at all for me.”
He studied her for a long moment and finally drew her tightly against him again. “You are everything to me,” he murmured against her hair. “I have nothing without you.” He hesitated. “I do not understand love.”
Roslyn swallowed with an effort. “Yes, you do. It’s everything you’ve said and done. I was just afraid to accept it for what it was.” She leaned into him and kissed his neck. “Show me again how much.”
For a moment, he seemed confused, but then she saw purpose in his features. He swept her up into his arms and carried her back to her bedroom.
She caught Dylan’s and Tor’s gazes upon them as they turned the corner, and beckoned to them.
Aurek ignored both of them until they broke the bed down trying to get in with them.
He glanced from one to the other and then around at the bed. “We will need a better bed.”
“We’ll need a bigger bed,” Roslyn said pointedly.
Clearly tired of the subject, Aurek focused on stripping her of the clothes she’d just put on, exploring each patch of skin he unveiled. By the time he’d finished, she was damned near finished herself.
Or, at the very least, dead ready.
He seemed pleased that she was wet for him before the first kiss to her lips, a fact he discovered as soon as he aligned his lips with hers and reached down to stroke a finger along her cleft. She was pleased that he was more interested in finishing the kiss he’d begun than instantly mounting her, bestowing heated, drugging kisses on her on and on until she was drunk with the currents of heat winding through her.
When she finally ran out of patience and began trying to mount him, he desisted, reaching down to make the connection and then surging over her to complete the joining, to stroke the length of her channel with the length of his cock until she’d scaled the mountain to the peak.
And there she hovered until she felt him reach his crisis so that she could make the leap to glory with him.
She had a few moments to savor and catch her breath before Dylan, who’d settled behind her, grasped her and rolled her toward him. Tor made the attempt to wedge himself between Aurek and her back. Aurek planted a hand on the top of his head and gave him a shove toward the foot of the bed, but then he shrugged and got up.
Tor claimed the spot the instant he abandoned it, pressing his cock to the cleft of Roslyn’s ass and then threading it between her thighs.
Dylan encountered it when he tried to mount her on his sword, looked so confused for a moment that Roslyn almost laughed and then sat up and punched Tor’s shoulder.
When Tor rolled away with the blow, he caught Roslyn, rolled with her and … off the bed.
It rattled Roslyn’s brains for a moment, but apparently not Dylan’s. He pursued the holy grail doggedly, managing to plow into her in spite of efforts on Tor’s part to dislodge him.
“I will beat the fuck out of you when I am done!” he growled finally.
“Wait until I am done!” Tor argued.
“Fine!”
Roslyn didn’t know whether to laugh or punch both of them, but she was distracted enough she didn’t manage to reach nirvana—just got close enough to be irritated when she missed.
Tor took the bull by the horns and helped her make it up to the top and over it, though, so she was a happy camper when they finished the session.
She left them ‘settling’ the issue and went into the bathroom to clean up and get dressed again.
Chapter Thirteen
Aurek was waiting for her in her living room.
They still had unfinished business even if, hopefully, they’d settled the personal business most dear to her.
She settled on her couch and studied him for a few moments and finally decided he was waiting for her. “There was a reason that you took me to all of those different worlds that wasn’t about the search for a new home, or a home—wasn’t there?”
He frowned. “It was exactly about finding a home,” he said slowly, “but also about bringing you to a better understanding.”
Surprise flickered through her. “Why?”
He looked confused.
“I mean why me?”
“You were chosen.”
It was her turn to be confused, but she was also shocked. “You mean by the company? Or the government since they took over the project?
“By the master race.”
“The gods?”
“Yes.”
It hit her then, like a lightning bolt out of the blue. That was the second time he’d referred to them as the master race. “They aren’t aliens.”
“Not that they have ever found.”
“And they’ve been to many worlds? A lot more than what we looked at?”
He shrugged. “Those worlds were chosen as homes for mankind.”
She thought about the hostile, dead or nearly dead worlds and a shockwave went through her. “Humans have lived on all of those worlds? Those aliens we met up with weren’t aliens?” She didn’t wait for him to answer, though, because she knew the answer. She realized it had been staring her in the face the whole time and she’d just willfully ignored it. “That’s why there were so many things that looked familiar. We were there.”
She digested that for a bit, turning things over in her mind, puzzle pieces. “We’re self-destructive.”
“Yes.”
“Wasteful.”
“Yes.”
“Greedy and corrupt.”
“That also.”
“Altogether nothing to be proud of.”
“Not true. There are good and there are evil and everything in between the two. It is the goodness that makes the species worth saving and the raw aggressiveness and greed that makes it possible. Without a balance of both, the species would have died out long ago.”
; “But … we’re locusts, aren’t we?” Roslyn said, dismayed at the thought. “Planet killers. We just move from one place to the next, suck it dry, and then leave it when it’s dying and find another place.”
Aurek considered that and finally nodded. “In essence, yes. But, as you saw, the abandoned worlds can recover and do.”
“And then we go back.”
“You have.”
She frowned. “You know the first thing that crossed my mind when we got to the first planet?”
“What?”
She shrugged. “It’s silly. But my first thought was that it was like Eden.”
“It is Eden. It is in the human memory even though they are not aware of exactly what it is. So far as is known, however, it is the birthplace of the species.”
“So why and how am I the chosen? What is the purpose I’m supposed to serve?”
“You carry the main purpose—the males Dylan, Tor and I have placed there in your womb.” He was silent for a moment. “If you chose … If you chose to make a home with us, then you will record all that has not yet been recorded so that humanity can know their history—all of it—and mayhap learn from past mistakes.”
Oh it was a grand idea. Roslyn had her doubts that enough people would really learn to make a difference. That was what had been their downfall, she didn’t doubt, every time. The good people, the conservative people willing to be careful and take care of their world were always outnumbered and overwhelmed by those who were more interested in profit and power, the lazy, and the stupid who just refused to believe it would make a difference and therefore it just wasn’t worth it to be inconvenienced.
“I love you,” she said after a moment. “And Dylan and Tor. How could you doubt that I would choose to make a home with my men?”
She could see the tension leave him. “We would need to return to Eden,” he said cautiously.
“We sure as hell can’t stay here! We’ll have the government all over us in no time flat once they figure out we came back by a back door they didn’t know about.”
He grinned abruptly. “Then we should gather supplies and go, because I am fairly certain that they are aware of the breach.”
Roslyn bounded up in a blind panic and began to rush around her apartment grabbing the most useful items she had—a few things for comfort, a few changes of clothing, tools. If she couldn’t fit it into her personal container, she abandoned it.
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