Chapter 2
Gwendolyn Fernandez, The Colony, Ten Minutes Earlier…
The hammer I swung was at least four feet long. The heavy, blunted end was designed to pulverize rock in the caves beneath the Colony’s surface. Designed for an Atlan or a Prillon warrior, not a five-foot-five female from Earth.
Had I been normal—still fully human—I wouldn’t have been able to lift it, let alone swing it in a wide arc and bring it crashing down on the wall in my friend, Kristin’s, living room.
I’d been at it for over an hour, and barely broken a sweat, or worked the edge off my frustration. I was a hamster on a wheel on this stupid planet, and every oversized man-child here thought I not only needed a keeper, but wanted a big, bad alpha male to tell me what to do, what to eat, what to wear. Some Prillon had offered to put a collar around my neck so he could read my emotions or some shit.
The thought made me feel violated. The chaos of my mind was not a pretty place right now. I definitely didn’t need to give a Prillon warrior—or two—access to the inner sanctum. What they’d find would probably scare them. Hell, most of the time the thoughts running through my mind scared me. Thus, me beating the shit out of Kristin’s wall.
I swung the hammer again, harder, taking down a chunk twice my size with one blow. I didn’t hear the door open, but it must have, because I was no longer alone.
“What the hell, Gwen? When I said I wanted the wall torn down to make this space bigger, I wasn’t thinking right now, and I wasn’t thinking you’d do it.” Kristin’s voice broke through the noise I made while smashing the wall to bits. I looked over my shoulder at my friend, the dust swirling around me like I was Pigpen from the Charlie Brown cartoon. Kristin wore the familiar body armor, as if she’d just come back from a mission, which she had.
“Don’t worry. I closed the door to the baby’s room so no dust would get in there.” Kristin had a little one, a beautiful baby girl and two doting mates who treated her like a goddess.
But she was allowed to go on missions. To hunt for the Hive. Her mates had to be the only reasonable aliens on the whole damn planet.
And she wasn’t even a cyborg. She was one-hundred-percent human. A volunteer. An Interstellar Bride sent from Earth when she’d been matched to her primary mate, Tyran, a tough as nails Prillon who had about the same amount of cyborg tech as I did. Tyran was strong. Super strong. One of only two warriors on the planet I wasn’t sure I could best in a fight.
And he already had a mate. Kristin. My thoughts shifted away from him. Not that I’d go after a guy who was mated, but he definitely wasn’t interested. He only had eyes for Kristin. And that was how it should be.
The other male on the Colony who melted my butter? Well, he was a loner. Quiet. Massive. Everyone I’d asked said he was an Atlan, but there was something different about him. Something that made my body clench with heat and my pussy ache with emptiness. Of all the males I’d met since being denied a return to Earth and basically left out here to rot, he was the only one who interested me in the slightest.
Makarios.
So, of course, he was one of the few who’d shown absolutely no interest in me. None. Not one stolen glance. No eye contact. Nada.
Big fat zero.
The only thing that saved my shattered ego was that he didn’t seem to talk to anyone—male or female—except the two other Atlans he’d been with when the trio had escaped from the Hive. Braun, Tane and Makarios. The three Atlan Musketeers. All three of them were gorgeous, I had to admit it. But there was something about Makarios that put me on edge.
The others called him Mak, but when I looked at him, I pretty much just stopped thinking. Even his name was erotic. I wanted him. I wanted him to unleash some of that restrained control all over me. I didn’t want forever, just long enough to scratch an itch or two. My sexual dry spell extended all the way back to Earth. Too long to go without a man-induced orgasm. Or two. Hell, with Mak, it would be at least three, I was sure.
It was well known that he didn’t want a mate. The rumor-mill claimed he’d recently tried to escape the Colony—obviously, that hadn’t worked—and that he wasn’t even Coalition, but one who was cast out from Rogue 5. Maybe he was part Atlan and part whatever sexy beast roamed the Rogue 5 moon’s home planet of Hyperion. All I’d ever heard about Rogue 5 was that they were a bunch of pirates and smugglers who belonged to very strict gangs. No loyalty to anyone but each other. The talk I’d heard said that originally, Mak had only been captured by the Hive because he was sitting in the brig of a Coalition ship when the Hive attacked. That he was nothing more than a Rogue 5 criminal with really bad luck. Wrong place, wrong time and he ended up with Hive integrations and a life stuck on the Colony.
But when I looked into his eyes, I didn’t see a criminal. I saw a restlessness and rage I understood all too well. We were the same, me and Makarios. Trapped. Prisoners.
Freaks.
I swung the hammer. Harder.
The section of wall burst into a cloud of dust...
…and the ceiling splintered out in a web of hairline cracks above our heads.
“Holy shit, woman. That’s enough!” Kristin closed the distance and took the hammer from me. I grinned when she was forced to drop it with a loud oomph. “How the hell did you even lift that thing?”
“Superfreak, remember?” I’d broken into her quarters to take care of the wall for her while she was out. Her idea to have it torn down one she’d shared in a late-night gab fest over a cup of Atlan wine, one of the few true pleasures to be found on this God-forsaken planet. And knowing she was off somewhere fighting while I resorted to breaking and entering to keep myself occupied somehow made the destruction less satisfying than I’d hoped. Still, it was better than going back down to the governor’s office and arguing with him again. And a hell of a lot better than going down to the cafeteria and being eye-balled like the prize broodmare at a horse show.
“Stop saying that. If you were such a freak, every male on the base wouldn’t be trying to get your attention.”
“Couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that I’m the only single female within light years of this place, could it? Last two people on a deserted island. Remember that game?”
Kristin laughed. “Oh, yeah. I always chose Detective Amaro.”
I nearly choked, but coughed instead, waving at the cloud of dust settling around me to cover my reaction. “Seriously? From that crime show?” The detective was a very popular character on an Earth crime drama on TV. At least it had been when I left Earth. He was a badass who always got the bad guy. And I knew Kristin used to be FBI. But still. “Really? Why?”