Chapter Eight
CJ, Rezzer’s personal quarters
I was turning into a bitch, a whiny, emotional wreck. I was overly sensitive and angry, a nag. I felt used. I had a little bit of an excuse. I’d traveled to a new world. Met a mate who didn’t want me, who’d tried to give me away. I’d taken a chance, risked everything to coax his beast from him. I’d given a complete stranger control of my body. Let him use me. Fuck me. Fill me with his cock. And then? Celebrate the fact that I had a magic pussy; that I’d healed him somehow and now he could leave me and return to battle?
What. The. Hell?
I didn’t understand any of this. So, yeah, it had been a big day.
But the one thing I didn’t like was to be used. Used and tossed aside. The greedy executives at the top in my company had done that to me. I’d been used in the insider-trading scheme and paid the price. They’d walked away scot free, abandoning me to the courts, to a cruel fate in prison. Yes, I was guilty. But we were all guilty.
And now, now that I’d fucked the beast back to life, he was going to toss me aside and go back to his old life. Like I was nothing more than a tool. Medicine? His last chance?
Not happening.
I took in his quarters. They were like a modest hotel suite without any charm. Simple. Plain. Basic. The bed, though, was huge. Bigger than any I’d ever seen, but it made sense since he was bigger than anyone I’d ever met.
When Rezzer said nothing, I turned around. He leaned against the wall just inside the closed door. His beast was gone, and he was now his normal size, which was still huge, and muscled, and totally freaking distracting. The clothing that had stretched taut around his beast now barely clung to his frame once more. He looked rumpled and sexy, well fucked. Pleased with himself. Which was completely unfair when I was questioning everything, feeling like an idiot, a hopeless romantic, emphasis on hopeless.
Scratches marred his right cheek, red against the dark stubble. His green eyes watched me closely, his arms folded over his broad chest. He was gorgeous.
I sighed because, while I was upset and hurt, I still wanted him. My pussy ached from the size of his cock and his seed still slipped from me. He was quite virile and I felt the pull of his animal magnetism. Moth, meet flame. He was going to burn me to ash.
I didn’t even mind the feel of the bruises along my back from being pounded into the hard transport room wall, or the ones I knew would be on my bottom from his hands.
“You were a fighter? In the war?” I asked, running my fingers along the top of the small table.
“I am an Atlan Warlord. I fought for seven years before the Hive captured me. Killed thousands of them.” He sounded oddly proud of that fact, and my heart sank.
“You loved fighting, didn’t you?” I asked, but I already knew the answer.
“Yes. We are born to fight, Caroline. But I was tired. We’re all tired. This war has been going on for centuries. Since long before I was born.”
“So, why are you here? Why am I here? You can’t fight anymore because your beast was gone?” We stood facing each other across the room, the tension, the attraction so thick in the air it was like breathing taffy.
“I fought. I was captured and tortured. But I was one of the lucky ones. I survived. All they left me with was this.” He pointed to the silver flesh on his left side. “Others suffered worse fates, were absorbed into the Hive mind. Lost forever. But those of us here, on the Colony, managed to escape with our minds intact.”
“Everyone on the Colony has Hive implants?” The idea was disturbing, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. My mind was trying to assimilate what he was telling me. What small amount Warden Egara had told me.
“Yes. We are all contaminated.”
“Contaminated?” What the hell kind of word was that? “I don’t understand. Contaminated with what? Poison? Are you all sick? Do you have some strange disease? What are you talking about?”
He sighed, the look of defeat in his eyes one I recognized from earlier, in the transport room, when he’d been trying to tell me he was unworthy. I didn’t like it.
“We are all here because we have Hive technology integrated into our bodies that cannot be removed. We are considered a danger to our people, our planets. And so we are banished to live out the rest of our lives here, on the Colony, with the others who carry the curse of their time with the Hive in their flesh.”
“Why here? I don’t understand why you all can’t go home.” This was—a disgrace. That’s what this was. War heroes. Soldiers who fought and died and suffered. And now they were banished forever from their homes because of a silver eye, like Ryston, or silver skin, like Rezzer? “That’s total bullshit.”
He sighed. “Here, on the Colony, we are deep inside Coalition space. The communication frequencies that the Hive use to control their Soldiers and Scouts can’t reach us here. But if we went home, or back to our battlegroups?” He shrugged. “Every warrior here has the potential to be used by the Hive, taken over, reactivated, forced to kill our own people. Our friends. Our fellow warriors. We are not children with scars, mate. We are hardened warriors, battle tested. Killers. We all understand why we are here. We have accepted the sacrifice we make to protect our homes, our people.”
“That’s not right,” I protested. I couldn’t wrap my mind around this. Banished, like lepers? These were warriors who’d paid the ultimate price, risked everything, and they couldn’t even go home?
Was that why so few human soldiers had returned to Earth? We’d been under Coalition protection for just over two years now. The length of time the soldiers were required to volunteer to fight. And yet, I’d only seen one or two return. Every time one of them made it back, the news channels blasted it all over the planet like it was a major news story. “Are there human soldiers here? People from my planet? From Earth?”
He nodded, slowly. “A few. Not many. Humans are fierce fighters, small and fast. They are placed on ReCon teams, infiltration and stealth units. But when they are captured, most don’t survive.”
My hand moved to cover my stomach. I was going to be sick. “This isn’t right. It can’t be right—“