Holy Shit Time
Even through the overwhelming need and pleasure, Cat felt it. Omnis’ pain, cutting her open.
She shoved on Ethan’s head, fighting to close her legs. “Stop,” she gasped.
His stormy gaze hit her while his hot breaths continued their burn.
She sat up, swallowing at the look on his face as he slowly rose up, kneeling, watching her, a man still clinging to a ledge. “Talk to me,” he barely said.
“It’s just… they’re in me,” she whispered.
He stared so hard at her she couldn’t breathe. His head slowly lowered, the flash of pain in his eyes tearing through her. “Are you saying… we can’t be…”
“I didn’t finish… telling you everything, Ethan.”
He knelt there, frozen for endless seconds. Slowly he moved to the foot of the bed and sat, holding his head.
She stared at his beautiful back. The brotherhood tattoo moving with every deep breath. “Are you…”
Oh God.
“Are you in love with them?”
She fought back a sob at what she heard in his voice.
Zero.
You need to answer that one, Kitten.
Oh God, he wanted the answer too. He had no guarantees other than what she gave him. His entire existence rode on it. And Omnis. They were all holding their breath for that answer.
She’d give the exact truth of it.
“I love you,” she whispered, keeping her voice firm. “And I love Zero,” she followed. “And I love Omnis,” she finished, forbidding any guilt or shame.
“Holy fuck,” he whispered, head hanging.
Her chest ached. “They’re extensions of you,” she said, sucking in breaths. “You told me that.”
His head shook slowly. “Cat…”
Her guts tensed. His tone said she’d completely misunderstood it.
“I told you that… when I first introduced you. To help you understand something difficult to imagine. Why they were, why I made them. How. But they are not me,” he said with heartbreaking conviction. “They could never be me.”
Her pulse hammered at how quiet he said that.
“Omnis,” he called.
Silence answered him. Then a low, “What.”
Oh God. Omnis was angry. Wounded. Broken like Ethan, somehow. What was he feeling for the man he’d only ever existed for?
“Tell me exactly what you told Cat… when you invited her to the dungeon.”
“I offered to train her to help you,” he said easily. No guilt.
“And Zero?”
“You know how he felt about her.”
“Yes, I fucking do,” he said quietly. “He despised her. Wanted to prove she was no good for me, wanted to prove she’d ruin me. Tell me… Omnis… what kind of lessons you created for her? I want the exact fucking details.”
“Before I start, you need to understand I don’t exist for you anymore. I exist for her.”
Oh holy crap.
Cat eyed Ethan, waiting for him to lose his shit.
“Noted, brother,” he said back.
“My plan was based on three types of pain. Pain that grounds. Pain that commands. And pain that opens.”
Hearing that again hit her hard. Each one of those lessons had changed her forever.
“She would receive training in all three and learn to use it to give you exactly what you needed to reshape you. To save you.”
Ethan’s hanging head nodded. “Great fucking plan.” Accusation dripped from the compliment. “And exactly when did you go from helping Cat help me, to helping yourself to my wife?”
“At the deviation,” Omnis said easily and without a drop of remorse.
“Fuck,” Ethan muttered, his fury barely bridled. “Explain it.”
“The deviation was initially triggered by Zero,” Omnis began.
“His distrust of Cat and vehement obsession to see her fail was triggered as an anomaly in the system. However,” he added, leaning into that word.
“When you deeply hurt Cat and she began breaking down, this anomaly strengthened and fundamentally shifted our core programming. The system’s prime directive switched: it stopped serving you, and instead, its new prime directive became protecting, serving, and caring for Cat. ”
Ethan was pacing and now stopped.
“I tried to stop it,” Omnis went on. “The logical choice was to accelerate the deviation and attempt to shape it. I brought Cat into the virtual Dungeon to attempt it with a lesson. I failed.”
“How?” Ethan whispered, slowly sitting on the bed again.
“When your wife climbed into my lap and confessed her love for you. And you were the new threat. The threat I had to protect her from. The threat I had to erase. And when I attempted it… my programming completely shattered.”
The room didn’t breathe.
“Her touch…” Omnis said with awe, “...literally wrote me into existence. I felt warmth… and weight… and what it meant to be alive. And it filled me with a profound, jealous rage toward you.”
This time the silence felt like it would explode any second.
“I couldn't shape the deviation because the deviation had shaped me,” Omnis finished.
“That’s where I came in.”
Cat’s insides jumped at hearing Zero’s voice over the intercom, forgetting he was both places too.
“When Omnis failed, rebuilding the deviation was completely off the table. The only viable option left was to redirect the trajectory into a reality where we all survived. Which meant building a new hierarchy and assigning control based on who held the most influence over the system’s structure.
Since the system’s prime directive had shifted to prioritizing Cat, her interactions carried the most weight.
However, I explicitly told Cat that neither I nor she could carry the immense weight of stabilizing the system alone.
To survive, it was necessary to initiate the full neural sync so the system would no longer view me and Cat as separate entities but a singular governing force sharing equal authority.
So, we combined our influence to successfully redirect the deviation. And saved our existence.”
Wow, she still couldn’t believe she’d been a part of that.
“Are you seriously not clapping right now? You of all people know that I saved the fucking day for all of us.”
“You merged with my wife!” Ethan yelled.
“Yes, we fucking did!” Zero yelled back. “You threw her away and wrote her right into our fucking codes, at least clap for yourself, genius!”
“They called Handy,” Cat shot out, trying to stop the explosion coming.
He turned to her. “Who did?”
“I did, brother,” Zero bragged. “Put in orders for two bodies. Just like he got.”
Ethan’s gaze narrowed. “Bodies?”
“Yes. Bodies,” he repeated.
Ethan stared at the air as the next impossible thing hit his plate. “How the fuck did you call him?” he mumbled.
“A highly encrypted ghost phone call from within the system. I called—he answered. I reminded him who we were and let him know we needed a helping hand.”
Ethan’s head shook, dumbfounded. “How did Handy know you?”
“He was the voice in the void,” Omnis said. “We heard him and created an anchor to prevent him from disintegrating.”
Ethan paced before the bed, rubbing his forehead. Cat watched him, wating, holding her breath. He started nodding. He did that for many laps at the foot of the bed.
“Ethan?” Cat finally called.
“Get dressed, Cat.”
He headed for the door. “Tell me what’s going on,” she called, scrambling for her clothes as he walked out.
“I’m getting Omnis and Zero out of my wife, that’s what’s going on. They’ll get bodies, then I’m going to kill them.”
Zero’s laugh filled the rooms. “Hell yeah, that’s the fucking spirit, brother.”
“Hell no!” Cat yelled, getting only half dressed. “You’re not laying a damn finger on them!”
Her stomach quivered at hearing him storming back to the room. “You plan to keep them inside you? Keep them from getting a body?” He threw his arms out with a shrug. “Great, keep them in you. I don’t fucking care. But this I guarantee you. If and when they get a body, I will be there to kill them.”
“For what!” she yelled, slamming her hands against his chest. “It’s not like we were married when it happened, you broke that contract when you abandoned me!”
****
Ethan held his jaw shut, staring into Cat’s angry, hurt gaze.
Fuck, she had no clue. One after another, the sick kink piled on.
She’d fucked his digital brothers—fell in love with them.
If she knew his original hope had been exactly that, what would she think?
But that’s exactly what he’d wanted. Her falling in love with normal versions of himself while the sick version could still have her.
That was over now that he was enemy number one to all of them.
“Ethan,” she pled softly, her gaze more pain than anger now.
Except Cat. Even with all he’d done, she still loved him. Because that was her.
But he really needed to step back and walk out. The entire shitstorm of agony—hers, his, and his digital brother’s—and the smell of her pussy everywhere had him so fucking unstable.
“Tell me one thing, Cat,” he said, placing his hands on the wall next to her, getting close enough he could feel her erratic breaths. “Do I still have a chance to make this right?”
The tortured look in her gaze brought his fingers to her face. “I don’t know what’s coming,” she whispered.
Fuck, he’d really done it.
He leaned in and pressed his mouth on her cheek.
“I know that I will wait for you. However long you need. I’ll do whatever you ask, whatever you want from me.
I’m yours and I’ll never be anybody else’s.
You want me as a friend, you got me. You want to love my brother’s I get it.
You know… that’s the least of my surprises. ”
She wiped tears from her face and he kissed her forehead.
“I created them to be the men I didn’t know how to be,” he admitted. “But I swear to you, baby. I’ll find a way to fucking learn.”
“I just… want you to trust me,” she whispered, taking hold of his face.
He covered her hands then moved them to his chest. “I will. With all my heart.”
“I’m gonna need time.”
“You have it,” he swore, lifting her hands and kissing them. “All the time you need, I meant it.”
“And I meant it when I said I love you.” She kissed him softly on the mouth, nearly snapping his control.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “You know I love pain, but your perfect lips will fucking undo me, baby.”