him. Sweat poured from her brow.
“You’re fired, Pigeon. Get off my ship.”
“But—”
“Now!” Hysterian roared. Teal light burst forth. “Unless you want to spend the next few months in the brig!”
Alexa gripped him weakly. “You hurt him, and I’ll never forgive you,” she gasped, catching his glowing eyes. She held them through the pain.
Something in his gaze shifted. Frustration?
“Get out of my sight,” he warned Pigeon though he stared at her while he said it. Hysterian swiveled and took her back to medical. He laid her back down on the pallet, and the machine hooked her up. Tears rushed from her eyes, knowing what was about to happen.
She caught sight of Pigeon in the doorway, watching on in horror.
“Why the fuck were you trying to leave?” Hysterian demanded, pulling off her boots. There was a heavy thud when they hit the floor. “What’s possessed you? You need to rest. Do you know how close you came to dying?”
“Hysterian,” she tried to stop him.
“I’m this close, Alexa, this close”—he put his fingers together—“to ripping off every head on Libra, and you’re trying to take a fucking stroll?”
“Stop—”
He leaned over her as the needles slipped back into her arms. Her chest constricted.
“You can’t die,” Hysterian said. “I won’t allow it. If I have to rip my skin off and give it to you for that to happen, I will.”
“I’m not human…”
Alexa fainted.
Twenty
Hysterian paced the bridge, examining Alexa’s medical records. He had the medical equipment rerun all its scans for him, take her blood, all while he denied what she’d uttered. Then he had them all deleted and removed from his systems, only to do it all again.
It was all right there.
The abnormalities. She had T-positive genes, and her blood type? Nothing any full-blooded human could ever have.
He scanned the records he had on file for her and the ones from his lab. If he could convince himself it was impossible, maybe he could convince the systems inside him that urged him to waste her. For a split-second, he’d nearly touched her.
Hysterian palmed his face.
He couldn’t deny the evidence, and he couldn’t deny the conversation that happened between her and Pigeon before they tried to leave his ship. No matter how hard he manipulated his coding, it remained the same. Better Cyborgs than him had tried and they couldn’t do it.
How could he be so easily duped?
He thought about Alexa’s hair dye, her sweet-smelling blood, and how she was always cold. The sweat, the dampness of the bedding after they’d had sex. Perhaps even why she tried to fight him every step of the way…
He missed every sign. His hands clenched.
Alexa was a half-breed.
She held the enemies’ blood in her veins. And he’d fucked her? Took her virginity?
He may have not killed countless Trentians like other Cyborgs had, but he’d still killed many. Even now, the codes—the first ones, the ones that were nearly impossible to remove from his systems—urged him to swat her life out like a bug. Or to hand her over to the authorities.
They demanded he remove her from the equation, because the only good equation didn’t have aliens in it.
She could be a spy.
Why else would she infiltrate his crew knowing the risk?
Hysterian turned to the porthole and stared at the stars as the Questor flew farther and farther away from Libra. He’d kept them docked for nearly a week while Alexa recovered, but now that she was on the mend, he wanted to be as far from the port as possible. Far from the shit that happened there, farther still from his own stupidity.
He could outrun it if he tried.
Was it insanity, flying out into space with your enemy? Each time Hysterian tried to leave, or thought about dropping Alexa’s sick body off for someone else to deal with, he couldn’t do it. Because each time he tried, he knew he’d want to kill anyone who got close enough to try and take her away from him.
She lied to me. He scowled.
And I wanted to protect her, was willing to hunt down her enemies and tear their spines from their bodies… He turned from the porthole and stormed out of the bridge, heading straight for the gym’s bathroom. He stripped, turned on the cleaning unit, and stepped under the hot water. His nerves thrummed.
How was it that he started with a crew of five, and now he was down to one, and in less than two months’ time?
How was it that he had an alien sleeping in his fucking