B Cubed #3 Borg Read online

  B Cubed

  Book Three:

  Borg

  Jenna McCormick

  Published by Captiva Heart

  Copyright 2013 Jennifer Lynn Hart

  Cover image purchased from romancenovelcovers.com. Designed by Rae Monet

  All rights reserved.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at [email protected].

  All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination.

  For more information please visit

  www.authorjennamac.com

  Dedicated to:

  Liane Gentry Skye

  Because you refused to let me stop at one.

  Cassandra’s Journal

  Date: Unknown

  It’s happened.

  Just like I knew it would. Being right holds no satisfaction for me. The reality is even more terrible than in my dreams. Bodies are everywhere. There aren’t enough living to properly dispose of the dead. The world stopped turning, the sun never sets on one side while the other is bathed in constant darkness. Plants can’t grow, animals drop dead from starvation. The riots are the worst, the raiding parties preying upon the weak, taking from them, killing those who put up a fight. Humanity belongs to the light. Is it any wonder that banished from it we are losing the best of ourselves?

  The major geological changes won’t happen for centuries yet, the oceans being pulled to the poles, the freshwater lakes lost. The rise of the cyborgnetic people that will dig out an enclave at the heart of the world. Those who will embrace technology and band together stand a chance. Those on the surface will cling stubbornly to the ways of the past, turning their backs on development and abusing the people they create. The ones they breed to do their work. The suffering will be great, the raiders becoming leaders with no concept of how to rule.

  Until their creations turn on them, just as an abused animal will turn on its master, the Bred will unite with the cyborgs until the Born teeter on the edge of extinction.

  There will be one who could unite them all, a born cyborg. But his mind is twisted in madness, his heart ice cold. He might break before he bends and destroy the gift he was given, for he has suffered much in every life he’s lived. I fear he is not strong enough for what humanity needs him to do. To be.

  I fear we all are lost.

  Chapter One

  “Dayen?” Former Task Mistress Allora hurried forward before he could make his escape.

  Damn. Dayen closed his eyes, shoulders slumped in defeat. He’d been dodging her for weeks, and it was only a chance meeting here in front of his Aunt Cassie’s door that lost him the battle.

  Well, perhaps not. He cracked one eye open and surveyed the door with suspicion. Nothing Aunt Cassie did was ever left to chance. So that meant she knew exactly how much Dayen had wanted to avoid his mother, and he’d set her on his trail anyhow.

  “Son,” Allora reached for him and out of habit born of pain, he flinched before her hand made contact with him. Touch made his telepathy worse, like turning up an amplifier until her thoughts echoed in his head and bounced off his skull. He couldn’t stand to be touched, not even by the woman who’d given him life.

  She froze mid-motion and withdrew her hand. He stiffened his spine so as not to telegraph his relief. It hurt her feelings if he did and despite their falling out, he didn’t want to cause her pain.

  Instead, he put the door at his back and turned to face her. “I was coming to see you later today,” he lied smoothly.

  “Of course you were.” Her eyes flashed, and she tossed her red-gold braid behind her back. With a start he realized the fiery locks were threaded with gray. When had that happened?

  Allora squared off as her training had taught her. Her doubt pinged in his brain, making his head ache all the more. “Son, you don’t have to go through with this.”

  Mine. The beast’s voice growled.

  Though he struggled to reign in the fury of his other half, Dayen stood at parade rest. His posture mimicked hers, though his hands clenched behind him into fists. The rage was unwarranted and he reasoned the monster in his mind into submission. His mother wasn’t trying to take his mate from him, he couldn’t attack her. Out by the lake he could see cyborgs congregating, all the festivities for his mating ceremony were well underway. Slowly, he turned his gaze on the woman who’d given him life. Who loved him fiercely and whose concern was a giant boulder on his chest, compressing him until he could barely breathe. How could he make her understand? “She’s what I was born for, mother.”

  Her eyes were kind as she whispered, “You have a choice, son.”

  He didn’t, not really. Never mind what was best for their people, Dayen couldn’t explain to her all the ways he was different. Allora didn’t want to hear a catalogue of his oddness. More than just his telepathy set him apart from the factions.

  He was all of them and he was nothing like them. “It is done, mother. Accept it.”

  She spat a profanity, something vile and crude and glared at her sister’s door. “She’s brainwashed you.”

  “Well, someone needed to clean up in there.”

  The voice came from behind his back, from his Aunt Cassie. He glanced at her over his shoulder. The one creature who could take him unaware. She was petite, even frail looking, especially side by side with his warrior mother, who could wrestle cyborgs into submission.

  Looks could be deceiving. Most of the cyborg colony would rather face down a furious Allora than a serene Cassie. His aunt was like him, an outcast, something inexplicable, unquantifiable and other. More than the sum of the technological or human parts they possessed.

  Aunt Cassie was actually a clone of the prophet Cassandra who had foreseen the end of the world and the rise of the three factions. Dayen’s telepathy had given him unique insight into the fear his aunt’s gift inspired. No one knew the extent of her powers. Some whispered she could walk through the shadow realm and communicate with departed souls. Dayen suspected they were right but Aunt Cassie was the one person he couldn’t read, so he had no proof one way or the other.

  “You,” Allora practically growled at her sister. “You’ve backed him into this corner, into breeding with some Born bitch to fulfill your precious prophecy. He can’t even stand my touch for an instant and yet you expect him to take a mate?”

  A low growl rumbled in his chest. His head ached and his pride stung at the thought of his mother discussing his future sex life with his aunt as though it were any of her business. The anger swelled again, hers feeding his until he wanted to make something bleed. Arguing would only prolong the encounter and he had about five minutes until her wild thoughts made him collapse like a weakling at her feet. He held his tongue.

  Cassie didn’t back down, flinch or show any sign that Allora’s accusations bothered her. Her voice was soft and lilting when she spoke. “I do not determine his fate, sister mine. I am only a guide.”

  Her calmness aggravated his mother even more, her ire prickled over his every nerve ending. The encounter would end in blood if Dayen didn’t stop it soon. “Mother, I want to fulfill my destiny. I am the only trifaction male, the only one they will all accept for their leader.” He wasn’t about to mention the issues of breeding with Allora. She was invasive enough as it was.

  Instead, Dayen retrenched. Lowering his voice
and ignoring her angry thoughts, he stepped closer. “Mother, I am alone. Unique in the world and I am tired of my own company. Did it ever occur to you that I want more than the hermit’s life I’m leading?”

  She would help him, the one that was his. He didn’t know how or why, but somehow she would put the broken pieces of him back together, make him whole inside. He would be fulfilled, not just an empty shell of a man with jagged edges.

  Allora’s anger faded to worry, her thoughts no less potent for her mood shift. “But your gift—?”

  “Don’t you want grandchildren?” He struck at her heart, the way she’d trained him to attack an opponent when he was on the verge of losing.

  “Of course.” Longing poured from her in waves. Despite their best efforts, Allora and Cormack had only had one child—the one no one could touch. His father had told him he’d cried whenever they’d picked him up as an infant and their upset had made him scream all the louder. Eventually, he’d been handed over to the care of robot nursemaids, things without human thoughts or emotions. From that point on, his contact with his parents was minimal. Allora’s craving to actually hold her offspring hurt him deeper than any physical blow.

  Dayen eyed the festivities again. Would his children inherit his curse? Would the Born mate that he had yet to meet one day resent him for claiming her?

  Mine, the beast snarled. Nothing can take her from me.

  His knuckles turned white at the effort of keeping the monster at bay. The vicious predator didn’t understand the delicacy of the situation, the negotiations, the planning. It just saw its end goal, to have its mate.

  But he was more than a beast, he was a man, a leader destined to unite the factions. Reason had to override instinct. It must. We will have her, he reminded it, reminded himself. Much is at stake, we must be patient.

  He felt the beast grudgingly settle down to wait.

  Cassandra cleared her throat, the noise jarring him out of his internal battle back to the argument taking place before him. “Good, then leave him to do his part.”

  Allora still looked ready to argue. But she turned to him and her thoughts took him aback. She would sacrifice anything to see him happy, even as she bitterly regretted the curse that kept her from holding her only child. All she said was, “I love you, son.”

  Dayen breathed in relief when she was finally out of range even as his heart ached to see her go.

  “Allora is a force of nature. It’s no wonder she thinks so loudly. I dare say that’s where your beast comes from, at least in part. Come in, dear nephew and tell me what’s brought you here on the eve of your betrothal.”

  If Aunt Cass had any thoughts, he never heard them. Being in her little cave-like home was a reprieve from the barrage of thoughts that pressed down on him whenever he entered the main routes in the compound. Maybe it was something to do with the orange moss that grew along the stone walls, or this sweet smell of her hydroponic garden just off the kitchen. Whatever caused it, his aunt’s space had always been a sanctuary.

  Because she was Cassandra she already knew why Dayen was there, but he humored her request. “My dreams. They’ve…changed.”

  His aunt poured him tea, her own special blend that she grew in her hydroponics laboratory. “Changed how?”

  Dayen took a sip from the cup, savoring the strong brew. He had no idea what she put in it but drinking it always made him feel a little bit better. “They’re more physical.”

  “More physical than dying?”

  Dayen huffed out a breath. The first time he’d dreamed of the world above, the surface he’d never actually seen, he’d been awed by the experience. Until his throat had been slit and he bled out all over the ground. He’d been fifteen and it had frightened him so much he hadn’t slept for a week. Cass had known of course, the way she knew everything and she did her best to help.

  “More intimately physical,” Dayen clarified, and hoped she wouldn’t make him say it.

  She looked at him blankly.

  Of course she would. “Sex. I’m having sex in the dream.”

  Her foggy expression cleared and her lips lifted in a small smile. “Well, that’s a nice change, anyway.”

  Talking about sex with Aunt Cass was only slightly better than discussing it with his mother, but he had no one else to confide in. “No. And I’m not him in these dreams.”

  Cass frowned. “Isaac?”

  Dayen shuddered. He never spoke the man’s name, afraid that the ghost whose soul he’d stolen could somehow inhabit him completely if he said it aloud. It was bad enough the man tormented him every time he slept, reliving bits and pieces from his too short life in Dayen’s head as though it were an ancient movie screen. Only the beast kept Isaac at bay. Sometimes Dayen wondered if he was even a person at all, or just a patched up mess of refurbished souls fighting for a second chance.

  He focused on Cass. “I think it’s me in the dream. It doesn’t feel like a memory and I can sense the others within me but I’m in control. What does that mean?”

  She gave him a look that seemed to question his intelligence. “Did Cormack teach you nothing about your urges? Do you need me to tell you about the birds and the bees?”

  Dayen sat back and ran a hand through his hair. Having a conversation with a soothsayer was about as effective as repeatedly bashing his head against the wall. What did two long extinct species have to do with any of it? “It’s not coming from me though. The dream is tense, awkward, and full of fear. It’s not arousing so much as tormenting. I wake up all full of anxiety and almost sick from worry. There’s no passion or pleasure, it’s just…horrific. But those aren’t my feelings. What can it mean?”

  Cassandra shook her head.

  “Could it be from her?” Though he’d never spoken to his bride-to-be Dayen could feel her out there, would be able to point in her direction at any given time. He didn’t know how it would work between them, or if they were even compatible. She could be a shrew, more forceful and domineering than even his mother. Her thoughts could be dark and depraved the way he heard all Born humans were. It didn’t matter. She was his, the woman meant for him alone.

  His birthright.

  Mine. The word came from deep inside him, not from the ghost or even a real decision. Whenever he thought about her, he couldn’t see her features, her body, or hear her voice but that word echoed down to his very marrow. And as he thought it he recalled another feeling that had surfaced during his bizarre dream.

  Rage.

  Cass plucked absently at the fabric of her dress. “I really can’t say.”

  Dayen noted her phrasing. She hadn’t said she didn’t know or couldn’t be certain. But there was no getting information out of her before she was ready to give it.

  Tiredly, he leaned back against his chair. He was too young to have all this pressing down on him. His gift was enough of a burden, but mating an unknown Born woman to save the human race…he felt as if he would crack under the weight of it all.

  And he did have urges, plenty of them, with nothing but his own hand to use for a relief. How would he complete the mating ritual if he couldn’t bear to touch his woman?

  What if he passed out in the middle of the act?

  The shame would haunt him always. Along with his recycled spirit.

  Cass reached out and covered his hand with her own, the only living being who could without causing him to double up in pain. “It will all work out all right. You’ll see.”

  “Like it did for him?” He murmured, thinking of his ghost.

  She caught his reference. “Isaac lived a good life. He loved his mate and was able to let her go when the time came because there was someone who needed her more. And he stayed because you, my dear nephew, needed him, too. Let his gentleness and ability to love guide you.”

  She always spoke of his ghost as some benevolent being, but Dayen knew better. And letting go of his mate, regardless of the reason, was unacceptable.

  Mine. He itched to be near her for the firs
t time, to see her exquisite features up close and inhale her intoxicating scent. He had a million questions. What would her voice sound like? Would her creamy skin be as soft as it looked?

  Would she like him?

  Restlessness urged him to his feet. “I must prepare.”

  Cass gripped his hand even tighter. He frowned and looked down at her. Her eyes had fogged over to a milky white color, blotting out her irises.

  “She’s dying,” Cass breathed. Her knuckles turned white as she squeezed his hand. Dayen had never seen her in the throes of prophesy before but he was sure that was what this was. Who was she talking about? His stomach turned over at the thought of his bride to be. There were many out there who didn’t want to see them united. Wrath coursed through him at the thought of her hurt before he even met her. She was his to protect, his to defend. If anyone hurt his mate, he’d annihilate them, even if their final thoughts drove him mad.

  Mine.

  He moved so fast the chair behind him toppled over. Though he wasn’t sure his aunt could hear him he grated, “Who is it, Cass? Who’s dying?”

  Her creepy eyes fixed on nothing he could see and she responded, “The Earth. And she will take us all with her.”

  ****

  “Borg whore.”

  One of the young men spat in Sage’s direction as she made her way through the great hall in her wedding gown. Lily, her little mutt, growled low in her throat and the spitter laughed. His insult didn’t hit her physically of course, flanked as she was by big Bred guards on either side. She lifted her chin up high, tugged lightly on Lily’s leash and ignored them all as she strode to the waiting tunnel vehicle, projecting what her Da had called the Ice Princess Persona. His words rang in her ears as if he was still with her instead of fifteen years buried. Never let them see you bleed or they’ll want to see more of it.

  He had been right. So tragically right.