Page 29 of The Rebel and the Rogue

No.

Please, by the gods, no. Was that what her scar had been from? Was that the reason she’d been so confused by little Scylla’s attentions? She’d intentionally had Hive integrations imbedded in her body?

“Gerian Eozara. I get Gerian, I’m gone. Out of your hair.” Ivy set her foot down on the ground, and the fact that the hardest female in Cerberus didn’t dare move shocked me almost as much as her words had.

Hived-Up? My Ivy? That was impossible. No one but the foulest of the foul willingly went to the black markets run by the outlying worlds and bought Hive tech. Paid to have their body mutilated. Contaminated. Paid hack scientists to implant experimental and unpredictable enhancements into their bodies to make them stronger, better, faster. Ruthless and lethal and able to… to kill a large swath of Cerberus Legion without even breaking a sweat. It was considered offensive, vile, even on Rogue 5, and compared to the Coalition Fleet, our standards were exceptionally low.

Yet Ivy had done the impossible. I’d seen it firsthand, was witnessing the aftermath right now. I had all the proof I needed to believe it, even if I didn’t want to.

“I don’t know that name.” Jillela lied to the bounty hunter staring down at her, and I held my breath, waiting to see if Ivy would allow her to live for the insult.

Ivy dropped on top of the woman faster than I could blink, her blade pressed to the female’s throat. “Well then, I guess I should just kill you and find a better messenger.”

I’d never seen Jillela afraid before. Never. Not even with the largest of foes. She was a formidable and ruthless opponent, but with Ivy she was petrified. “No. No need. I… I will deliver your message.”

Jillela’s fearful eyes roamed the destruction, the dead. I saw the wheels turning in her mind, the counting as she assessed the threat, the truth of Ivy’s words. The extent of what one female could do in her quest to find Gerian Eozara.

Cerberus was not a small force, there were several hundred members they could send after Ivy. But the human female had just killed at least a dozen of the worst of Cerberus and injured a dozen or so more, without elevating her heart rate. I’d killed as well, but we were not banded with legion colors. This wasn’t a legion versus legion fight. It was personal, the work of a female who was out for vengeance, and those in the Cerberus Legion who got in her way were either injured and broken, like Jillela, or dead.

This destruction was on them. That was our code. Even so, I had no doubt Cerberus would triple his guard and every single one of them on patrol would be out for blood. For Ivy. For the Hived-Up human ex-Coalition fighter.

We wouldn’t get this deep into Cerberus territory again. At least not without killing a few of them along the way. But looking at Ivy, I didn’t think that would stop her.

She hadn’t gotten her bounty, but she’d certainly gotten the message out that she was after him… and would get him. At any price.

“Thank you,” Ivy said to Jillela as if they were ha

ving dinner together like close friends. “You have until this time tomorrow, or I’ll be back.”

Yeah, not friends.

“And how am I supposed to find you?” Jillela wondered. “You aren’t one of us. You are not Rogue 5.”

If anyone like Ivy had grown up on Rogue 5, she’d be infamous regardless of legion. Everyone would know of her abilities, just like Jillela knew she was not from here.

“No, I’m not. I’m a bounty hunter.” Ivy rose and turned, pointed a bloody finger at me. “You know who he is, don’t you?”

The female lifted her head from the ground and looked at me. Our gazes locked. “Zenos.”

“Jillela.” I returned her greeting as a golden angel with ice-cold blue eyes stood above her like death incarnate.

“Find Zenos, you find me.” Ivy clapped her hands together. “Excellent. That’s now settled. We’ll be on our way.”

Ivy sauntered toward me, her hips swinging, every curve and muscle under her control, leaving Jillela behind.

Now that the panic for her safety had bled away like the lifeblood of the Cerberus on the ground before us, I could see Ivy for what she really was. She was contained violence. Lovely death. Primal. Vicious. Protective. She was here to avenge her Coalition unit, her friends who had died. They weren’t her family, but they meant something to her, as the other members of Astra Legion did to me. Not related by blood but by circumstance, by war. She’d gone into Cerberus territory armed with only a blade, blasters and the skill of her body to avenge her friends. To seek the one responsible.

I’d known all that, she’d told me. Us. Astra. Barek, the others. But I hadn’t understood the extent of it, how much it drove her. How far she’d go to achieve her goal.

Had she gotten herself Hived-Up for this purpose? To help her in avenging them? Fuck, if that was true, she’d gone to unbelievable lengths to do so. She hadn’t gotten the integrations for selfish reasons. The opposite. She’d endured pain, even the sneer and hatred of others, for her unit. Entering Cerberus Legion was nothing. This fight? It had been nothing to her.

She would not stop until her loved ones were avenged. The look I’d seen on her face when little Nero had climbed into her lap, the panic, the confusion, must have been because she didn’t understand love and connection that wasn’t forged by battle. She had everything within her to be the perfect mate, the perfect mother, she just didn’t realize it.

She knew nothing but revenge. For fighting. For justice. She’d turned herself into something she detested in order to accomplish the only thing on her mind. Her sole focus.

Once this need for justice was complete, she would learn the truth of herself. I would show her she was more than just a machine out for vengeance. She would be protective of our children. Our legion. Our home.

But those were dangerous thoughts. She’d told me she did not want a mate, and what she’d just done, how she’d single-handedly destroyed a group of Cerberus, was indication enough that her focus wasn’t on those types of pursuits. Settling down, creating a home and a life with someone else? Creating children and the nesting and preparation that came with that? No, what female killed and maimed while eager to carry a child in her womb? Even if she were pining for an infant of her own, my bite was most likely lethal and she would not get a child from me. We could fuck, but I could never claim her. I could not risk her life. She could have died here on the streets, yet I was most fearful of killing her myself.

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