Page 23 of The Rebel and the Rogue

A small hand settled at the base of my neck, and I stilled as she traced the line of my scar over my shirt, top to bottom.

I gasped and Zenos explained. “Our uniforms are designed to pick up the markings on our skin and display them.” He pointed to his own arm and the odd assortment of marks and lines on his uniform that I’d always assumed was some kind of camouflage or intentional design. It was in the new clothing we’d donned earlier, not the other garments. Perhaps only here on Rogue 5 did they wear it, for I doubted anyone they met on Zenith had the same custom.

“It’s a setting in the new uniforms,” he said, validating my thoughts. “Every scar is tracked by the suit and displayed as a badge of strength.”

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” I murmured.

I quoted the famous Earth saying as the little girl inspected me from head to toe, touching me everywhere with no self-consciousness at all. Arms. Shoulders. Legs. Obviously a curious little thing, when she reached the top of my uniform, she moved my hair aside so she could track the scar all the way up to the base of my skull.

“Wow. You are very brave. Did that hurt?” she asked.

“Yes.” The word was barely audible. Memory flashed through me like acid, and my breath caught in my throat, trapped there as the unexpected flash of horror held me paralyzed. I remembered the day my entire unit died, still wondered why I had not gone into the final dark with them. The images of that time crowded into my mind as if I had a horror film playing on repeat in my mind. I could still see the Hive Scout who’d sliced me open, feel the burning agony as my commander had pulled me through the dirt and gore before he’d died. The silence that had remained after they’d all succumbed still haunted me when I tried to sleep. I could see the surgeon, hear the crackling voice of the doctor who’d offered to make me more than what I was before, who gave me the illegal implants, who saved my life and gave me purpose.

I’d spent two months in that filthy clinic on the outskirts of the sector. Two months of agony as I fought to survive despite the knowledge that they were dead. My friends. The only people I loved in this universe. Dead. Every. Last. One.

“Ivy?” Zenos’s voice sounded far, far away, like an echo.

The dining room in Astra Legion was gone. I was lost in my head, surrounded by death. Agony.

Pounding. All I could hear was the pounding of my blood through my ears. And screams. I covered my ears with my palms.

“Zenos’s mate.” Small. Innocent. So trusting. Nero brought me back to reality with a tug on my wrists and soft words.

Blinking, I pushed the memories back like I’d done thousands of times before. I blushed furiously, realizing what had happened. I dropped my hands to gently lift him from my lap. He went without protest, and I pushed myself to my feet to look down at both him and the little girl. She looked unsure now, and I hated myself for that. One more thing to add to the list. I gave her a small smile of reassurance. “Yes, honey, it hurt. A lot. But I’m okay now.”

“Because you are strong.” She nodded as if it were fact. She knew about scars, knew they were wounds that hurt, but nothing more complex than that. Thank God. A child’s mind was so innocent of danger. Her smile was a relief, and I reached out to touch her soft cheek. She really was beautiful.

“Yes.” I was, and it was time to start acting like it. To get my head back in the fucking game. Enough mooning over an alien male I couldn’t have. Enough feeling safe, feeling cared for. The clothing didn’t mean I truly belonged. It meant I wasn’t naked. And my hair… God. Who could fight with long tresses getting in the way? Maybe in a Hollywood movie, but this was real. This was Rogue 5. I was such an idiot. Enough.

I shifted my gaze to Zenos, crossed my arms over my chest. “Playtime’s over. Let’s go. I have a job to do. It is time to find Gerian Eozara.”

He lingered for a few moments to say goodbye to the children, but I couldn’t watch. I didn’t want to see him with them, didn’t need that image in my mind of Zenos as the big, loving protector. As a father. As more than just the guy I fucked, because if I thought about him in any way but a giant orgasm machine, I might start to care. And that was the most dangerous thing of all.

And the game, giants and pirates? I wasn’t either of those things. I wasn’t a princess. I wasn’t a hybrid. Hell, if I were perfectly honest, I wasn’t exactly human anymore either. I had the scars to prove it. I was a bounty hunter, and it was time to stop living in a dreamland of happily ever after and babies and get back to work.

8

Zenos, Cerberus Legion, Rogue 5

Ivy moved like a ghost through the streets, the dark black of our uniforms making it easy for the two of us to blend into shadows as we moved through enemy territory. She’d put her hair into a tight braid, and I missed the soft fall of gold down her back. I’d removed my armband—Ivy had yet to find hers—and reset our armor when we left the relative safety of the Astra-controlled region of the city. Nothing marked us now. We were truly rogue. And the outward display lines of Ivy’s scars were gone as well. I missed them, wanted to strip her of her uniform and trace the lines with my tongue. To revel in her life experiences, her bravery. Her strength. To hear the full story of how she’d achieved them. Hold her if that was hard to do. Outward scars were one thing, internal ones, the demons we fought in our heads, was another.

“Keep up or I’m leaving you behind.”

Her hissed warning made me grin, made my balls ache to master her again. Fierce, my female. But I’d seen the horror fill her eyes when little Scylla asked about the scars, knew there was a story. Devastation so deep the memories took her someplace hidden in her head at a simple mention. I’d very much needed to know what had made her shudder with fear and pain, needed to know everything about the female I became more obsessed with each passing moment. Needed to know who to kill for hurting her.

Scars were a sign of all we survived, but it was possible that was all Ivy had done. Survived. Pushing herself forward through time, but was she really living?

As hard as I tried, I couldn’t get the image of little Nero curled up in her lap out of my mind. Couldn’t stop imagining that it was my son or daughter she held instead. Our child. I’d never had such thoughts before, never gave myself a moment to even consider it, the idea too dangerous to my psyche. It held too much hope. Too much want for something I couldn’t have.

Ivy had looked shocked when Nero placed himself in her care, as if kids were a novelty for her. She’d said she’d been a fighter for four years. That was a long time in battle and most likely without the simple comforts of a home, of family. I wondered who or what she’d left behind on Earth. Obviously she didn’t long to return, for she’d laughed at Astra when she’d mentioned it. But four years without kin. Without connection to familial roots… She shrugged it off. Gods, she shrugged off everything, every emotion, and I had to wonder if it was because it hurt too much. If she felt too much.

I saw past that, to the tender side of her, one she probably didn’t reveal often, even to herself or anyone else, and never to me. I’d seen her glare, snarl and stand toe-to-toe with both Barek and Astra. I’d seen her gasping with pleasure. I’d seen lust and hunger and rage—but never that.

Gentleness. Caring.

Love, perhaps? Or at least the stirrings of emotions I had begun to fear she might not ever reveal. I’d taken her body. Fucked her. Filled her. Made her scream with pleasure. It was an escape for her. A way to retreat from the horrors that drove her. A short connection with another, a few moments of bliss found only in orgasm. Yet she had never looked at me with such softness, and I was shocked to discover I longed for her to bestow that gift upon me. Seeing her come on my cock, on my mouth was one thing. I wanted all of her, not just the prickly, argumentative facade she had firmly in place.

“What’s wrong with you?” Ivy stood with her hands on her hips. She’d stopped moving and stood in the shadow of an awning, glaring at me as my mind had wandered. “Well? Are you trying to get us both killed?”

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