She turned to face me, unzipping her uniform as she did so. She stepped out of everything as I just watched. Transfixed. Stunned. Confused. After a minute, she stood naked before me, the strange fog swirling around her body like whispers caressing her skin.
Frozen in place, I stared. I couldn’t look away. She was beautiful, yet not the same Gwen I knew. Vibrant, deep blue from head to toe, her black hair formed a dark halo around her curves. The blue was divided into sections of color, forming a pattern of light and dark I longed to trace with my hands. My lips.
By the gods. What the fuck had the Hive done to her?
“Go, Mak. We had a deal. You’re free.” She repeated her words, but I still couldn’t move. Or look away. Like I’d be able to leave her now. Naked and blue with dead Hive littered around her feet.
“And where are you going? What do you think you’re doing, female?”
She tilted her head, her smile sad. “Killing as many of them as I can.” Moving slightly, her head rotated as if she were listening to something I couldn’t hear. “He’s angry with me for killing his Soldiers. Good.” She was grinning now, the sight almost frightening. All she needed was a flaming sword or serpents coming out of her head and warriors on dozens of worlds would build shrines and worship her. “We must go now. He is waiting.”
I frowned. “Who is we? Who is waiting? What the fuck is going on? Why the fuck did you take your clothes off?” Moving closer, I stopped her from walking away with a hand on her bare shoulder. “Gwen. Talk to me. Please. I’ll help you.”
She shook her head, her black hair sliding like silky rope. “You can’t help me.” Her blue hand rested on top of mine, her naked body so perfect I felt like I was talking to a statue carved by an artisan. Where was my mate? My Gwen? And who was this creature looking up at me with such resignation in her eyes?
“I can, if you’ll tell me what you’re doing.” I’d never talked to her so softly. We’d been all fire and stubbornness, a battle of wills, fighting and fucking until we both were finally sated.
But this? Her, now? I didn’t understand and there was no fucking way I’d be leaving her side.
She blinked, slowly, and I would swear I could see her mind calculating her options. “I’m taking the Hive ship to the surface and killing Nexus 4 before he can take another shipment of transport minerals off the planet.”
Nexus 4 on the planet’s surface? Minerals? Whatever. Other people could work on that problem. She could tell the governor and the thousands of restless warriors on the surface the details, let them deal with it. And they would. Eagerly. I didn’t give a shit about any of them, or the Hive, or how furious the governor was going to be. Only her.
“Alone?”
She looked at me as if I were the crazy one, standing naked on a moon. “Of course. The rest of you would never get close enough to touch him.” Her smile was frightening, full of death and menace. Not human. “He will want this body. He will not be able to resist what the other created for him.”
Let her get close enough to touch a Nexus 4, who or whatever the fuck that was? Naked? To tempt him into touching her?
“Over my dead body.”
“Go, Mak. You are free.” She shrugged out of my hold and resumed walking. Quickly.
Running after her, I swept her up into my arms and held her against my chest, exactly as I’d done when carrying her to my quarters to lick and taste and fuck her. I wanted her to remember that. I needed her to remember us. But I was in this damn space suit, so I couldn’t kiss her. Taste her.
But I could touch her, to get her out of her head like I had in my bed. Up against my wall. Oh yeah, I’d wiped all thoughts from her head, and I wished I could do that now.
“Let me go,” she struggled, but for once I would use all of my strength and kept her right where I wanted. She could hurt me, force me to fight her with all my strength. I saw the knowledge in her eyes, but she didn’t. Which made my heart skip a beat. She cared, at least that much.
“You’ll have to kill me, Gwen. You’re not going alone.”
She froze in my arms, the glazed look finally leaving her eyes. Anger flared. Good, I could deal with anger. “That’s not fair, Mak. We had a deal. You’re supposed to go. Go home to Rogue 5 and Kronos. So, do it. Leave.”
“No.” I wound my gloved hand into her mass of black hair and held her still, tilting her head back so she would have to either look at me or close her eyes like a coward. And I knew she had courage to spare.
“God damn it.” Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears and I wished I could kiss them away. My fierce warrior was no more. I did not like that she was reduced to tears, but I would not let her go until this was settled, until she understood I wasn’t leaving her side.
“What are you doing? You don’t want a mate, remember? So, go.”
“I want you.”
She shook her head. She heard me but wasn’t really listening. “No.” Her gaze darted down to my elongated fangs, then back up to my eyes. “No, Mak. You don’t. Not forever.”
The bite. Gods be damned, she thought I didn’t want her because I didn’t bite her as a Hyperion would. Hadn’t claimed her. Her upset, these tears were all because of me. “My bite would kill you, Gwen. I am half Forsian. The combination of the Hyperion and Forsian genetic lines makes my bite toxic to a mate. There are only three half-breeds like me in existence, and the last male who tried to claim a female could not resist the instinct to bite. He watched her die in his arms.”
She tried to push against my hold as I heard the rumble of Marz and Vance’s shuttle landing nearby.
“That’s bullshit,” she countered. “You should have told me. I’m not exactly normal, Mak.” She motioned down to her startlingly blue body, the fact that she wasn’t wearing a helmet either. Or anything, for that matter. She took a deep breath and blew it out into the swirling fog to emphasize her point.