Even if his methods had been unconventional, impulsive, and wrong, she’d do it all over again. She’d miss Zeph and his candy-apple green eyes but she knew he wasn’t really gone. After all, the Cyborg before her was a chameleon.
His warm, real hands roamed her body and returned her sense of safety. Hector was family, and family meant everything. Then she remembered…Oh shit.
“Steven!” Janet pushed away from him again. “You beat up Steven! Really?”
Hector grunted. “So, we’re doing this, we’re ruining the moment?”
“God, you have to make everything so freaking complicated! How is my family going to ever—”
Epilogue 1
Hector hauled a half-ton of steel toward the inlet. Netto’s huge blue body came into view as he drove down the dirt path leading from the Montihan settlement to his own. They were in the process of building houses—one for each of them.
Hector stopped his vehicle at the end of the lot and began to unload the material. He heard Netto approach him long before the shark said a word. The fucker was almost twice his size—almost. And only when Hector wasn’t in mid-shift.
He still had the body of a croc—that would never change—and the delusion of the Cyborg born to it from the war-torn era. Now that he knew Zeph was just a personality in his head, he no longer felt pain when he shifted, only pressure. He was stronger with this body. The chameleon part of him never really helped him unless he was trying to be sneaky.
“Took you long enough,” Netto said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Hector replied, lifting a steel beam onto his shoulders. “The shipment was packaged horribly, and the merchants dropped our shit right out in the open before promptly leaving.”
“Oh?”
“I may have snapped my teeth at them.”
Netto grunted. He picked up a beam from the vehicle and followed Hector toward the house.
It was smaller than the Montihan house and much farther away from the main settlement than Netto and Rylie’s home, but that was his fault. There was no warm welcome for him when he and Janet returned from the ocean that day. In fact, Quinten Montihan immediately challenged him to a duel, which Hector accepted and suffered two bullets to the chest. He would’ve taken several clips if it would’ve made them forgive him faster, but time was what the family needed. Quintin spent the rest of the day sulking.
It’s not like Hector wasn’t used to pain.
She warned me.Hector grinned. Janet couldn’t be more beautiful when she was pissed. Except, maybe, when she used him like he washer trophyinstead of the other way around. His cock twitched against his pants.
He set down his load and stepped back for Netto to do the same.
“Thanks for your help,” Hector said.
Netto nodded.
Always the silent one.
Netto started to walk away, and Hector opened his mouth but hesitated. They’d spent a great deal of time together over the past six months and would spend a lot more in the years to come. They lived several miles apart, which was more or less nothing. At least Netto was quiet.
“We’re to be real brothers soon,” Hector said, finding the words slightly distasteful. No Cyborg in theirrightmind wanted to be that close to another Cyborg. Ghost City was an exception due to its trade hub, and the underlying electrical signals that pulsed throughout soothed his kind. Kept them clear-headed.
Netto stopped and shrugged.
He continued, “I had a brother once.”
“A delusion. We all just thought your new persona was by choice.”
Hector’s jaw ticked, but continued. “He died long ago.”
Netto turned to face him. “I don’t care. Your chameleon problems are your own.”
The fact that his brethren had all accepted his delusion and shrugged it off without thought would always irk him.
“What I’m trying to say—and this is fucking hard—is that he gave me a family. This family. And that means you too.”Janet’s getting to me. Fuck, she’ll never let me live this down.He steeled himself. The shark stared at him blankly, and Hector sighed. “That’s it, man. See ya tomorrow.”
