to end the beating. The guard hit Malice twice across the stomach with the reprimand stick, the metal ringing against his frame.
Malice clenched his jaw. The impact of the stunning had worn off. Due to his enhanced nanocybotics, he recovered much quicker than he had in the past.
“She thinks she’s so smart, with that big brain of hers.” Picton’s eyes glowed with a malicious zeal. “She doesn’t realize two beings can use that tactic.” He slammed the reprimand stick against Malice’s face. Blood speckled his visual system. “I put notes in her file about how she talked with that other medic, the one who blew her own head off. I told them how they were always bumping into each other in the hallways.” The male snorted. “The two cunts hated each other, but the beings reviewing the footage won’t know that.”
The fraggin’ male would push Illona into danger. Malice curled his fingers into fists. His female hadn’t hated the other medic. She’d considered the female to be her friend.
A closer review of the footage might reveal their connection.
“Fuck. I wish it had been her that had walked through that door.” Picton beat Malice with the reprimand stick again and again. “They were both uptight females who thought they were better than everyone else, but she’s the worst, always haranguing me about the way I treat you machines. I would like to see her head being blown off. That would shut that measly mouth of hers forever.”
Malice’s doubts about his female’s motives dissipated with each whack of the guard’s reprimand stick. Illona was highly intelligent. She must have processed Picton would cause trouble for her, was a formidable enemy to make, yet she’d confronted and provoked the male.
For him. She had done it to shield him, not caring that it placed her lifespan at risk.
He recalled her anger after her friend’s death, how she’d appeared willing to seek vengeance, processing there was a high probability she would die. His female was brave, foolishly so, and too blasted careless with her well-being.
Picton’s face turned red. Sweat streamed down his ruddy cheeks. The guard struck Malice with all his might…which wasn’t much. He was a human. But it was enough to beat his flesh into mush.
As usual, Malice was stunned at regular intervals. The guard didn’t have the courage to hit him without those invisible restraints.
Malice endured the pain and withdrew into his processors. In the past, he had focused on hating Illona, on plotting her death, his vengeance. All his anger had been directed at her.
He no longer blamed her for her actions. She’d been trapped as he had been, was forced to play a role to ensure she lived and he survived.
During this planet rotation’s beating, he concentrated on the yearning inside him, on the need he had for his little female. It burned within him, had grown stronger with every breeding.
He reveled in the footage Valor relayed of her, savoring her laughter, her smile, the warmth in her big brown eyes, the lilt in her voice. That, he projected, was the true Illona. The serene, cool medic persona had merely been a mask donned to fool their shared enemy.
Judging by her exchanges with Valor, they now also shared a friend. His female joked with the E Model as she extracted the tracking devices from his back, telling him she hadn’t lost a cyborg yet.
Then she admitted the two of them had been her only cyborg patients. Valor laughed. She did too, gaining amusement from her own joke.
If Malice hadn’t been stunned, he would have smiled also.
That was a revelation. He wasn’t the smiling type.
He also wasn’t the sharing kind. It didn’t mesh with his possessive nature. He would have preferred to be his female’s only patient, didn’t like that she was touching another male.
That male was his friend, wasn’t interested in breeding with Illona. Valor had complained numerous times, loudly, over the transmission lines that she stunk like a C Model. The warrior acknowledged Malice’s claim, respected it, would never touch her.
And touching beings was her role. She was a medic. Medics often made physical contact with their patients to run diagnostics on them and to repair them. That was part of the process.
But Malice didn’t like the touching. At all.
She was his. He—
The handheld clipped to Picton’s flight suit buzzed, gyrated against the male’s hip. The guard didn’t appear to notice that signal. He continued to pummel Malice into crimson pulp. The handheld vibrated more vigorously. The hum became