His normally hard expression softened. “She tastes even better than we remembered. Sweeter.”
Omicron nodded. “We believe the extra fat around her burn is responsible for this. Perhaps when the two full moons rise, she will allow us to?—”
“I will kill her this day before the rise of the moons,” Fenrir Prime informed them.
Other than appearance, the variants had little in common—by their progenitor’s design.
Yet they regarded Fenrir Prime with twin looks of devastation.
“Prime, we beg of you—” Omicron started.
Fenrir Prime did not let him finish. He would not. Could not endure another cycle of this.
“You have both been fools, especially you, Omicron. If you wish to say your goodbyes, do so anon, before the rise of the moons. If she has escaped from my room, make sure she is returned to it before my arrival.”
The Huntmaster’s dot chose that moment to disappear over the horizon.
Diarmuid launched himself into the air without a word in a great flap of his dark-green wings.
Omicron continued to stare at Fenrir Prime with something worse than insolence. Grief.
“This, combined with your flagrant defiance of my order not to catch her, is making me wonder if I won’t have to put you down, too. Like the she-wolf you should have let die.”
It was not an empty threat. Omicron had put his prime in a terrible position. After weeks of failing to end her in her sleep, Fenrir Prime would take any excuse to end Omicron’s life for putting him through this.
Omicron must have realized how serious his prime was.
The other variant took to the sky without another word of protest.
Fenrir Prime gave them half a pause before following in their wake.
The visit from the Huntmaster had shaken him. What would have happened if Diarmuid hadn’t godspoken her into hiding? If the Huntmaster had seen the she-wolf?
No, that unexpected inspection and the coming of the full moons told him clearly what he needed to do.
I will end this now, he decided.Not tonight. Now.He would not let the memories stay his hand this time.
He flew the distance back to the Eastern Station without letting himself think.
He alit on the structure’s south side, where his private rooms were located, right below the stone office building Dorie always insisted on calling a castle for some reason.
As he walked forward, he reshelled into his human form. The pants he’d been wearing when he got the urgent eyeline hail from Diarmuid readjusted to fit his smaller frame.
He did not switch to this form because Dorie preferred him shelled, he told himself, but because it was easier to manipulate things like knives in his hominid form.
No, he was determined to see this through. This time, he would not fail.
He did not hesitate to walk through the green door that appeared in the wall. Her distinct smell of plastics and foods that did not yet exist landed on his tongue as soon as he walked into his sleeping quarters. Along with the smells of his variants.
Good. At least they’d followed his orders.
His hand shot to the tool wall and came back with a knife. He would kill her, then celebrate his new mastery over himself by hunting something for dinner that was not from their nearby herd ofMegaloceros.
However, he stopped when he realized the room was empty.
Neither Dorie nor his variants were anywhere to be seen.
His thermal scan snagged on something at the table Aengus had made for her, along with three large seats for them and onesmaller chair for Dorie so they could eat together at a table, the way she preferred.
