She neededsomething.
“I hate you,” she cried. “I hate you!” Everything she’d been feeling exploded out from her, all the thoughts, emotions, the confusion.
She fought until she tired. Still, he didn’t stop her. He just stood there, letting her try and hurt him, letting her use him as a punching bag. Alexa sobbed, shaking, falling into his chest. She was never going to be able to hurt him how she wanted.
Because she loved him.
She fucking loved Hysterian in a twisted, dependent way. She’d been consumed by him her whole life, and at some point, it stopped being all about vengeance. It became an obsession. A dangerous one. One she couldn’t shake, no matter how hard she tried. An obsession she loved.
She wanted to deny it. For years she had.
Alexa coiled her fingers into his suit and cried. “I shouldn’t want a monster like you.”
His arms gently embraced her, holding her like she was some delicate egg, and a torrent of tears burst forth.Why does he have to be gentle?Why had he killed her dad?
She pressed into him, knowing she’d lost the battle. She’d lost long before she stepped aboard theQuestor. Long before Hysterian knew she existed. There was never going to be a good ending for her.
He lifted her into his arms and carried her out of her quarters, through his ship, and into his room. She didn’t fight it.
It’s what she had wanted all along.
Sixteen
Hysterian placedAlexa on the edge of his bed. She sat upright to rub the last of her tears from her face. He watched as she composed herself. He kneeled in front of her.
She met his gaze when her courage returned. His eyes hadn’t stopped glowing. She shivered, knowing she was at his mercy now. Whatever happened, there was nowhere she could go where he wouldn’t follow.
The realization made her shiver.
I’m just as much his enemy as he is mine.
Part of her wanted to do to Hysterian what she’d almost done with Pigeon. She wanted to tell him everything. To spill all of her secrets so they wouldn’t be hers alone anymore, so the burden wouldn’t be so heavy… To tell him she was a half-breed—that she had alien blood coursing through her veins. The same aliens Hysterian and his Cyborg brothers had once killed by the thousands. Hundreds of thousands.
Would he kill her right now if he knew? If she told him?
What would he do if she mentioned her father?
Would he remember…?
What if she told him she had spent the last decade stalking him, watching him, studying him and his kind from afar, hoping to one day kill him? Possibly the rest someday too.
Should she pull out the faded picture she had of him from the liner of her duffle bag? A picture she had stared at for years? The one of him staring off at something out of frame? Where he was handsomely decked in his military uniform?
She’d always wondered what it was he had been staring at.
Alexa grabbed hold of the bedding, wrenching it in her hands. His eyes dropped to them before flicking back to her face.
She waited for him to do something, anything, so she wouldn’t sign her death warrant and tell him all her secrets.Let the chips fall where they may…
Because despite all her choices so far, she didn’t want to die.
“Hysterian,” she started when he continued to stare at her, like he was trying to figure her out. “I—”
“Stop talking.”
She shut her mouth and released the bedding bunched up in her hands. He reached out, and she flinched. His eyes exploded with light.
“Why did you flinch?” he demanded.
