BONDED TO THE CYBORG BEAST

CORIN CAIN

CONTENTS

Foreword

1.  Thea

2.  Auger

3.  Thea

4.  Thea

5.  Thea

6.  Auger

7.  Thea

8.  Auger

9.  Thea

10.  Thea

11.  Auger

12.  Thea

13.  Auger

14.  Thea

15.  Auger

16.  Thea

17.  Thea

18.  Thea

19.  Auger

20.  Thea

21.  Epilogue

FOREWORD

Welcome to Aurelian Empire!

This is an alien cyborg fated mates romance novel with an overly protective, possessive alpha alien Cyborg. Contains spanking scenes!

(For adult audiences)

Hope you enjoy!

-CC

1

THEA

“Ohhhhh, what a beast,” she sighs with a wicked grin, stroking Auger’s cheek. That touch makes me protective of my creation. More than a man. A beast. I don’t know what’s in his DNA, but I’ve got my guesses.

He’s more alien than an Aurelian, more brutal than a Scorp, sharper than a Toad and far more than any man.

“Stop talking like that,” I admonish, annoyed. Jenna is everything I’m not. She makes me feel inferior, even though I’m the lead designer of research and development and she’s a hairdresser. We’re both 22, but I spent my life in front of computers and charts, and she spent her life…well, she’s very forthcoming about her adventures and the guys she spent them with.

She raises her eyebrow at me. “Oh come on. You made this guy to be every woman’s fantasy, didn’t you? He looks like he could pin you down with a single hand.”

He could. A single finger, more accurately. I designed the schematics myself.

“I said stop talking like that,” I say again, trying to make my voice firm.

I’m not so good at the interpersonal stuff. You put me in a room and tell me you need to give an alien cyborg the stopping power of a .45 pistol round with a single punch? I’m your girl. You tell me to deal with a blonde who won’t stop flirting with a man whose eyes have never opened? I don’t know what to say.

She turns to me, raising her perfectly maintained blonde eyebrow that matches her perfectly maintained flowing blonde curls. “Oh come on. You built him, right? Spill the beans. What’s he like in bed? Did you program him to be dominant? He’s such a…beast,” she says, biting her lip, and I hate knowing she’s imagining my creation in bed with her.

“His programming would not allow him to have sexual relations with a human,” I say, my voice cold.

I try not to imagine things like that…but it’s hard. It turns out, creating the perfect man to intimidate and take control of life-or-death situations happens to create a thing of beauty. You feel so tiny, so helpless in front of him.

Anyone would. It doesn’t matter if you’re 22 and he’s made to look old enough to be your father, or if you were in your forties. I designed him to intimidate. To end problems without lifting one of his metal-reinforced fingers. He’s not just massive. He’s heavy. And he’s got the strength to move his steel bulk with deadly purpose.

There’s something unsettling about Auger. He’s alien. Technically it’s highly illegal to use Aurelian or, Gods forbid it, Scorp DNA in a Cyborg. The official story is that he’s man and machine, and nothing more. I can feel the truth.

His blood is not just human.

Aurelian and human DNA fill him, giving his skin a pale, stone look.

But could he Bond a Mate like an Aurelian? I made his schematics for human DNA. What if it throws all my calculations off?

The all-male Aurelian species works in triads. Each can only Bond with one woman in the entire universe—their Fated Mate. It’s the only way for them to biologically reproduce. The huge alien warrior species scours the universe to find her, and when they do…

The only thing in life they care about is getting her pregnant. The Bond makes every desire a thousand times stronger, and it can warp the woman who is lucky or cursed to be Bonded to them, bringing up every dark need she has.

But Auger couldn’t possibly have these desires, even if he did wake. I know it. I programmed him, and I understand him better than I understand myself.

The Mating Rage can drive Aurelians mad enough to go Rogue and try to claim women as property. I designed Auger to stop them.

My cheeks redden as I try not to imagine Auger in bed. I’m too tired for this. I’ve been working what must have been weeks straight to meet the deadlines. Story of my life. When other girls were dating, I was coding. I finished high school at 16 and graduated top of my class at the Able Institute of Technology. Full ride scholarship.

Compared to Jenna? I feel like I haven’t lived.

I hate the way she touches my creation, and I hate knowing that if his eyes ever opened, he’d lust for her more than me. Because no matter what Auger is, he’s still a man—and men like gorgeous blondes with unfair proportions, not mousy programmers.

“And I love me an older guy,” says Jenna, running her hands down his neck. I clear my throat. Loudly. Her hand freezes, and she rolls her eyes.

“We tested schematics. Using a visual age of thirty-eight resulted in the highest level of respect and intimidation. Men want to start fights if they are challenged by someone they perceive as younger than them, but older than thirty-eight and they view him as less of a physical threat.”

“Fine fine. All business. I’ll get to work, boss,” she says, her tone cold as she brings the scissors to Auger’s brow.

Auger.

I should not have given him a name. He’s not a person. He’s a test. The first of his kind.

Six foot eight. A hulking beast. I made him that tall. It's the largest size that can fit in standard dimension luxury transport ships that starlets and heirs to fortunes travel in.

His jaw is an anvil. His face is broad and hypermasculine. Three days of stubble lines his face—well, four now, until Jenna trims it down to the perfect level. His hair grows while his eyes stay closed. Black, with a touch of grey to give him an authoritative presence. I created him to impose the second he enters a room. I don't care if it's filled with a triad of Aurelians or a group of drunk Toads, all eyes will turn to him when he enters. His shoulders are broad, boulder-like muscles and he's chiseled out of my own imagination.

His chest is covered by thick, grey-black hair.

“He’s just numbers to you, isn’t he, Thea? Just a machine.”

I wish she was right. But Auger has become so much more. He’s never opened his eyes, and he never will. The only Mark 1 prototype. He’s too beautiful for this world. I’ve never seen his eyes, but I know what they look like. Brilliant and blue, under thick black brows.

“He’s not a machine. He is a hybrid—human DNA and a frame that can withstand a transport ship crash and come out unharmed.”

And maybe something more. Aurelian and even Scorp blood running through his veins.

She clips his hair, just like she did yesterday when I showed Auger to a rich family interested in protection. He’s just the first part of the demonstration.

“You know, he’d be more imposing with a shaved head.”

I bristle. “He’s not a soldier. He’s a bodyguard. Look, I’ve run the tests. I know what I’m doing here. Just please, do your job, and quickly. I have to show him to…” Somehow, I don’t know the names of the new prospective buyers.

It doesn’t matter. They’re all the same. Too much money and too much to lose.

After Sentinels, the robot bodyguards that used to be most popular, grew vulnerable to a hack, there was a market for something less machine and more…man.

More beast.

A little shiver runs down my spine as I stare at him.

Auger lies back against the restraint table that keeps him upright. His own muscles, as powerful as they are, can’t keep him up without a mind to control them. He always makes me feel…submissive.

If he could bed a woman, I wonder if that Aurelian side would come out. I know what that species likes. They are famous for gathering harems of women, spanking them over their laps and teaching them discipline. Dominant and possessive, the alien species exults in owning a woman’s sexuality so fully she becomes his servant.

I shudder at the thought of him coming to life. I’ve seen other Cyborgs, designed to be just like him, each new line of the Mark models fixing bugs and issues that the last didn’t. Auger himself could be flawed—an imperfect species.

We’ll never know.

He’s shirtless, clad in tight combat pants that we show him off in. Above those pants are the lines of his Adonis belt that arch down to his manhood—also hypermasculine. It’s not my fault that both men and women view a big dick as a sign of power. There’s a huge bulge in his pants and I try not to look there too much.

“Mmm, sure you don’t want to turn him on? If you want to test this, count me in as a very willing volunteer,” she says, running her hand down the lines of his muscles to the band of his pants.

I snap.

“Get your hands off him!”

Her eyebrows raise. “Whoa. Whoa, calm down. I won’t touch your boyfriend. Jeeze. I’m just teasing. It’s not like he’s awake, anyways. This model can’t even be activated, right?”

I’m surprised she knows that. “No. He can’t. He’s a test. I make changes to his physical body, but I run all my tests on his mind in code and simulations.”

She giggles. “And why’d you make him so big, if he’s a guardian?”

My cheeks turn red. There’s a scientific answer to it, of course, but I don’t want to tell it to her and fuel her fantasies more.

It always makes me feel small and helpless when I think about that thing. He’s got two balls the size of apples, balls that pump him full of the testosterone of twenty average men. Hypermasculinity is necessary for the protective instincts I put in them. It just so happens that the Aurelian part of his DNA showed up in his cock.

He’s such a… beast.

I force that annoying thought from my head, the thought put there by the woman who most makes me want to tear my hair out. He’s not a beast. He’s a protector, and I won’t think of him like a wild animal.

“It’s based on strength.”

The second and third generations of my Cyborgs move. The Mark 2s and 3s walk. They talk, in low, gravelly voices at the perfect timber to command respect, voices that can switch to authoritarian in a snap—or intimidating to avoid a fight. Those ones are alive. Auger has never thought. He is a machine more than a man, no matter what you cover him in.

He just happens to be covered in rippling, powerful muscles and flesh without an ounce of fat.

Muscles that cover a steel interior. His mind is just enough computer to get past the Human Alliance laws against cloning, but he’s got a brain that houses that chip, just like me. If he loses that brain, he’ll lose his humanity and be a shell of his former self.

The Human Alliance laws. Laws that are getting bent more and more now that the universe is on the brink of war.

He stands without thought in his eyes as Jenna trims neatly. Every hair has to be perfectly in place for the display.

He will never fear. He will never love. His eyes will never open, and his mind will never experience life.

He is a test.

If you’re an ultra-wealthy business tycoon, well, you might not be able to buy brains for your daughter, but thanks to me? You can buy her a huge, formidable protector who will live and die for her.

“What the hell is the delay? There’s a demonstration in fifteen minutes. Another couple rich cunts here to place an order, though for some reason they won’t tell me who. Doesn’t matter. They’re all the same.” Galfond’s voice drips with disdain. The senior lead enters Auger’s room, followed by four attendants.

Galfond can afford to treat everyone with disdain. He’s enough of a genius that he doesn’t have to be polite.

The Cyborg Bodyguard project has taken the last two years of my life. I’m under a strict NDA. My life has been nothing more than coding, designing, testing and building the next generation of protective agents.

I’m a lead designer, the youngest by far of the four of us. Despite my title, I sometimes feel I’m left in the dark. Cobernaught snatched me up the second I graduated top of my class at the Able Institute of Technology. I’ve only contacted my parents by holo-vid the last two years. My friends drifted away after a couple months. They couldn’t relate.

“Why the sudden interest? We used to have a visitor every month. Now we’re getting them practically every day.”

Galfond runs a hand through his thick, tangled white hair. “Gods, Thea, when was the last time you slept?” He ignores my question, concern in his voice.

I blink. “I don’t know.”

“You’ve done nothing but code, compile, and demonstrate for the last week straight. You don’t follow the news enough. People are scared, Thea. When people are scared, Cobernaught makes money.

He turns to Jenna. “Are you quite finished?”

She rolls her eyes and runs her hand down Auger’s abs, then turns to us. “All done. You can show the beast off.”

Galfond laughs. He doesn’t seem to get annoyed at Jenna, and it just makes her more infuriating. I get it. She’s everything I’m not, perfectly manicured beauty, all curves and cleavage. She’s sex on a stick, and I’m…well, basically just a stick. Men don’t get annoyed at anything women like Jenna say, and they treat everything she says like the most hilarious joke in the world. Even sixty-five-year-old men who should be done with flirting.

“Get out of here, young lady,” he laughs, and Jenna gives him a big wink. She enjoys flirting and it frustrates me to see the way even Galfond isn’t immune to her charms. Geniuses should be smarter than that.

I clear my throat as she leaves.

When people are scared, Cobernaught makes money.

It was a dream job. The salary… Gods, twenty times what I was expecting. The salary wasn’t what drew me in. Cobernaught might be a new company, but they had Galfond. That was enough for me to trust them. The chance to create something.

No—not something.

Someone.

Not an AI but a merging of flesh and man that could truly become conscious.

Not a parody of consciousness, like the AI helpers that can speak with you, mimicking conversation so real you’d swear there was something behind it. Machine learning. That’s all it is. Responding to stimulus correctly.

Now I’ve brought these beings into the world.

They walk, and they talk—but also from a distance. There’s still…bugs.

What world did I bring them into? They’ll be plunged into the violence and war of the shattering universe.

I get my most authoritative voice ready. “Okay. Wheel him,” I order the four young men.

The attendants pause for a moment. They don’t like struggling to wheel his seven-hundred-pound bulk out. Even the two of them in their thirties seem like children compared to Auger.

They act like petulant children, too, and I can see they feel inferior to my creation. He makes them feel anxious and small.

I designed him for that. Intimidation prevents attacks.

“Wheel him,” repeats Galfond, snapping his fingers, and the four attendants move instantly.

No one listens to me!

His restraint table is a slab on wheels. It’s dull blue-gray, made of the same steel that forms his bones, which Mr. Tan, the head of marketing and customer acquisition, says proudly as he taps it with a coin, making it ring out in front of prospective buyers. The grey steel makes him even more menacing. We could create an automated system to bring him around, but Mr. Tan says it looks better to show four men struggling to move him.

I don’t know if that’s the real reason we don’t use an automatic transport.

I also don’t know why we pushed so hard to make him look menacing. Buyers will be purchasing Cyborgs like Auger for protection in this dangerous universe, and they should be comforted by him. We’ve optimized the Cyborgs more for war than personal protection, in my opinion.

It’s not going to be the average person who can afford to be protected.

I’m not naïve. The first commercial models will only be available to the super-rich. In time, we can drop the prices. With time, my creations could be programmed to protect all of the innocent, not just the ones who can afford it.

Galfond tuts as the attendants struggle to wheel Auger out. It takes me a second to realize he’s tutting at me.

“You’ve got to wash that. You know the buyers are worth hundreds of trillions, right?”

I blink, confused, then look down. There’s a coffee stain on my normally crisp white lab coat. Damn Jenna didn’t tell me. I vaguely remember spilling last night when I was checking a line of code in the Mark 3 models.

“I need more time,” I mutter.

They pushed me. I know they want a quicker release, but they have to wait!

The Cyborg Bodyguard project is supposed to be in prototype stage for the next two, three years at least until they’re perfect. When you have someone’s life in your hands, there can’t be bugs.

There’s a balance to be had.

You want a protector who can face down any threat without fear, but go too hypermasculine and they are more beast than man. That’s why Auger can never be turned online. The Mark 2 and 3 models, while still powerful, are nothing compared to him. I pushed him to the limit. He’s got more testosterone pumping in his veins than a bull.

You need a protector who will do anything to keep their charge safe, but you need them to obey without question.

I’ve been toning newer makes down, but even the Mark 3 models have their own ideas too often. I hate to do it, but I have to tone down their autonomy. It makes me sick. I brought life to these beautiful creatures who care about nothing but keeping their charges safe, and now I need to limit their minds to make them more commercially viable. Mr. Tan wants Cyborgs that will obey, more docile when they know better than the humans they are made to protect.

I hate the idea of some spoiled brat thinking she knows better than the combined weight of human knowledge on protection, combat and guarding that I’ve uploaded into the Cyborg minds. Some rich heiress could overrule my creation and die for it.

I follow Galfond out of Auger’s room. He sniffs and makes an exaggerated face at me. For a mid-sixties man, he’s got a childlike sense of humor. “You need a shower. Gods. You’re ripe.”

“Shut up.”

He teases me, but his teasing has an edge of concern.

He’s brilliant. I was obsessed with his calculations and thesis in school. I was starstruck when he and a recruiter met with me in my home while my own mother and father watched with glee that a massive multi-world corporation wasn’t just interested in their daughter—they were practically begging for me.

I couldn’t believe we’d be working on the same project. Even more shocking: he wasn’t my boss, but an equal.

A man who has had twice my age in experience on AI, and he’s been a mentor to me these last two years.

Still, no matter how often he tells me to sleep, or eat healthy, or find a work-life balance, I’m addicted to fixing and improving my creations.

We walk down the hallways. The wheels creak under Auger’s bulk. The technicians grunt and groan as they struggle to wheel the cyborg out. Humans…they’re so pathetic now, compared to my creation.

Cobernaught has heavy restrictions on technology in their huge space station bio-dome. Otherwise, they’d use a hover-table. That’s the real reason we need to use four men, not some marketing gimmick.

It’s like working in the Oil Age, before we escaped Earth and saw the true horrors and wonders of the universe. Before we knew about triads of massive Aurelians hellbent on finding and claiming their Fated Mate. Before we knew of slimy Toads who would sell you out for a single credit, or the Scorp—the mindless killers who nearly laid waste to our species.

I pull myself to the present.

“Who did you say the new prospects are?”

I don’t like when they look at Auger. He should be safe in the darkness of the room he lives in. Well—not lives, but sleeps. He may breathe through his nostrils so lightly you have to put your head right up to them to feel his breathe, his heart might beat slow and strong, but he’s not truly alive.

The concerns of mortals are not for him.

Let the other generations of cyborgs wake and live, but let him rest.

He’s the first. I have to keep him safe.

Galfond grunts. He makes that sound when he’s annoyed. “I don’t know. Mr. Tan wouldn’t tell me. Neither would any of the other bosses.”

The bosses.

We’ve got a couple of them. Their age, ethnicity, and background doesn’t matter. They all somehow look the same. They’ve got the same soul—and not much of one. They wear crisp suits as uniform as our white lab coats. They’re always speaking under their breath into their smartwatches when I answer their pointed questions.

“How much pain can they handle before they short-circuit?”

“Tell me more about overdrive mode. How long can the Cyborgs work at 300% strength before they shut down?”

“They’re powered in part by minuscule Orbs. Have you looked into other, more economical sources?”

It’s always the same. They want more specs at cheaper prices. Profit margin is everything to them—but they need a machine that works.

I’m surprised Galfond doesn’t know who the prospects are. He’s always in the know. The factory has been buzzing lately. There’s not that many workers, but our small staff greets each arrival with a buzz of excitement. I’ve seen holo-vid stars, famous politicians, and some of the richest in the universe walk through our hallways.

They mean less to me than a line of code.

We turn a corner, and I pull the door to the demonstration room open.

I’ll show the buyers Auger first. Then we’ll move on to the next demonstration with the Mark 2 models. They aren’t as sophisticated as the Marks 3s, but they can show off the physical capabilities of our creations in the room below, seen through thick-paned glass.

I know they made the glass triple-thick to make our creatures even more fearsome. Galfond told me all about their marketing tricks with a disdainful smile. It just made me smile.

The glass can stop a Mark 2, who were created with less raw strength.

It can’t stop Auger.

Two men in their forties stand in the room. Tall, but not nearly as big as my hulking creation.

The mysterious buyers.

They’re dressed like money. The older of the two is clean-shaven and thin, standing an inch or so taller than the second. The other has an extra twenty or so pounds and a brown goatee.

Mr. Tan gives us an empty smile and introduces them.

“Welcome. This is—”

Galfond freezes at the door as the attendants wheel Auger in. I notice the two buyers don’t look at Auger right away but fix their eyes on Galfond.

“I know who they are. Damned devils in suits! What the hell are the Stone brothers doing here? Get the hell out of my lab!”

He’s never lost his temper in the two years we’ve worked together. Mr. Tan clears his throat. “That will be enough, Galfond. You are excused. Thea will take care of the demonstration.

I blink, confused. “What’s going on?”

Galfond turns to me, his eyes wild. “You might not watch the news, but I fucking do. These two are war profiteers. When people die, they make money.”

“We are in the business of keeping the universe safe,” says the taller of the two brothers. His tone is neutral, with a heavy drawl. He speaks like he’s greeting a shareholder meeting.

“Bullshit,” snarls Galfond, turning and stalking out of the room.

I stand, uneasy, not knowing what to do.

I don’t speak at these demonstrations. Mr. Tan just likes to show me off, talking about how I was the youngest to publish an AI equation at 13, how I built my first autonomous robot at 14, and how I’ve been the brains behind some of our biggest developments. Galfond told me that the contrast between the old, wizened expert and young blood inspires confidence in buyers.

Now I’m standing in a room with two men worth a fortune and I don’t know what to do.

I want to follow Galfond out. If these men are evil, I don’t want them to have anything to do with my Auger.

But—I don’t want to leave them alone with him. If anyone is going to look at my man, I’m going to be there with him.

“I’m Thea.”

Mr. Tan smiles. There’s never a crinkle in his face or a gleam in his eyes when he smiles. It’s so empty.

“Thea was the youngest…”

He goes on to introduce me with the same spiel.

Normally prospective buyers ooh and aah in the appropriate places. The Stone brothers just watch me, impassive. The older one opens his mouth to speak.

“My name is Guster Stone. This is my brother, Tint. And are you looking for a new job, Thea?”

Mr. Tan steps forward, his face pale. “She has an iron-clad non-compete. Let’s get on with the demonstration.”

A new job?

I’m happy where I am—aren’t I?

I fucking better be, because work is the only thing I have.

In college I was always studying. It didn’t help that I started at 16, always working with older guys. I never had time for a boyfriend, and I grew tired of their advances. I’m no Jenna, but when you’re one of only three women in the Advanced Artificial Intelligence program, there’s not much choice.

“We have lawyers who can shred that non-compete like it’s made of toilet paper, if you’ll excuse my French. Or maybe we’ll just have to buy this whole damn company.” He chuckles. There’s life behind his voice—he’s not a soulless corporate drone like Mr. Tan.

That somehow makes Galfond’s accusations more troubling.

I clear my throat. “There’s not much of a demonstration with Au—with the only Mark 1 model in existence. This is simply to show you the physical specs up close.”

Up close, with the only Cyborg who can’t turn on. Mr. Tan doesn’t want any…bugs to happen.

“The rest of the demonstration will be with the Mark 2 and 3 models.”

Guster blinks. “Oh, I don’t know about that. Looking at the source tells the story.”

The source.

Is he talking about me or Auger?

Either way, I don’t like it.

I need him to focus on the Mark 2 and 3 models, not on my prize.

Tint clears his throat. “The Mark 3 models. When will they be ready for mass production?”

Mass production? Mark 3s? Are they crazy?

Mr. Tan steps forward, waving his hands. “We can discuss that later. As I said—”

Tint raises a hand with authority. It shuts Mr. Tan right up. “We want to hear it from the source.”

My eyes narrow.

“Our Cyborg Bodyguards are tailor-made for unique protection needs. They won’t be mass produced, even when they are ready for commercial sale. We’re a long way off from that. The Mark 6 models may be useful for real-world application, if the bugs get wrinkled out. That could take at least two years.”

Mr. Tan’s face goes white. We’re not supposed to mention the bugs, and we’re sure as hell not supposed to mention a two-year waiting period. That delay is enough to dry up million-credit deposits.

To my surprise, Guster’s smile widens. “Very good. Please, show me your work.”

I turn to Auger.

His face is barely lined, tiny wrinkles etched in, not from worry or stress, but to give him authority.

He’s never felt pain.

He’s never felt terror, like that fear that sometimes grips me, late at night when I’m alone in the dark.

He’s never dreamed. Never experienced.

Never lusted.

His mind may not be alive, but his heart pounds, slow and steady. Air flows in and out of his lungs, and his balls fill his blood with testosterone. If you run a hand against his body, you can feel the warmth.

It’s impossible not to be proud of him.

“My specifications are both complex and simple. Being able to punch through a brick wall is unnecessary when appearance is used as a first deterrent. We didn’t just need our Cyborgs to be intimidating to men or Toads. We needed them to give pause to Rogue Aurelians.”

Rogue Aurelians. Regular Aurelians are bad enough, the cocky bastards. Rogues don’t just build huge harems of willing women. They snatch up women on their own, forcing them to join their harems. I’ve heard girls giggle about them. How they discipline and train their women into obedient little sluts with a firm hand on their bottom.

Rogue Aurelians don’t give a fuck about what’s in your head. They only care about what’s between your legs.

My creations won’t just give them pause. They’ll obliterate them.

A tiny smile comes to Tint’s lips. I see it in the corner of my eye. He runs his hand against his cheeks as he thinks, and I know that his goatee is new—he used to have a beard.

My own creation has three days of stubble. Enough to show virility but not enough to hide his thick, broad jaw.

“However, we also built this model to fit in human-sized vessels. They will be a protective force to be reckoned with. My Cyborgs will not hesitate to jump in the way of a bullet if their charge is in danger. They would face down a dozen Scorp to save the life of their charge.”

Guster steps forward towards Auger.

I go cold.

I want to tell him to step back, but I can’t make the words form in my mouth.

“Their charge. Tell me, Thea, how does that work?”

I don’t like my name in his mouth. He’s not a cold reptile like my profit-hungry boss, Mr. Tan, who is wringing his hands, worried that the next thing I say is going to nix the sale.

What I tell him next will quash any ideas he has about mass production.

“Each Cyborg can be linked to the man or woman they are designed to protect. It’s a simple process, done with their DNA, and it ensures that they would never be fooled by an imposter or a holographic representation of their ward. They will protect their charge beyond question. They would do anything to keep him or her safe.”

Guster runs his hand down the huge, broad chest of Auger, the black-grey chest hair parting like a field of wheat under a breeze. I shiver. Guster turns to me, his brown eyes flickering under the light like I’m looking into a flame. “Can they be trained to have multiple charges?”

Mr. Tan gives me a warning glare—telling me soundlessly to avoid the question.

I don’t care if I get in trouble.

I want to dissuade this…this businessman from being anywhere near my creations.

“That’s an issue we’ve been working on since the Mark 1 model. Unfortunately, at this point it’s impossible. That means the Cyborgs are only useful for protecting one person. I don’t know if that will be fixed in the first production models, and frankly, I don’t know if it should be.”

War profiteers.

It’s coming together, even in my tired mind.

These two men don’t see my Cyborgs as bodyguards.

They see them with soldiers.

Mr. Tan clenches his jaw. “That will be enough. I will continue the demonstration in private. Thea, you’re free to go.”

I hesitate. I don’t want to leave Auger in a room with these men, but I know an order when I hear it.

“Actually, my part of the demonstration is done. Wheel him out. I’ll take him back to storage.”

The attendants don’t move.

I wish I had the authority like Galfond. I know the exact tone of voice that scientifically will get these four damned men to jump to attention, because I programmed it into Auger. Problem is, my vocal cords can’t make it happen.

Guster cocks his head. “No, I think we’ll keep him here, for now. There’s so much that you can learn from the source. Thank you for your time, Thea.”

There’s nothing I can do. I force back my grimace and leave, taking one last look at Auger over my shoulder as the doors close behind me, cutting me off from him. I didn’t like the way that Guster touched him. I don’t know what they want from my creation, but they better not do that again.

Each step wearies me. Like I’m slogging through a swamp. I can’t remember the last time I slept for more than an hour, a cat nap to refresh me. When coffee isn’t enough, I’ve even dabbled in the pills Cobernaught lets us use, and damned if I don’t have clear, endless energy. Galfond made me promise not to use them, telling me they’re made for fighter pilots on week-long missions, but when they get me closer to fixing the bugs in the code…

I open the door to the breakroom. Even the doors aren’t automatic. I’m surprised that they don’t work with a physical key, the way Cobernaught seems to distrust AI. I guess they don’t want us to be able to lock them.

It’s a little unsettling that an AI company uses as little code as possible.

Maybe they know we can break it.

I don’t know where that thought came from, but it’s true. If the doors were automatic, you just get me onto any control panel and I could figure out how to make them open and close to spell a message in Morse code, and no one at Cobernaught could stop me.

The breakroom is small and almost always empty, but I know it will be where Galfond is sulking. He’s sitting at the little table, stewing with a steaming cup of coffee. He motions brusquely for me to sit, but it’s not rude—he’s not mad at me.

I can feel his smoldering anger. It mirrors mine. Those Stone brothers want to turn my guardian angels into killing machines.

I sit down heavily. I’m worried that if I rest for a moment, I’ll fall asleep. I usually catnap for an hour at a time and then three alarms from my smartwatch blare out, waking me.

Galfond shoots out of his seat, nearly knocking it over. He pours me a cup of coffee from the machine. I’m used to getting the black brew from a replicator, but this is an old-school machine with a pot made of actual glass. It pours water through the ground beans to make a real brew.

Galfond sits down in front of me hard, and his full cup spills over. He ignores it and hands me the piping hot cup. I take a sip, luxuriating in it.

“Those fuckers are here for one reason. Gods, I was a fool. I had two conditions for working for Cobernaught. Two fucking conditions. No military use. No commercial sales unless I said so. I won’t let them get away with this.”

I set my cup down carefully on the table, but my hand shakes a little. The rest of the Cyborgs may not be Auger, but I feel a connection to them all the same. Thinking of them being used for war makes me sick.

Galfond shakes his head so hard his thick white hair bounces back and forth. “You need to follow the damn news, Thea. You’ve got no idea what’s going on, do you?”

I think back to tense conversations I walked by. I never bothered to find out what the other staff were worried about. If it was something to do with my work, they’d tell me. “I just thought people were stressed about deadlines and pressure. What’s going on?”

Galfond’s eyes narrow. “The Aurelian Empire is unstable. About a third of them split off, Orb-shifting away from loyalist planets, led by those damned Priests with their superstitions of the end times and some savior. Fanatics! No one knows where they went…”

He swallows another sip of coffee then slams his mug down. “Bah! All those superstitions, and it’s all just to take women slaves.”

I clench my fist.

Rogue Aurelians are one of the reasons I built the Bodyguards.

I designed my Auger to fight them.

Aurelians are obsessed with finding their Fated Mates. I wonder if it’s that part of their genetic makeup that allows my Bodyguards to be such good protectors. The process of binding the Cyborgs to their wards is nothing like the sick, twisted Bond that forms between Aurelian and human, but it takes only the good of it: the protective instincts of the naturally dominant species.

If you put my creation up against a triad of Aurelians, he would rip them to shreds. He’s got some of their DNA in their flesh, yes, but that’s just a coating for his metallic strength. His fists can punch right through their power armor. Only a triad of Elites, clad in full Orb-Armor would stand a chance against my Auger.

Galfond taps his hand against the table quickly. He’s anxious. “That’s why the fucking bosses have been so gleeful. War means profit, and they’re taking orders already. I snuck into our accounting department and got a look before I was chased out. They’re fucking selling the Mark 4s.”

I gasp. “They’re not ready! The flaws…the linking…they’re not ready!”

My creations aren’t ready to go out in the world alone. I’ve built them to be strong. Confident. Powerful. But they haven’t been tested enough. They could snap in a real-world application.

If Cobernaught pushes the release so quickly, I don’t know what could happen.

There is a roar that rips at my heart.

A roar half beast and half man.

A roar designed to strike terror in those who face it—a roar designed by me.

Auger’s roar.

My coffee flies into the air as I sprint to him.

2

AUGER

Pain.

Cacophony. Wall of burning sensation and blurry images, too much for me to handle. My eyes are shocked open for the first time, and reality is nothing like I expected.

I lived in darkness.

I lived under deep, deep waters, lost in the memories of a thousand battles, blurry half-formed images that are not real.

Only one thing is true.

Her voice.

So far away. I hear her like I’m at the bottom of the ocean, and she swims at the surface, looking down at me through crystal waters.

I can smell her.

Oh fuck, I can smell her, and I ache for her. There is a force that drives me towards her. Every second of my life I spent trying to open my eyes, trying to make my muscles move so I could get to her.

We are meant to be together. Nothing can change that.

I focus on the memory of her voice, her being, as agony rips through my mind. I’m going insane. Only she keeps me real as lightning pain flares through every inch of my body.

I’ve died a thousand deaths. I’ve been skewered, shot, crushed, and cut down by Orb-Blades. The only agony that has come close to this was a violent death by Scorp-Venom. The same pain rips through me.

My voice is someone else’s. It screams in rage and agony. My eyes are slits, clamped down against the burning light, but I can see the two men who look down at me impassively. Blood fills my mouth as I bite my own tongue. My muscles try to fight at my bonds as I convulse under the electric shocks, and I feel the electrodes in my brain.

My mouth aches, opened as wide as possible as I roar—but it’s not just pain and agony.

Anger burns up.

Who of these mortals dares to torture a titan!

3

THEA

I sprint, slipping and losing my footing as I rush around the corner and I hit heavily into the wall. I pull myself up and rush down the stairs, nearly falling again. I can hear Auger’s roars of pain and agony through the door to the lower level viewing area.

I fling the door open.

His roar blasts my ears. It’s too loud. It was designed to cow a man, a brutal, booming war cry that hits me like a wall of artillery. I push through the sound to him.

Auger.

He’s in his restraining table, facing the windows above, and there are electrodes in his brain.

They’re testing his pain response. I run to him. I don’t care if the rest of his consciousness is not active, I can’t see him like this. His mouth is open like a gaping wound, screaming out. I rip the electrodes from his head, and his screams stops.

My ears ring in the sudden silence.

His eyes are opened, just a slit, and I see brilliant blue for the first time.

They close as his body relaxes, occasionally twitching from the electro-shocks.

“Thea! Back off! He’s not active!” Mr. Tan’s voice is rational, but I can’t listen.

I turn, boiling mad. “What the fuck are you doing to him!”

Guster presses on the microphone that lets him speak clearly through glass that couldn’t stop the roar. “A demonstration to see the Mark 1 reaction to pain stimulus. Only his basest functions were activated. If Mr. Tan is correct, there is no conscious thought. Simply a machine responding to stimulus.”

There are tears in my eyes. I turn to Auger. I don’t care if there was conscious thought. If there’s anything in his mind that was active—I can’t have his first memories be agony and pain. I run my hand over his chest. He’s sweat-soaked. My huge, brutal warrior was tortured, and I don’t care if his mind wasn’t active to feel it.

His eyes open.

Blue and brilliant.

Too brilliant. More brilliant than I designed, shining like ice above a flame. He’s so fucking big as he looms over me. When he stares down, I’m miniscule.

He strains against the bonds, bonds designed to stop him from escaping if he ever did activate, bonds that he couldn’t snap through even as he convulsed under the agony.

The steel creaks and they break.

His two huge hands grab me.

I scream out. He’s too fucking huge. He was in agony, his eyes wild and brutal. Somehow, he came alive, and he snapped.

I’m the first thing he’s seeing after being tortured.

He could break me in half with a twist of his wrists. His bright blue eyes stare deep in my soul, reaching into me as he lifts me like a toy. Sweat courses down his brow.

He can lift two-thousand one hundred and thirty-three pounds of weight without momentum. The figure rushes into my panicked mind out of nowhere.

He stares down at me and draws a huge, ragged breath in, tasting air for the first time. His bright white teeth glisten.

“Thea. You are mine.”

His voice is a rasping whisper. He says my name, and it sounds so right, so low and deep and gravelly that no one else can hear it. Before I know if it’s real or not, his eyes shut again.

His hands open.

I fall to the ground, my legs buckling. He lies back against the angled table, the restraints burst and on the ground.

I turn, looking up at the men. The Stone brothers have identical expressions of wonder, and Tan’s gone ghostly white. “A mere motor-muscle reaction to stimulus, of course. As I said, there’s no thought in the generation 1 model. Gus, Frank, take these two to the next facilities.”

Gus and Frank aren’t the names of any of the attendants who oversee wheeling around Auger, but Mr. Tan is too shaken to get it right. Guster and Tint stare down curiously, then follow the attendants out.

Mr. Tan rushes down the stairs. I can hear the pitter-patter of his feet.

The doors open, and he stares. “How the fuck did he break through it? You told me that activating base functions would keep him unconscious!”

He stays back, close to the door. He’s ready to turn and run if something happens.

I can’t let him think Auger was conscious. I have to trick him, somehow. I swallow, my throat dry. “I know you were bullshitting those two when you said it was motor-muscle reaction, but you were close. Don’t you know they can go into overdrive? The restraints were designed for 100% power, not 300%. Base functions include emergency procedures. Gods, do you even read the information I send you?”

Mr. Tan gulps. “So, what are you saying? Are they meant to do this?”

“I’m saying that was a stupid fucking idea.”

He stays back, not fully convinced. “Is this…is this flaw present in the Mark 3 and 4 models?”

“There’s no damn Mark 4 yet! I know exactly what you’re doing, Mr. Tan!”

He pauses, considering, and suddenly he looks reptilian. He’s stressed about making the contract happen with the Stone brothers, but now he’s hearing something in my voice that makes him pause. He’s not an executive, nervous and trying to make a profit. The second I say those words he loses his humanity and I see the reptile underneath. “What do you mean, Thea?”

I’m in danger.

I know it, not with logic, but with my hind-brain.

Instinct.

It helped my ancestors avoid saber-tooths and predators, and now it’s telling me to shut the fuck up about how much I know about them selling my Cyborgs to military contractors as soldiers.

A chill goes through me. “You can’t push the Mark 4 out. There’s already known bugs. And this—I mean, he really shouldn’t have been able to function enough to pick me up without killing me. With overdrive activated…I should be split in two.”

There was something conscious that held him back.

The mask of the salesman comes back over Mr. Tan’s face. He looks less like a reptile, but I’d be a fool to think he’s warm-blooded. He smiles. “Of course. Of course. That’s need-to-know information. I didn’t realize you knew we were thinking of pushing out the Mark 4s, on a trial basis, of course. You see, Thea, with the current geo-political situation, people need our help. We want to provide our Cyborg Bodyguards as soon as possible. Guster and Tint could be very important buyers. They want to provide bodyguards for VIPs travelling in war zones.”

I nod. It’s believable.

If I hadn’t seen the mask slip off for a moment, I would have believed it.

Investors.

The Mark 4 may be a bodyguard.

The Mark 5 will be a soldier. Once the pilot program shows their strengths and weaknesses, the Stone brothers want to mass produce them for military service. They’ll buy them by the thousand to train and contract as a mercenary force.

It’s illegal. Highly fucking illegal. We have the rights to build a Cyborg Bodyguard, and nothing more. Galfond told me it took a decade and billions in legal fees to some scummy law firm to get those rights. If the Human Alliance finds out what Mr. Tan plans…

If war is coming to the universe, then my Cyborgs are going to be the deciding factor…if I can’t stop them from turning my creations into murderers.

What can I do against a multi-trillion credit corp?

Mr. Tan looks over at Auger, nervous. “We can’t have this…thing here anymore. If it can activate without our permission, even just emergency function, it could cause an incident. That would be very bad. No one would want to use them as a Bodyguard if they saw…if they saw what just happened. Take his computer chip out and study it to find out what was wrong with him. I know you say he’s supposed to work like that…but something wasn’t right.”

He’s still suspicious.

“Take his chip out?”

I don’t understand. The chip is embedded deep under his brain. It can’t be taken out.

“Yes. Extract it and incinerate him. You can check his code to find out how he came active. That wasn’t just an emergency function. I saw his damn eyes open. He was looking at you. I could have sworn his damn mouth moved. Gods. If this costs me the sale, I’m going to be fired. The Stone brothers are the biggest buyer we’ve ever seen.”

He talks of incinerating my beautiful creation and he thinks only of the credits he might lose. I imagine Auger’s flesh searing, disintegrating under the incinerators, and my heart goes cold.

“Wait. Let me study his form first. There’s a possibility the malfunction was in his organic brain.”

Mr. Tan pauses. He wants Auger gone as soon as possible, before word spreads. He wants this covered up and disappeared. There were only a few witnesses, and he can explain this all away and keep his job.

Unless it happens again.

“I’ll need to open him up and take out his brain. Then I’ll incinerate the body.”

Take out his brain. Does Mr. Tan believe me?

It’s a lie—that would kill Auger—but I need to convince Mr. Tan I’ll disable him immediately. He has to believe it could be a problem in Auger’s organic brain. Otherwise he won’t go with my plan and will have the computer chip sent to me to analyze while Auger burns.

“Fine. Fine. Fuck, I need to catch up to the Stone brothers and feed them the same bullshit you just fed me. What did you say? Emergency mode or something? Just admit you fucked up the code, Thea. I know you’re little miss girl genius, but you’ve got a fucking ego on you.”

He’s sour.

Older men are more respected.

If I looked like Auger, he’d never dare to speak to me this way.

It’s only because he views me as a weak young girl that he can make me take his ire. If Auger came to life now, he’d rip Mr. Tan’s throat out for offending me.

“I fucked up the code,” I say, looking down to appear suitably chastised.

His anger made his slick salesman mask slip, but it comes right back. “No, it’s not your fault. These fucking deadlines, I’ll tell you. I’m being pushed just as hard as you. Just make sure you incinerate him by the end of the day. Gods dammit. What a fuck-up. Alright. I’ll send technicians to move him to medical bay 1.”

That won’t work.

“Bay 7,” I say quickly. “It’s got the tools I need.”

I know the layout of the ship. I’m taking a huge risk—but the Cobernaught ban on tech comes with benefits.

There won’t be any video feed to watch what I plan to do.

“Fine. Bay 7. I have to go.”

He rushes out, slamming the door behind him.

The electrodes dangle.

I’m alone with Auger. My throat closes up as I look at the massive man. Sweat-soaked, he’s even more primal. He’s an animal. His hair is short, wavy, and clings to his brow, a mop of shiny black hair speckled with grey.

How were his eyes so brilliant?

How did he know how to speak?

I look up at the viewing panel to make sure no one is watching, and step towards Auger. Without the restraints, he makes me even more nervous. If he could come alive…

I gently touch his stomach, feeling the ridges of his abs, shivering in front of him. He’s got a deep, musky smell. I didn’t program that into him. It’s his own scent, manly. I run my fingers ever so gently through his thick chest hair. If there’s anything inside, I want him to feel a gentle touch after the agony of the torture.

“Are you in there?”

I whisper gently to him, looking up at his chiseled face.

He makes me feel so tiny and helpless.

If there’s something in there, something that has experienced life, then I can’t let him be burned into dust.

I have to save him.

4

THEA

It takes six attendants to get him onto the medical table. They huff and wheeze, pushing him, and I have to help to get him on.

“That’s all,” I snap, and they leave. They’re relieved to be away from him.

I see the way men act around Auger.

They feel insecure around him.

I need to know how he activated. Was he truly there?

I heard his voice, the whisper too low for anyone else. He…he scares me. His mind is a mystery. I’ve added so many different sources of combat experience from brain scans of fallen warriors that were available in my database. He’s had hundreds of different men, from lowly soldiers to generals, put in and out of his mind.

He’s a collection of DNA from many sources, genetic makeup that’s been changed and swapped. I wasn’t supposed to do those tests on him. He was supposed to be only a body, showing off physical proportions, but I went far beyond with his mind to see how he would change.

The medical table is one of the only autonomous units that can work with mechanical assistance, because doctors working on Cyborgs need to be able to move their seven-hundred-pound bulk without assistance.

How long do I have?

A shiver runs through me as I’m alone with him. If he wakes up…what would I do?

I’m so torn.

He shouldn’t wake up. He should never have been able to open his eyes.

Thea. You belong to me.

He knew my fucking name.

Those words keep tingling in my mind. I’ve got no time to run a scan to see if he’s linked to me. I can’t let my warrior die.

I chose Medical Bay 7 for a reason. It’s the closest to the transport shuttles that bring malfunctioning or failed Cyborgs to the graveyard—close enough that no one will bat an eye that I’m moving him myself.

It’s not a graveyard. There’s no resting place for these men. They get melted down into base components and reused. Some of the Mark 3 Cyborgs have metal from the Mark 2 models.

I have to move fast. I don’t want anyone asking questions or or noticing that his skull is intact. I’ll have to deal with the technician in charge of paperwork for the transport, but he’s a kindly old man who always smiles wearily at me. I think I can get through him.

I press on my smartwatch, and the hologram menu appears in front of me. I scroll through, deep in the programs, until I find a piece of code I wrote when I was 13. Other kids my age were getting in trouble with drugs and booze.

I was getting in trouble by learning how to hack.

I tested it twice.

The school’s lights flicked on and off in Morse code, spelling my name. The second time, I made it say something more vulgar—and no one ever noticed.

I didn’t get cocky. Once I knew it worked, it lost its fascination. Just another challenge beaten.

Now I’m going to need to use it in a multi-billion-dollar facility on a private world owned by Cobernaught.

I press on the button of the medical table and the wheels roll slowly. I walk him through the empty hallways, thankful that there’s few staff. No one stops me.

I get to the big elevator doors of the transport. The old man brightens up when he sees me. His hand shakes as he writes my name on the sheet of paper. We use pen here. Old-school. He’s wizened, his face wrinkled with age.

“Shame. That’s the first one, right? You had a name for him, didn’t you?”

I nod—nervous but keeping a blank face. “Auger.”

“Auger. Auger. A good name. Guess when we get old, no one cares about us anymore.” He sniffs, melancholic, and I realize he’s one of the only people in this facility who give a damn about Auger—even if it’s only because it makes him think of himself.

I give him a smile. “Shame, you’re right. Say, could you give me a moment alone in the transport with him? I know it’s silly, but I want to say goodbye.”

He nods, slowly. “Ain’t supposed to. Ain’t supposed to let anyone in the transport except the bodies. Hell, you’re the one that built him, didn’t you? So young. So clever. You remind me of my own granddaughter. You know, I don’t think she’ll care to say goodbye to me.”

He pulls himself up from the chair, moving slowly to give me even more space, scanning his keycard so the doors open. It’s one of the only automatic doors on the station.

I wheel Auger in, stopping myself from rushing, but the second the doors close behind me I sprint into action. I should be scared that I’m in an automated transport that brings Cyborgs to incinerators, but there’s too little time to worry. I’m so fucking lucky this particular part of the process uses an automated system and not a human pilot.

I open the control panel and scan my smartwatch in.

I find the destination. It’s always the same. The graveyard. It’s sad to see—the little transport hovers over the incinerator and the bottom doors open, letting out a deactivated Cyborg. Its eyes never open as it falls into the fire.

If those doors open up thirty seconds earlier… It won’t save him. But it will give him a chance.

I don’t know if Auger can escape.

But I know he has the schematics of the facilities deep in his mind, because I put them there, to test his memory and spatial awareness on a simulation of his mind.

The code loads.

If this works, he’ll be dropped en route, and no one will ever know.

But if my code isn’t stealthy enough…they’ll know I was the one who tampered with it.

I see the flaw in my plan too late.

My code engages.

The doors start to hiss open, and I close the control panel in the nick of time. The wizened man looks at me sadly.

“A beautiful creature, isn’t he? Shame to see him go. Ah well. Happens to all of us, eventually.”

I try not to show the naked fear in my face.

It doesn’t matter how subtle my code is when no melted metal shows up in the incinerator. I’ll have to pray they think it’s a malfunction or that Auger somehow fought his way out.

I brush his matted hair out of his eyes. This will be the last time I see him. He has survival instincts, much higher than the newer models, and he’ll find some way off this manufactured world the size of a large moon. I gently stroke his forehead, letting my smartwatch touch against his head, the activation sequence commencing.

He stiffens.

He’s no longer in a coma.

He’s waking up—slowly. It will take him two minutes to fully activate, if it works. The incinerator is only three minutes away.

I’m giving him a chance. A thin one, but it’s all I can do. I give a sad smile to the old attendant. “He was flawed. The new models will be much better.”

We step out together. The doors close behind us. I hear the little transport taking off.

What have I done?

What have I set in motion?

If he comes alive and he cuts down guards to escape, their blood will be on my hands.

If he’s cut down by their bullets, shot to death and dying horribly instead of blissful oblivion from flames he would never feel, it’s my fault. My stomach curdles as I imagine him waking up too late, just soon enough to experience the flames burning him alive.

There’s nothing I can do now.

I won’t know where the beast of a man goes, but I’ll know if he’s caught.

I walk down the empty hallways to a private transport. All the transports are automated. I’ve been sleeping in the office for a week, rushing to fix the code.

Now that I know Cobernaught’s plan, I don’t have the same drive to finish.

The transport touches down at my gorgeous house. It’s high tech and practically a mansion. I didn’t read the fine print of my contract to Cobernaught, but apparently it included this beautiful estate.

I grew up in a one-bedroom with leaky faucets and a replicator that fucked up coffee on the regular.

Now I’ve got a glass mansion with a private swimming pool I’ve used once, and thick walls. There’s nothing on the other side of those walls. Cobernaught’s got rows of mansions like mine, just waiting for more scientists and researchers. They plan to expand once they start getting deposits. I may have started the Cyborg project, but more and more I realize it will not end with me.

I’ve opened Pandora’s box.

I feel like I’m walking in a trance. I can’t believe what I did. I should have been a good employee. I should have taken his chip out and scanned it.

They’ll ask me what I found tomorrow.

I’ll have to think of some bullshit. I’m in a fog. I walk to my king-sized bed. My arms move too slowly. I can’t even pull off the coffee-stained lab coat or set an alarm. The second I lie on the bed, not even the stress or tension of the insane thing I did can keep me awake.

5

THEA

I wake up—panicked.

It’s pitch black out. The situation crashes down on me.

What I did… Oh Gods, what I did.

Am I going to get fired? Will they know I hacked the systems?

Surely not. I’ve tested that code before, many times…

I’m sweaty, cold and clammy. Did it work? Is Auger alive? Was he caught? Or was he burnt up in the flames, his last moments agony?

I thought I’d sleep for days, woken up by frantic calls from my coworkers or superiors about the missing Cyborg. Instead I’m woken by the strange feeling that I’m not alone.

I’ve got a house big enough for a family of ten but I’m the only one in it. My bedroom ceiling is translucent, a giant sunroof, and stars twinkle above. I’m so far from home. At some parts of the orbit, I can see my old home. The man-made moon of the space station circles it.

I’m groggy and tired, and I pull myself out of bed and walk to the bathroom, brushing my teeth and trying to think. I pop a pill. Within ten minutes I’ll have clear, focused energy.

Then I’ll be able to think.

They won’t pin the escape on me. If Auger managed to activate in time, and my hack worked…

They can’t keep him.

He’s stronger, smarter, and more powerful than any of the other models. He would have found a transport ship and escaped.

The attendants won’t check the incinerator until the morning. If I could have Galfond fudge the records… He’s already pissed at Cobernaught for working with war profiteers. I can trust him.

I have to trust him.

I look at my watch. Two a.m. He’s going to be grumpy. “Call Galfond,” I say to the watch, and it connects me. Within two beeps he picks up.

“What’s up? You’re at home? That’s good. You need to sleep.”

I swallow. “Galfond, are you alone?”

“Yeah. I’m in my office. Mr. Tan came in asking me some bullshit about overdrive mode. Obviously had no damn idea what he was talking about. All I can tell you is they’re not getting away with using our creations for the military. I’m drafting up something spicy for the Human Alliance right fucking now that will put the wrench in that.”

I remember the way Mr. Tan’s mask slipped off. Galfond thinks he’s exposing a greedy corporation. I saw the reptile behind the greed. “Just…just be careful, okay? I’m calling…I’m calling because I might have done something.”

His eyes focus, the image fuzzy on the holo-projection. He looks at me, worried. “What did you do?”

It’s now or never.

Either I trust him, or I don’t, and it’s time to choose.

“Galfond…I…” I can’t spit the words out. They’re stuck in my throat. I summon every bit of strength I have. “I helped Auger escape.”

He’s stunned. He says nothing, but slowly opens his desk drawer. I can see his hand move and I hear it opening just off the holo-vid. He slides the whistleblower report into the drawer and shuts it.

“Maybe,” I continue. “I don’t know. I…I just gave him a chance.”

He taps his finger against his desk as he thinks. “You activated him. Thea, you know how many conflicting identities we tested on him. He was in a quiet place.”

A quiet, safe place. Existence without thought. There’s a beauty to that. He was brought screaming into the ugliness of the world, just like I was brought screaming, but where I landed in the embrace of a loving father, he felt only pain.

His only moments alive were agony. The quiet place is better than that.

I shake my head. I pace, my feet moving me through my massive, lonely house. The pill is taking effect. It clears my head of the fog that dulls the reality of what I’ve done. I feel like I’ve slept for ten hours and woken up fresh and ready. “No. He wasn’t unconscious. The Stone brothers tested his pain thresholds and he came alive. Hell, I don’t know, Galfond. I think he was awake all this time, awake and asleep, like a coma victim who can hear sounds but can’t react.”

I’m lost in memories of speaking with the silent beast. I told him everything. My deepest, darkest fears. How I’d never had a real boyfriend, how I feel like I’ve barely lived. My purpose.

How even if I can’t be strong, I can bring things into the world that can protect the weak.

Galfond snaps his fingers. “Focus.”

I snap back to reality. Galfond’s mind is working fast. “So, Thea. You fed some bullshit to Mr. Tan about Auger going into overdrive. If Auger went fully awake, then there’s no way you would have been able to pretend. He would have fought his way out with his bare hands, and he’d have been taken down. So he didn’t activate fully, and it looked like a glitch.”

Seeing his brilliant mind piece together the puzzle from only a few shapes reminds me of why I’ve been in awe of Galfond since I was eight years old. He smiles, not relieved, but the same smile he gets when he cracks a particularly frustrating bug and his code compiles clean. “You took him to Med Bay 7.”

I blink twice.

Even for him, that’s a stretch. “How did you know?”

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. His mind is one in a million. He puts his coat on, the holo-vid following him as he gets up. He winks, shocking me from my stress. “You told me once there’s only three things automated in the whole damn facility. Elevators, medical labs, and transports. You also told me that 12-year-old you could have hacked them all. Where did you send Auger?”

“I programmed the doors to let him out early. Before the incinerators.”

Galfond snorts. “Half measures! I’ve told you a thousand times, Thea, do it right, or don’t do it at all. So if he didn’t activate, and your hack worked, he’s lying helpless on the ground right now. Or, if your hack didn’t work, he was awake but was melted already. I can’t help you in those two cases. I won’t. But if there’s metal missing from the incinerator and your project is out there—I can fix it. I’ll update you when I get there.”

Galfond hangs up without a goodbye.

If my project is out there.

I know him better than anyone else. Auger has strong survival instincts. He would have taken a transport and escaped to the planet below.

You belong to me.

Those words echo in my mind, making me shudder as I look out at the pool. In the distance, over my walls, is planet X12. It is a huge, fertile green orb. It has no moon—or it didn’t, until Cobernaught built this facility. I grew up looking up at the man-made moon. Our government told us it was going to be a huge factory that would bring us jobs. Now that I think back, it was only when I was ten that the story changed and we were told that it wasn’t just any factory, but a brand new station for Cobernaught’s Bodyguard program.

That planet was a safe place for me. I grew up protected. I never worried about the scything claws of a Scorp or being kidnapped by Rogue Aurelians or human slavers.

Is he on there now? Can he blend in with humans? Will he stay on X12 or make his way into space to find his destiny?

I’m responsible for the fear and stress I’ve brought into my own life. Including Auger.

Cobernaught built here, deep in the middle of the Human Alliance, so they could source directly from X12’s Able Institute of Technology. Ironic, how a planet known for farming is also the destination for promising students who flock from all reaches of the Human Alliance. We took a course on ethics in AI, and how we needed to make AI and robotics to help humans prosper, not to undercut their jobs and push them out of business.

I didn’t think much about ethics. All I thought about was how with my knowledge, I wasn’t just a scared human. I might not be strong myself, but when I can program a robot to kill anyone who gets within ten feet of me, I know the taste of true power. Women flock to Aurelian harems for safety.

I built my own safety.

I remember walking into my first class at 16. How everyone stared at me. You aren’t supposed to get into their Advanced AI course until you’ve finished a mathematics degree. Everyone else was in their twenties and looked at me like a zoo animal.

I might still be in a tense situation, but the phone call with Galfond relaxed me. I stare at the wavy waters of the pool with the sense that I’ve done something. The worst anxiety is sitting, worrying, and doing nothing.

If I had let Auger burn in that fire without giving him a chance, there would be a hole in my chest that would never be filled.

The huge green planet reflects the light of the sun. In the dead of night, it’s like dawn or dusk on the moon. Time doesn’t mean much to me anyways. I just work, day or night, sleeping when I can.

My pool captures the reflected light, and I’m entranced by the tiny ripples of the water as it moves from the pull of gravity from the massive planet.

It’s like I’m in a dream, as across the water is him.

The lights bathe his huge muscles with a cold glow. His body is unscathed. His combat pants are ripped on the left thigh, his huge leg muscle flexing as he stands silent and still.

My walls are eight feet tall.

He can jump twenty feet from a dead stop. Thirty-two from a run.

There’s thin glass and twenty feet of space between us. If I try to run to the transport ship, he’d catch me in 2.6 seconds exactly, shattering the glass with his charging bulk as he runs me down.

My mind is moving, but my body can’t. I’m frozen. He marches towards me, his eyes glowing bright blue and homed in on me.

I try to pull my eyes from him, but his ice-blue gaze has me captured. My hand shakes as I put my smartwatch to my mouth to call for help.

Who can I call?

Cobernaught would send a team to pick us up.

They’d cut Auger open to see what made him snap. His self-preservation protocols should have guided him to leave the station, where he’s at extreme risk. The Mark 2 and Mark 3 models place less emphasis on their own lives. It’s a balance between a willingness to sacrifice themselves for their wards and not wasting their lives needlessly. I don’t want my creations to die for nothing.

I feel like I’m in a dream, but in my nightmares, the monsters move slowly.

This beast is striding with long steps. He doesn’t take his eyes off me as he wades through the shallow end of the pool, taking a direct line towards me. Ripples spread out over the surface, and seeing my Cyborg affecting the physical world makes it all feel very fucking real.

Auger pulls himself out of the pool in a smooth motion, the water cascading down his muscles and making his combat pants cling to his powerful legs. He drips as he walks closer, until only a half-inch of glass separates me from the huge Cyborg.

What does he want from me?

He towers over me, staring at me with those bright blue eyes. I’m not his ward. I can’t be. We never drew my blood. We never transferred my DNA over. If my DNA was somehow engrained in this beast, it’s not in the protective, servile way of the Mark 2 and Mark 3 models.

He told me that he owns me. His words said it first—and now his eyes repeat it as he stares at me like I am his possession.

My hand shakes. I pull the smartwatch away from my lips, unable to make the call and damn Auger to certain death. I open the sliding glass door before he smashes it open.

“Thea.”

His voice is deep, endless. Gravel. When he says my name, it does something to me. I made his tone authoritative and commanding. I programmed his exact tenor, but I couldn’t program that…inflection that is somehow his own.

There is something in his mind I didn’t put there.

He isn’t just following commands. He has his own…being, independent of me.

“Auger. You can’t be here. You need to get to X12. You can blend in with the others. I have a transport ship outside. I can set it to the planet. You can get away.” I’m rambling, my voice raised an octave.

“This is the only place I can be.”

He towers over me. Even though the glass is meaningless, it felt like a barrier between us. He could have broken his way in.

But I invited him with my actions, sliding the glass door open and allowing him entrance.

Sweat covers his body where he was too tall for the water to touch him, like he ran all the way here. Maybe he did. It’s not just his huge bulk and height that makes me feel small. It’s those piercing eyes that glow with their own light and stare into my soul, like he knows all my secrets.

Maybe he does.

I’ve told them to him, one after the other, speaking to his silent, sleeping being. Did he hear those words? Does he know me, better than anyone else in the world?

I take a step back.

He takes one forward, into my home.

“How did you know I was here?”

He has no smile. His face is lined, his eyes focused. He breathes in. His nostrils flare—tasting my scent. He’s got a better sense of smell than a wolf.

“I heard you. I heard you like I was in a dream and someone was trying to wake me up. The only thought I’ve ever had was to come for you. The only thing I need is to protect you.”

I shiver. I mentioned in passing to Galfond I lived eight minutes north by transport. I’m in one of the only inhabited mansions. Auger has a tracker’s knowledge of hunting in his mind. He would have found me no matter what.

What else did he hear? There were times alone with him I spilled my deep secrets. I told him things I never told anyone else. My fears. My worries. My hopes and dreams.

And in return, I know him intimately, almost better than I know myself. I put his brain together. I watched it grow in a vat and connected it to the computer chip with thousands of skills and commands already uploaded. I formed his body and watched him being built from nothing into the imposing creature he is today.

For all I know him, there’s something unknown in his eyes. A bright light that was not put there by me.

A soul.

“You have to get out of here, Auger. They’re going to come for you.”

My watch dings, making me start. Auger doesn’t flinch. I break my gaze from his eyes, the icon on my smartwatch showing that Galfond is calling me.

Auger’s hand moves fast. He grabs my wrist. He could squeeze the smartwatch into dust with one tenth of his finger’s strength. His touch sends a shiver down my spine and a coil of heat through my body. I breathe in and taste his musky scent.

His bones might be metal, but he’s a red-blooded man. He’s more man than any human. In front of him, I feel tiny, helpless, out of control.

“Take off your watch. Give it to me.”

“Galfond will worry…”

Auger steps forward, so close I’m pressed against him. He looks down at me. I’ve been this close to him a thousand times, but it’s different when it’s his being commanding him. “This is a matter of your safety. In matters of security, you will obey. This is the first and last time that you hesitate, or there will be consequences. Do you understand me, Thea?”

Consequences?

I try to step back, nervous, but he pulls me against his broad, naked chest. I can feel his sweat soaking through my lab coat. “I understand,” I whisper, and my hand trembles as I press the button on the bottom of my smartwatch. The seamless strap opens. I hand it to him and he pockets it.

“Good. Do not let it happen again. You created me. But in matters of your safety, I own you, Thea.”

He gets so beastly when he talks like this. His muscles tense, his eyes wide. Suddenly, feeling small and helpless in front of the Cyborg doesn’t just make me nervous and insecure.

It makes me feel something I’m not ready for. My breath catches, and my heart pounds.

“You made the doors open before the fire. How?”

I swallow. It’s hard to make words form. “I hacked it.”

“Good. We will go in the transport that dropped you off. We are moving now.”

I try to pull away. His grip is tight against my wrist. I shake my head. I need to make him listen to me. If he doesn’t, he’s going to lose his life. Every second he spends on Cobernaught’s man-made moon puts him in danger. “Auger, no! We need to think. We need to plan! You can’t—oh!”

With the strength of twenty men, he hefts me over his shoulder like I’m weightless. I kick, hitting his back, but it’s like I’m slapping at a wall. “Put me down! Dammit, Auger, put me down!”

He ignores my pleas. I can feel his sweat through my clothes. Even if I am his ward, he should be listening to my direct commands. His legs churn as he walks me to the living room.

He sits down heavily on the couch. It creaks under his weight. With ease, he transfers me from over his shoulder…

To over his lap.

What the fuck is going on? I didn’t program him to do this!

“I told you once. In matters of safety, you obey me without hesitation.” His voice is abrupt, deep, commanding me.

“Auger. Let me go. Now!” I realize how foolish I sound trying to argue with the huge beast while I’m trapped over his lap. I wriggle, trying to pull myself away, but he holds me down with an iron hand. I’m so small against him. My body feels like it’s electrified, every touch magnified.

No matter how hard I struggle, he doesn’t let go, keeping me tight against his lap. Heat pulses between my legs.

I didn’t want to do this, but I have to. I have to take away his autonomy even as he just gained it.

Deep in his mind is a backdoor emergency switch. Three code words I can use to turn his mind off and get away. I’m not as helpless as he thinks.

“You will learn your lesson.” His voice is dominant and commanding.

Authoritarian. I programmed him to keep his ward safe at all costs. I was foolish to think there was no link between us. He might not have my DNA through a syringe of my blood, but somehow he’s got it in his head that he has to protect me.

I sigh. “I didn’t want to have to do this, Auger. You’ve given me no choice.” My voice gains confidence, even though I’m over his lap. I have to let Galfond know what’s happening. Together, we can transport Auger’s sleeping body somewhere so far away he can never find me. We can get him to safety.

“Goblin. Sanguine. Cakewalk.”

He tenses, his body changing instantly.

His grip relaxes on my back. His hands lose their force, pressing me down lighter and lighter. I shudder, thinking of how close I came to…Gods know what. I tremble, imagining how it would have felt. Some tiny little part of me is somehow…disappointed.

He was about to teach me a lesson.

He was about to spank me like he owns me. Like he’s an Aurelian and I’m just a maid in his harem, being taught a lesson for not cleaning well enough.

Auger gasps. He draws a huge, ragged breath as he fights off the command.

His hands tighten, pushing me down. “You tried to turn me off.” It’s a statement of fact. Underneath it, I hear a tone of hurt that he was never programmed to have. He’s wounded knowing that I tried to shut his consciousness down.

The backdoor switch didn’t work. The string of words designed to stop him in an emergency failed.

I’m over the Cyborg’s lap. He’s not angry at me. He’s disappointed.

“Auger. I can explain. I just needed to—”

“Silence.”

My mouth clamps shut. I designed him so a single word would command a room. His tone doesn’t just hit my ears. It goes down my spine and into my body. My clit tingles at his dominance.

“You are a smart woman. You designed me. You brought me out of oblivion and into this reality.” His deep voice rumbles and I feel it through his chest. “You are smart. But physically, you are small and weak. Say it back to me.”

My cheeks turn red. I don’t know what I was expecting, but this isn’t it. “Physically, I’m small and weak,” I repeat, before Auger can get more…stern with me.

“Good girl. In matters of your safety, I own you completely. You need me to protect you. I am your master.”

My master. My owner.

A shiver runs all over my body. My skin has never felt so alive, begging for his touch. I feel like my body is on fire with something I don’t understand. I have to bite my lip to stop a moan from coming out.

When older guys hit on me in class, it felt predatory. They just wanted to use me. Auger’s voice is protective and caring. He might respect my mind, but he views me like a rare, fragile possession that needs to be protected. He views me like his little toy.

“Repeat it after me. I need to hear you admit it. You need me to protect you.”

I draw in a shaking breath. “I need you to protect me,” I whisper back to him.

“I own you.”

I bite my lip, squirming under his grasp. The monstrous Cyborg holds me tight with a single hand, demonstrating his power over me. “You own me,” I whimper, feeling so filthy at how the words turn me on.

“You’re a helpless little toy without me.”

His voice soothes me and scares me at the same time, because when he says that, a dark wave of pleasure rolls over me.

“I’m a helpless toy,” I whimper out, and with those words my nipples harden to diamonds. I’ve never felt like this in my life. I feel like an animal in heat that needs the pack alpha to claim her. I shift, unable to keep my legs together, I’m so soaking wet. He breathes in and takes in my scent.

His sense of smell is better than a wolf’s—and they can sense a bitch in heat from a mile away.

His huge hand pulls my white lab pants down along with my panties. No man has seen me naked before. The farthest I’ve got is a kiss, and not even making out, by a guy who did it on a dare from his classmates and laughed at me afterwards.

Now I’m bare-bottomed, over the lap of a huge Cyborg who is treating me like an unruly, foolish brat.

“When I am finished with you, you will never disobey me again. You were very, very bad.”

I squirm, but he’s got me in a trance. Those words are a spell. They’re so filthy, so wrong in my mind, but they feel so fucking right. My nipples ache for him to pinch them. My body needs his touch. I crave this dominance more than air.

“I’ll never—”

His huge hand comes down and shuts me up.

I designed his specifications. I designed his precision tracking. He can choose the force of a punch or blow down to a millimeter of pressure. I designed it to protect the weak.

He uses his programming to place a hard, sharp spank on my right buttock.

The crack of flesh on flesh fills the room. There’s a slight delay between the sound and the pain, like I touched a hot pan and realized I was burnt before I could feel it. For a millisecond, there’s nothing but sound.

Then there’s sharp pain.

Again.

He slaps his huge palm down on my left ass cheek, and I can feel my flesh jiggle under his blow. It’s the same spot, but mirrored. I’d be impressed by his accuracy if it didn’t hurt so damn much. If it makes the spanking stop, I’ll tell him anything. I need to convince him I’ll follow his orders while I secretly try to find a way to get him as far from Cobernaught as possible.

“Auger. Please. I won’t—”

“Silence, pet,” he growls, slapping my ass again.

I sound so weak. I don’t care. It fucking hurts, and the shame is as bad as the pain. I’m so humiliated that I’m over his lap.

Even more shameful is that he can see and smell my soaking wet, glistening cunt that shows some part of me is enjoying his dominance.

“Your mind is strong, Thea. But compared to me, you are a tiny little thing.”

He spanks me again, the staccato of flesh on flesh driving in his point. It fucking hurts. I fight against him, struggling to get away. With a single hand he can keep me against his body no matter how hard I struggle.

By the fourth slap on my ass, my buttocks are on fire. He hits the same fleshy spots, and each spank hurts more.

He doesn’t stop. I keep fighting against him until my body gives out, and I surrender, flopping out over his lap and going limp as tears come to my eyes. I’m so helpless to escape.

Then I feel it.

His huge cock surges against his combat pants. Disciplining me is turning him on. The tear drips down from my eyes. “Oh stop. Oh please, stop,” I whimper out, my pussy burning with desire for him to continue. As much as I beg, he can see and smell how much I need this.

My words tell one story. My arousal tells another.

His huge hand comes down against my ass again. The crack fills the air. I moan out in pain, unable to stop the pathetic sound from leaving my mouth.

“I have lived a hundred lives, Thea. You put them in my mind. They are like dreams.” His voice is hot, full-blooded.

Hundreds of lives.

All those different skillsets I loaded into him. The martial arts skills of a jujitsu champion. The expert marksmanship of the sniper with the longest distance confirmed kill. The medical skills of the top surgeon in the sector. Brains and experiences bought by Cobernaught to enhance my Cyborgs. The skills were supposed to stay…

The memories weren’t.

My mind is working slowly. He’s spanked most of my conscious thoughts out of my mind, but I struggle to understand the man who has me over his lap.

“I will die for you, Thea. I will protect you over myself.”

His voice is a promise. He will do anything to help me. He’s lived hundreds of lives, somehow. He’s loved. He’s lost. And every one of those lives had a bad end.

The agony in my ass is burning and hot. “Please. Auger, I can’t take much more.” My voice sounds so weak. Defeated. Whatever he tells me to do, I’ll do.

“You will take as much as necessary for you to obey me without question.”

His cock surges. He draws a huge breath in. He wasn’t ready to be so turned on by spanking me. His cock throbs like a wild thing against me. I ache to see it hard.

I’ve seen that massive thing soft. His testosterone-laden balls had the side effect of making his flaccid dick hang thick and huge even soft. I can’t imagine what it looks like hard, but I can feel it pressing against my side like a baseball bat. His huge balls are like fall apples under that big fat cock.

Cyborgs aren’t supposed to fuck.

They’re also supposed to turn off when you say the emergency codeword.

“You need this punishment. It will save your life. I will not stop until I know you will obey without question.” His voice is jagged, fighting to stay sane. He slaps his hand against my ass again, harder, as if he’s fighting against his own desires. The two sides of him are in conflict, one wanting to protect me and disciplining me for my own good, and the other wanting to fuck me like he owns me.

I whimper out. I need to beg him to stop. A tear drips from my face, but I can’t form words under his harsh discipline.

I hate how right this feels.

I hate how badly I need this.

There’s a respite. I brace myself, tensing for the next spank.

His finger grazes my sopping wet slit. That tiny touch sends electric pleasure thought my body. It’s a tendril compared to the burning fire of my ass cheeks, a seed of need planted in a raging bushfire.

“Your body knows that I am in charge.”

“You’re in charge,” I whimper out automatically.

The pleasure ends as soon as it started. I ache for more. I rub my body against him, feeling pathetic but needing stimulation, craving the sensation. He slaps his hand against my ass, even harder, and I cry out as tears steam down my cheeks.

I give in to him.

I can’t think anymore. The pain and submission empties my mind. I’m a blank slate.

Auger can put whatever he wants into my mind—just like I put so many things in his.

“I am in charge of you. You will obey me. You are my little pet, and you will call me master.”

I can’t handle that.

If I call him that, I’m lost and I’ll never come back. My body shakes like a trembling leaf. I ache for him. For his dominance. The huge man was designed by me to be an imposing force that would make any man feel insecure. I’m so tiny and helpless over his lap.

I’ll be his little pet. He could make me eat out of his hand, and if he spanks me like this, I’ll lose all will to fight back.

I hesitate—and his hand comes down, even harder, making me moan out in pain.

“Yes, master,” I whimper, crying.

“Good pet,” he says, and this time my moan is not pain.

He calls me his pet, and I feel like he owns me.

His finger comes down to my slit. He teases the entrance. His fingertip presses in, and I bite my lip hard.

If that’s his finger, I can’t believe how fucking big his cock is going to feel when he stretches and claims me.

“You love being a good little bitch for your master, don’t you?”

His voice is dripping honey. It’s intoxicating. It’s more pleasurable than any drug. It seeps into my mind like warm tendrils of melted gold. That huge finger slides into my virgin entrance, and my soaking wet pussy clamps against his finger.

There’s only one answer to his question.

“Yes, sir,” I answer, the words coming out of my mouth like I’d been waiting to say them since I first designed the hulking alpha male.

“You will always do what I say. You will be my good little bitch, and you will obey without question.”

His finger slips out of my slit, leaving me empty for a moment. I ache so badly for him to slide it back into me. His finger alone is such a tease, making me crave his huge, fat, throbbing cock that presses against my side. There’s a loud rip as his dick presses through the thick material of his combat pants. It can do nothing to stop him. I’m on his lap just below his dick, pressed against him, and I can’t see it…but I can feel it pressing against me.

He’s starving for me.

“I’ll always do what my master says,” I gasp out, and his finger rewards me by finding my clit.

Oh Gods.

He’s a beast, but he’s in total control of me.

I’ve never felt anything like this. It’s too fucking good. He growls, low and deep, his dominant, powerful tones making me so small and safe.

“I will always protect you, Thea. I will always keep you safe. You belong to me. You’re my pet forever. And if you ever forget, I’ll put you over my lap and spank you until you cry.”

I know I won’t ever forget.

I feel like I’m linked to him. Like for the rest of my life, I’ll feel like he owns me.

“Ohhh…ohhhh yes, master,” I whimper, his words making my head spin. I’m so helpless and tiny over his lap as he plays with my clit, adding a second finger and using my juices to wet it as he swirls them in a circle. He’s better than I am. He toys with my body like he knows it instinctively.

He snarls like a beast, his cock throbbing. A thick spurt of pre-cum drips out, wetting through my thin lab coat.

Normal men aren’t supposed to have pre-cum like that.

Auger is no normal man. I know he’s part Aurelian DNA, though I have no idea how Cobernaught got the genetic makeup of a fallen Aurelian warrior. Aurelians have thick, creamy pre-cum designed for one reason—to shove their massive cocks into too-tight little human holes.

He’s not just part machine.

He’s an alien.

I turn my head. I need to see it. He just presses me down harder, and I go limp. I’m hanging over his lap, helpless as he pleasures me.

I whimper, writhing, my body squirming. There’s something so arousing knowing that at any second he could spank my ass again. The seeds of pleasure are growing roots deep in me, building and growing stronger than the agony of my burning ass.

His words are so filthy, so fucking wrong, but they feel so good.

He’s conditioning me.

I fucking know what he’s doing, but it feels too good to stop. Even if my mind knows he’s training me like Pavlov’s dogs, there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

When I disobey him, he calls me bad and spanks me.

And when I’m good…

“You’re such a good bitch, Thea. You’re my good little pet, and you’ll always do as your master says,” he incants, his voice hypnotic. I’m falling under his spell.

Pleasure builds and builds. The roots of my pleasure are deep in my mind and that tree wants to burst into life, pushing through hard packed earth. I’m on the verge. I’m so fucking close. I can’t think, wiggling and moving, but his fingers stay steady in their rhythmic circling, bringing me closer and closer—

His fingers slow.

“Oh, please, sir, please,” I beg, needing it. I forget any sense of shame. I’m too turned on to care how filthy I must look with my ass red over the Cyborg’s lap. I need it so bad. I’m so fucking close to my first orgasm with a man.

“You will always be a good pet for master.”

“I’m a good bitch for—oh fuckkkk oh fuck oh fuck—” I scream out, not caring how slutty I sound, knowing I sound like a filthy little toy for the huge Cyborg.

“Cum for me,” he orders me, and his words send me over the edge as my body obeys.

“Ohhh…ohh Auger,” I groan as the tree bursts up, spreading its huge branches and leaves over my mind as the pleasure overpowers me. His fingers speed up, faster than any human could do, never stopping. They play with me like he’s known me my whole life, until I’m a puddle of submissive, helpless trembling pet over his lap.

My body shakes until it’s over. He stops pressing me down against his lap. He runs his hands over me, gently touching me.

The hands that rip metal in two caress me. They are soft, smooth, gently massaging my quivering body. I’ve never felt so small and helpless in my life, so owned.

His cock pulses against me, hot pre-cum warm against my body. I want that big dick. I need that big dick.

If being spanked over his lap made me tiny and helpless, I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose my virginity to him. My mind fixates on it. The way his huge cockhead would slowly slide into my tight little hole.

How fucking vulnerable I would feel to have every inch of that massive thing deep inside of me.

I’m too embarrassed to ask for it. I just want him to take it. If I was like Jenna, I’d beg him to fuck me. I’d be able to articulate the desires deep inside of me. Auger pats my trembling body like I’m a scared pet in a thunderstorm.

The huge man helps me up. I don’t trust my legs, but he stands me in front of him. My ass is still on fire—but I like the burning sensation for the reminder of his strength and dominance, like he’s branded me as his own. I stand on my shaking legs and look down at him.

He lies back, his cock standing straight upwards, his body tense and relaxed at the same time. He’s in complete control of me—but he’s not in control of himself.

It feels so natural to get on my knees in front of him like I will worship the God of a man.

His balls are as big as apples. They hang, heavy and full of testosterone and cum. His cock is rock fucking hard. The veins are filled with blood, painfully swollen in his aching need for me.

I want him to grab my hair and force me to deepthroat him.

6

AUGER

My body is built to fight, to kill, to die and protect. Now it burns with desire for her.

My mind was fractured when I woke from a deep, deep sleep, jolted awake as I fell hard onto grass. She put the schematics in my head. She woke me up before I could burn alive. I owe her everything, but I don’t always know who I am. I held my breath for seven minutes through the water main, swimming with the outgoing flow. Sometimes I didn’t know where I was, my brain flicking between the present and the past, to lives half-remembered, lives trying to take control of my brain.

When I spanked Thea, all those memories went quiet.

For the first time I truly lived.

I stare down at my perfect goddess, kneeling in front of me, and I am here and I am now and she keeps me anchored to everything good. My cock throbs. It’s painful how turned on I am. I am linked to this woman. It’s not just the little strands of DNA I latched onto each time she touched me, grazing my arm when she looked up at me in that room where I was so alone, unable to know what was real and what was fake until she spoke.

Only her voice was certain. I clung to that voice. She cared about me. I knew it then. I know it now, as I look into her desperate, wet eyes.

She aches for me.

She wants me to grab her hair and force her to take every inch of my cock deep in her throat. A low rumble builds in my throat and a spurt of creamy liquid shoots from the slit of my cockhead. She aches for me—but she is not safe.

She can be weak.

She can be helpless.

I will be strong and powerful for her. I will protect that beautiful mind in her fragile body.

My mind might be able to calculate and equate like a computer, and I can access a thousand facts on command. I may have lived through dozens of battles, but I will never have her brain. Her mind is sharp, always thinking, but she can turn it off with me.

Her body is oh-so weak. In matters of her safety, if she hesitates for a second, she could die.

There’s a roar in my mind. My eyes focus in on her face. I etch her visage into my soul. The scream of my mind roars louder than my bellows when I was tortured.

She cannot die.

She cannot hurt.

Her full lips open as she stares at my cock like she’s in a trance. I breathe in the scent of her pussy and I want to taste her juices. She’s so fucking beautiful. I imagined her, every day, breathing in her scent and praying for a glimpse of her. Now she prays to wrap her lips over my cock, but she’s too shy and nervous to ask me.

I must be strong for her.

I ache to sate my desires—but she is not safe.

A memory shoots up in my mind, and my vision blurs.

Am I here, or am I there? A man in a black suit. I’m in this same house. Or a different house, built the same. Cold dead eyes.

“Wait. Wait second. You don’t need to—” A prick on my neck. Darkness coming. I stumble. He follows me, his feet firm as my legs give out. I put my hand on the door, opening it to my private sick bay. I just need to get to the ephedrine. One shot of that and my mind will come back. Oh Gods. I’m so tired. I get to the drawer. So many syringes. So many things. I grab them, but they clatter to the ground, and my legs give out. I’m next. I fall to the ground and look up. The man in the black suit checks his watch, watching me as the darkness takes my mind.

I shake my head, my eyes refocusing on Thea.

Cobernaught is not evil. It is impassive. I heard their executives speak as they looked at me, but their words are blurred in my mind.

She is not safe here.

My cock aches and throbs, and while she can be weak and lose herself to desire, she depends on me to be strong. I stand up, looking down at my perfect little pet.

I ache to claim her and make her fully mine.

First, she must be safe.

7

THEA

I kneel in front of him as his cock drips pre-cum. I want so fucking badly to taste it. I need his cock in my mouth. I lean forward. I don’t care how shameful it is. I can’t wait a second longer.

He stands to his full height.

He towers over me. Seven hundred pounds of killing machine and I want him to put all that power into turning me into his bitch. His cock stands straight out, a pearly drop of pre-cum forming at the slit. I want to see if he’s sensitive. I want to hear him growl in pleasure and reward me with his own sounds of need as I serve him.

What am I doing…

The thought is weak. Far away. My mind has melted in front of his dominance.

Desire is right there. It’s close, overwhelming, rooted in my mind.

“Get up.”

His voice is a firm command.

I’m confused—but I respond instantly, like he’s controlling my legs. He reaches out, helping me up as my legs tremble. His cock is almost bursting with need, but he’s holding back. His breath is hard and hot. I pull my pants back up over my burning ass, and reality hits me.

He melted my mind. Now that it unfogs, I can think.

I need to get to Galfond. For Auger’s sake. And for mine.

I need to be free of this creature before it’s too late.

Before he sinks himself so deep in my being I can never get him out.

This. Is. Not. A. Man.

I need to remember that. Anything I feel for him is wrong. Humans are meant to be with humans or Aurelians. Society would mock me. They’d view me as a sick, twisted pervert who created the perfect man to fuck. I can hear their mocking tones already.

I finished high school at an early age, pushed forward by a work ethic so hard I was deaf to the teasing. I was so socially unaware it wasn’t until university that I realized when someone was making fun of me. I was so deep in my work I never paid attention.

Now I understand people enough to know they’d crucify me for what I want to do.

I can’t hide in my work forever. If word got out of what I did with Auger, I’d be a pariah.

Worse, this is proof there’s something wrong with my creation. If people find out that I hooked up with a Cyborg, the Bodyguard program would be nixed in an instant. Every creation I built would be thrown into the incinerator like they had a horrible flaw.

Cyborgs aren’t supposed to take their charges over their laps and spank them.

They’re not supposed to know how to make a girl cum in a minute with their fingers, and they’re certainly not supposed to be rock fucking hard, dripping cum like a leaking faucet.

My mind is clearing. I need to get Auger away from anyone who can find what he’s done. Otherwise it won’t just be his life and my reputation. Hell—it’s not even that I could go to jail for this. They’d make new laws just to prosecute me.

It’s the thousands of lives that I’ve built that are in danger. They are my children, just like Auger is my creation. We are responsible for each other.

The problem is, it’s going to be hard to get him to safety. I don’t know how to convince him. While I’m with him, I must obey, unless I want my bottom turned a deeper shade of pink.

“Come with me. To the transport.”

“Okay,” I say, and for a second my breath catches. He looks at me with those serious blue eyes, and for a second I think he’s going to make me say, “Yes, master.”

Thank the Gods but he doesn’t. He hikes up his ripped pants. His cock is a huge steel rod but he forces it against his leg, pushing it down like a yapping dog.

He marches to the transport that dropped me off. It’s a tiny ship, built to move four people at most. Auger is four men in one. The doors open.

He points to the nav system where I can punch open coordinates. “Does Cobernaught track it?”

I shake my head. “No. They keep everything as low-tech as possible. Auger, you’re in charge, but please, let us go to X12 together. I’m not disobeying. I’m just—”

I trail off as he punches something in the console. To my shock, a control panel appears for manual flight. A steering wheel extends from the nav console.

“That’s not supposed to…”

“Manual override.”

How the fuck did he know how to manually override a transport?

He takes off, piloting like he’s done this a thousand times.

The problem is, I fucking know he hasn’t. And worse, I never uploaded piloting specs to his mind.

“How? How do you know how to fly?”

I’m looking at him with new fascination. I was planning on adding piloting programming next week. He takes us up over the eight-foot wall with inches to spare, then drops us down instantly to keep us below eyes. We move like a silent wraith through the trees.

“Shooting. The sniper. My brother…his…his brother. He taught me…he taught him, him, him , him, him, him—”

His voice is erratic, caught in a loop. His hands go white-knuckled on the wheel. We glance against a tree, scraping, and he refocuses, getting control.

When I uploaded the long-distance rifle programming from the mind of a sniper whose family sold his brain to Cobernaught, I uploaded more than just sniper skills. I uploaded long-ago lessons from a brother I didn’t know he had. I uploaded hopes, dreams, memories.

For a terrifying second, Auger didn’t know who he was.

Or worse—he knows who he is, and he’s losing himself to memories. For a second he wasn’t sure if he was Auger or the military ace sniper who died of a heart attack forty years ago; his brain just one of tens of thousands of Cobernaught files.

The immensity of the project is mind-boggling. Cobernaught bought those files four decades ago.

The company has only existed for one.

I’ve been so dialed into my work I never stopped to ask the big questions, the ones that kept Galfond up at night. Some dark conspiracy lurking beneath everything we did.

I’ve got no time to think of Cobernaught. I need to do whatever I can to stay alive and keep Auger in the moment.

When he was spanking me, he was sure of who he was. I put my hand against his thigh. His eyes focus, his pupils dilating, and his piloting smooths. He skips us up over another eight-foot wall and we face down an exact copy of my own glass mansion.

We land beside the pool and I get a strange sense of déjà vu. Now I know how Auger felt looking in. The only difference between my house and this one is that someone has made this house a home. My own walls have the stock art it came with. This one has beautiful bright orange and red paintings.

I put my hand against Auger’s arm.

I don’t know what he plans to do to whoever is inside that home, but if he kills, there is nothing I can do to save him or the rest of the Cyborgs. One death and the program would be nixed for eternity. My creations would be pushed into oblivion.

Unless Cobernaught covers it up…

“Auger. Please. Whoever is in this house, whatever they did to you, you don’t have to hurt them. Please. Please let me call Galfond. Please, give me my smartwatch back. He’ll know what to do. He always knows what to do.”

Auger turns to me as the transport settles in on the ground. The manual controls disappear back into the ship.

“I know what to do.”

His voice is stern. His eyes are unfathomable.

What mind lurks behind those eyes? No—what minds? I created him. I brought him into this world, but the Auger I made is not the Auger that I see in front of me. He is his own being, and I do not own him. If I can just convince him to talk to Galfond, I know we can both get out of this alive.

Galfond proved he’s on my side when he went to the incinerator to cover up the escape.

I trust him, and I need to get Auger to trust him, too.

The doors of the transport open. The cool night air grabs me. I feel a chill, and it’s not all the night. As I look at the glass mansion, a deep feeling of dread overcomes me.

Whoever is in there isn’t expecting Auger to pay him a visit.

Auger moves forward with deadly precision. “Who’s in there, Auger?”

“No questions. Come.” He doesn’t turn to see if I follow him. He knows I will obey.

I glance at the controls. I know how to work the transport. I might not have pilot training, but I can quickly punch in the coordinates to the main facility, the ship darting upwards and away.

And then what?

Auger can run and jump thirty-two feet, grabbing the transport and pulling it down before I could get away. I don’t need to be handcuffed or bound with ropes to be utterly captive by my kidnapper.

I follow him meekly.

“Please, Auger, don’t hurt whoever is in there.” I whisper the words so low I can barely hear them. I know the capabilities of his hearing and I hope he doesn’t punish me for begging him to keep them safe.

I know what he can do.

I don’t know what he will do. I don’t understand his mind like I used to.

He can punch straight through a steel wall. He could rip a man’s heart out. I’ve put so many schematics in his head from hard, brutal men. You don’t become an expert marksman or a world-class general without doing some evil.

That evil is in his mind.

I need to remove it, so he can be Auger and only Auger.

He ignores my begging tone and walks to the glass door, opening it. It slides open easily. It’s unlocked. He never hesitated. He knew it was unlocked.

Why the hell was it unlocked?

He walks into the house like he’s been there a hundred times, and it clicks in my mind. This house belonged to someone who is in Auger’s mind. What happened to them?

He turns, and his bright blue eyes glaze over. He stiffens, losing himself in memories. I run to him, running my hand over his sweaty chest, brushing his thick black-grey hair down. “Auger. Auger, it’s me, Thea. I need you to come back.”

His neck twitches. The muscles on his forearms convulse, and panic hits me.

I’ve seen this before. The critical bug in their programming I’ve never been able to fix.

He’s about to have a grand-mal seizure that will fry him. It happens right before we have to deactivate a Cyborg and throw him into the incinerator. They’re never the same after.

“Auger. I need you.” His eyes roll back, and his breathing stops. Then he clamps his teeth down hard. “Auger, I’m not safe. I’m not safe. I need you to protect me.”

He goes stiff, and his eyes refocus. He’s brought back to real life. I run my hand gently over his chest, feeling his powerful, heavy heartbeats. I brought him back. My Auger is safe.

The one thing that can bring him back to sanity is the need to keep me safe.

He acts like nothing happened and points to a door.

In my carbon copy of this home, the door leads to a gym. I used it once. I’ve got a feeling that whoever lived in this house made some modifications. I want to ask him what’s in there, but hesitating is going to get me spanked again, so I walk forward and grab the handle.

My hand shakes as I turn it and press it inwards.

It’s not a gym. It’s a medical lab. There’s a chair, medical supplies, gauze and bandages. A drawer is opened wide and syringes and supplies are scattered on the floor.

There was a struggle here.

I turn to look at Auger. He stands in the doorway, unable to walk through. He looks down at the scattered supplies like he’s walking over his own grave. “Auger, I can’t take the memories out of you. Not here. Not in this lab, it’s too low-tech. If we go back to Cobernaught, I can fix you. We have to sneak in.”

His expression doesn’t change. Stern. Commanding. Implacable.

“Auger, it’s not good for you to be here. I don’t know what happened here, but this isn’t your home. This isn’t you.”

His cocks his head sideways. “I don’t want you to take out the memories. I need to search you.”

I blink twice. “Search me? Why? I’m not hiding anything. I promise Auger. That smartwatch is the only way I can contact anyone. Please, I’ll do whatever you say.”

He points down to his leg, where his pants were ripped even before he entered my home. There’s another big hole where his cock shredded his pants, and I can see the root of his half-flaccid stem. I look away before he can make me feel small and helpless again.

Through the big rip on his thigh there’s a tiny white scar. I made my Cyborgs rejuvenate. They can take a bullet and survive, their body pressing out the foreign object and healing from the inside. A knife wound will seal itself, and as long as they don’t bleed out, they survive.

Repairs leave a faint mark.

“What happened? Were you shot? Cut?”

“This is where they put the tracker. Get on the table.”

He didn’t have any tools.

I know exactly what he did. He forced his metal and flesh fingers into his leg and pulled the tracker out. No anesthetic. Nothing to dull the pain. I move towards the medical table, but terror hits me as I imagine his huge fingers pressing into my skin.

I freeze up. “Auger. I’m not tracked. I swear. Please, please don’t hurt me. Please. There’s an automated medical bay in the station. If there’s a tracker, we can take it out there, with the AI. But please…”

I beg him, but I know the awful truth.

I programmed this into him.

Just like he would saw off my leg if an infection was too horrible for me to survive, he would dig into my fucking leg and take out a tracker if he believed it would keep me safe. Tears come to my eyes again. I haven’t cried since university, and now I’m crying twice in a day.

“Get on the table.”

He commands me. I know not to disobey him. My ass is still burning from that lesson. Tears well up in eyes, and I look into his bright blue gaze.

I see it.

Deep inside it is a flicker of humanity. “I’m not going to hurt you, Thea. I will never hurt you.”

His voice is soft. I…I never programmed that. I know every decibel of his tones he can use. He should have commanded me, stern and harsh, to get on the table in a way that would make me obey instantly. Instead, he used a soft, reassuring, caring tone that calms my pounding heart.

It’s insane, but I trust him.

I get on the medical table, shivering. The house is cold and I shiver.

“I will not examine under your skin. Even Cobernaught could not have placed a tracker like that in you without your knowledge.” His voice is a promise, and it calms me. Some of my tension leave.

He stands above me. I’m on the thin medical table, cold against my back, and he wheels the table farther into the center of the room, flicking a light on with his right hand while never losing focus of me, an unconscious movement like he’s done it a hundred times before.

A sad look passes over his face. He’s in his memories, but he’s still in control.

“Strip.”

I pull myself up, sitting upright, and before he can order me again, I pull off my shirt. My nipples are hard and it’s not just from the cold. He looks at me dispassionately. Then his eyes flick to my nipples. He fights against his desire, but it’s harder every second. Testosterone is one of the strongest sex hormones in a man and he’s got twenty times the libido of a normal person. I know how bad he aches for me.

He says nothing, and I pull off my old lab pants, throwing them aside. They’re filthy and soaked with his sweat and my own juices, my top stained from coffee. The metal table is cool against my poor, aching ass, soothing me.

I’m naked in front of the huge man. The light makes his beautiful skin glow. I made him to be intimidating and powerful to threats, without consciously realizing that what makes a man respected and dominant to other powerful men also makes them mouth-watering to women. He’s cut from stone, ridged abs and a broad chest with thick, black-gray hair that I want to grab onto. His hair is wavy, and his stubble frames that anvil jaw. He’s broad, strong, and utterly in control.

That huge steel rod of a cock presses against his pants, and I want him to lose control of himself as he claims me.

No. You can’t want that. He’s a Cyborg. If you fuck him, you can never go back.

“Lie back now.”

I lie back, staring up at the light, and his fingers graze my toes. It tickles me, and despite everything, I giggle. I feel so stupid but he doesn’t laugh at me. He runs his fingers up my right leg, and soon the ticklish feeling turns into a deep, aching desire as he nears my desperate slit.

I bite my lip. I can’t beg for it. I can’t. I need to hold on to some shred of my dignity.

He runs his hands up my left leg, methodical. Then he brushes up and down my stomach. When his fingers touch over my nipples, I whimper as ticklish pleasure washes over my body in a wave. Then he runs his hands up my neck. When I feel his fingers against that skin, I know how easily he could wrap his hands around me and choke me. Even the right to breathe could be in his control.

I giggle again when his fingers gently touch my ears. He runs them inside, and my laugh is nervous now. He walks to the sink, washes his hands while I tremble in anticipation. His broad back is thick and muscled. He turns, staring at me with that dispassionate medical gaze, then stands over me again.

This time his fingers run over my nose, and I cringe as they slide ever so slightly inside. I start getting the urge to sneeze, but it’s over quickly.

Again, he washes his hands, and returns.

Next he runs his fingers over my lips. I gasp as his finger slides into my mouth, and I wish so desperately it was his cock. He inspects my mouth, then washes his hands again.

“Spread your legs.”

I shiver. My body responds automatically, my thighs opening, and he slides a finger deep into my wet cunt. My pussy contracts around the digit as he searches, and when he pulls it out, I moan out in need. I’m so fucking turned on. He’s fighting back his own desire as he goes to wash his hands once more.

“Turn over,” he growls, and now even he can’t push down the ache of need.

My cheeks go bright red.

Oh no.

What if he…

I don’t even want to think about the last place there is to look.

He runs his hands through my hair, searching in the strands, like a scalp massage that soothes me. Then he starts again at my feet, going all the way up to my buttocks and making me tense. Thank the Gods, he doesn’t go into that last little hole.

Then he rubs his hands over my back, searching the rest of me.

Finding nothing, he steps away. I start to turn.

“Stay,” he orders, and I stay there on my front, facing down with my ass up, when I hear him opening a bottle. He squirts something.

Then I feel it.

A cool, ticklish sensation on my ass. “Auger, please, not there,” I whimper, so embarrassed. I’ve never even kissed a man and he’s got his finger pressed against my little asshole.

“This is for your own good, Thea,” he says, his voice holding back lust. His finger presses against my asshole. He’s so strong he could force it in, but he gently strokes my tiny asshole, and the ticklish, dark sensations build up in me.

I lost myself to my work for so long, pressing down my sexuality. I was always so awkward, so nervous, and now dirty, dirty thoughts well up in me as the huge Cyborg toys with my ass. His finger slips in and I gasp out in dark need.

“Ohhhh…” I moan, my lust building and building.

“Silence. This is a medical exam,” he growls, and I know he’s saying it for his own sake. If I keep whimpering and moaning, he’s going to lose control and shove every inch of that huge dick deep inside of me, claiming my innocence.

I bite my lip, forcing back a moan. If I whimper, he might spank me again…

But I want desperately to push him over the edge. I clench my fists, fighting back a slutty sound as that finger presses past my resistance. “Auger. I can’t hold back my moans. I’m sorry,” I whimper out, moaning.

His growl scares me.

His hand comes down hard on my ass, right where he was spanking it before. My asshole clenches over his lubed finger and it feels even better, so I moan again.

“Silence!” he yells out, and I clamp down my teeth—when I feel something tiny wriggle.

“Auger!” I gasp out, and he presses a second finger in.

It’s too much. The pleasure turns to pain, then he grabs, and suddenly his fingers are out. I turn my head. He shows me a tiny metal bug the size of my fingernail, a crawling device that emits a red light every three seconds.

“How…how did they get it in me?”

This tiny device could have crawled into me at any time. It makes me wonder what else Cobernaught has done to me. I had that…that mechanical creature burrowed inside me, keeping tabs on me constantly.

My body is on fire with desire. I know it shouldn’t be. That was a medical exam for a practical, life-saving reason…

But having his fingers sliding into my body, unable to stop him, triggered dark needs deep inside. I turn my head, looking up at Auger, and I ache for him to take me, and take me hard. He could so easily pound me against the hard table, forcing his huge dick into me the way he forced his thick fingers into my ass.

There’s a crash of breaking glass from outside.

My heart pounds—but his face stays stern and unfazed.

He is my bodyguard above all else.

8

AUGER

Desire turns to fear in her eyes.

“Stay,” I order her, and she freezes on the table, nude and vulnerable. Her ass cheeks have the red marks of my handprints.

I should have punished her harder. I should have made her sob and plead until she couldn’t take it anymore. Because if she doesn’t obey me now—

She dies.

She twists her body, turning over, and her eyes are wide and terrified. Her scent changes from aroused to scared. I hold the wriggling tracker in my fingers, ready to crush it before dealing with the threat from outside.

“Wait! Don’t crush it!”

I don’t know what she has planned, but I hand it to her, turning. I will trust her mind. I will trust that her brain sees something I don’t.

My cock is hard from the delicious thrill of exploring her tight little asshole and feeling her clamp up, unable to stop my intrusion. I ache to claim her holes with my cock, but the dark, dirty thoughts disappear as I hear the footsteps and home in on the threat.

Four men.

Trained. They walk in cautiously, fanning out.

I rush through the door to meet them, putting myself between them and Thea.

Four men in black turtlenecks. Behind them is shattered glass, the last shreds clinging to the doorframe. They wear thin, light black pants. They sent four, but they should have sent forty.

My vision blurs. The leader of the four brings me back to the memory of crawling desperately to the drawer for the shot of ephedrine that would have fought off the drowsiness of the tranquilizer. I never woke up from that sleep.

I force myself back into reality, casting off that shadow world of lives half-remembered.

All four of them have long, thin pistols, hip level and trained on me. I’ll need momentum. Otherwise when the bullets hit, I’ll be dropped. They stand just far enough apart I won’t be able to charge all four in a single bull rush.

I ball my fists.

They are highly trained—but I see the minute changes in the three that stand slightly back. They’re nervous.

The leader is a pro. He didn’t flinch when he tranquilized an innocent doctor and brought him to the Cobernaught facility to take out his brain. He doesn’t flinch now, facing me.

“Leave.” I boom out the word. The broken glass that clings to the doorframe like the last leaves of autumns I barely remember falls to the ground, clinking down. Three of them take a step back.

The leader is resolute.

“Goblin. Sanguine. Cakewalk.” His teeth flash white.

I was already tense and prepared for those words. I remember how when Thea said them, trying to deactivate me, my body slowed. My mind nearly shut off. It was only breathing in her scent that jolted me back to reality.

That betrayal is the only thing that saves me now. I’m ready for the grogginess. I keep my eyes focused and homed in on the leader. The words hit me directly in my computer chip, in that piece of technology between my spinal cord and my brain.

I fight it with every organic impulse in me. The parts of my brain that are human fight back against the programming.

I am not just a machine.

Colors switch off. The world is black and white. All I can see is their black turtlenecks and their white teeth. Sound melts, a dream, and I tense against my muscles relaxing and falling asleep. I’m standing in mud up to my neck. The more I churn, the deeper I fall.

“Auger!”

Her voice is a thick branch that saves me from going under. I cling onto it and pull myself back into reality. My eyes refocus, color and sound hitting me with fury as my senses reactivate.

She is in danger.

My charge, my love, my perfect little possession is in danger while these four men stand alive.

I step forward. It feels like I’m walking through a sea of cobwebs.

My muscles flick on. The four men look at me. The leader has no fear in his eyes. He has battle calm. He presses the trigger, and there’s a staccato pop like a silencer.

No bullet fires from the muzzle of his pistol. It’s a long, thin dart that shoots towards my heart.

My mind is slow. My body is not. The dart picks up speed but slows in my vision as I focus in on it and watch as my hand grabs it an inch from my chest. I drop it to the ground.

“Fuck,” states one of the three scared men, and they fire in unison. I dodge, tracking the trajectory and knowing I can weave my body around them.

Then the darts would slice through the empty space. If they’re meant to slow a Cyborg, they’ll end the life of a human. She didn’t listen. She didn’t stay deep in the medical bay. She’s right behind me, and if I dodge out of the way, she’s going to take three darts into her little body.

I stutter step, fighting against my own momentum, swinging my arm to knock the darts aside. One flies and clatters against the ground.

Two embed into my chest.

The leader is already reloading, cold as ice, his hands never trembling when I charge.

The tranq is in my veins, my heartbeat pushing it through my body, and the leader somersaults to the left with uncanny speed. I ignore him, and I’m on the three others in an instant. Their eyes have whites. Fear. Then the first doesn’t any eyes anymore. He’s wet on my fist. I take the jugular out from the second.

The third falls to his knees.

“Please. Please,” he whimpers, begging for his life.

My computer chip brain tells me to end him. He is still an active threat. The empty tranq-pistol is on the ground at his feet, dropped from his shaking hands, and he quivers with fear.

I fight against my computer chip rules. I am programmed to use both my hands and rip his head from his shoulders.

I spare him. I fight with all my humanity. There’s a staccato click and a sharp pain in my back as another dart enters my skin. I turn, twisting, but I’m sluggish. My body is trying to make antibodies to fight against the venom in my veins. These men were sent by Cobernaught and whatever was in those darts was made to stop a Cyborg cold.

The newest model of Cyborg. The tranq is not optimized to put me down.

I’m slightly different—and I turn to charge the fearless leader of the four.

I stumble in my charge, nearly losing my balance, my vision blurring.

If I lose control, she dies.

Thea is behind him. The leader of the men between me and my ward. She did follow my order—to the letter—standing on the other side of the open door with her toe on the line, like a dog who isn’t allowed in the kitchen waiting for her food.

I ache to touch her one last time. I try to move towards her, but my legs won’t follow my orders.

I fall to my knees. I struggle to pull myself up, but I’m falling, falling, falling deep under the water. The ocean takes me. I’m drifting down, down, down, sucked into an endless trench as the light fades above me.

When I’m gone, she’ll be helpless. My computer chip activates overdrive, trying to push strength into my muscles, but whatever was in those darts deactivates it.

I lose sight of Thea.

She no longer wishes to look at me.

She can’t bear to see me this way. I failed her. She must view me as a weak, broken machine. She must wish she’d never saved me from the incinerators. I belong in the fire, melted down to scrap to make a newer model. Her disappointment is so deep she will not even watch my final moments.

The professional reloads. He sees me disabled, but he’s not taking any chances. From behind, the man I spared from death stands. One moment he was begging. Now he’s going to use my mercy against me.

“Gods. I thought this fucking animal was going to rip my head off. Cobernaught owes me a fucking raise.”

Then there’s another click. The man I just spared betrays me. My foolish organic brain went against my programming and spared him, and now a fourth dart hits my back right next to the other, pumping its venomous tranquilizer into my body. The pain of it entering is nothing compared to my own foolishness. I feel like an idiot as I try to get up, failing.

The Gods did not make me. Thea did—but I pray to Gods half-remembered for one more glance, one more sight of her before darkness takes me forever.

The professional clicks a button on his pistol. I hear the bullet entering the chamber as he switches it from tranquilize to kill.

He’s going to put me down.

He raises it up, pulling the trigger. The muzzle flashes. A tiny supernova of fire, a dying star, oh, so many things I longed to see…

Thea. Thea. Thea. Thea.

My mind goes into full overdrive, emergency mode activating despite the tranquilizers, but my muscles are completely shut down. I have to watch with my heightened sensations as I see the whirling death of bullet leaving the muzzle—

It hits with a wet thud.

The man slumps behind me. The professional clicks his gun back into tranquilize after dispatching his team member who was foolish enough to vocalize the name of his employer.

Thea sprints out of the medical bay. She ignored my order to stay in there. I’m not fit to give her orders if I can’t keep her safe. In her hands are two syringes, the syringes I so desperately tried to get to when I was tranquilized a lifetime ago.

Epinephrine.

The doctor couldn’t get to the syringes when this turtlenecked man cut him down.

He didn’t have Thea.

She dives forward, jumping through the air, and jabs the needles directly into my veins. My blood fills with the shot. I push myself upwards groggily, my eyes blurry but focusing in on the threat. The overdrive combined with the shot puts me into full gear. I surge forward, my hands opening and aching to crush his head between them.

The professional realizes he doesn’t have time to reload and dives through the broken glass, sprinting towards the wall. I watch him leap up, scrambling up the eight-foot wall easily. I could track him, but I need to stay close to my ward.

My mind is racing and slow at the same time, a strange mix of tranquilizing and overdrive spurred on by the epinephrine. My heart is pounding like a drum.

My blood is analyzing the tranquilizer and sending out antibodies to fight it. It doesn’t matter how good the tranq is, my own genetic makeup is better. Thea designed me to be able to fight off venoms, poison, and tranquillizing agents. I’m coming back to life.

I do not fear anyone.

But that man…that man I respect for his raw murderous capabilities.

He got away before I could end his life. That man is not evil or good. He is the cold logic of Cobernaught incarnate. He moves slower than in my memories. It’s been twenty years. He came here once to kidnap the doctor, putting him into a sleep that he never woke up from even as his brain was being ripped from his body on his own operating tables in the facility.

Overdrive clicks off and the weariness of the world hits me.

I fall. I land hard on my ass, looking upwards. Even the epinephrine can’t combat the exhaustion like I’ve been sprinting flat out for hours.

I look up at her. She glows in the light. My angel. She stands, naked and pure, and she runs her shaking hand through my hair.

9

THEA

I pant. I can’t believe I was strong enough to do what I just did. When I saw Auger on the ground, fighting against the heavy sedatives, I knew there was only one chance. The shots were miraculously on the ground, as if someone had dropped them. I grabbed them, opening the seal, and somehow made my legs push me forward even though I’d never been so scared in my life. I dove to him.

Pure epinephrine can counteract almost any sedative. Two shots could give a human a heart attack, but Auger is no mere human. He’s steel, man and alien. He’s a titan.

I rub Auger’s head when I smell the blood and gore. My hand freezes in his sweat-soaked hair, and I see what he did.

My stomach boils up.

There’s a man without a face.

Another has no neck. His head is connected to his body by a thin strip of flesh. I nearly throw up, forcing down the burning bile.

The third faced a quicker death. He has a bullet wound in his forehead, killed in friendly fire when the leader of the four missed his shot.

“I…failed…you…”

Auger’s voice is slow and groggy.

I look down at him. I cannot see a man. A man cannot punch straight through another man’s skull. A man cannot rip the throat out of someone with the flick of their wrist. When I see the violence he wreaked in seconds, fear grips me. I’ve been looking at Auger all my life like he was a creation that I could control.

I’ll never be able to leash this beast.

He is a whirlwind of death and I am responsible for everything he does.

I’m terrified of the brutality he’s capable of.

“You didn’t fail me, Auger. You kept me safe.” I say the words—but they’re empty. They’re tainted by the evidence of his killing. I programmed him to be like this.

It’s one thing to write the code.

It’s another to see it in action. To see a man reduced to a pile of flesh and blood. Auger’s hands are covered in fresh, red liquid, clinging to his pale flesh. I pull the darts from his body, throwing them aside, but my hands shake and I’m scared to let my fingers touch his flesh, as if his beastliness could be transferred to me and make me less human.

I try not to look at the two dead men that Auger dispatched. I’d never seen a dead body before, and now I see three—two of them violently destroyed by a man, no, a Cyborg obsessed with keeping me safe…

No matter how many people he kills.

He motions like he’s drunk, waving his hand towards the third assassin who has the bullet in his head.

“I went…against my programming. My programming told me to kill him. I failed you.”

I blink twice.

He’s right. I programmed Auger to kill that third, begging man without hesitation. He should have ripped the man’s head from his body with both hands. I programmed the Cyborg Bodyguards to be merciless when their ward is in danger.

There was an active threat to his ward.

And he fought against the killing I implanted in his programming to spare a life.

I no longer look at Auger like a brutal killer. The Cyborg beast becomes more human in my eyes. “Auger. That…that was you. I programmed you to kill if your ward was in danger, no matter what. You…you fought my programming off. You didn’t fail me. You just showed me…”

You just showed me you’re better than I ever could be.

“Then I am wrong.” He says the words with self-disgust and hatred. He feels he could not keep me safe. That he doesn’t deserve to be near me. I created my Cyborgs with one goal—and now I feel anxiety at the thought that one day, through no fault of their own, one of the Bodyguards I make may lose their ward.

They would never recover.

I rub my hand through his thick, sweaty hair. Even sitting, he’s huge and powerful.

“You’re not wrong, Auger. You’ve got mercy in you. You’re more human than the man they sent to kill us. Gods, if he didn’t miss his shot…”

My mind is so tired. The empty syringes lie on the ground. If I had stumbled when I ran to Auger…if I hadn’t found his veins in the last possible moment…

“That wasn’t a miss. That was an execution. His man said the name of the employer out loud.”

I didn’t hear it. I was rifling through the supplies on the ground, searching desperately for the one thing that could save us. My mouth goes dry. “Who?”

“Cobernaught.”

I half-hoped it was the Stone brothers. A chill runs through me. Who have I been working for, all this time?

The night air flows through the broken windows. Cobernaught tracked us here with that tiny bug that crawled into my ass. I feel it wriggle against my palm. It’s half-crushed, unable to move after I pressed it against my hand when I grabbed the syringe.

Auger pulls himself to his feet. He’s unsteady, but he’s getting back control of his body. He looks down at my cold, naked form. My nipples are two little buds. I step back, not wanting to turn him on. His pants are barely held together anymore, ripped and tattered.

“You need clothes. He had a wife. She left him when he chose work over her.”

Is he confused? Did the tranquilizer affect his brain? “Who had a wife, Auger?”

“The doctor who was brought here for his brain to be harvested.”

This time I can’t hold back the bile. I throw up, retching on the floor.

I’ve been working for the devil.

Auger has his medical skills from the top surgeon in the sector, a man who died twenty years ago. I read his file. He was married to his work, so much that he lost his wife, divorced after he moved to a man-made world that must have been the last straw in a tense relationship. He was brought up here before Cobernaught was even a true corporation, before anyone knew what was going to happen on this facility. He must have been told he would be the doctor for the construction crew who built the mansions and facilities on this man-made rock.

When construction was completed…

His brain was harvested.

His house is frozen in time. They didn’t even clean up the mansion, and everything is just as it was when he died. His children grew up. He had a wife, but she’s twenty years older now. Time moved on, but this snapshot of a doctor’s life stayed the same.

I’m working for murderers.

I wipe the bile from my lips, my legs shaking. “Auger,” I whimper, fear gripping me. My knees feel weak.

“Move. Now.” He is certain. He stabilizes me.

He grabs my arm, leading me down the hall to the main bedroom.

It makes me feel sick. I’m looking at a bed where a man slept with his wife. Her leaving him might have saved her life. Did she get a message, when he died, that there was an accident he didn’t survive? Did she grieve him or forget him?

The art on the wall makes me shudder. Three paintings, each part of a stylized cherry blossom tree, feminine. This was art his wife picked. Art he kept up when she left him.

“There are clothes in the drawers. His wife was similar to your size.” Auger opens the drawers, throwing things out at random. He’s treating the things of this family like they’re junk.

“I don’t want to wear something a dead man’s wife wore,” I say, my voice weak and trembling. I wasn’t made for this. For life-or-death struggles, for thinking like that shark of a man killed Auger.

Auger turns to me. “It’s just things.”

“I know, but…”

He nods. “I think I understand. There was a gift. He never gave it to her. A dress.” He opens the bottom drawer, grabbing a fine wrapped package with a pink bow. He tosses it to me, and I take it in my arms, not sure if this is better or worse.

At least it hadn’t touched her skin, twenty years ago.

I hold it, but I can’t open it. I can’t put it on. My muscles feel so weak, my brain so slow. Auger pulls me forward out of the bedroom, lifting me up over the broken glass, and my feet touch the cool grass as we leave the dead man’s house.

I look left and right, panic grabbing me, expecting to see the man in the black turtleneck.

He looks at me. “The tracker.”

“Of course.” I drop the clothes on the ground, looking at the tracker. “I need my smartwatch.”

He pulls my watch from the pocket that hangs loosely off his thigh. He hands it to me. I press on it, and the 3D holo-projection comes out as I scan through lines of code.

If I can modify the transport hacking code to change the location…

I start typing on a virtual keyboard that will let me speak to the tracker in a language it understands.

There’s a low hum from the direction of the Cobernaught facility.

“Ship’s coming. Hurry.”

We stand in front of the transport, and the doors open as I rush to change the code. “I just need another second…” I mutter as I rush, trying to change it. I press enter, and the red light of the tracker flicks off—then on.

Auger grabs my shoulder and pulls me hard into the transport ship. He nearly falls over as he forces me in, and I realize he’s weaker than he looks. He punches in coordinates on the transport ship and it lifts off quickly.

I was expecting him to pilot. He doesn’t—and it makes me worry more about him. Instead, he is trusting the AI of the ship.

The doors close as we fly over the wall. “The tracker will show Cobernaught we’re flying the opposite way. I’ll make it erratic, so they don’t catch our trail. It’ll buy us time.”

It takes him a half-second to process what I say. “Good job.” His voice is slurred. He’s barely staying upright in his seat.

“Where are we going, Auger?” I take a look at the coordinates, but they don’t mean anything to me.

He turns to look at me. His eyes are glazed. “There was a captain. He learned Cobernaught was going to harvest his brain. Riggler.”

Captain Riggler.

I swallow, and guilt grabs me. I remember that name. Galfond made jokes about that name. He was a captain I used to implant leadership skills in Auger in case our Bodyguards needed to command a security team.

I remember lazily looking at his cause of death. You get curious, sometimes, about the minds that come into your possession. You browse through their life story, but they don’t feel real.

The cause of death was an accident when his transport ship malfunctioned and slammed to the ground.

“He was trying to get away.”

I picture it. The transport ship lifting off. Auger’s eyes blur over for a second, and he doesn’t know who he is, then they snap back into focus. “Yes. He had a safe…place…”

His voice slows, then he falls back, his head lolling to the side. I gently rub his shoulder.

We fly upwards, the black transport blending in with the dark. The tiny tracker will tell them we’re going the opposite way. It will buy us time, and I’ll keep it moving, jagging back and forth all the way to X12. They’ll lose time trying to find us on the densely populated city center of the planet.

I look down through the viewport.

Row after row of mansions. All beautiful, austere glass. Most are empty. I wonder how many had people inside them. Men and women who lived, who laughed, who hoped and dreamed.

Cobernaught bought the bulk of their brains legally.

The ones they couldn’t get, they brought here to harvest.

They were planning Cyborgs and the Bodyguard program long before Cobernaught existed as a legal entity. Whatever shadowy shell corporation existed before, it was designed so that if anyone found out about their murderous ways, it could be dissolved like a disgusting caterpillar to let Cobernaught’s butterfly wings open.

Who the fuck am I working for?

I look down at the rows of shining glass. For every thirty that are dark, one is lit up.

When I finished my work here, did they plan to take my mind from me? Would I have had an uncharacteristically young heart attack, caused by stress and the pills that they thought were safe? Would they pay my family a hefty settlement? Somewhere deep in my contract, is there a clause that they get my mind when I die?

I shudder.

Whoever I’m working for, I share an employer with that man in the turtleneck. Deep below, hiding in manicured forests of trees, he lurks.

White ships with searchlights fly towards the glass mansion. They shift their course, following the fake location the tracker sends to them.

We fly up and I see the station in its entirety.

I’m brought back to my first day of work. Eighteen. Terrified. It feels like a lifetime ago.

I finished my exams that morning when I was flown out. The youngest graduate of Able Advanced AI and I never went to the ceremony. I had my degree shipped.

I never took the degree out of the box. Its only use was to get me here. To this job. In this dream of a life, creating beings. All I ever wanted was to bring consciousness out of the darkness. I was so intent on that dream I never stopped to consider what that meant.

I looked down at that facility, all bright glass and metal, thinking of it as a bright, limitless future. Imagining what I would create.

I created something of beauty.

I created something that went against its own programming to spare a life.

I created living art—and I hope desperately, knowing it is naïve, that Cobernaught plans to use my beings to protect the innocent.

I rub the tiny pinpricks on Auger’s back where the darts entered him. He’s so strong. Those tranquilizers could have stopped a bull. Nothing can worry him now.

“You didn’t fail me, Auger. I’m safe,” I whisper to him, just in case some part of him can still hear me. He’s a rock, a boulder, a safe place. He will protect me no matter what happens. I run my hand over his skin, and tears well in my eyes.

I brought him into this world.

He’s my responsibility.

I may be working for evil, but my creations are not.

I built these men to protect. I built these men, but somehow, someway, they built their own moral code. They have their own soul. They know right and wrong, and no matter what Cobernaught tries to make them do, my creations will make the final choice.

Auger spared a begging man’s life.

The man in the black turtleneck executed him. That man is a simple tool, not good, not evil, but a weapon.

My Auger is a being. My Auger is more human than that shark in a human’s form.

The transport blows hot air at me, so I’m warm despite my nakedness as we fly from the man-made moon. The huge fertile gem is massive behind the cold artificial moon, life contrasted with machine, X12 warm and welcoming compared to the industrial coldness of the space station.

I’m so glad to be away from it, and out of Cobernaught’s reach.

The transport is warm, but a chill passes through me.

I’m out of their reach, but Galfond is in their grasp. He’s in the palm of their hand and they can ball it into a fist at any second. How can one man survive against the well-oiled corporate machine of Cobernaught?

My smartwatch has four missed calls from him.

“Call Galfond, voice,” I whisper. Auger is fast asleep, and while he didn’t specifically tell me I can’t call anyone, I don’t want him to take my watch away from me.

Galfond picks up instantly.

“Thea? Where the fuck are you? Why didn’t you answer?”

“Galfond. Listen to me. You’re in danger.”

He snorts. “I can take care of myself. But your little plan worked. Auger’s out there somewhere. Don’t worry, don’t worry. I faked the records and melted down another blank Cyborg so there’s no evidence of what you did. Where do you think he is right now?”

It’s so hard to listen to him, but I’m not able to cut off my mentor. “That’s…that’s not what I mean. Look, the Stone Brothers aren’t the real threat. Cobernaught is murdering people.”

I’m all over the place. I’m so tired, I’m barely making sense.

“What the hell are you talking about? Slow down, Thea.”

“The brains. Galfond, the minds. They’re killing people and taking their brains.”

Galfond chuckles. “Alright, Thea. Where are you? What the hell’s going on?”

“Galfond! You’re not listening! I know it sounds crazy. Auger has memories. Memories that…”

“Auger’s with you?” Galfond cuts me off, his voice intense. “Thea. You’re in danger. He’s going against his programming if he came back to you. You need to deactivate him. Now. I’ll come for you.”

I shake my head. His life is in danger, and I’m losing control of the conversation. “The emergency shutoff phrase doesn’t work on him. Never mind that. Galfond, you need to shut up.”

My voice gains strength. I find my words, remembering the exact tones that I put in Auger’s vocal cords to command attention and doing my best to mimic him. “Listen to me very. Fucking. Carefully. You need to take a transport to X12. Now. The top surgeon we uploaded to Auger’s mind? He was murdered. I was just in his house. It’s still got signs of the struggle when they took him. That’s just the start. This goes deep.”

Galfond pauses. He takes a breath in, but he doesn’t say a word. He’s taking me seriously.

“Galfond. Please. You’re in danger. Take the nearest transport. They sent a whole team after Auger and me.”

“Then I’d be a coward to leave.” His voice is stone.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m nearly finished on my report. I didn’t have any proof that the Stone Brothers were trying to use the Cyborgs for military purposes, but I just needed enough to get a spotlight on them and spook them. Now you’re telling me that Cobernaught is killing people and using their brains. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

I can’t believe him.

He knows he’s in the hornets’ nest—and he’s going to poke around.

“Galfond. Are you crazy?”

“I’m not crazy. But I have work to do. They’ve got no reason to suspect me. Where are you headed now? X12? Wait—don’t tell me. It’s better I don’t know. I’m scrubbing the record of these calls. Don’t call again from the same number. Make an alert pop up on my sunflare app and I’ll call you. Yeah, I know you hacked my damn watch to make me think the sun was going to bathe us with radiation. Good one. I can’t talk anymore.”

He hangs up.

I remember that innocent time when I remotely hacked his smartwatch to make him think there would be a solar flare so big all our systems would be down for a week. He never let on that he knew it was me.

Of course he knew.

As we leave the moon below, I feel like I’ll never see him again.

Brave Galfond.

Brave, foolish Galfond.

We float into space, the transport driving towards a hidden destination, a safe spot for a murdered man.

10

THEA

The captain knew exactly what he was doing when he made his safe house. I didn’t see it until we were two clicks away. It was only when a cube of space was slightly darker and without stars that I realized it was a matte-black space station that’s been orbiting X12 for two decades without being discovered.

The ship docks automatically, thudding against the station. Auger comes awake in an instant. His body seizes up with stress, his bright blue eyes wide and confused. I rub his shoulder, soft, gentle. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

He looks over at my naked body, searching for any sign of injury. His first thought is for me. I hold the perfectly wrapped package with the bow in my arms, but I turned the heat up so I’d be comfortable in nakedness. I need a shower more than anything. If I pull the clothes on, they’ll get dirty in a second.

Auger stands, steady again. He recovered in his rest.

The transport clicks into the station. The doors open to the airlock. We walk through, and the next set opens.

I’m so used to the sterility of the Cobernaught facilities that I’m shocked to see a man-cave. Auger steps through.

“They killed him when he was trying to get here,” I whisper to myself as I walk into a place that was made for one man alone. The color scheme is warm browns. The heat is still on, the air recycling over and over, and the main area is a big living room. There’s a dartboard. An actual bar. On the wall is a poster of a topless woman, printed on real paper.

The furniture looks like it’s made of real wood, and I breathe in. The bar itself is a big chunk of live-edge wood. Auger sits down heavily on the couch, sighing, and I imagine it’s exactly how the captain would have if he got here alive.

It feels like we’ve walked into a real home, not a safe house. Auger puts his head in his hands. He’s still exhausted. “The shower is…there,” he says, pointing down the hallway.

“Is it safe?”

I ask the question, but I start walking before I get an answer. It feels safe in here. It’s so different from anything Cobernaught has ever had their hands in. “It’s safe. Go.”

I take the dress that was supposed to be a gift from a dead man. Maybe it was meant to save their marriage. He didn’t even get a chance to give it to her.

I bite my lip. Auger sometimes gets lost in the memories. Will this dress confuse his mind? At least his wife never wore it. He won’t have any memories linked with it, except picking it out and having it shipped.

I feel like I’m intruding into someone’s private space as I walk down the hallway to the bathroom. There are two towels, both thick and huge, and a shower that looks like heaven. It’s so strange being in houses and spaces that haven’t had people in them for decades. I feel like I’m a time traveler.

“Water on,” I say to the shower.

No water turns on.

The captain made his safe house with minimal AI. It makes sense, if he was suspecting an AI company of betraying him.

I try to picture it. When did he figure it out? Was he living here, working for Cobernaught security? Or was he being interviewed under the guise that he was putting down his skills to be transferred into Cyborgs that way?

Maybe people started to die. Maybe there was one too many accidents, and he pieced it together. Maybe he was always a suspicious bastard, the kind who puts a nuclear bunker under their home…just in case.

Eventually, he must have realized his true purpose, or gotten suspicious enough to try to get away.

He tried to get away, but they caught him before he could escape.

I feel so bad now, remembering Galfond’s joke about whether Riggler had as big of a “wriggler” as Auger. Those jokes make me sick now. I’m in the home of a murdered man and I keep expecting to see a ghost.

Only ghosts aren’t spooky phantoms.

Ghosts have hearts and blood and pulses that never quicken when they pull the trigger. They’re in black turtlenecks, walking silently with death in their hands.

I put the package on the counter and step into the shower, turning the handle manually. I yelp. It’s cold! I’m used to water that’s instantly hot. I jump out and wait until it steams to walk back in.

I should be exhausted, but the pill keeps me awake. It’s strange having a body that’s pushed to the limit while your brain is still working a mile a minute.

I’m worried about Galfond. He’s a tough old man. I know he can take care of himself, but I’m not sure he realizes the true evil of the behemoth Cobernaught. He chose to stay in danger. He made the decision.

He gets to choose to put himself in danger.

I can’t.

If I tried, Auger would stop me. Then he’d spank me for the thought. I shudder, remembering how turned on I felt when he put me over his lap and disciplined me like an unruly little brat. My nipples harden.

I finish the shower and dry off on one of the old towels. It’s got a dry smell to it. Not bad, still clean, but ancient. I grab the clothes and walk into the other room to the bedroom. There’s a big bed, designed for a big man, and I sit on it, running my hands over the package.

It’s such a strange feeling. A package meant for a dead man’s wife, never opened.

I undo the bow slowly, feeling like I shouldn’t damage it, and unwrap it.

“Oh…” I say, running my hands over the dress.

This was a mistake. The dress is nothing like my own wardrobe.

I always wore clothes to blend in. Basic colors and fits, anything to be comfortable. I never cared about looking good. In fact, the less people who looked at me, the better.

It’s a pleasure dress. Yellow, like a flower, vibrant and alive.

Crafted from strands of material that caress your body, the richest Aurelians clothe their entire harems in them to keep their women in a constant state of lust. The sheer dresses are crafted from the cotton of a rare tree, and the material is almost sentient, touching and tickling the skin like a thousand tiny feathers.

I’m clean and scrubbed, and I look over at captain Riggler’s drawer. Maybe I should pull on his clothes instead. But he was a big man, and it’s a creepy feeling to put on clothes that were worn by someone killed by the very company I worked for.

I slowly put on the dress, and it hugs my skin.

I’ve never worn anything like this. This was designed for the enjoyment of brutal aliens. My nipples harden as the strands of material ever so gently caresses me, and I let out a moan. I can still feel Auger’s handprints on the cheeks of my ass, and it turns me on feeling his mark.

If I walk out wearing this, I’ll be on display. The material is so sheer it’s as revealing as being naked, hugging and flowing over my body.

There’s a full-length mirror on the captain’s wardrobe. I can imagine him looking at himself in full dress uniform. Now I see something completely different.

I’ve never seen myself like this.

I look…

Beautiful.

I’ve never felt beautiful before. Auger makes me feel that way. Knowing that he gets so turned on by my body. Knowing that he’s obsessed with me. But will he like this side of me, or lose his attraction?

Somehow, the sheer clothes make me look even more sexual than if I was bare. My nipples poke out against the yellow fabric, and I feel anxious.

What is Auger going to think of me?

I want him to think I’m sexy, not laugh at me…

Against my judgment, against all my instincts, I step out into the hallway.

11

AUGER

The water stopped and I heard the door click. My senses are coming fully online. My heart nearly burst out of my chest during the fight.

Half-memories from the flight here. My body and mind were so overloaded I shut down. Did Thea call someone? Even her voice felt unreal.

I can smell her—she’s aroused and nervous. Her little feet patter down the hallway towards me.

I barely recognize her. I’ve seen her naked, and I’ve seen her in a lab coat and white pants, but never in this. She’s wearing something…very different.

She’s dressed for my eye. She’s dressed to catch my gaze and hold it, so I can think of nothing but her perfection. Her nipples are hard as rocks under the sheer material of her dress I can see her belly button and the smooth skin of her stomach, the curves of her hips, her long legs. I want to run my tongue over every inch of her. Her dress is so transparent, I can almost see her sweet little cunt.

I shudder.

I could hold back when I was protecting her. I could hold back when I was spanking her to keep her safe. My mind blurs, and for a second, I’m so overwhelmed I don’t know where I am or who I am.

I breathe in and Thea’s scent fills my mind. I’m pulled back to reality. When she’s here, I know exactly who I am.

I am her protector.

I ache to bring my hand down against her bottom. Not to punish. To train her to be my perfect little toy. I ache to force every inch of my cock deep into her. Until I do, I’ll be gnawed by starving hunger.

I breathe in fully, the smell of her innocent nervousness mixing with her aroused cunt in my nose. She burns in my mind. I want to taste her tang, to worship her pussy with my tongue. I want to make her cream her little panties with need for me. My cock hardens, surging painfully, pre-cum dripping from the tip.

I ache to stretch her, to invade her deepest, most innocent places and claim her. I want to make her my little toy. I want her to know, deep down, that she belongs to me.

I own this helpless little creature.

I’m going to show her exactly what that means.

All the blood in my brain flows down to my cock, surging, painful and starving for her. I will feast.

I will make her mine.

12

THEA

I feel so insecure when I walk into the main room.

I’ve never wanted to be sexy before. I’ve never wanted anyone to desire me—never thought I could be desired. For a second I think he’s going to laugh at me, mocking me like that boy who kissed me on a dare.

His breath catches.

His cock stands up, pressing against his combat pants, forced down his leg and struggling to break free. It’s a long snake.

“Auger, relax. You’re still tired.”

I imagine helping my wounded Cyborg. Getting on my knees in front of him and nursing him back to strength. Instead, he stands on his tree-trunk legs, towering over me.

“You are my strength.”

If I felt insecure before, now I feel tiny and so fucking naughty to be dressed like this. I knew exactly what would happen if I dressed like this in front of a huge alpha male, but knowing he’s going to claim me makes my heart beat like a rabbit’s in my chest.

I can’t believe what I’m doing. “I’ve…I’ve never worn anything like this.”

He towers over me, stepping in front of me, and reaches down with a hand to gently stroke the bottom of my chin, forcing my nervous gaze upwards. I’m freshly showered but he stinks of man. It’s not a bad smell. It’s sweat and exertion, power and masculinity distilled. It’s the stench of too much testosterone. His seed is boiling in his balls and he needs me. I can feel it pulsing inside him.

“How does it make you feel?” His voice is a ragged growl, taut like a rope stretched to the limit. His eyes are two burning blue orbs.

I swallow, my throat dry. “Nervous.”

Desired.

He leans forward, and his huge lips burn against mine in a kiss that whispers in my soul.

It makes me ache for so much more. I lean up to meet him, but he pulls back, making me need more.

“You’re naughty, aren’t you?” His eyes are wild, protective yet crazed with need, staring into my soul.

Oh fuck.

Those words transform me. I feel my mind going blank. I’ve been through so much. I nearly died over and over, and I need to stop thinking. I need to take a step back. I need to turn off my mind and let the alpha male take control.

I need my master to tell me what to do.

“I’m a…I’m your naughty little bitch,” I whisper, my voice shaking as I stare into his burning eyes.

He waits. “Say it.”

My teeth chatter. I’m captured in his gaze. “I’m your naughty little bitch, master.”

He leans down to kiss me, his mouth hot and hungry, and his tongue forces past my lips. It feels so fucking wrong. I’m dressed up in a pleasure dress like some submissive toy who runs to an Aurelian harem just begging for the strict dominance of the species.

And it’s working.

I’ve got my owner’s full, complete attention. The beast who can rip through a man with his bare hands is completely focused on me. He can’t hold back. The last tatters of his combat pants rip as his cock fights free, pressing up and against me, slick with pre-cum and coating my skin. It’s too fucking big.

His huge hands roam down and grab my ass cheeks. I feel so desired. I’ve never felt so attractive, so utterly needed.

He’s going to teach me everything I’ve missed out on.

He’s going to take my virginity.

The analytical part of my brain thinks that phrase like a scientist. When I feel that huge dick pressing against me, the logistics of it make me scared. He’s an animal in his need, his breath ragged as he kisses me deep, his hands grabbing the sore flesh of my spanked bottom and pressing me against his body. Seven hundred pounds of flesh and steel dominate me and send fear into my heart.

I tense up as I imagine that huge cock ripping me in half.

He’s built like a bull.

He’s got the testosterone of twenty men pumping through his veins and his dick is like a fucking baseball bat. When he lets loose, he’s going to ruin me. His programming to keep me safe is nothing compared to the burning lust and desire pulsing up in him. I could kick and scream, I could push him with my hands, and nothing will stop that huge cock from claiming me.

Auger pulls back.

He looks into my eyes and I tremble, held up only by his huge hands cupping my ass cheeks.

“I’ll be so gentle, my sweet little pet,” he whispers, his voice melting me. I look into his eyes and trust him completely. I can’t say anything, so I just nod, and he picks me up.

I’m lifted in the air and the room spins.

My legs open instinctively for the alpha. I wrap them around his huge torso, grinding my pussy against his hard muscles. The the thin material of the dress that was separating my cunt from his sweat-soaked, hard body is pushed up, and I feel him against me. He walks me down the hallway and each step makes my pussy glide against his hard abs. Pleasure seeps into my mind. Deep, dirty pleasure as I feel like a tiny, slutty little toy for the huge, dominant man.

His stubble scrapes at my cheeks as he kisses me, and the overwhelming smell of man, so different from me, makes my head spin.

He walks me into the bedroom and sets me down on the bed, mounting me. The bed creaks in protest at his huge bulk. I’m pressed firmly down against the bed by seven hundred pounds of alien Cyborg. It doesn’t matter what I try. If I kicked, screamed, bit him, he would barely feel it. I’m utterly helpless and in his control.

I’m so terrified, so turned on at the same time. His tongue slides past my lips so easily, and when I feel his huge steel rod of a cock throb against my stomach, spilling pre-cum, I know he’s going to fuck me just as easily. The biggest thing I’ve had in there was his fat finger and that stretched me so deliciously.

His cock…

Is going to leave its mark on me forever.

He leans back, rubbing his palm against my pussy through the shimmering material of the dress, then brings his juice-covered finger up and forces it into my mouth. I have to taste my own need, tangy for the Cyborg. He grinds his cock against my cunt, sending tingles of pleasure and need through me.

The pleasure dress seems to sense my need, feeling like a thousand little tongues lapping at my body, making goosebumps appear on every inch of my skin.

He doesn’t pull my dress off me. He just lifts it up, and the huge head of his cock presses against my virgin entrance. My legs open instinctively for him.

He stares into my eyes. Those huge, bright blue orbs burn into my soul. His anvil jaw is so strong and set, black stubble flecked with gray making him look authoritarian and in control.

“Good little pets belong to their master,” he growls, and his cock presses into me.

“Gentle,” I gasp out at the sudden pain. I’m not ready for this. He’s way too fucking big, as thick around as my wrist. Tears come to my eyes from the pain.

“I need you,” he snarls, and his eyes grow ferocious. He’s half mastiff, half wolf, both protecting and claiming me at the same time. “You’re going to have to take every inch of my cock deep inside that fertile little pussy of yours.”

Fertile.

Cyborgs aren’t supposed to be able to have children. But if he’s got Aurelian DNA in him, the strongest urge will be to put a baby in me. To seed me, breeding me over and over until I’m fat with his child. There’s no going back now.

I whimper, the tinge of fear adding a sharp spike to my arousal. He’s holding back.

Barely.

If he snaps, he’ll thrust every inch of that steel rod deep inside of me and the agony would make me black out.

“Please, please, master,” I moan out, begging him to be gentle, and he growls low and slow as he presses forward.

“You’re so fucking tight,” he says, and my body opens up for him. His cock spurts pre-cum and the highly lubricated Aurelian-infused cum lets him force that impossibly huge dick into me. The lubricating pre-cum soothes me, cools me, takes the pain down to a satisfying edge of being stretched.

“Punish me, sir,” I gasp out, craving that delicious edge of pain.

He growls like a beast and thrusts, pressing his cock into me.

I nearly black out from the pleasure and pain that mixes together as he takes my innocence. I’m ripped open by the Cyborg beast as he takes me where no man has ever been before. It should be agony, but the Aurelian in his DNA infuses his pre-cum with an agent that molds my body to his rod.

I’m no longer a virgin, and neither is he, both of us experiencing the togetherness of sex for the first time.

I’ve never felt so close to someone. My eyes go wide, tears forming. I can almost feel him in my mind. I built him, and I know his thoughts, and for a second I feel his need for me welling up.

His eyes are just as wide, filled with wonder as he slowly, deliciously forces his cock deeper and deeper inside of me. I can’t fucking believe how deep he is inside of me. I’m stretched to the absolute limit. The constant chatter of my mind calms as I’m lost in the moment. Auger’s cock seems to change my body, letting me take him deeper and deeper as his thick girth stretches me wider.

His eyes are filled with awe, worship, and complete ownership.

“I love you. I love you, Thea,” he gasps. We’ve known each other for years. He’s heard me spill my secrets. He knows me better than I know myself, and I know him deeper than anyone else ever could.

His love spills over me.

“I love you, sir,” I whisper back. “I love you, Auger.”

Too soon? Too fast? I don’t care. I built this man. I knew him and poured my love into his creation, never daring to feel a thing. Now that he’s fully taking me, I lose myself to those quiet moments where I spilled my soul to him.

We are laid bare to each other.

He pulls his hips back, then thrusts deep into me. I want to feel the slap of his huge balls against my asshole as he fully enters me. He’s not nearly fully in me. He growls, his hands gripping my ass cheeks.

He’s still holding back.

He presses his huge body against me, covering me completely, and I’m buried deep in his chest. I feel so small. So vulnerable. So protected yet so defiled. His cock pulses in my body. Each beat of his heart makes it throb. It’s a living thing that opens me and spreads me wide.

“Take me hard, master. Show me what a beast you are,” I whisper, so low no man could hear.

He is no man.

He growls, pulling me closer, his hands gripping my ass cheeks as he forces every inch of his cock into me until I feel those huge, hanging, cum-filled balls pressing against me. It makes me scream when he’s so fucking deep, my body shaking and trembling, unable to move an inch as the seven-hundred-pound man claims me.

“You’re master’s good little pet,” he croons, his voice so soft and sweet, encouraging me for taking every fucking inch of his big dick into me.

“And good little pets need their master’s big cock, don’t they?” He slides his cock all the way out, leaving me so empty, craving so much more.

“Good little pets…oh Gods…need master’s big dick,” I whimper, my voice so small and weak, and the second I say it he slams his huge dick into me. I scream out, and he starts to fuck me hard and fast, his balls slapping against my ass with each thrust. Pain and pleasure mix like molten chocolate in my mind, so rich, dark, and endless, and I fall into that endless pit of need. I don’t hold back. I run my hands over his back, lovingly touching him.

“I fucking love you, my little pet,” he whispers in my ear, hot with need. “Master loves you.”

That’s all it takes to send me over the edge. I scream, writhing, trying to move under him, but his hands move up from my ass and squeeze around my entire body, holding me close to him in a big embrace, making me so small and safe as I cum for the first time from a man. My pussy contracts and spasms on his huge, fat, throbbing cock that’s filling me with pre-cum and suddenly I need to feel him spurt into me.

My breath catches. “Please, please, sir, cum in me,” I beg, my voice so full of need. I beg him desperately.

It turns him into an animal.

He can’t hold back.

He fucks me in a wild frenzy, in and out, every inch of his cock pulling all the way out until my pussy lips almost close and then forcing it deep into me until those huge balls slap against my asshole. He squeezes me so tight I can’t breathe, the scent of his thick musk filling my nostrils.

“Sir, cum in me,” I plead, begging, aching, needing.

His cock stiffens. He forces himself fully into me, holding himself deep inside when he spurts. His cock pumps me full of cum. Load after load of hot sperm shoots deep into me, filling me so full, and I nearly black out as my orgasm goes to new heights. My scream fills the room, loud, aching, until I’m fully satisfied. He keeps his dick deep in me until every spurt is pumped so deep into me.

Then he slowly thrusts, milking the last drops as my pussy contracts desperately.

My body is weak and shaking. I’m lost in the pleasure. He pulls himself slowly from me. His cock is coated in my pussy juices, his white cum, and the red of my claimed innocence.

He can’t be without me. I see it in his eyes, then he slides his still half-stiff cock back into me and holds me, shifting to his side so that we are facing each other. His cock softens in me, still thick and plugging me full of his seed. He wraps his arms tight around me and I blink over and over, trying to comprehend what just happened.

I’ve changed Auger’s mind over and over. I’ve put different skills and programs in him.

It’s him who has complete control over mine.

He’s inserted himself deep in my consciousness. He owns me so utterly it scares me.

“Please, Auger, I’m so scared,” I say. I don’t explain why. I don’t have to. He understands completely. His bright blue eyes look at me with all the love in the universe.

“I’ll never hurt you. I’ll never leave you. You will always be safe with me. I promise you.”

I try to smile, and suddenly tears come to my eyes. I feel so foolish. He gently strokes my tears, making me tremble like a leaf. “You can cry, Thea. I’ll be strong for you.”

“I…I feel so stupid,” I gasp out between sobs. I’m not crying from pain or terror, but just from being completely and utterly overwhelmed. My body still trembles and I’m so helpless in front of him.

I believe him. I believe he’ll always keep me safe—but if anyone ever finds out that a Cyborg fucked a human woman, every single one of his kind will be euthanized. They are meant to be a step above robots, just barely organic enough to be immune to hacking.

They aren’t supposed to be able to fuck.

They aren’t supposed to be able to show mercy.

And never, in a million years, were they supposed to be able to love.

I bite my lip, nervous, anxious, and it’s like he reads my mind.

“I love you, Thea.”

“I love you, Auger,” I say, and press myself against his chest, feeling so safe and warm and protected.

13

AUGER

I only require three hours of sleep a night.

I woke up two hours ago, but I never moved a muscle. I stay so still, holding my precious mate in my arms. She has the most brilliant mind of anyone—and I know, because I’ve felt the memories of hundreds of experts in their fields.

No one can match my Thea.

And yet, that brilliant mind is trapped in such a small, helpless little body. That makes my heart beat faster. I must keep her safe, no matter what. She’s mine, and her belonging to me makes me responsible for whatever happens.

Love.

I know what love is. Many men in my mind had it. Many thought they did, only holding on to a shadow of the real thing. I’ve felt great loves, but nothing compares to the intensity of the way I need Thea.

I will never let anything happen to her.

No matter what.

She shifts in her sleep, nervous, and I gently stroke her back, my hands so light against her. I claimed her. I made her mine.

I’ve taken her there—but I ache for more. My balls are already full again. I need so much more. I want her mouth. I want that tight, sexy little hole in her bottom. I want to feel her ass clenching and trying to stop me from claiming her, just like her tight little cunt tried to stop me from fucking her.

The breeding instinct is more powerful than anything I’ve felt.

Deep down, I know my purpose.

It’s not just to keep Thea safe.

It’s to seed her over and over again, until she bears my sons. I imagine tying her up, fucking her over and over again, my balls filling every ten minutes so I can fuck her tight little slit.

I won’t need to tie her up. I don’t need to keep her in chains to fuck her over and over again. She’ll beg for it. She’ll open her legs wide for me with a smile on her lips and need in her eyes.

She’s starting to ache for it. I feel it. She craves my seed deep inside her, and I’m going to keep fucking her until she bears an army of strong, powerful sons.

What if I can’t? What if I’m just a machine? What if I can’t give her that gift?

I get an image of her with her breasts swollen with milk, her stomach huge with my babe, and a low growl forms in my throat.

My cock stiffens, hardening.

14

THEA

I’m deep in cozy sleep when I feel him throb inside of me. His soft cock stiffens and I whimper. I’m so sore from his first fucking and I wake up with him still in me.

“Please, I’m so sore,” I whisper, though part of me aches for the pain.

He pulls himself out and runs his hand over my hair. “I must shower,” he says.

He leaves the room and I’m alone in the bedroom of a dead man. A dead man whose memories haunt the mind of my Auger.

Can I truly love him?

Can I truly love him when I cannot know him? I thought I did know him, but the more I think about it, the more scared I get. What if those memories well up and he loses sight of who he is, forever?

I shudder as I remember how filthy good it felt to be dominated by him. I never knew I wanted a dominant man. In fact, I barely thought of men. When I masturbated, rarely, it was always to vague thoughts, never anything concrete.

That fucking was more real than anything I’d ever experienced before. He fucked my soul, and I can feel his cock still in me just like I can feel his dominance burnt into my mind. I want to serve him. I don’t know where it’s welling up, but filthy images are making my mind swirl. I hear the shower starting.

Worry grabs me, and my thoughts focus in on Galfond. He’s there, all alone. He doesn’t have an Auger to protect him. The Cyborgs are more likely to be used against him than to protect him.

There are so many conflicting thoughts in my brain. I can’t help Galfond. He won’t listen to me. He’s been headstrong since the start. The more I warn him about Cobernaught, the more he’ll want to take them down.

What a fucking disaster.

My life’s been thrown apart, a whirlwind. The only thing that feels stable is Auger. And even he is losing himself in his memories. What if anything he’s done comes out, his actions judged by the public?

Sparing a man when his programming told him to kill.

Fucking me.

I can feel Auger’s seed in me. Cyborgs aren’t supposed to fuck. They’re programmed not to—but despite the secrecy, I know Cobernaught mixed Aurelian DNA with them. The alien species is known for their Mating Frenzies, so powerful that even the strands of DNA easily overwhelmed the programming.

Is Cobernaught going to send the Mark 4s out into the world?

What if they malfunction? The second one of them fucks their wards…

I shiver. They will be sent to protect women and men, and it’s women who will ache for them. I designed them to be the perfect protectors. I never realized when I first made him that everything that makes a Cyborg able to cow a man with a glance is exactly what turns a woman on.

There are so many conflicting thoughts—and I ache for the mindless bliss of submitting to Auger.

That’s what makes it so intoxicating. It’s the ability to completely empty my mind as Auger does what he wants to me.

The water shuts off, and the naked Cyborg enters the room. His cock is half hard, thick and veined, and it makes me feel so small and submissive.

If I stay in a room with him any longer, I’m going to be on my knees with that big dick in my throat when I need to be thinking about Cobernaught and getting Galfond to safety.

I squeeze past Auger without a word. If he hears the need in my voice…

He can already smell that he’s turning me on. I can’t let him take me. Not now. I turn the water on, letting it heat up before I step in, then I wash last night off me. I’m still so sore from the rough sex. Fuck.

Sex? It felt more like he was breeding me.

I shudder. That’s what Aurelians do to their Mates. Is Auger fertile? He can’t be—right?

Just like he can’t show mercy, he can’t fuck, and he can’t love. The Cyborg is his own being and I’m foolish to think anything of him.

Am I foolish to trust him?

I shower. One of the towels is hanging, wet from Auger’s shower. It’s so human for him to leave it there, drying.

You can almost forget he’s so much more than a man. But when you look too long, you see that the stone tint of his skin is more alien than human, the eyes that are a little too bright and shiny, the minute movements that betray his foreignness.

The mix of Aurelian and human DNA that lets him link to a ward has had…side effects. Side effects that share similarities to the corrupting, possessive Bond of the alien species.

In some ways, he’s just like us.

In some ways, he’s just like them. He’s fought off his programming to do the right thing. But his memories…they scare me. The competing personalities that threaten to take control.

In his mind is a collection of memories that influence his personality. Influencing…that I can handle. But when he loses sight, sometimes it feels like he’s being taken over for a second.

Like he loses himself.

And if he loses himself, so do I. It’s not his memories that love me. It’s him. The man I’ve spoken to all these years, whispering to in the dark, alone together. So many lonely times when I had no friends except the sardonic Galfond, and I preferred to do my coding and work next to my silent statue of a guardian. So many times I spoke to him, telling him things, imagining his responses in the exact timber I programmed.

The water splashes down over my body and I try to relax in the heat. Now that I know what getting fucked is, it’s all I can think about. Sex always felt like a secret being kept from me—because I was always so much younger than everyone else. Hushed conversations about boys would cut short when the too-young “nerd-freak” came near.

They knew so much more than me, back then.

Now I know something they will never experience. Auger is more than a man. Even a woman in an Aurelian harem couldn’t experience something like what we had together. And as for humans—how could a man compete with a titan?

A sly smile comes to my lips. I blush at how smug I feel.

I’m in a hidden safe house space station barely as big as my glass mansion I’ll never be in again, hurtling in the same gravitational field as a man-made station built by murderers. They have no cause, no overarching goal except for profit, and that makes Cobernaught even more intimidating. If the accounting department runs the numbers and see me as more profitable dead than alive, they will send the man in the black turtleneck to end me.

The only person that I care about other than my own family is trapped on that station.

Galfond is a scientist. Now he’s investigating the crimes of a mega-corp that lives like black water, flowing and taking any shape it needs to survive as it spills over under the noses of everyone.

All this should be making my anxiety spike. I can’t hide in code and work now. Real life is here, whether I like it or not. And yet, with Auger near me, I feel that delicious mix of safety and vulnerability that only he can give me.

There’s so much to discover with him.

There’s so much I want him to teach me.

I remember how naughty it felt when he was toying with my asshole in the medical lab, pulling out the tracker. There was a moment of pain at the end when he used two fingers.

Two fingers that are nowhere near as big as his fat, powerful cock. My nipples harden under the water, and it’s so hard to stop myself from running to him. It’s like Auger turned on the tap and all that pent-up need is spilling out at once.

My smartwatch beeps, urgent red.

Galfond.

He scrubbed every record of calling me from his watch. Now he’s reaching out to me. I’m about to accept the call when I feel cold, imagining a gun to his head.

I answer on voice only, keeping the shower on to mask my voice from Auger. He might be able to hear me. If he does, he might stop me for my own good.

“Galfond. Are you okay?”

“Thea. You have no idea what’s going on. This goes way deeper than Cobernaught.”

The hot water can’t warm the sudden chill that runs through me. I’m mute.

“I found proof they used Aurelian DNA. I always wondered how they convinced the Aurelian Empire to let them use it…they never did. The genetic makeup of the Cyborg Bodyguard program is their biggest secret. You mark my words. Cobernaught would rather people knew about them murdering people and harvesting their brains than have the Empire find out about the illegal DNA use. The hammer would come down on them…even with Human Alliance protection.”

“Protection? From the Human Alliance? But they’re the ones who held up the program in the first place.”

It took an army of lawyers to get Alliance permission to allow the Bodyguard program.

“Oh yes. Human Alliance protection. That red tape was all a façade. This thing goes to the fucking top. The corporation that preceded Cobernaught was a shell. That shell was a subsidiary, a research and development wing for a solar panel company. Doesn’t make sense, right?”

He’s losing me. “Galfond, what does this have to do with the Alliance?”

“That solar panel company had a contract with the Alliance to build panels to recharge ships on long space travel. It was meant to be a replacement for Orbs. This whole thing has been set in motion for forty years. There’s layer after layer, but I’m peeling it away. The Human Alliance itself is behind the Cyborg program. This thing goes right to the fucking top.”

Ice fills my veins. “Galfond. You need to get off the station. Now.”

“Not a fucking chance. I’m so close. If I can get access to the financial records, I’ll have everything I need to blow this whole thing wide open. Hey! This is my office, who the fuck do you think you are? You can’t—”

I can hear the struggle as he fights and I know with cold certainty who came for him.

The man in the black turtleneck. “Galfond!” I yell out, and the transmission cuts off. He was taken for knowing too much.

Now I know just as much. I’m even more of a danger to Cobernaught.

The bathroom door flies open. Auger heard me cry out.

He is stern and commanding, his face blank as he throws the shower door open and grabs me by the wrist, pulling me from the shower. My wet feet slip. He holds me up.

“Auger! What are you doing!”

It’s so easy for him. He just pulls me behind him, and I half fall, half follow him into the bedroom. I’m disoriented as he throws me over his lap.

“I let you use your smartwatch for the escape. Not to get in contact with the enemy.”

“Galfond isn’t the enemy!”

“You spoke with Galfond. Galfond was taken. This was a foolish risk.”

I tremble over his lap, naked and helpless. “Auger! We can’t waste any time! We have to get to the station!”

His hands come down hard.

This is no playtime. He’s making it hurt. I moan out, not understanding what I did wrong. “Auger! Stop!”

“Galfond could have been taken.” He slaps his hand down hard on my ass cheek, and I writhe against his legs, trying to squirm away. He’s too fucking huge. I kick, smacking at his legs while knowing it’s useless.

“He could have had a gun to his head. His value as a hostage depends on whether you answer his call. They could have tortured him until you flew yourself right back into the station. You need to learn.”

He brings his hand hard against my ass, and I stop fighting. It just makes it worse. Tears come to my eyes, but I don’t care about the pain. I need to help my friend. He’s training me to obey him, but I can’t shake the terror that one of the only people I care about is in trouble. I don’t care if I put us at risk. Galfond needs me.

Auger slaps his hand down hard enough to make me gasp out in pain.

My smartwatch beeps. “Take it off, or I will crush it.”

I want to answer the call from Galfond. I need to know what happened to him and if he’s alright. My ass is burning, and maybe what Auger says is true—if I get in contact with him, they’ll hurt him to make me come back into their grasp.

I undo the smartwatch and hand it to him meekly. “You do not accept calls without my permission. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” I say, squirming in his grasp. I need to convince him to go back to the station with me. Together, we can grab Galfond and save him. They won’t expect us with the tracker giving off a false GPS signal.

“Good.” He still holds me down. “But now I have to make sure the lesson sticks. Words are easy. Pain is not.”

I wince, clamping my eyes together, but I can’t prepare for the next spank that comes down against my ass. He slaps me hard enough that I scream, whimpering and trying to get away. There’s nothing I can do. It’s like I’m trying to get away from a giant.

I fight off the pain, trying to spit out words. It’s so hard to make them come to my lips. He slaps my ass again, the crack ringing out, and I gasp. “We have to save him! Auger, we can’t leave him—ah!”

He spanks me hard, again. “I decide!” He growls the words, but I hear the pain under his voice.

It’s the pain of knowing I’m right.

He knows we have to go down there and save the one man in the station that would do the same for him. In those days when I spoke to Auger, when he stood asleep and barely breathing, I told him all about Galfond. About how he was the reason I worked for Cobernaught. How he made sure his contract included stipulations that Cyborgs be used only for self-defense and never war.

One of the last good men in the universe—and Auger is conflicted. He wants to keep me safe, but he also knows what is right, his own moral code fighting against his programming. Even more, his deep, possessive feelings towards me won’t let him see me get hurt.

I steel myself.

He brings his hand down hard on my ass, and I whimper, but stay strong.

I ball my hands into fists. “You can spank me until I cry, Auger. You can hurt me. But you won’t change my mind.” My voice comes out, shaking from the pain but strong and deep, welling up from a place of power inside me I never knew existed. Being with Auger has let those parts of me come out, like being in the same place as the strong, powerful man offered me the protection to thrive. “You can’t change my mind. We need to save my friend’s life.”

His body stiffens. He’s not aroused, even with me naked and thrown over his lap, the stress gnawing at his mind. “I can’t let anything happen to you. If something did…Thea…if you…”

He can’t bring himself to say it, and I realize how much responsibility I have for him. I have to keep myself safe for his sake. If I die, he’ll be lost.

He lets me up. I push myself off his naked thighs. He’s only got on tight black boxers that hug his body, bulging out where his huge dick rests. “Nothing’s going to happen to me, Auger.”

Auger’s bright blue eyes stare into mine. He looks at me like I’m built from porcelain, a beautiful, fragile possession that he never wants to let go of. He gently strokes my cheek. His fingers can squeeze iron but they’re so gentle for me. “I’ll always keep you safe, Thea.”

He stands, moving me aside. He takes in a huge breath, and the way he looks at me, it’s like he’s etching myself in his mind. “I must prepare to go.”

“We have to prepare.” I cross my arms, challenging him.

“No. You will stay here. I cannot bring you into danger, Thea. I will not.”

I was so foolish to think we’d go together. I was blinded by my stress for Galfond’s life. I pictured us flying down and landing in the compound, working together with me using my hijacking and computer skills and him using his brute strength and power.

Together, I knew we could do it.

Alone?

He’s going to be up against an army all by himself. An army I’m sending him into. I shake my head. “Auger, that’s not fair. You can’t leave me up here.”

A sad look crosses over his face, only for a moment, replaced by his unyielding confidence. I programmed that confidence. That moment of sadness was his own.

“If you’re with me, I cannot act fast. In the doctor’s house they hit me with the first tranquilizer because dodging it would have put you in danger.”

I remember that sickening sound when the dart hit him. He could have moved out of the way. He didn’t because I was right behind him, trying to see what was going on. All that pain was my fault. He nearly died because of me.

I can’t let him go to the station alone.

What if he never comes back?

I understand that sadness in his eyes, that brief flash. He has a photo-realistic memory. He was painting my being in his eyes, so that if something happened to him, the last thing he would think of was me. I can feel it, and I do the same, burning every inch of his body into my retinas, his fine, strong features and his powerful body.

I want him all. I want his pain, his sadness, his tension. I want his dominance. I never knew I ached for him, and now that I have him, I know I can never live without him.

His face sets. “There is an escape pod. If you don’t hear from me in six hours, then set coordinates to X12. Cobernaught has a reach you would not comprehend. I know. I was their arms, over many lives. There is one thing that can keep you safe. A dead-man’s switch.”

I shake my head, and now the tears that drip down my face are not from physical pain. “Auger. Don’t talk like this. Please don’t talk like this.”

He snarls. The pain returns to his beautiful, deep blue eyes, but they are losing their humanity as he becomes a tool. “My watch over you cannot stop when I am dead. I must teach you now, to take care of yourself. Create a file with everything Galfond told you. Encrypt it. Can you link the smartwatch to your heartbeat?”

My vision blurs from tears.

“Dammit, Thea, we don’t have time! Can you link it to your heartbeat?”

I nod. I’m speaking to a ghost.

He doesn’t think he’s coming back. “Don’t go, Auger. Don’t go.”

When it was the two of us, it was different. I had this fantasy of us working together as a team to save my mentor. Now I realize it was a foolish girl’s dream. Alone, he is in danger.

“If your heartbeat stops, it sends the files to the Aurelian Empire. You expose my genetic makeup to their Empire. You need to let Cobernaught know before you launch the escape pod. Otherwise…”

Otherwise they will hunt me down and cut me out of the air before I can make it to X12.

I rush to him, needing to feel his arms around me before he goes, but he turns away, giving me a hard shoulder like it’s too painful for him. “You would never forgive me if your friend dies. His heart is good. I owe my existence to his work. I will save your friend and I will bring him back here.”

He steps out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him, and I stand there stunned, rebuffed by the man.

He can’t think of me.

If he does, he won’t be able to leave me. He has to become the weapon I created.

Tears stream down my face, but I hold my face up. I can cry, but there’s no time to wallow. The smartwatch is on the desk. Auger left it here after teaching me a new lesson, trusting me with it. There’s a third call from Galfond registering on the face.

It makes me sick knowing he has a knife to his throat, but I know they won’t kill him, not yet. If I answer that call, they’ll torture him on video until I do whatever they say. Now, I have them wondering, unsure how valuable he is as an asset to make me do their bidding.

If they kill him, they lose their leverage over me.

Unless they go for my family.

That thought makes me want to throw up. I want to call them, to warn them, but what could I say? Even if I convince them to run, there’s nowhere they can go that Cobernaught can’t find them. Their safety will depend on the dead man’s switch…

And Auger’s power.

We have one chance. We have to end this here. My own knowledge of their crimes could slow Cobernaught, but never stop them.

Galfond has the keys. If I can get him to safety, he can expose the corporation so fully there’s nowhere for them to hide. He can bring so much pressure on the Human Alliance that they’ll have to shut down every part of the program that isn’t directly related to keeping innocents safe. He has the tools to force Cobernaught to use the Cyborgs for good, not for whatever geopolitical purpose the Alliance had in mind.

I run my hand through my hair. I’m not nervous about Auger’s body failing. He’s a bull.

I’m worried about his mind.

What happens if he loses his identity when the man in the black turtleneck has his finger on the trigger?

Even my titan is not invincible. I have to be there with him to bring him back. I’m the only one who can make his vision refocus and clear his mind. If I can’t be with him physically, I have to find another way.

I press a button on the smartwatch’s 3D projected screen and delve into the code I used to change the tracker’s geolocation to show us going to X12. We’re “almost there,” but I switch the location to the other way, hoping it can buy my family more time. We just need a few hours to get Galfond safe. With his brains and Auger’s power, the three of us will be able to stand up even against the behemoth of Cobernaught.

I wish I could use the tracker for what I need it to do, but it’s a device that is so small and simple it barely has storage space for basic functions. I need to find something that will let me be in contact with Auger.

He’s going to be so alone down there.

I need to watch his back.

I throw open drawers full of old, stuffy socks, searching desperately. I can hear Auger in the other room and I know he’s still here—for now.

Will he even say goodbye before he goes to the space station?

Or does he worry that seeing me will make him lose his edge?

My hand touches something cold. I pull it out. An older model smartwatch that hasn’t been used in twenty years. The code will be archaic, but the operating system is similar enough. I boot it. The security is like a rusty gate that swings open when I touch the lock.

I’m in it. And now I have to make it do what I want before my Cyborg goes alone. I don’t know if he’ll accept my help, but I have to try. Smartwatches can make calls with audio or video, scanning the body of the wearer to show an outline of their body. I need to make it so I can see behind him. Even Auger can’t see what’s sneaking up on him, but I can.

I switch the angles of the sensors. I won’t be able to see Auger anymore, but anything ten feet or less behind him will show vaguely on my holo-feed.

The man in the black turtleneck is a silent killer. He moves quieter that any human has a right. I can’t bear to think of him getting behind Auger. My Cyborg can survive almost anything—except a gunshot into his computer chip.

That man works for Cobernaught. He’ll know exactly where to place the shot.

My stomach roils as I remember the perfectly placed hole in the other assassin’s forehead. Turtleneck is accurate.

My anxiety spikes, so I push myself into my analytical thought. I don’t have time for fear.

I lose myself in the work. The second I’ve finished the project, the crushing weight of reality drops on my back. I’ve hidden in numbers and code my whole life. These last two years have been the most extreme, working frantically on a space station that’s a ghost town.

I wasn’t living in the world. I was just haunting it—until Auger brought me into reality. I push myself forward, opening the doors to give him my creation.

Auger is readying himself. He’s not dressed in thin boxers. He’s not going into the lair of the beast unarmed. I thought he was imposing before.

Now he’s a killing machine. The 6’4 captain who owned this space station safe house readied himself for an invasion. Auger is clad in flak armor that molds to his huge form. He hulks with brutality. I remember the captain’s specs, down to high height and weight that I thought was big until I created Auger. His armor stretches to accommodate the Cyborg’s bulk. It may have weak chinks at the joints, but it will stop a bullet cold. A rifle is slung over his back, a pistol at his waist.

A two-foot-long hunting blade hangs at his waist. He could slam it through a tree.

It’s fucking intimidating and his eyes burn like icy stars, staring me down. If I didn’t know how much he cared for me, I’d be shaking. “Put this on.” I hand him the watch. He doesn’t protest. He doesn’t ask me what it is. He slaps it over his wrist, but he’s not here anymore.

He’s down on the station, rescuing my friend. “I’ll be able to watch your back with that.”

“I will come back for you, Thea. I promise you.” His voice is rough gravel. I know the tone he’s using—reassuring in the face of danger, designed by me to calm down his ward when the stakes are high.

“I know you will.” His eyes are the only thing that makes me believe him. I can’t program that gleam. I couldn’t program the certainty behind his gaze.

If he doesn’t come back, I’ll never move on from it. I’ll stay a ghost for the rest of my life.

I’ve found him, and he’s found me. There will never be another Auger. If he doesn’t return, there will never be another him, and never another me. I’ll lose what I’ve found. In the short time I’ve known him, he pulled up the parts of me that make me, me. I don’t want to hide from the world anymore. With him at my back, I can do anything.

He is my future.

And now he’s going into danger alone because I begged him.

The airlock doors shut behind him.

If he dies, his blood is on my hands.

15

AUGER

The transport shudders as it unmoors from the matte black space station hiding in the vastness of the universe. I built that station before I came to Cobernaught’s facilities. The offer stank. What did they want from me? I’d been dishonorably discharged. I was a damn pariah. And these rich fucks wanted to hire me?

I showed them.

I saw right through their bullshit. I built a safe house, and right when they thought they had me, I took off and escaped to it. That was what…twenty years ago?

“Auger?”

My vision snaps back into reality. I blink, refocusing. Putting on the captain’s armor made me lose sight of who I was. The second I’m away from Thea, everything gets blurry. She’s the only thing that can put the world in focus.

She’s the only thing that can keep me, me.

“I’m here, Thea.” Her voice is slightly fuzzy through the smartwatch.

I can get in and out.

When I’m with her, everything is clear. When I’m fucking her, nothing exists but our bodies moving together in the perfect rhythm. I can still feel her tight little cunt contracting, milking my cock of every drop of seed.

I need to fill her with my child.

I need to breed her until she bears my children.

My cock surges against my pants, and colors brighten as reality crystalizes. My senses are honed as I pilot to where Thea and I just barely escaped from.

I have to trust she won’t open her smartwatch calls or respond to messages. Cobernaught has Galfond. If they can’t make contact with Thea, they won’t torture him until she obeys. I’ve spared him the electro-shock that made me roar like a beast.

I’ve spared him torture and put him under the executioner’s axe.

I know how these things work. I’ve been on both sides of the negotiation. When Cobernaught realizes they can’t use Galfond as leverage, he loses all value as a hostage.

This isn’t an ordinary hostage situation.

They won’t waste his mind. They’re going to bring him to the medical bay to harvest his brain for the next generation of Cyborgs. My mind churns, putting it together. I’ve got a clear vision of the schematics of the facility.

But where will they take him?

Thea won’t know. I steel myself. I must go into my memories. I have to risk my grip on reality to know where to find Galfond.

I bring those memories up, searching for one that will tell what I need to know, when I find a horrifying end in my memory bank. My adrenaline surges and my heart pounds.

Panic.

The anesthetic wears off. I kick, I scream, fighting as the burning pain of the saw cuts open my skull. My eyes glaze, unfocused in the torture, when I see the number 2.

Med Bay 2.

“Auger! Auger! What’s happening to you!” she screams out, and I open my eyes.

I’m on the ground, staring up at the roof of the transport. My head pounds. I pull myself to my feet, the space station approaching.

I lost time. Five minutes. Ten. I don’t know. My internal clock skipped.

“Auger. You were speaking in a different voice. You need to turn back. Something’s happening to you.”

She’s terrified that I’m losing my mind. “He’s in Med Bay 2. They’re going to harvest his brain if I don’t save him.”

Who was I? That man who woke up on the operating table. He deserved a horrible death. An assassin. A man who went into homes and cut down people for pay. He was recruited by Cobernaught—and they harvested his mind when he outlived his usefulness.

A man who deserved that death lurks in my mind. I’ve got evil blood in my veins, evil memories, but they are not me. I can’t let them take control.

I switch to manual piloting as I approach. The man’s memories well up in my head, and before I can push them down, they tell me to pilot right. I turn hard on the controls.

“Auger, what are you doing!”

“I know what I’m doing.”

Do I?

Or does someone else? I trust the memories of that man, the one who died on the operating table and who would have done anything to survive. Now he’s in my mind. His memories and being have the same survival instincts, and they told me to pilot right without explanation.

“What did I say when I lost time?”

“Auger. You’re scaring me. You were speaking in this low, low voice, but you weren’t making any sense.”

Good.

The memories do not have a fully formed personality. They can’t articulate themselves clearly—yet. The more I allow them in my mind, the more I leave myself open to losing control.

I veer right, and I catch it in the corner of my eye—a scanner I’m now just out of range of. My evasive maneuver pulled me out of their line of sight.

If I didn’t follow the voice in my head, Cobernaught would know I’m coming already.

They can’t know I’m coming. The element of surprise is my greatest asset against them. I’ll cut those bastards down and kill them for thinking they can stand up to me. I just hope I’m there in time.

I’ll cut those bastards down? Was that my thought…or his?

If I was following my programming, I’d have taken Thea and piloted the opposite way, far away from X12 and Cobernaught. I could hide her somewhere. Keep her safe. The two of us could build a life, far away from the murderous mega-corp.

A life that would be stained by the death of her friend I didn’t save. If I want a future with Thea, I have to get her mentor out of there. Her voice is different now from that scared, nervous girl who spilled her heart in the dark, speaking to me when she thought I couldn’t hear. She’s grown. She’s still scared, but she has her own voice and her own words.

I land the transport two clicks away from the station in a small forest, touching down between huge trees. I know every camera guarding the station. Or at least I did, a long time ago. More personalities bubble up in my mind. The closer I get, the more they compete for space in my brain. The designer and architect of the station. The head of security. The assassin. The doctor. They compete, clamoring voices in my mind, fighting for supremacy in my consciousness.

“Shut up. Shut up!”

“Auger. Turn back. It’s not worth it. Whatever’s happening to you, the closer you get to the station, the worse it’s getting. Please. Just fly back to me.”

I refocus, the grays of the world becoming greens and blues. I’m a kilometer away. I lost time. The water main where I escaped is still there. I can swim against the current.

Unless they realized how I escaped and beefed up security.

I’m going in the front. I know exactly where Bay 2 is. My vision starts to gray, but I think of her and pull myself back to the moment. If I scale the walls, there’s no going back. I’ll be in the hornets’ nest. I could turn back now. I could leave—but that’s not who I am.

I can’t let Galfond die. I never knew him. Not personally. But Thea spoke of him with reverent tones, and if she respects him, he deserves better than to die on an operating table. So many times she spoke to me when I was in the dark place, unable to move. So often she spoke of Galfond as a man of honor. I jog, gathering speed, and jump straight up. I slam my fist into the wall, creating a handhold and using it to vault over the security walls as the dawn light flashes over me.

They never designed the facility to defend against their own creations.

The facility is designed like a prison. I’m moving fast, but I’m in the secured area and sooner or later, someone is going to see me on the video feed. I have no time to spare. There’s a door, and I lower my shoulder and bull rush it.

It crumples under my weight, and alarms blare out in the facility. A thin bead of sweat forms on my brow as I get my bearings. Pure focus. I’m here, and I’m going to break my way through whatever stands in my way. There’s a man in a guard’s uniform with a pistol at his belt. He turns tail and runs before I can take a step towards him. I follow down the hallway, my eyes homed in when everything goes gray and I feel like I’m slogging through wet concrete.

I push forward.

I only need to stay sane for a little while longer.

Then I’ll be back to her—back to the one woman who can bring me into reality.

A Mark 3 Cyborg stands in the hallway, unsteady. He’s just been activated. Cobernaught is putting everything against me, their first creation, come to get vengeance.

I take the Cyborg’s head off, preserving his brain and computer chip. There’s no need for him to die.

I look to the right, through the long window, and see a dozen more Cyborgs slowly waking up, blinking and seeing the light for the first time.

I remember how disoriented I was when I was brought into life, blinding lights and a cacophony of sensations hitting me. It was the pain that cleared my mind. The agony of the electricity brought me online and cleared my thoughts. These Cyborgs don’t have the luxury of torture, and I’ve got a few minutes before they pose a threat.

Technicians run as I approach. I turn the corner and push open the door to Med Bay 2.

I stumble. Yellow fear fills me. This is the place that killed me. I have to get away. I have to get away, now!

“Auger! Focus!” Her voice brings me back. Thea keeps me sane.

I press on. Galfond is on the operating table. There is an IV in his arm sedating him just enough to keep him down, but not enough to fully shut off his mind. There should be someone standing there, checking his vitals. There should be someone with a saw—

My vision blurs.

I remember.

I remember screaming and dying on the table. I was walked in here conscious, strapped down, pumped full of fluid that was supposed to knock me out. The dose was wrong. I felt that saw as it cut into my flesh and opened my skull. I’m fractured into so many memories, some of me strapped on the table, screaming, others of standing above a victim in a coma, ready to take his brain from his body.

I never thought it would happen to me.

I had so many men here, on this very table, and I cut their minds out of them.

Who is this fool? Galfond. Yes, I know him. We scoped him out. A young, promising artificial intelligence researcher. He’s principled, though, so we can’t let him close to the truth of what we’re doing here. But why does he look so old? What’s going on?

My boss told me Galfond would see through us, someday.

They told me when that happened, I’d bring him to Med Bay 2. Now we’re here.

That means it’s time for him to die. I walk towards him, reaching for the saw, but there’s a knife at my belt. When did I put that there? Why are my hands so big?

I’m disoriented. Nothing feels right, as if I’m in a dream, my body too big, my legs too heavy. What’s going on with me? Am I losing my mind?

“Auger! Behind you!’

Auger.

It’s not my name, but she’s speaking to me, a woman’s voice that I cannot see.

She loves me. I’ve never felt love before, but I’ve seen it in my victims. They always call out for the one they love the most before they die. She’s making that sound, and she’s making it to warn me.

I twist, turning, and see my second in command—only he’s aged thirty years. I trained him. I don’t understand the lines on his face or the gun in his hand, but the gunshot rings out and I feel a sharp pain in my throat. I can’t breathe, but there’s enough oxygen in my blood to rip the gun from his hand.

I take his whole hand with it.

The bleeding stump pumps blood in the air as I stab him in the heart. He falls, gurgling, and I stare down, unable to make sense of what is happening.

I touch my throat. My hand is red. A glancing blow or I’d be down already, my lifeblood spitting from my jugular. I turn to face Galfond. He’s so old. Where did the time go? What’s happening to me? Am I in a dream?

“Auger. I need you. I need you to come back. Your ward needs you.”

Ward? I don’t have—

My vision shifts into focus. I lost myself to the trauma of this room. The longer I’m away from her, the less real everything is. Galfond isn’t the enemy. He’s the one I’m here to save.

I rip the IV from Galfond’s arm. He has no idea how close to death he came. I shake him gently, keeping my eye on the door. The man in the turtleneck is dead, but we’re not safe. We’re in the clutches of Cobernaught and only I can keep us safe.

The Mark 3s are going to wake up. When that happens, I’ll have to fight through an army to get to Thea.

I may not be able to take their heads off their bodies so surgically, preserving their computer chips and brains.

I may have to kill my brothers.

My body repairs my throat, and I breathe clearly. Thea designed the perfect war machine. Now I’ll need everything she put into me to get back to her. I lug Galfond over my back, and he groans as he comes back into the world with a blinding headache. I pull him out of the med bay, walking over the body of man in a stained black turtleneck and into the hallway.

Three Cyborgs block my way back. I run the other way. There are two hallways.

“Left,” mumbles Galfond, bleary and waking up. I turn left. The Cyborgs are slow behind me, their feet thudding heavily against the ground as they fight with their motor controls to wake up.

Left is away from the closest escape. He better know what he’s doing.

“He wants you to go to his office.” Thea’s voice is clear—and the schematics make sense. I’m on a direct route to his office. I sprint until I get to it, throwing the door open and setting him down in his chair. The Cyborgs will be on us soon.

“What are we looking for?”

“My…desk…open…” I open his desk drawer, the lock breaking as I pull. There’s a stack of papers. My eyes analyze the lines of text. Row after row of figures and numbers connecting the Human Alliance to Cobernaught through a mass of shell corps and accountant’s tricks.

They won’t help us get away, but they’ll guarantee our safety when we do. My ears pick up the sounds of more Cyborgs waking up, and we’re running out of time. “The watch,” he whispers, and I find a black, modified smartwatch under the stack of papers I pick up. I hand it to him, and he motions with his head, so I put it against his wrist. It tightens automatically around his arm.

“Auger! They’re coming!”

She knows it as well as I do. I pull Galfond over my shoulder and rush into the hallway.

Cyborgs block the way from each side. There’s too many. Five on each side, with more approaching.

We’re blocked in.

Five men built from steel and flesh, each near my equal. Behind them will be a hundred more. This is the end.

I focus in on Thea. If I’m going to die, I’m going to die thinking of her. I’m going to die savoring the scent of her body, the press of her lips against mine. My photo-realistic memory brings up a last image of her looking up at me, her eyes wide with wonder.

I feel Galfond shift over my shoulder. He mumbles something to his watch, and at the same time, every one of the Cyborgs freezes.

I snap back into real life. My enemies are nothing more than statues.

“They’re out until I put them online. When the code word didn’t work on you, I made changes to the code,” he mumbles out, his voice clearing as the sedatives wear off.

I walk through the Cyborgs, glad that I don’t have to kill my brothers. It’s eerie to see them pulled out of consciousness so easily. We may be stronger than the humans who created us, but they have tricks and tools to keep us docile. The newer models have less autonomy than I do. They’re easier to subjugate. They’re easier to control.

Where will Cobernaught send them?

What will they be forced to do?

I slam my fist through a door, throwing it open, and we’re out of the facility. Even with Galfond on my back, I’m able to jump and scramble over the walls and run to the transport ship, strapping him in. He’s getting back motor function, and as we take off, he opens a call with Cobernaught.

Ships follow us up, but when he tells them he’ll send every detail of what they’ve done to the Aurelian Empire if they follow us, they back off and he ends the call. He’s got his finger over a coms-link channel that will go straight to the Aurelian Enforcement Agency. Unless Cobernaught can blow us out of the air instantly, he’ll spill the details of the whole program.

There’s nothing they can do.

Just like that, we have immunity. Just like that, we’ve stayed the beast.

“You did it. You’re safe. Just stay focused, Auger. That’s your name. Auger. Auger. Auger.”

She says it over and over, and every time my focus drifts, she brings me back to reality. I make sure there isn’t anyone following us before I get near Thea. I won’t bring danger to her.

Galfond’s dead man’s switch worked. We’re safe. It feels surreal, but we’re safe. My short existence has been pain and danger but now I’m going to be able to simply live.

We attach to the space station and the airlock doors open.

I step through and she runs to me, when I hear the mumble behind me. He’s muttering the same words as he did in his smartwatch.

The modified code.

I stare at Thea, savoring my last look at her.

I freeze and my mind goes blank.

16

THEA

“Galfond! What did you do to him?”

I stop in my tracks before Auger. He got back in one piece, but now he’s stopped cold. Galfond walks around him, holding his smartwatch up in front of him. “I froze him. For his own good. When you told me the codeword didn’t work, I looked into it. The only reason it wouldn’t work is if something else is letting him fight against his programming.”

“Yes. He’s a real person, Galfond. He’s not just a machine. You can’t take his consciousness from him. Unfreeze him. Now!”

He shakes his head. He’s groggy, but his brain half-awake is better than any other man’s. “I can’t ethically do that until you tell me some things. Has he deviated from his programming often?”

I nod. “Yes. He spared someone’s life. And…”

“What were you saying to him from the transport? You kept telling him he was Auger. He’s losing himself to memories, isn’t he? When we uploaded skills into his mind, we put something else in there, too.”

Galfond’s sharp as a whip. He knows without being told, piecing together everything from the little pieces he has.

I run my hand over Auger’s huge body. He stands like a statue. “Yes. But he’s back. He’s back to himself.”

Galfond sighs. “Is it getting better, or worse?”

Tears come to my eyes. I thought he was safe. Now the man I trust the most other than Auger is telling me my worst fears. I’ve got him, but I might still lose him. “It’s getting worse. But it’s just because he went back to that place. That’s a place filled with memories.”

Galfond rubs his head, and I know he’s thinking about how close he came to having his own brain pulled from him. “I can do a hard reset. I can wipe everything from him, including all his skills. He’ll have to learn from scratch. His computer programming has how to talk and walk, and basic functions, but everything else has to be learned. It will take you years, but if you don’t do this, he might lose everything to those other people in his mind.”

I look up at Auger. His face is so peaceful when he’s frozen. I hate how he looks when he loses time. His eyes glaze over, and the man who cherishes me disappears. Now I’m seeing him, but there’s nothing behind those eyes as his mind is blank from what Galfond did to him.

“Do you really think it’s the best thing?”

He nods. “It’s the only way to be sure. I’ll need to fix those mistakes in the programming on the Mark 4s.”

“The Mark 4s! Don’t tell me you’re going back to Cobernaught!”

He gives me a cryptic smile. “The devil you know. They can’t stop me now that I can blackmail them. I’m going to force them to do what they said—to build Cyborgs that protect those who can’t protect themselves. Thea…you’ve sheltered yourself from the universe. But there’s war coming and…and we need to use our creations for good.”

I’m too selfish to care about the rest of the universe right now. It can rip itself to shreds, as long as my Auger is safe. But what if he loses every memory of me? What if the secret conversations where he grew accustomed to my voice are wiped from his thoughts?

What if our connection is severed before it could bloom?

“What happens if you reset him? Will he remember me?” My voice tremors.

Galfond shakes his head, slowly. “No. It’s a blank slate.”

“I can’t let that happen. When he’s with me, he doesn’t lose sight of himself.”

“What makes him come back?”

I blush, and he laughs. “You can’t be serious.”

“Yes. I…I know this sounds crazy, but he cares about me. And it’s not just the programming. There’s something that’s only his. If you wipe him…”

“Whatever grew will grow again.”

I run my hand over his cheek, standing up high on my tiptoes. I close his eyes slowly, to protect them as they are opened and glazed. “No. What we had together…it was short, but I can’t lose it. It’s the start of something. I…I can keep him, him. I know it. He won’t lose himself.”

“You’re taking a huge risk, Thea. The newer models have few programs uploaded. Auger…you played with his brain. You put hundreds of personalities in there with him. But I’ll admit, he was able to focus in on who he was when you spoke to him. It’s your decision.”

“I have to take the risk. I have to be with him.”

“Then I better stay farther away in case he doesn’t approve of me freezing him. I’ve got to work to do—is there a study?”

I explored the space station while Auger was out. Well, I paced nervously, bumping into things as I stared through the holo-screen, unable to keep still.

The hideaway is bigger than I excepted. There’s a library filled with military books. “Use the reading room. It’s all the way down the hallway and to the right.”

He gives me a hug. “Thanks for sending him for me. I know it was you that convinced him.”

With that he walks away, and then Auger comes to life, opening his eyes.

“What happened?” He rasps out the words.

“You’re safe. You saved him.”

He shakes his head. “I lost time again. He…he was behind me and…”

“You didn’t lose time. He froze you. He thought that you needed to be reset. Auger, can you hold your mind? Can you be you?”

He drinks me up with those freezing blue eyes. “When I’m with you, I can.”

He steps forward, picking me up, and I wrap my legs around him as he kisses me. His body is brutish and armored and I want him to shed everything of the captain’s. I hate being in this space station with him. We need to go somewhere that isn’t filled with his false memories.

We need to start somewhere fresh.

I pull back. “Take off his clothes. I just want you.”

He puts me down and undresses, ripping off the captain’s armor. I hope he’ll never need it again. I can’t wait for him to take me into the bedroom. I need him, now. I need to feel the safety of his arms, the power of his love. He can feel it. He rips my clothes from my body, then he stands, looking down at me. Something comes over him.

“I know a place we can go. There’s a lake. It’s beautiful and peaceful, and far away from where they can touch us.”

I shake my head. “No. We’re not going to a place from your memories. We’re going to start somewhere new and build together.”

He picks me up, kissing me, and his huge dick pulses and presses against me. His pre-cum spurts and I’m flooded with my own wetness. I’m so small in his arms as he slides me down on his huge rod, impaling me with his massive dick. I feel the delicious pain of being filled with Auger’s huge dick. I moan, my mouth opening, and his big tongue swirls in my mouth. His hands grip my ass cheeks, spreading them open, and his fat finger toys with my asshole.

He’s completely in charge.

He owns me.

I don’t just think it. I feel it. I can sense his endless desire, like I can read his mind. It’s strange, and for a second I think I’m going crazy, and then it’s gone. Was I imagining things?

He pulls his head back, gasping with need, his cock pulsing as he presses me down hard, claiming me again. My eyes are wide with desperate, aching need.

“I’ll always keep you safe,” he snarls, and those words make me dizzy. He slides his finger into my asshole, and I bury my face against his huge chest, feeling so tiny and protected in his arms.

“I’ll breed you whenever I want,” he growls, and pulls me up until his cockhead is barely touching my pussy lips. He pulls his finger from my asshole and positions my little hole above his cock. A spurt of pre-cum shoots against my asshole, the dark, shameful need filling me. “I own your body,” he states, and I shudder as I feel the truth of his words.

“Be gentle, master,” I moan out, my eyes wide as I feel so innocent yet so filthy at the same time. He’s hungry for me. His lips draw back like a beast, showing rows of shiny white teeth.

I whimper as his thick cockhead presses against my tight little hole. It’s like he’s forcing a slick baseball bat up my ass. There’s no way my puny resistance can stop his unending desire from taking me however he wants. I can smell sweat and testosterone, mixed and pungent, and I know this is going to be the rest of my life.

He’s got the drive of twenty men and all of it is focused in on me. He’ll take me whenever he wants. My mouth, my cunt, my asshole.

“I belong to you, master,” I gasp out as he forces his dick into my ass. The slick pre-cum of his Aurelian DNA lets him push every inch of that huge steel rod into me and I go limp, losing control as he claims me. I’m a tiny little toy in his arms, and he’ll claim me however he wants, for the rest of my life.

“I love you, Thea,” he gasps, his bright blue eyes staring deep into mine as he makes me his forever.

17

THEA

The fire crackles. Auger gathered the rocks from the riverbed. He built the cabin by hand, felling the trees, carving the wood, using his strength to create and not to harm. Huge mountains loom outside, bigger than anything on X12, the gravity of this uninhabited planet less. Massive beasts roam, but there is none more dangerous than Auger.

For the first days we never spent more than a few minutes apart. As the weeks passed, he was able to go for an hour, then for a whole afternoon away without any crisis of identity. Every memory on this planet is his, and mine. They are ours and ours alone.

It’s strange. Sometimes I think I can…feel him when he’s gone. The more we fuck, the more I can almost…sense his emotions. It’s strange, then it flickers away, and I convince myself I was imagining it.

He sits beside me on the huge, sturdy yet simple bench. I started to make the cushions by hand, then created a robot that could sew instead. Auger prefers to do things by hand.

We’re out here, far from everyone else. Far from Cobernaught. Far from Galfond and his moral dilemmas as he tries to fix Cobernaught from inside. Here, there’s no endless coding and dark days and nights spent inside.

My thoughts never stopped racing while I worked.

Here?

They are calm.

One day we may go to a populated world. One day, we may immerse ourselves in the politics of the crumbling Aurelian Empire and fight off the Fanatic Aurelians who would hurt the innocent. One day, I may even return to Cobernaught if Galfond is able to strong-arm them into creating Cyborgs for protection and not for war.

Here, I’m alive. After years of barely sleeping, it’s time to enjoy the moments.

The universe can wait. My man cannot. I’ll stay hidden away with him until his mind is whole. Until he is truly only himself.

I don’t care about anything else. There’s one thing I want, deep down, that I still haven’t said out loud.

I want him to get me pregnant. It’s an urge that grows every day, so powerful it makes me wake up, hot and bothered, and ride him. I feel like I’m changing. Like he’s making me a bitch in heat. I can’t stop it.

He breathes in, his nostrils flaring, and I shift in my seat, embarrassed.

He can sense my arousal.

He runs his huge hand over my leg, and I tremble. “You want it, don’t you, my sweet?” His bright blue eyes stare into my soul. I have no secrets from him. He’s known me his entire life.

I can’t say it. I just nod. His face gets stern. “When I ask you a question, what do you do?”

“I answer,” I gasp out, seeing the dominant set in his jaw.

“You’re slow to learn that lesson.” My nipples harden. I know what he’s going to do to me now. He’s going to put me over his lap and teach me. If he didn’t spank me, I’d find ways to provoke him, because I crave it desperately. Turning off my mind. Just being his.

I crave it. It’s my time when I completely let go, when I turn everything off and just submit to him. He’s reading next to me, a huge beast of a man, discovering classics on his own that are half-remembered in his mind.

The spankings don’t just let me turn my mind off. They center him.

He sets the book down, turning to me, and my heart pounds faster. He kisses me deep and slow, running his hand against my cheek slowly, tenderly. “Do you want your master to teach you a lesson?”

I bite my lip, holding back a moan. “No, sir,” I lie. It feels even dirtier when I pretend he’s forcing me to get pulled over his lap and spanked until my ass is red. His handprints mark me with his ownership.

“I’m going to have to teach you. How do I teach you?” He growls out the words. He wants to make me say it.

His eyes go harder, stern and commanding, and I feel my pussy tingling with need. I shift, pressing my thighs together. “You spank me.”

“Over my lap.” His voice is a hard, hot command. He’s barely holding back. I know he wants to spread my legs and fuck me with that massive cock, but he knows how badly I need to be spanked. He’s going to make me wait for it.

I go willingly. If I don’t, he’ll chase me down and spank me hard. I’ve played at that, sometimes, when I want to feel naughty and bad, but I love his firm, disciplinary hand on my ass. I lie over his huge lap, and he takes a sip of amber whisky before pulling down my pants and exposing my ass to him.

“My sweet little pet gets turned on by getting spanked, doesn’t she?”

My cheeks go red. I’m still embarrassed by how fucking easily he dominates me. He presses his finger against my sopping wet pussy, then brings it to his lips, and I shudder as I hear him lick my juices. “Yes she does,” he says, tasting my need.

His hand comes down on my ass, firm but not cruel, and I moan out in need and pain. I fucking love this. I love turning my mind off.

One day, I’ll use my mind for good. For now, I need a reprieve, a calm in the storm, and he gives it to me. He is my rock. He is my center. He is the stable thing to build a life around.

His hand comes down hard against my ass again, pain flaring.

“What do good little bitches say?”

“Thank you, sir,” I moan out, my cheeks bright red. He spanks me again, hard, fast, and his cock surges up. I know what happens after this. He lifts me up, takes me into the bedroom, and fucks me hard.

“What are you thanking me for?”

I scrunch up my eyes. It’s so hard to think. He rubs his fat fingers against my pussy, making it even harder to answer.

“Answer me now!” His voice gets so stern and my heart flutters.

“For teaching me to always answer you when you ask me a question,” I moan out, and he slides a delicious finger into me. It’s nothing compared to his cock, and it drives me wild. He pulls his finger out, teasing me, and his hand comes down firmly on my bottom. It’s blossoming fire, heat spreading from his stern hand, and I whimper in pain.

If I need to, I can beg him to be gentle. I can ask him, and he will—but I love the pain.

He spanks me until I melt, then he picks me up, inflamed by the act of dominance, and brings me into the bedroom. The wooden beams of the cozy cabin he built us stand tall around us, built for a towering man to walk around without craning his neck. His huge dick presses against my cunt, and he looks into my eyes then slowly slides it into me.

“What do you say?”

“Thank you, sir,” I moan out, and he thrusts, wrapping his arms around me until nothing exists beyond my man. I orgasm almost instantly, pent-up pleasure and need built and sated, but we’re just getting started. He’ll take me hard the entire night, seeding me over and over, his Aurelian pre-cum soothing me.

His desire overwhelms me. I swear I can feel it, pulsing in my mind, a hard, steel dominance melted by his need that burns bright as a star.

His eyes flash wide as he fucks me deeper and deeper, and I crave his seed. I want him to cum deep inside me.

“Sir…” I gasp, wanting to tell him something, too shy and embarrassed to say what I need.

“Tell me what you want.” His voice is cold iron with a beastly edge, his brilliant blue eyes flashing as he looks deep into mine.

It’s too intense to say.

But Auger just put me over his lap and spanked me hard for not answering him. His handprints on my ass sting with each thrust. He pulls his cock out of me, rubbing it against my soaking wet entrance, teasing me.

“Tell me what you need.” He commands me, sliding his cockhead against my wetness, grazing my clit and sending electric pleasures through me that makes me need him inside me even more.

Carrot and the stick. He spanked me before, now he’s holding back, not giving me his dick until I spill out my darkest desires. His cock spurts pre-cum, wetting me, and I press my hips forward, desperate for his throbbing hardness.

“I want you to cum in me, sir,” I gasp, and he slams every inch of his huge cock into me. He presses deeper and deeper, stretching me open painfully as he takes what is his.

“Tell me what else,” he rasps, his voice turning harsh. I didn’t program that. He should be in completely control, but I push him past the edge. When he’s with me, he’s not a man or a machine.

He’s a beast.

“I want you to breed me, Auger. Fuck. I need it. Cum deep in my little pussy,” I gasp, and I swear I can feel him for a second, feel the being I created. His need to seed me burning in him, his blue eyes flashing with hot hunger, then it’s gone, flashing out of my mind and I know I imagined it. He wraps his arms around me, pulling me so tight against him I can’t move, pressing his dick in and out of me deeper and deeper so I’m never empty.

“Oh Gods, yes, Auger, yes!” I scream, feeling his cock swelling inside me. My body reacts to him, my pussy clenching against him tighter and tighter. I feel like I’m milking his throbbing cock, and he can’t hold back. My orgasm melts my mind, pleasure bursting through my being. It’s the utter relief, the purest satisfaction, and I let myself go, letting myself go limp while the alpha breeds me.

His eyes widen and he presses his dick into me the entire way, so deep inside me it hurts so good, and huge torrents of cum jet out from his dick. Auger roars so loud I hear birds flying off nearby as he claims me as his own.

His eyes stare into mine as he seeds me. They hold pure bliss…

And a flash of something else.

Sadness. It’s gone in an instant, then he kisses me, holding his dick deep inside me. We roll on our sides together, our bodies intertwined. I run my hands over him, my arms shaking.

Everything feels so right. So perfect. I don’t know how long we will spend on this hidden planet, so far away from civilization, but it will always be our oasis. It will always be there for us.

I get a wave of cozy tiredness, and I nuzzle up against Auger’s chest as he strokes my hair.

Everything’s perfect…

Except I saw that flash of sadness in his eyes. I didn’t imagine it. Cyborgs aren’t supposed to feel sadness. He’s silent, lost in thought, and I run my hands over his huge, muscled body. For the first time in my life, I feel distant from him. I know all his secrets, and he knows all of mine.

“Auger, what is it?”

He’s silent for a full minute. I can feel his heart beating, strong and steady. He’s my rock. He starts to say something, then stops. I pull myself out of his arms, looking up at his strong, broad jaw, my titan who could face down anyone to protect me.

He’s always so sure of himself, but I see the deep pain in his eyes.

“Auger, please. I love you. You can tell me anything.”

“What if I can’t give you a child?” His voice is a rasp, full of emotion.

I don’t know what to say. He thinks of himself as less than a man. As a machine. My thoughts race to find the words that can soothe him.

“Auger, it’s okay. I just want to be with you,” I say. And it’s true. I’ll be happy with him. We love each other.

But deep down…

I’ve got this longing to start a family with him. I never thought of children before his eyes opened and met mine. Never thought about a family, a husband. Settling down.

He’s making me want it. When I’m with him, I know I want to be with him forever.

“You’re lying to me,” he says, and there’s no anger in his voice. Just sadness.

“No. I’m not. If I’m with you, it’s enough,” I say, trying to ease his pain.

“Enough. But not everything you want,” he says, pulling me close against his chest.

I’m exhausted, but he only needs two or three hours of sleep. I hope he won’t spend the hours in tortured thought.

I wish there was a way for me to help him.

18

THEA

We haven’t talked about it in a week. We’re in our happy routine, except we’re not. It’s there, between us, unsaid and unspoken because there’s nothing to add to it.

I can’t let go anymore. Not completely. When he spanks me, fucks me, when my mind should be melted into bliss, it’s there.

I can be happy with him…

But I don’t know if he can be happy with himself.

He doesn’t feel like he’s enough. He feels broken, terrified that he’s more machine than man, an imperfect creation who can’t give me a child.

In time, his anger at himself could turn to resentment for his creator.

Today, we’re going to talk about it. We’re going to find a way to go forward, no matter what happens. Auger is out felling trees to collect firewood, but I hear his unmistakable heavy boots as he strides home.

The door to our wooden cabin opens, and I smile up at Auger, because I know things will get better if we just talk. He’s sweaty, shirtless, his black chest hair matted to his muscled chest.

Maybe talking can wait a bit.

“Want a massage?” I ask, walking up to him, running my hands over his chest. I want to work my hands into his taut, sore muscles, soothing him. Then I’ll open my mouth wide and let his cock press down my throat, run my tongue over his sweaty balls, ride him like a banshee. I love how he smells when he’s been out sweating in the sun for hours.

His face is stony.

“Thea. You deserve better than me. I’m just a machine.” His voice is flat, and my heart breaks.

It’s all he can think about. When we’re in bed together, and we should be just enjoying every moment, I see flashes of pain in his eyes.

He wants me, aches for me. He wants to give me everything I need.

“It can take time. Trust me, Auger, I’m in no rush. I love spending time with you. What we build, we’ll build together, in good time.”

He pulls back from me and slams his fist against the wall. He smashes right through a huge log, sunlight streaming in.

I gasp, stepping back. “Auger, you’re scaring me,” I say. He’s as beastly as when he was ripping men’s throats out for threatening us.

I’m not scared of him hurting me.

I’m scared of the hate he feels for himself.

He’s not just a machine. He spared one of the men who threatened us.

Against his programming, he spared a life. I need to make him see he’s not just a collection of lines of code.

“You’re not a machine. There’s something in you that’s yours and yours alone. Please, Auger, you can’t feel this way,” I plead, trying to find the words that can soothe his rage.

I force myself to walk closer to him. He’s huge, barely restrained, his hands balled into fists and I’m terrified he’s going to punch the wall again. I run my hand over his abs, craving him, wanting him to put all that anger and frustration into me in bed.

He recoils like my touch burns him. “I’m going for a swim,” he growls, turning and kicking the door open. It slams shut behind him.

I look through the fist-sized hole in the side of our home, watching him walk to the river.

Everything was perfect. I was in bliss. Spending my days with him. Watching him build our home, so safe, so secure.

It’s not enough. Not for him. I could be happy with him, no matter what.

He can’t be happy with me until he’s happy with himself. If he thinks of himself as less than a man, we’ll never truly find what I want with him.

I can tell what hurts him most. It’s the thought that by spending my life with him, I’ll miss out.

Maybe it’s the Aurelian in him. They span the galaxies, searching for their Fated Mate. The all-male species is dying out. Their strongest urge is to the find the one woman in the universe who can bear their sons, and breed her, over and over, until her belly swells up.

That breeding urge might be too strong. I won’t change him. Not even if it means he could be happy with me. Not even if I know how to open the panel in the back of his head and reprogram him.

I don’t want fake happiness. I want him.

I can’t let him leave. I pull the door open. “Auger, wait!” He’s by the raging river, out of earshot if he were a man. I know he can hear me. I designed him to be able to.

He strips his pants off, throwing them aside, and ignores me, diving into the currents. He swims upstream, water cascading over his powerful body as he fights against the white, angry waters.

I stand at the side of the river. Spray from the waters hits me, but the sun is warm on my back. I’m in a light dress, a dress that usually makes me feel comfortable and relaxed. He likes me every way, and I don’t feel like I have to dress up for him to be attracted to me.

“Auger, come out. We need to talk.”

He hears me, but he ignores me, his arms scything through the water.

Why did I have to make him such an infuriating man?

“Auger! Come out! Now!”

He won’t listen. He wants me to go back to the cabin, sit there, tinkering away with my inventions, pretending like everything is okay.

Fine.

If he wants to be like this? So will I.

I jump in, gasping as the waves pummel me. The water soaks my dress, fills my shoes, and I’m pulled down. I gasp for air then I’m thrown under the waves. I regret it instantly. My heart pounds and panic surges up.

I’m thrown downstream. Huge boulders fill my vision, when I feel his arms wrap around me. He pulls me out, and I gasp for air on the soft green grass by the riverside, looking up at my protector.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He’s angry in the way he only gets when my safety is at risk.

I catch my breath. “You can’t hide from me, Auger. You can’t just run off when you’re hurting.”

He clenches his jaw shut, too angry to speak. Good. Let him be mad. At least then he’ll talk to me. “Never put yourself in danger again. You don’t know what it does to me.”

“You don’t know what it does to me to see you hurting alone, Auger. We need to work through this.”

“There’s nothing to work through. I’m a machine, Thea. You built me. Any sons or daughters I have will be created in a lab,” he says, bitter, his voice full of self-hatred.

“You don’t know that. Let’s go back.” The sun is blotted out by his mass. Water drips down from him onto me.

“Back where?”

“To Cobernaught. Galfond’s still there. He’ll work with us. We can find out if…if you can have children,” I say.

Auger shakes his head. His black hair is matted down, a strand in his eyes. He moves it aside, and I stare into his brilliant blue eyes, wanting them to be full of joy again. “No. I won’t bring you back to that place. It’s not safe.”

“When you’re with me, Auger, I’m safe. But we’re not going to have a future together if you hate yourself. I love you more than anything. And I know you’ll protect me.” I reach up, running my hand over his broad chest, feeling so small and protected under him. His arms flex as he keeps his weight up, looming over me. “They won’t dare do anything, not with Galfond blackmailing them. Please. Just give it a chance.”

His eyes narrow. “And what if I can’t have children? What if I can’t give you what you need?”

“I just need you, Auger. I just need you.”

He breathes in, deep, then reaches down to brush my wet hair out of my eyes. He kisses me, our lips meeting, and I feel like everything’s going to be okay.

He breaks off this kiss with a hungry gasp, and his cock surges up, thickening with lust. “Promise me you’ll never do anything like this again, and we can go. Promise me you’ll never put yourself at risk again.”

“I promise,” I say, meeting his pure blue eyes. I can feel the love pouring down from him. When I jumped into the river, it was a reminder of how precious what we have is. He kisses me, hungry, and I melt against him, knowing that no matter what happens we’ll be together. I reach down, trying to wrap my hand around his thick cock, unable to as a spurt of pre-cum drips down on me.

We break off the kiss, gasping. “Whatever happens, I love you, Auger. It doesn’t mean you’re less. It means you’re you. And whatever you are, I love.”

He believes me. I feel it. He presses his huge cock against my slit, thrusting into me, and we roll together in the sun on the riverbed, our bodies together, and I know everything’s going to be okay.

19

AUGER

We approach the moon base above X12, and this time, my memories don’t surge up to try and control my mind.

I know who I am. I am her protector. I am her love. And she is my everything. Thea is at my side, standing next to me as I pilot towards the factory with one hand, at ease with the controls. “It’s going to be okay,” she says, giving me that smile that makes everything perfect.

“You will do exactly as I say. If I say we leave, you don’t complain. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” she says softly, taking my right hand and kissing my knuckles. “Whatever you tell me to do, I do.”

We spoke with Galfond three days ago about making the trip up. He assured us nothing will happen to us. I reviewed his system and linked it up with our smartwatches. With the press of a button, everything about the Cyborg program will be revealed to twenty different news organizations who will fight to be the ones to break the story.

I pilot over row after row of empty mansions. I didn’t live in them. Many of the memories, the brains scanned and uploaded to my consciousness did, but they’re quiet now. Just skills and information that can be used. They no longer try to take control of my mind.

No matter how much programming and uploaded memories flood my mind, there is still something that is me.

I found it with her. She gave me more than life. She let me find who I was. My true self. Not the machine.

I need to give her everything. I’m nervous, because I don’t want to disappoint her, but I know that whatever happens, she’ll accept it.

But I don’t want to disappoint myself. I want to be everything for her and more. I want to give her all she needs.

My cock stirs as I imagine it. Making her belly swell up to the limit, her breasts full of milk.

She will be the perfect mother. I hope they get her sharp mind, her way of looking at things and understanding the causes behind them.

I’ll keep our sons safe, no matter what.

Sons. Why do I always think we’ll have sons?

I pilot towards the landing pad, feathering the thrusters and touching us down lightly. Two Cyborgs stand with rifles that look like they mean business. I judge the caliber of the weapons. They’ll fire two-inch-long bullets that can puncture through my muscles and bone, but they won’t put me down before I throw them off the landing pad and onto the ground below.

They aren’t the true threat. My fist clenches when I see the man the Cyborgs are flanking. Mr. Tan. He’s in a sharp black suit.

“Cobernaught in the flesh,” I growl, wanting to rip his head from his shoulders. He’s the one who attached me to the electrodes and made me hurt for a demonstration. He’s the one who made my first waking moments torture.

“And Galfond has him by the balls. We’re safe here. And I’m always safe with you,” says Thea, running her hand over my forearm.

The side door of the transport hisses open and I jump out in front of Thea, keeping my body between the Cyborgs and her. They don’t raise their rifles, even when their eyes dart down to the knife at my belt that I fashioned out of dark stone on our home planet. It’s a weapon fit for a caveman, but it’ll do the job with my strength behind it.

“Is that really necessary?” says Mr. Tan, glancing at the knife with distaste. I hear Thea jumping down behind me and my muscles tense, readying myself for war if he makes me.

“You prefer I take the rifles from them?” I grunt, and the two Cyborgs just stare back, unblinking. I wonder what model they are. They seem more like robots than men. Mr. Tan steps back, intimidated. He thought two Cyborgs at his side would make him safe.

He thought wrong.

“Where’s Galfond? We’re supposed to meet him in ten,” says Thea, her voice neutral, ignoring the standoff and giving us all an out.

“He’s in lab 78. These two will accompany you two to ensure your safety,” replies Mr. Tan, and the two Cyborgs step forward.

“No. You tell anyone to follow us and they lose their head. Yours is next.” I state the words with an eagerness that wasn’t programmed. Maybe he senses something’s off, because he gulps.

I step forward, my hand on my knife.

“Very well. No problem, no problem at all. Of course, you can protect yourselves. You will have access to all necessary parts of the station.”

“We’re not here to get your trade secrets. We’ll be out soon,” says Thea, placating him, and we step forward together. Mr. Tan mutters something under his breath and his two Cyborgs form a wall between him and us as he steps all the way to the side of the platform to give us space to pass.

The station is a functional, gray thing that looks strong from the outside. I’ve broken out and back in. The walls can’t hold me, but now I’ve got my ward to take care of. There are two more transport ships floating out of range of scanners that will come in hot at a press of my smartwatch. I’ve got contingency plans that I hope I won’t need to use.

We go through a set of doors and into the sterile hallways of the facilities. Thea leads us towards the lab. We pass by a glass viewing pane and I see a Cyborg opened up, his reinforced carbon bones being welded by a technician.

It makes me ill, and I look away. Thea senses my discomfort and gives me a smile that makes me know she doesn’t think of me that way.

Like a machine.

We get to a doorway marked 78 and Thea turns the door handle, opening it to the little room inside. I breathe in, smelling only one man, a familiar scent of someone I trust.

“Galfond!” Thea yells, running to the old man and giving him a huge hug. It’s a little lab, with a medical table big enough to fit a seven-foot-tall Cyborg, three chairs, and a metal tube that Galfond was tinkering with when Thea ran to him.

“Woah, careful there, don’t want to make your boyfriend jealous,” he quips. I’m not narrowing my eyes at him because of jealousy.

If there’s anyone who can shut me down, it’s him. He’s an older man, past his physical prime, but there’s a gleam in his eyes and an intelligence that helped create me.

I hate the vulnerability. That those who wish me harm could shut off my brain or lock up my muscles while I am forced to watch something terrible happen to Thea.

Could he change me? Could he re-design me without vulnerabilities?

Thea breaks off the hug. I nod at the man with respect. “Galfond,” I say as way of greeting.

“Auger. You’ve given Cobernaught a real headache. They’re terrified the other Cyborgs will turn out like you. They’re trying to make the new models more like thoughtless robots.” He grins, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “Don’t worry. Old Galfond’s got a few tricks up his sleeve. You’re here to see if you’re shooting blanks, right?”

I grit my teeth. “Yes.”

Thea gives him a smack. “Galfond! Be nice.”

“He’s a big boy. He can take it.” He points to the long metal tube. “Just give me a sample in there, and I’ll have the results soon. I am not going to be here for that process,” he says, giving Thea a wink and leaving the room before he can smack her again.

“How…clinical,” says Thea as the door shuts. I shrug and unzip, pulling out my cock. It’s heavy and soft. I stroke it, but I’m unaroused, filled with stress for the results.

Thea walks to me, running her fingers over my cock, and I stiffen against her touch. She leans down, kisses the sensitive head, and I grunt as it rears up in response to her. I stroke, imagining being deep inside of her. I think back to our first time, when she was so vulnerable, so overwhelmed, when I took her virginity and claimed her forever.

Pre-cum spurts from my cock. I want to pick her up and take her, but I hold back. Thea licks her lips, and I can sense her need for me, smell her arousal.

She smiles up at me. “It’s okay, Auger. Whatever happens, I just want to be with you. I promise.”

I feel her in my mind. I feel her love for me, and I know she means it. I ache to impregnate her, but I know she’ll love me, no matter what happens. I stroke my cock faster, and she squeezes my balls, massaging them.

Every day I feel closer to her. Every day I feel our souls more intertwined. “Cum for me, Auger, cum,” she begs, her voice submissive and eager. She flicks her tongue under the sensitive head of my cock. It drives me wild and I groan as I get so hard I feel like I’m going to explode, then torrents of cum shoot into the tube. It sucks it up, and I breathe heavy, the rush of endorphins flowing over me, but there’s no satisfaction from it.

The only time orgasms satisfy me are when I cum deep inside her.

I grunt, pushing my softening cock into my pants and zip up.

“Auger, I promise. No matter what, it’s going to be okay.” I smile down at her so she knows I can accept it, no matter what. So she knows we’ll have a future. One of the chairs is big enough for me, so I sit down, even though I’m not tired. Thea jumps up on my lap, wanting to be close to me. I run my hand through her hair, enjoying the sensation of her body against mine.

As long as I have her, everything will be okay.

A few minutes pass, and the door clicks open. Galfond’s got a serious look on his face, his eyes dull and without the normal twinkle. My hopes fall.

“I’m sorry. There’s no sperm. Just fluid.”

“Is there any motility?” asks Thea, analytic.

Galfond shakes his head. “No, I mean there’s no sperm at all. He’s not built to reproduce. Cyborgs weren’t even supposed to be able to have sex. I’m sorry.”

My dreams of children shatter. We’ll have a beautiful life together, but I’ll never see Thea playing with our sons. I’ll never see her with her belly swollen up. I’ll never see her eyes light up when she feels the first kick. When she watches our baby crawl, walk, say his first words.

“Can you change me?”

Thea shakes her head. “Auger, I don’t want you to be changed. I want you to be yourself.”

Galfond thinks it over, his brilliant mind working. “Maybe. It could take time.”

“My programming as well. I don’t want anyone to be able to turn me off. I need to destroy my weaknesses so I can keep her safe,” I growl, hating the parts of me that aren’t strong enough to protect her.

“Don’t speak about me like I’m not in the room. I don’t want you to change because of me, Auger. That’s the one thing that can split us apart. I love you and only you. Don’t turn into something else. Please.”

I grit my teeth. “Can you do it, dammit?”

Galfond nods. “I can. But you might forget everything.”

“I’ll learn again.”

Thea jumps up from my lap. “Galfond, can you give us some privacy?”

“Sure,” he says, uncomfortable with the situation and exiting as fast as he can. He leaves us together.

Thea turns to me. She’s at eye level when I sit. So fragile. So brilliant. More than anything, I need to keep her safe. “Auger, I don’t care about kids. I want you, just you. We fell in love together.”

“We can fall in love again.”

She shakes her head, her eyes wet. “Auger, I know we can be together. I know I can be happy with you, so happy. But if you change, I don’t know if I’ll love you the same way. I didn’t fall in love with your programming or the uploaded memories. I fell in love with you.”

I’m seven hundred pounds of brute strength, and I feel so weak. “I can’t give you everything.”

She smiles, the sadness leaving her eyes. “Don’t you understand, Auger? You’re everything.”

I get this…

Flash of understanding. It’s like I can read her mind for a second. My perception warps, and for a split second, I can see myself through her eyes, and I understand.

She wants to be with me, as I am. I don’t know how I know, but deep down, in my bones and my soul, I understand it.

Thea looks stunned for a second, like she felt it too. I stand, opening my arms, and grab her tight in a huge hug. “Let’s get off this station,” I say, wanting to be alone with the one woman in the universe who completes me.

20

THEA

I sit across from Auger at the solid wood dinner table he carved himself. The fish is straight off the grill, caught just thirty minutes ago. “You spoil me,” I say, looking up at the huge man across from me.

We spent a week alone on our little planet, and it’s been perfect. Every day I feel closer to him.

We didn’t stop to chat with Galfond when we rushed off the station. I don’t want to hear about the Aurelian Empire splitting in half or the universe plunging into war. I can’t deal with it right now.

My world is Auger. Maybe one day I’ll use my skills for good, but the sides are so muddled it’s impossible to know who’s good and who is evil. When I learned about the Human Alliance involvement in the Cyborg Bodyguard program and that it was always about super soldiers and not about keeping innocents safe, it killed the last of my optimism.

If we’re going to build something for good, it’s going to be me and him, working together. Not a big company.

“I do spoil you. Just wait until you see what I’ve been working on,” he says with a grin, lifting the fresh fish onto my wooden plate. It goes with a salad of foraged greens. I’ve set up an automated garden. Sometimes I water the plants by hands, other times I let the robotics take care of it. At harvest, we’ll have a huge bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables.

“I want to take a look!” He just smiles with his secrets. He’s been building an extra room that connects to our bedroom, working away an hour or two every day. I want to see it badly, but he made me promise not to.

Yesterday, when he was sitting in bed reading, I walked to the doorway to the unfinished room right in front of him and made eye contact with him while I slowly opened the door. I wanted him to punish me. He spanked me until my ass was red, then fucked me hard and made me promise not to look. I came so hard I lost my mind.

I squirm on the seat, my bottom still sore. “You’ll see it soon, my love. It’s ready. Tomorrow I’ll show you.”

“Why not tonight?”

“Some things are better with anticipation,” he growls, taking a bite of the fish. He eats like an animal, downing ten times as much as I do. It’s a sight to watch.

“This is so good,” I say, swallowing a bite of the pink fish. It’s my favorite species of the many edible varieties on the planet, and it’s one of the rarest. He sometimes hunts for hours to catch a good-sized one.

He looks into my eyes, content, and I get this weird…sense that I know his thoughts.

It’s been happening more and more lately. Every time we fuck, it gets stronger. I’ve started to imagine I can feel where he is.

“You got some of the sweet berries for tonight, didn’t you?” I ask him, not sure how I know.

“Yes,” he says, blinking in confusion. “It was meant to be a surprise. How did you know?”

I shake my head, furrowing my brow as I try to work it through. How did I know? “It’s strange. I don’t know. I just…felt like you went north today, where the berry fields are.”

He puts down his fork. “Something’s going on, Thea. Between us. When we were in the lab together, testing me, I felt like I knew your thoughts. I felt that you wanted to be with me, no matter what, and that let me accept myself.”

“It’s strongest when we’re in bed, isn’t it?”

He nods, pushing his plate away. “Dinner will wait,” he says, standing to his full height. The high ceiling beams of our sturdy cabin seem a lot lower when he towers over me, so huge, so powerful, so in control. His word is law. I can’t help but react to his strength. I’m constantly aching for him. He woke up desires in me I never knew existed.

Desires I’d be too scared to experience with anyone but him.

He points to the door leading to our master bedroom. “Go. Strip. If you’re not naked, on your back in ten seconds, I’m throwing you over my lap. One.”

My bottom is still sore from the last spanking, and though I love it, this one would be too rough to handle.

I gasp and jump out of my seat, running to the door when he grabs my wrist and stops me cold. “Two.”

I fight against his grip, but it’s impossible. He’s so fucking strong. His brilliant blue eyes stare down at me, growing more dominant by the second. “No fair,” I gasp, wriggling away from him, knowing he can put me over his lap and spank me whenever he wants.

“Three,” he says slowly, licking his lips in anticipation.

“Auger please, I’m still sore,” I beg, and he lets me go. I rush into the bedroom, ripping my clothes off, and jump on the bed at the same time he says ten. My legs open instinctively, presenting myself to the alpha. He enters the room, his nostrils flaring, tasting my lust. He rips his clothes off, throwing them aside, and I stare up at his huge, powerful body.

His muscles, every one designed in the lab, have grown. Days of cutting trees and tossing stones have bulked him up. I love the V taper of his body down to his huge, throbbing cock, the cut abs that I run my hands over while he takes me hard. His strong jaw and wolf eyes exude dominant masculinity. His grapefruit-sized balls swing under his cock, and I know how desperately he wants to fill me up with seed.

He steps forward, the sun glinting through the window against the stone tint of his skin, and I understand. When it hits at certain angles he looks like a statue. His cock rears up, so hard it’s almost vibrating, and a huge spurt of pre-cum drips from it, the only way he can fit that massive thing in me.

“Auger,” I gasp in sudden comprehension.

The bed creaks as he mounts it. I wriggle back against the pillows, pressing my hips up instinctively for him. Auger slides his cockhead against my slit, pre-cum oozing out, teasing me, making sure I’m ready for him. I toy with my nipples, knowing he likes how I look when I’m playing with them, hard little buds begging for his touch. I whimper in lust and need, my thoughts so clouded.

It’s so hard to think when you have seven hundred pounds of protective, possessive Cyborg obsessed with you and you alone.

“Auger, you’re part Aurelian,” I say.

His blue eyes glow, too brilliant to be a mere human, the tint of his skin too like marble to be a normal man.

“Yes. I know.” He thrusts himself into me and I forget everything. I moan as I’m impaled, filled to the limit. It’s like he’s in my stomach, so deep in me that my mind melts.

He’s there. In my mind. It’s faint, but I know I’m not imagining it. There’s this awareness of him, of his emotions. I feel his lust, boiling up in him, how desperate he is to claim me.

“Auger, Aurelians can only…oh yes, right there,” I gasp, as he presses his cock into the spot that drives me wild, rubbing against somewhere inside me that makes me whimper. “They can only get their Fated Mate pregnant,” I finish, my mind clouding with the need that’s building up in me.

I get this urge, so strong, to take his seed deep inside me. I’ve always it, but it’s more insistent this time, an aching hunger that must be obeyed.

He puts me in heat.

Auger runs his hands over my body like he’s worshiping me, his huge fingers finding my nipples, pressing my hands away and pinching and pulling them while I moan. I can feel him so deep in me. He keeps his cock pressed all the way in, and each throb drives me wild.

“Auger, what if what we’re feeling is…”

“Is the Bond,” he rumbles, his eyes wide.

He’s part Aurelian. Could it be that he’s linked to me? The all-male alien species is able to link to one woman alone, the one woman who can bear their sons.

Their Mate.

I run my hands over his chest, feeling the ridges of his abs as he squeezes my breasts together. A low growl forms in his throat.

He understands. Every moment we’re closer together, every moment the imagined connection becomes more real. The thought that maybe if we grow this Bond between us, he might be able to get me pregnant makes him put his head back and roar. He grabs my wrists, putting them above my head, and I’m so helpless underneath the beast.

He can do whatever he wants to me.

I feel so tiny as his cock throbs, swelling up bigger, and he looks straight into my eyes and fucks me like he’s never fucked me before. He slams his cock into me with hard, violent thrusts, and my body molds to him.

“Auger, you’re so deep,” I gasp, my eyes rolling back as he stretches me open. Sweat drips down from him as he pounds me, and I don’t try to fight against his grip on my arms.

“I’m going to Bond you to me,” he growls, his voice animalistic, his words a dark promise. I’ve heard about the Bond. It scares and excites me. He’s the only man in the world I’d let link me to him forever.

He kisses me deep, his tongue swirling in my mouth as he stretches me to the limit. His huge balls slap against me with each thrust, so full of his seed.

The little ball in my head that is Auger blossoms, a presence that is him and him alone. He’s in my mind, and I can taste his hunger.

His protectiveness is complete. He needs to keep me safe more than he needs to breathe.

He breaks off the kiss, gasping, and I know he’s close. “I’m going to breed your sweet little pussy, Thea,” he snarls, like he’s possessed, and his lust reaches a zenith in my mind. I can feel our need thrumming between us, back and forth. He doesn’t just want to get me pregnant.

He needs to.

I’ve seen women pregnant by Aurelians. Their breasts swell up heavy with milk for the huge Aurelian babes, their stomachs massive. The Bond molds them into the perfect little fuck toy for the alien race, and it prepares them for birthing the powerful aliens.

It scares and excites me what Auger’s seed could do to me.

Whatever he does to me, I want it. Whatever changes he’ll force in me, I need them. I’m his, and he’s mine.

He wraps his arms around me, the muscles like boulders as he squeezes me so tight against him I can’t move an inch. I couldn’t stop this if I wanted to. He’s gone wild, intent on cumming deep inside me, his sweaty body grinding against mine as he bounces me against the bed with each thrust.

“I’m so close,” I gasp, on the verge of an orgasm that will drive me insane.

“Tell me what you need,” he growls in my ear, his breath hot against me.

I can’t hold back. “Get me pregnant, Auger, get me pregnant,” I beg, the words spilling out of my mouth. It sends me over the edge. I cum so hard I scream, golden pleasure washing through my body, and I can feel my pussy clenching tighter around his throbbing cock, milking the alpha. He can feel how desperate I am for his seed, and I know he can read my emotions, my absolute lust.

It sends him over the edge.

His cock stiffens even harder, huge and stretching me open as jets of his hot seed fill me.

Something seems to thrum in my mind, some deep, dark thing that makes all my desires heighten.

The Bond.

I know it’s there. It’s not fully active yet, growing stronger with each coupling, a shadow of what it will be.

I already felt like a bitch in heat for Auger before he ever fucked me. I can’t imagine the heights of pleasure and need I’ll feel when it’s fully bloomed in my mind.

Auger holds me tight against him and we both gasp, catching our breath. His heart beats against me like a drum.

“I love you so much, Auger,” I say, because I can feel his love and adoration pouring into my mind. That little aura that is Auger, steel and power, loves me more than life itself. I can feel how possessive he is of me. He owns me, and I don’t fight against it. I love feeling like his possession, and I love knowing how completely I own his heart and mind in return.

“I know, Thea. I can feel it. You’re in my mind. I’m never going to let anything happen to you. I promise,” he says, then kisses me, his lips soft against mine. I’m fully, completely satisfied.

I turn my mind off, safe and complete under the alpha. His cock slowly softens inside me, but he doesn’t pull out. He keeps me filled with his seed, and it’s so right. It’s not the blossoming Bond that makes me want this. It’s me, all me.

It takes time, and I’m still trembling, but our heartbeats slow. I run my hands over his broad back, feeling his strength. He pulls out, pulling his hips back, and his spend drips from me.

“Auger, what was in the room you built?” The anticipation is killing me.

He gets a wicked grin that no one programmed. It’s all him. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

“I don’t think my legs are working after what you did to me,” I say, my body twitching in the aftermath. The golden glow of the orgasm is making me sleepy and satisfied, but my curiosity is piqued.

He scoops me up in his arms in the same movement as he stands up from the bed. He kisses me again, then smiles down at me as he opens the door with one hand while holding me up easily with the other.

“Oh…fuck,” I say, as I see what’s in the room. It makes me feel so vulnerable, so small, so helpless.

“It’s just getting started.”

The room is built with the same wood logs as the rest of the cabin. It’s empty, except for a table in the middle, a table built for me and me alone. The wood is molded and shaped and I know it will contour my body exactly.

There are four restraints. Two for my wrists, two for my ankles, and the table will angle me up.

He sets me down on it. I fit into it perfectly. He’s put a pillow under me when we’ve fucked before, and it makes him feel too deep inside me. The dip of the molded wood keeps me slightly arched, so my hips are in the perfect position for him.

If he seeds me, it’ll stay inside me. He didn’t know we were Bonded, and he’s created the perfect place to breed me over and over again, as if by instinct.

“I was looking forward to tying you up in here…but I lost control and took you in the bedroom,” he says, standing in front of me, his huge, soft cock stiffening. I feel the restraints. They are wooden clasps. “I’ll get leather so it’s soft on your wrists soon, my love.”

“This is going to be…intense,” I say, a shiver running up and down my body. He clasps my ankles into the restraints, and I pull at them, but I can’t move.

As if I need restraints with Auger. He could pin me down with a single finger. But I like it. I like the feeling of being trapped. He walks around me, clasping my wrists into the restraints, and I pull at them, knowing I’m helpless, but wanting to feel it.

He stands behind me, his huge balls swollen and above my head, his cock stiffening. He steps back and leans down, kissing me gently on the forehead.

His aura is lessening in my mind. I crave it. I crave that connection between us, and so does he.

“I’m going to keep you tied up here and Bond you to me, Thea. I’m going to lock you up for hours at a time until you bear my son.”

His words are so filthy, so right, and my nipples harden, desperate for his touch. He runs his hands over my body, owning me.

“I’m going to tie you up and tease you until you’re a begging little puddle of need, Thea. I’m going to run my tongue over your sweet little cunt until you’re screaming for my cock,” he growls, and I know his cock is hardening.

“Auger!” I gasp, as he walks in front of the table. I’m at perfect height for his huge cock. My legs are forced open for the alpha, and I know he can see my glistening wetness mixed with his seed.

His eyes roll back and his nostrils flare, tasting my need. He’s such a beast. He growls, clenching his jaw, every muscle in his body so taut and flexed he looks like he’ll burst.

He gets control of himself.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

I bite my lip. I’m too shy to say it. His cock surges, a huge drop of pre-cum falling on the floor, and I ache to have him inside me again.

“That’s what I want, Auger. Take me, take me, I’m yours,” I gasp, and I feel his aura flicker in my mind. He can’t hold back. He thrusts into me, claiming me again.

When he presses his huge cock into me, my mind fills with his love and possessiveness. His aura blossoms, stronger with each thrust.

I’m his, and he’s mine.

Forever.

21

EPILOGUE

“Now aren’t you a beauty. Shame you’re going to a beast.” I look over her file with distaste. Alana Martins. I’ve got enough leverage with Cobernaught to nix the deal, if I have to.

Oh, they moaned. Oh, they whined. But when I showed them the genetic sequencing that was sent out to a dozen lawyers—with instructions to send it straight to Queen Jasmine of the Aurelian Empire in case of my death—they capitulated. I was shocked enough by the findings. It’s not just Aurelian DNA in there. There’s a trace of Scorp. There’s no way in hell they had Human Alliance permission to add that, and if I leak the info, they’ll be between a rock and a hard place with nowhere to go.

I don’t have all the leverage. They know I love working on these Cyborgs, and they know I won’t do anything to shut down the program. But I cut down their military development and forced them to change their way forward.

Even the Human Alliance can’t make my Cyborgs into soldiers…

Unless war comes to our borders, and then my creations will protect humanity against Scorp, Toad, or Aurelian.

The third Mark 4 unit stands in front of me. Unit 4003. He’s going to RD Law Firm, the legal geniuses that managed to bring this program into existence. I told Cobernaught that we needed to wait for the Mark 5s before we start selling them, but they didn’t listen.

Secretly, I don’t mind testing my creation out, especially on a woman willing to work for a corporate devil like RD Law. The only reason I haven’t nixed the deal is because I see something in her eyes. She grew up poor, and maybe she isn’t like those rich fuckers who would sell out their own mothers to increase the company’s valuation.

Plus, she’s one of the few women high up in the company. Call it what you will, but those huge corporations still have sexism in them. Maybe having a giant at her back will give her a little more leverage against some old cunt who wouldn’t take her seriously. Oh yes. Now that’s a fun thought. Some asshole in a ten-thousand-credit suit ruining it with his sweat when he was expecting a small woman and gets my creation right in front of her.

I inject the syringe with her DNA into Unit 4003’s arm.

He’s deactivated, but his eyes flutter beneath the lids.

Interesting. Very interesting.

I wish I had Thea with me, but she’s flitted off to some uninhabited world, keeping her whereabouts completely secret. Fine. Let her enjoy her honeymoon. If anyone found out the love between her and Auger, I don’t know if it would put our program out of business…

Or increase orders 500%. I chuckle to myself.

I’ve got work to do.

“Alrighty then, unit 4003. Let’s make sure the Auger situation doesn’t happen again. I’ve put limiters on you. They should hold back. You shouldn’t be able to do anything…scandalous with her.”

Looking up at the huge, six-foot-eight creation of steel and flesh? I don’t know if my limits will work. Especially with the Scorp DNA increased by point twelve of a percent. It may make them erratic, but it’s increased their strength and combat capabilities remarkably.

RD Law demanded Bodyguards.

They should be careful what they ask for.

“Oh, Alana Martin. Let’s see what happens to you.”

I can’t help but giggle again.

I TRULY HOPE YOU ENJOYED!

The next book in the Cyborg Mates series is coming out soon. If you’d like to be notified when it’s released, you can sign up at http://eepurl.com/dEk-p5 because you’ll be the first to know!

If you like the alien captive niche, then you may enjoy Aurelian Prisoner - however, it’s a reverse harem romance. The Cyborg Mates series is currently the only non reverse harem series within the Aurelian Empire. The Captive Mates series is written in parallel with the Cyborg Mates series.

The powerful alien species deals with escape attempts harshly.

ALLIE: I took from the species. Now they want... me. My greatest fear is captivity on their ships. I've been hiding for years, and times running out.

Aurelian enforcement agents.

They look like Greek Gods in the flesh. Greek Gods had more mercy. Break their laws, and the seven-foot-tall alien warriors chase you down. The only thing they hunt more passionately than criminals is their Fated Mate, the one woman who can bear their sons.

My sister was taken from me by space pirates. My freedom is all I have. I won't let them take it. No matter how they try to break me, I'll keep fighting to break free.

Aurelians may be honorable on the surface. The arrogant species has strict laws and rules to how they can treat their prisoners. But I've seen another side of the alien species...

Possessive. Dominant. Controlling.

And if I can make them succumb to the mating rage, they'll have no choice but to let me free...

READ AURELIAN PRISONER TODAY!