Page 50 of The Rebel and the Rogue

I felt relief, happiness, so many things all at once. I dropped back into the chair, my legs giving out. We’d found it. We could mate. Have children. Keep our loved ones alive.

I popped back up again as if I were some child’s toy bouncing up and down. “Ivy,” I said, looking around again. “Where’s Ivy?”

“Gone.” Astra said the one word with such finality my head whipped around to look down at her.

“What do you mean, gone?”

Barek slowly stood, faced me. “Don’t speak to my mate in such a tone,” he growled.

Yeah, the antidote worked.

“I want to claim Ivy. Fuck, it works.”

“You’re too late,” Barek said.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“She told you all along, since we were on Zenith even, that she’d taken the antidote and you could bite her. She told you to do it. You refused.”

“Of course I refused. I didn’t want her to die.”

“She wouldn’t have died,” Barek countered.

“How would you know?”

Barek tipped his chin down. He was calm as fuck, and I was coming out of my skin.

“Because Astra is alive. She took the serum and I bit her and she didn’t die.”

“Obviously,” I snapped, waving at a very serene Astra. Gods, a few orgasms and our leader went all soft.

“I trusted the tests that were done. I trusted Ivy that the antidote worked.”

“You were willing to risk Astra’s life?” I asked, stunned.

“I was willing to risk my life for Barek,” Astra said. “For love. To finally belong to him.”

“You could have died!” I shouted. Heads swiveled in our direction, the room went quiet.

Astra slowly stood. Barek moved to her side as if they were magnets and nothing could keep them apart.

“We have the antidote, Zenos. What we’ve wanted all along. You were too afraid to use it, to believe in it.”

“I love her too much,” I admitted. “I won’t have her dead!”

“Then you won’t have her at all,” Astra added. “She’s transported off Rogue 5. You refused to bite her, even with the antidote. You didn’t trust her.”

“Of course I trust her! I love her!”

I was repeating myself, I knew it. But I was irrational. Angry. She was gone?

Astra took a step toward me. “We’ve wanted the antidote all our lives. Generations before us would have killed for it. Now we have it. It’s ours, Zenos. And yet you’re still afraid to live, to claim the one you love. You must trust in Ivy. If you don’t, your love means nothing.”

I looked at the

sickeningly in love duo before me.

They’d waited decades to mate. As soon as the antidote was available, they’d taken it. Not blindly, for it had been tested, but with faith nonetheless. They’d been willing to risk it all. For love.

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