Page 28 of The Rebel and the Rogue

re in danger, and I expected to be obeyed.

Blade swirling in her palm, she glanced over her shoulder at me and grinned, completely ignoring the two Prillon hybrids looming over her like she was carrion.

“Not yet, baby,” she said to me as if placating a small child. She looked amused, almost eager to fight. She appeared relaxed, but I sensed the anticipation, the tension in her body ready to be unleashed. “This will just take a few minutes.”

A few minutes? We’d be dead in a few minutes.

My breath caught in my throat, half panic, half paralyzed by the gleam of eagerness in her gaze—and more. She’d called me baby. What did that—

I blinked and she’d moved, her blade slicing through the two Prillon hybrids like they were made of air. I knew differently, knew what it took to slice through the protective band of armor at the base of their throats, their large bodies. Skin, tendon, bone.

Ivy shouldn’t have been able to…

The hybrid Viken fell next, his neck twisted at an odd angle as Ivy leaped over his head—way over his head—and landed in the center of a group of Cerberus Enforcers at least ten paces closer to the building. Holy fuck, she had to be an Everian Hunter to move like that.

The others, at first stunned at what she’d done, now swarmed her like insects. The attack, her explosion of movement had lasted just a second or two.

My mind tried to process, to understand what I was seeing. What Ivy was doing. All by herself.

It was impossible. This was not happening. My eyes weren’t working properly.

She disappeared from view, buried beneath the pile of attackers, and the possessive rage within me exploded. I’d vowed to keep her safe, and I was failing. Finally I moved. I attacked, flinging bodies, uncaring of the path of destruction I left in my wake. If they blocked my path to Ivy, they died. I had to reach her. To save her.

“No!”

My bellow of rage seemed to snap a few of the peripheral bystanders to their senses. A few turned and ran because this wasn’t just a female who’d ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. This wasn’t fun and games for them anymore. If they hadn’t fled, they’d have taken their last breaths. The ones who bolted were the smart ones. They didn’t have a death wish. Not for themselves.

The others I tore to pieces with my bare hands. Two. Five. Ten. Ion blaster fire bounced off my new armor exactly as the smuggler had promised Astra it would when we’d bought it. I felt the cut of several blades, but they were nothing. Last-ditch efforts to protect themselves. Annoyances that preceded the attackers’ deaths.

I plowed through the Cerberus fighters, but when I reached the place Ivy had disappeared, I found nothing but a pile of dead and dying, none of them Ivy. My female was nowhere to be seen.

“Ivy!”

My bellow echoed up and down the street, and I realized how quiet things had become. Dead bodies were strewn about my feet, the others having either run away to wait for reinforcements or taken refuge inside. They’d all given up. Fled.

But where the fuck was my female?

My head whipped around at the sound of ion blasts from inside the canteen. Shouting. Screams.

Oh, shit. She went inside?

Enraged—at Ivy and everyone who was shooting at her—I stalked to the door to open it, my blood-slicked hand wrapped around the handle. Glass shattered and I jumped back. A body flew through the air to hit the street with a loud groan.

Not Ivy, but a hulking hybrid Atlan in fucking beast mode. He had to be close to my height, my size. He’d been so enraged his beast had taken over, yet he’d been tossed out a window as if he were a piece of food scrap given to a pet.

Turning, I watched in awe as Ivy leaped through the open section of window—she’d completely destroyed the scene displaying a peaceful Atlan landscape—to crouch on the ground next to a pile of bodies. Scanned the group for threats. No, she wasn’t part Everian. She was something else entirely, something I’d never seen before.

A female I recognized as one of Cerberus’s top Enforcers lay at the edge. Jillela. The female was a skilled and ruthless fighter. Cruel and brutal, yet she, too, lay broken among her legion members. Alive but unable to fight.

“Cerberus will hunt you down,” Jillela warned, her voice tinged with pain, her breathing ragged. “You will die for this.”

Her threat made my blood boil, and I ached to rip her body in half for daring to threaten Ivy.

Ivy stood, walked over to her. Loomed. “You tell Cerberus that I’m coming back, and I’ll keep coming back, keep killing you drug-running fucks until he gives me what I want.” Blood covered Ivy’s hands, her blade and uniform, but she wasn’t even breathing hard. Didn’t even have sweat on her brow after killing or injuring at least thirty Cerberus. What. The. Fuck?

“And what is that, you Hived-Up piece of shit?” Jillela glared, wincing as she tried to move. Ivy put a booted foot on the female’s shoulder and pushed her back down.

I froze as if stunned by a blaster. What had Jillela said? Hived-Up?

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