Page 40 of The Rebel and the Rogue

“Go ahead and do it,” I told him. “Kill me.”

“My pleasure, Ivy.” He pressed the business end of the knife to my throat.

I closed my eyes and squeezed the lids closed. Hard. Waited for the sharp point of the blade to slice and rend. To tear my flesh, my arteries and end me.

And then he was gone, ripped away from me as if a tornado had lifted him and tossed him across the room. An animal took his place, fangs extended, a roar like none I’d ever heard filling the space like the blast of a shotgun. He loomed, wild and untamed. Vicious.

“Zenos,” I whispered. My heart soared. “You’re alive.”

The male I’d fallen in love with looked down at me, and I’d never been so happy, so insanely, out of my fucking mind happy to see anyone in my life. Yes, I loved him. God, did I. I’d thought my life was over, not because I hadn’t been able to avenge my unit, but because I’d thought Zenos was dead. Why live when my heart was gone?

But he was here. Alive. And he’d just saved my life.

I sat up, watched as Zenos stalked to Cerberus. He plunged a fist into Cerberus’s chest and I heard bones crack. Break. The leader fell to his knees. I saw Barek and Nev in the doorway. Watching. Waiting.

“You laid a hand on my female,” Zenos said. He struck again. “Mine. I vowed to protect her.” And again. “Don’t fuck with what’s mine.”

And once more.

Cerberus was dead. Sprawled on the ground in a basement with his chest caved in like a broken eggshell. No righteous ending.

It was over. My mission. My rage. My personal battle. It was all over.

When Zenos turned to me, helped me to my feet and looked me over for injuries, I realized I was staring at my life. My heart. It belonged to Zenos.

13

Ivy, Zenos’s Personal Quarters, Astra Legion, Rogue 5

The lights were set to five percent, only a soft glow lit the bedroom, or sleeping room, as Zenos called it. Considering all we’d been through, the fact that I’d stunned him so he wouldn’t come after me, we didn’t say much after we returned from Cerberus Legion, or when we stripped our soiled body armor and showered, or when we slid beneath the cool sheets of his bed.

I’d thought he would yell at me, spank my ass as he’d often threatened to do. I deserved it, all of it. Perhaps I was emotionally vulnerable because I’d thought he was dead, that nothing really mattered except that he was breathing and whole.

Maybe he was quiet because he wanted to stun my ass for what I’d done.

Either way, we stayed quiet.

Cerberus was dead. He’d started a war, and we’d finished it quickly. The Quell lab was destroyed, but so was the Cerberus Legion, from the top down. I couldn’t believe the news that Rhord was dead, that Cerberus had killed him… out of retribution? Hatred? Just because he’d been an asshole without a little bit of integrity?

I felt all this, and I wasn’t even a member of the Astra Legion. How dare he fuck with them? Sure, everyone from Rogue 5 had a bad reputation all over the galaxy, but others didn’t understand. They didn’t know them. Not really. I hadn’t either until I arrived. Until I learned what they were really like. They might be rogue, but Astra Legion were good people. Like Robin Hoods of space where they might be outlaws, but they broke laws—or at least bent them—for good reason. They had an unspoken code of ethics that didn’t get broken. Until Gerian Eozara. Until Cerberus went too far.

What he’d done would bring the legion closer together, not tear them apart as he’d wanted. They’d all be wary though. Jaded.

What Gerian Eozara did, how Cerberus had responded, showed why they had the code, why they stuck together, forged bonds that were as strong as those fighting the Hive.

It was good versus bad in the Wild Wild West of space.

I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened, that Gerian Eozara had been caught, that the Quell operation coming out of Cerberus was shut down. That Cerberus himself was dead. It was over. Justice hadn’t been served—yet—because Gerian Eozara was still alive, but my job was done. He’d be tried for his crimes. Someone else would rule Cerberus Legion. Take on that name as their own. Hopefully make it become something honorable.

I wasn’t stupid enough to think that Quell would never be distributed again. My team was still dead. They didn’t care that he’d been captured or that Cerberus Legion was in turmoil. They didn’t care about anything since they were fucking dead. I was still the only one who lived. I’d been so focused on getting retribution, getting revenge, that I’d lost track of what I really wanted. What I needed in life.

I wasn’t a fighter any longer. Hell, I wasn’t even fully human. My integrations made me so I couldn’t go back to Earth, even if I wanted. I no longer had a mission, a job to do. I wasn’t the same woman who’d volunteered. I wasn’t the same woman who’d graduated from the Academy. I wasn’t even the same woman who’d survived years of battle with the Hive. I was lost, it seemed, the only thing anchoring me was Zenos’s arms about me.

The only place I found comfort, where I was accepted for exactly who I was, and what, was with Zenos. And I’d stun blasted his ass.

“I can practically hear you thinking,” Zenos murmured, reaching across the bed and pulling me into him, my back to his front. One arm was slung over my waist, his palm resting on my belly, fingertips brushing the undersides of my breasts. He was warm, his muscles hard. Hard everywhere.

The prod of his cock at my back made my nipples pebble, my body warm.

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