“No!” I shouted, the single word echoing off the walls of the bare room.
“That good, huh?”
I blinked, looking up at Kira’s smug face. My friend leaned over me, but hopped back when I sat up abruptly.
I rubbed my hand over my eyes. Gods, that had been intense. So real. But it had all been a dream. A stupid bride testing dream.
Rachel, another Earth woman who’d been mated to the governor of The Colony, remained silent, but the corner of her mouth was tipped up. Yeah, she was internally laughing.
Doctor Surnen, who was in charge of all testing on the planet, held his tablet from the other side of the testing chair. I wasn’t sure if he was quiet because he knew the testing involved intense sex dreams or because I was the first female he’d tested and he wasn’t sure what to say to me. From what I’d been told, I was currently the only unmated female on the planet besides the mother of another Earth mate, Kristin. This doctor did not normally test females. He only tested integrated fighters who were transferred here after they’d escaped captivity.
I knew my nipples were hard, but I definitely wasn’t sharing that with the doctor. I didn’t have a hard on because I didn’t have a cock, but my pussy ached for the sex I’d vividly imagined… but hadn’t had.
I was horny. Hornier than I’d ever been in my life. Was the testing supposed to be cruel, to get you all hot and bothered with no chance of relief? Was it so that the person being tested would be so desperate to come that they always approved the match just to get guaranteed sex?
At this point, with those traitorous nipples and my pussy clenching for a cock to fill it, I’d probably approve a match to a planet whose males were blue and had two penises.
“I came here to visit you and Angh, not to be tested,” I reminded, not for the first time.
She rolled her eyes. “You did both. A very successful trip.”
I climbed from the testing chair and stretched. Bad idea since it only rubbed my nipples across my Academy uniform. I whimpered.
Rachel laughed.
“I don’t like you,” I grumbled and gave her my head-of-the-Academy evil eye which usually had cadets peeing in their paints. She only laughed harder.
2
Elite Hunter Quinn, Latiri 4, Hive Integration Base, Sector 437
Heavy manacles circled my wrists and neck, my dried blood the only sign of what the Integration units were trying to do to me.
Make me one of them.
Hive.
Control me. Control my strength and my hunting skills. Control my mind.
I would die before I gave in to the buzzing noise inside my skull. The sound grew louder with each round of injections. I lost more of my mind, even as I felt my body growing stronger.
I’d watched two lifelong friends, two Elite Hunters like myself, die writhing in their cells. But they had not turned into the enemy. They had fought to the end, and they’d denied the Hive what they wanted. More fighters. Elite warriors.
My brothers had not given the blue Hive bastard running the base what he wanted. I was the last of us. The last Elite Hunter in these underground cells. His last chance to succeed.
The others had fought him to the end. As would I.
“I see you are awake, Hunter.” The dark blue alien was a patchwork of silver and dark, vibrant blue. His eyes were nearly black. Completely opaque, there was nothing behind the orbs, no shine of emotion, no soul. Not the blue of a bright sky, something darker and far more sinister. I knew I faced the infamous Nexus, one of the mythical leaders—or creators—of the Hive systems. My information came directly from the I.C., the Coalition Fleet’s Intelligence Core. Fewer than a handful had ever been seen, and only by human females from a new Coalition planet called Earth.
“What do you want? I don’t go for men, and I don’t go blue, so don’t get too excited.” The Nexus narrowed his eyes at me but showed no other reaction. But he knew what I meant. I could sense his irritation in the air.
“I have no wish to breed with you.”
“Thank the gods for small favors.”
That irked him further. “You make attempts at humor, Hunter, but they will not save you. You will be mine in the end.”
I shook my head and stared into his eyes. The act made the noise inside my head increase to a roar, the pain like needles boring into my eyes, but I held that gaze and dared him to kill me. “No. I will be one more dead warrior, and you will be a failure.”