Chapter Twenty-Five
Aric
Thrusting a hand forward, a beam of lightning as thick as his wrist lashed out, sawing off the Outsider’s left arm at the elbow before continuing on and burying itself in the corridor to ground out.
“Yeah, that’s right,” he growled. “Party’s over.”
He expected the Outsider to turn and flee, but once again the alien surprised him. It charged, lowering its upper body and slamming right into him. Aric yelped and was bowled over, though he managed to hold onto the thing’s leg. It went down in a pile and the two of them rolled over one another until they emerged in the cavern itself.
The suits came after them, spreading out wide and putting themselves between the creature and the portal.
Aric smashed a fist into what would be the head on a human. The armor dented and then rebounded. The Outsider’s remaining arm appendage came around, the end reshaping into a club that knocked Aric aside. His left arm went limp, the blow numbing the connection to the arm itself.
Anger welled up in him, originating from two sources. One was the Outsider itself and its unwillingness to just die. The other was directed at Kaitlyn.
She’d known about their child for nearly a week now. A week, and in that time she’d hidden the secret from him. Only because he was in danger of dying had she finally revealed her secret. Would she have done so if things were different?
Aric knew he would forgive her, there was never any doubt in his mind, but he felt the anger was warranted. This wasn’t a tiny secret; this was life-changing. His mate was pregnant with his offspring. That wasn’t something you hid from another party!
Aric lashed out with another blow of lightning but the Outsider moved out of the way and it struck a bank of computers. Sparks flew everywhere, panels popped off, and screens exploded in a spray of glass as the systems tried to handle the surge of energy.
“Oh no you don’t,” he snapped as the Outside dashed past him and went for the portal itself.
They may not have been outside, where he could call down a lightning strike to obliterate the alien, but they were out of the tunnel now. He had some space.
Aric removed the restraints from his mind, and his dragon, awoken and ready from all the fighting, rushed to fill it. The cavern shrank rapidly in size relative to him. Wings ripped from his back, blotting out many of the lights strung from the ceiling, while his neck elongated and his face became a snout filled with rows of razor-sharp teeth.
He spat a bolt of lightning the thickness of an oak tree at the Outsider. It missed, but the concussive explosion when it hit the ground tumbled it aside. Aric lunged, picking the thing up in his mouth. He flung his head back and forth like a dog wrestling for a toy before releasing at the end of one arc.
The Outsider pinwheeled through the air before crashing into the far cavern wall with a disgusting crunching sound. Purple goo seeped from several cracks in the armor, but it still tried to extricate itself.
Aric walked over, whirled, and just as it worked itself free his tail slammed it back into the wall. He followed that up with another lightning bolt. With the armor broken the energy found its way into the innards of the alien, and it exploded, raining showers of black armor and goo down upon the other soldiers in the cave, all of whom shouted and ran for cover just a little too late.
Anger satiated, he returned to his human form, brushing off bits of black exoskeleton from his shoulders as he strode through the ruined command center toward the tunnel where Kaitlyn awaited.
His mate.
Not just his mate, he corrected. His mate and his child.
His family.