Her Cyborg Beast, page 11
The Earth Coalition fighter escorted us down the corridor, Rezzer at my side as we followed him to the governor’s command room. As soon as the door opened, Governor Rone looked up from a map and graphics on some kind of screen imbedded in the table in front of him.
“Rezzer. Good. Marz and Kiel are on their way with the rest of the team.”
“What team?” I asked.
Rezzer pulled me closer, his arm around my shoulders as the others filed in, their footsteps heavy. He introduced me to the men. “Marz. Trax. Kiel. Warlord Braun. This is Lady Caroline. My mate.”
They bowed, which was awesome and intimidating at the same time. Kiel was the only one who looked totally human, but he didn’t move like one. He was too quiet and had too much contained power in his body. None of them were small, the Prillon warriors, Trax and Marz, both at least six-six. Marz was fair, like a Nordic god, and he had a strange silver ring of flesh around his eye and the eye itself was…like liquid silver. Oddly beautiful. Not quite as hard to accept in an alien face rather than a human one. The Prillon Trax was much darker, like a black man back home, but his hair was a deep rusty brown, like cinnamon sprinkled on coffee. His eyes were amber ringed with bronze, like tiger-eye gems. They were large warriors, attractive and terrifying, but none compared to my mate and the other man, Warlord Braun, who I recognized as an Atlan. A beast. Like mine. “Hello everyone. I’m CJ.”
They rumbled off greetings, but I could tell they were distracted by the reason for the summons. I, too, was curious. They gathered around the governor who had done something to make the map he’d been looking at hover in front of him like a hologram. The image looked like a series of worms twisted around one another in the air. But as the others spoke, I realized they were caves.
“The sensors depicted movement here.” Governor Rone lifted his hand to an area of the tunnels that turned red when he touched it.
“That’s close.” The one called Marz said, but I already knew it was bad news by the way Rezzer’s hand twisted in the back of my dress. I wasn’t even sure if he was aware of the movement. This news had him upset.
“You’ll leave immediately,” Governor Rone added. “We need to double patrols on the south side of the base. But that’s not going to be enough.”
“We need to go back into the tunnels.” The beast named Braun crossed his arms and I noticed just how many weapons were strapped to every available inch of the Coalition armor he wore. His hair was a very light brown, almost golden and the warm color matched the dark gold of his eyes. He was, next to my Rezzer, the sexiest man in the room.
Not that I was prejudiced in favor of Atlans. Nope. I’d deny it if asked.
They all wore the same form-fitting black armor. I was surrounded by a feast of man-candy. I knew the governor had a mate, the copper collar around his neck the Prillon version of wedding bands, but I wondered about the others. Either way, their mates, or future mates, were lucky women. Not one of the warriors was as gorgeous as my Rezzer, but still. Not bad. Not too bad at all.
I needed to talk to the Earth woman, Lindsey, the public relations specialist I’d yet to meet. Rezzer had been too busy knocking me up for me to do so before now. Maybe a “hot men from The Colony” calendar would get more brides here. If that kind of campaign could get donations for fire stations back home…
“I’ll lead the team.” Rezzer’s rough growl pulled me back to the present.
The governor stood and turned to my mate, his gaze purposely focused on the cuffs around Rezzer’s wrists. “Not possible, Rezzer. You’ll monitor the team and coordinate from here.”
“No.” He was changing, the beast rising to the surface. I watched, fascinated. I hadn’t been able to see this without his cock inside me—which meant I was too distracted to notice exactly what happened. His eyes grew brighter; his shoulders filled up somehow. His whole body expanded before my eyes. It was crazy and fascinating, and all I could think about was how amazing his huge cock felt when he fucked me. I wanted to climb up his body and taste every inch. I just…wanted. Yeah, I was a total goner.
I felt my pussy grow wet, and Rezzer stopped in his tracks, frozen, to turn and look down at me. “Kill Hive. Mate. Stay.”
He held up his cuffs and looked at mine.
“He can’t go with them unless you take off your cuffs, CJ.” Rachel appeared from somewhere and came to stand next to her mate, using her big belly to get the hulking warriors to move out of her way.
I remembered the pain walking away from Rezzer that first day had caused, as if I’d been hit by a cattle prod in both my wrists. I so didn’t want that to happen again, and I had no idea what that would do to the baby.
I didn’t like the idea of him going into danger, but I knew he needed this. Needed to end it. I wasn’t going to get closure on the insider trading fiasco. Ever. And that hadn’t been any big deal in comparison to what the Hive had done to Rezzer. Twice. He needed to take those bad guys down, let his beast go wild on their asses.
“You should go, so why don’t you just take off your cuffs?” I asked.
“No!” Rezzer’s roar made me jump, and I reached for him automatically. He actually lifted me off my feet, cradling me like a small child against his chest. Sheesh, he really was huge when he went beast. So freaking sexy. Could he feel my nipples harden against his chest?
I lifted my hand to his face and caressed him, just so he’d feel me, know he was still mine. It worked, and I noticed the other warriors in the room settle back into more relaxed stances, drop their hands from their weapons.
Had they really thought he was going to lose control over the idea of taking off his cuffs? The idea was sobering.
Rachel rested her hands on her round stomach—she would bring another baby to The Colony soon—and tilted her head with a sad smile. “He can’t remove them. If he does, you’ll be free to choose another mate. Those cuffs are your mark of ownership, your claim. Taking them off means he won’t belong to you any longer. He’ll have no reason to control his beast.”
Rezzer nodded, obviously thankful she said what he couldn’t. Not with his beast raging.
“What?” I looked into Rezzer’s green eyes. I knew the cuffs were important, that they shocked the hell out of me if we got more than about fifty paces away from one another, but— ”I thought they were just for me. To keep me close to you. Won’t they cause you pain if you leave them on?”
He nodded again.
“Yes,” the governor answered for him. “But just enough to remind him that you are waiting for him. That he belongs to you. That he needs to maintain control.”
I looked down at the matching cuffs we wore with newfound awe. So, I could take mine off, but he would rather be in pain than lose his connection to me? “My mark of ownership?”
“Yes.” Rezzer’s response made me realize I’d spoken the last thought aloud. “Rezz. Belong. You.”
I saw the truth of those three words in his somber green eyes. He was mine in a way I couldn’t even begin to understand.
“They’re not human, CJ. It’s hard to realize it, but they’re not even close,” Rachel offered. I remembered Warden Egara’s words, that any mate I was matched to wouldn’t be like any Earth guy.
“Okay.” Still looking into my mate’s eyes, I held up my cuffs. “You want to go hunt? Track down the Hive?”
“Hunt.” He didn’t look away from me; the word was a promise, and I realized he felt like he needed to do this to protect me, protect everyone on the planet. Protect the new life growing inside me.
“Okay. Put me down.” He settled me gently on my feet, and I held out my wrists to him. I had no idea how to take the cuffs off. No seam. No latch. Nada. “Here. Take them off.”
With a tenderness that was shocking from someone so large, he did, showing me the pattern to trace, the trick to unlocking them.
They dropped into his large palms, and he winced just for a moment as the sound of a small electrical jolt emanated from the cuffs around his wrists. “You sure about this? It won’t hurt you?” I ignored everyone else in the room, but I didn’t care. This was between me and him.
“Mine.” He wasn’t talking about the cuffs.
Well, that about summed it up. I smiled. I couldn’t help it as I took the smaller cuffs from him. “Well, you’re mine, too. So hurry up and do whatever you have to do and come back to me. You’ll help me put them back on, and then we’ll go through that list of yours.” I pulled his head down for a kiss, just a quick touching of our lips, but I wanted to do it there, in front of everyone. It was my claim.
Rachel was at my elbow when I let him go. “Come on. We’ll go pretend to eat something and not worry while they go do their thing.”
I walked from the room and didn’t look back, the heavy weight of the cuffs in my hand a promise. He’d be back. He had to be.
12
Rezzer, In the tunnels beneath Base 3
* * *
We all followed Kiel through the dark tunnels. Strange alien worms lined the walls lending an eerie glow with their bioluminescence. We were deep underground, deeper than we'd ever been on these tracking missions before. But I did not doubt Hunter Kiel's, prowess. He had been methodical and efficient before meeting his mate, a human woman named Lindsey, and adopting her son as his own. But if he had been brutally efficient before, having a mate had not softened him. The opposite, in fact. Of all the warriors on The Colony, he would be the one I might struggle to defeat in battle.
Everian Hunters were fast. But Kiel was Elite, even among his own kind. He could move too quickly to track with the naked eye, and was nearly as strong as my beast when in hunting mode. Hunters were notorious throughout the Interstellar Fleet as bounty hunters and assassins. That Kiel was the only Hunter on The Colony had made him something of a legend. And when his mate had mysteriously appeared out of thin air, sent in a shipping crate by traitors from Earth, his legend had only grown.
The Hunters were notorious for being able to track their prey across solar systems on instinct alone. Some believed he’d used his abilities to magically lure a mate to him because she was here, and he hadn’t even been tested by the Interstellar Brides Program. Superstitious nonsense, but Kiel did nothing to quell the rumors. I knew better.
He’d gotten lucky when Lindsey showed up here. Damn lucky.
“Report, Captain.” The governor's voice came through all of our helmet communications systems. We remained silent waiting to see if Kiel deemed it safe to answer.
“Nothing so far, Governor,” Kiel said. “But we’re close. I can smell them.”
I couldn't smell them, but every instinct I had was screaming at me that something was wrong. And my beast was holding on by a thread. The intermittent electric shocks blasting through the mating cuffs on my wrists helped keep me sane, helped remind me that my mate was waiting, that she needed me to finish this mission and return to her. Still, my hackles were up, my instincts roared through me. “Something’s not right.”
I was in the back, protecting our flank, and every second we lingered, my heart raced faster. The last time I’d been down here, I’d been captured. This wasn’t a place I wanted to linger, but this time, I wasn’t alone. Still, my gut was telling me—
“He’s right. Something's not right, Kiel. I feel it, too.” Captain Marz, the Prillon warrior, looked to Vance and they fanned out to my sides. We had come down in a team of eight, but divided in half about fifteen minutes earlier when the tunnel had split.
“Has the other team reported back in?” Kiel asked.
The governor’s voice was hoarse. “No. But I need you to get Rezzer back to base.”
My head snapped up, and I felt my eyes glaze as the beast fought for freedom. “Why?” It was less a question than a demand.
Maxim’s voice came through clearly but did nothing to help calm my beast. “We need you back at Base 3, Rezzer. That’s all I can tell you for now.”
Something had happened to Caroline. It was the only explanation. He wouldn’t pull me from a mission for anything less. And since he wasn’t stating the reason through the comms, it was bad. “Tell me now, Maxim. Tell me now, or I'm going to rip the base to shreds looking for her.”
“Control yourself, Rezzer.” He didn’t contradict my words about Caroline being missing. “Then get your ass back to base.”
“We go back to base. Now.” The change was right there, just under my skin, but I held onto control by my fingernails. For her. But when I met Kiel’s gaze, he knew that if he didn’t turn the team around right now, they’d be going on without me.
“Agreed,” Kiel said. He nodded at Marz and Vance, and they began to walk toward me. Two steps later, all three of them had their ion blasters drawn and pointing at something behind me. I turned and saw what we’d spent the last three hours hunting.
Three Hive soldiers stood at the end of a long cavern, an offshoot we had yet to search. Unfortunately, they were just out of blaster range. Fuck. My beast snarled and grew.
“Hunter?” Marz asked Kiel for orders.
As the Elite Hunter on the team, Kiel was in command, and as much as I wanted to go full beast, run down the hallway and rip those bastards to shreds, I had a mate to get back to. These assholes were so far down my priority list, they barely registered. As soon as Maxim indirectly told me there was something wrong with Caroline, they were nothing but in my way to get to her. Period. “Shoot them and let’s go.”
“They're out of range,” Kiel said.
“We’re not out of their range. Look at that rifle. What kind of weapon is that? I’ve never seen it before.” Marz narrowed his eyes, and I knew his cyborg implant allowed him to see farther than the rest of us. “Take cover!” he shouted.
Too late. A sharp pain stabbed me on the left side of my chest, and I looked down to find an odd dart protruding from my uniform. With a growl, I reached up and plucked it from my flesh but a strange disc about the size of my fingernail remained attached in my uniform. “What the fuck?”
“Take cover!” Kiel was yelling now. He was on the ground, as were the other two.
I wasn’t sure what was happening. The Hive could have killed me. They could have blasted my head off or poisoned me with that dart. But they’d done neither. I studied the object stuck to me, craning my neck to get a better look. The others stood and Marz came up on my left side, pulled my arm.
“Come on, Rezzer. Move it.”
As soon as I started moving, he let me go and I followed him. I wanted as far away from these damn caves as possible. With each step I took, I was closer to Caroline. The pulsing pain from the cuffs was my reminder. We darted down a side tunnel. The moment we were out of their line of sight, we stopped and the other two gathered around me to inspect the object.
“Get that off your uniform. Now!” Even as he said it, Kiel took a step back. “Get it off. It’s a remote transport beacon.”
“What?” Marz looked shocked. “How the hell did the Hive get a transport beacon?”
Kiel rubbed his brow even as he kept his eye on the tunnel entrance. “A MedRec unit was hit a few weeks ago. Rogue 5 mercenaries took out an entire MedRec team with Battlegroup Zakar. Took hostages for the slave trade and stole the weapons and transport beacons.”
“By the gods, Kiel. Why weren’t we told?” Marz asked.
“It was need to know.” Kiel shrugged his half-hearted attempt at an apology. “They never thought they’d sell to the fucking Hive. And I sure as fuck never thought they’d end up here.”
“Right. With us. Contaminated,” Vance added.
“They were wrong.” I lifted my hand to the tiny device as both Marz and Vance stepped back. I didn’t blame them. If this thing went off, I was quite sure they didn’t want to go wherever the Hive would take me. Wherever the fuck it was programmed. The beacon was small, almost too small to grab with my large hands. And I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to remove it. I had a feeling that this—combined with Maxim’s communication from a few minutes ago—was all part of something larger at work. Something that had to do with Caroline. The Hive had aimed for me. Hit me with the dart. They were expert marksmen, not aiming at the four of us and randomly tagging me.
Kiel inched his way toward the opening and peeked around the corner to check on the status of the Hive soldiers we knew were following us. His confused expression confirmed my suspicions. “They’re gone.” Kiel stepped farther into the corridor and lifted his nose to scent the air. “Where the hell did they go?”
Marz followed him and used his cyborg vision to check the cave in both directions. “You're right, they’re gone.” Both men turned back to me.
“Get that fucking thing off.” Kiel's eyes looked glazed, the closest I’d ever seen him to a panic.
I ignored his command and looked him dead in the eye. “You have a private communication channel with the governor?” It was standard operation procedure. The commander of a unit always had a way to talk to core command without alerting the others on the team.
His nod was so small it was nearly imperceptible.
“Tell me what he didn’t want me to know.” I allowed my beast into my voice, the deep growl rumbling through the small cave. I reached up to remove my helmet, the confines too tight when I was on the verge of changing into my beast.
Kiel took a deep breath and looked at me, the resignation in his gaze making my heart sink into my stomach like a heavy stone.
“Someone on the inside got to CJ. They used a transport beacon—“ He pointed to my chest. “—just like that one.”
“The Hive was inside Base 3?” Marz was practically shaking with rage. Base 3 was our home and we’d taken enough abuse from the Hive to last a lifetime. And I’d walked away, left her alone when there were fucking Hive to hurt her? My beast growled, the rumble heard by the others.
Kiel shook his head. ”No. Not Hive. A medical transport worker. He was a medical officer from one of the shuttle teams. He’s only been here a few weeks.”
