“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 theQuestorflew 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 bed?
Because that’s where Alexa was now, locked in his room, away from all the medical equipment she could use to create a weapon or hurt herself with. He made sure there was nothing in his room she could use—if that’s what she planned now that she’d been found out.
He needed to keep her close until he figured out what he was going to do with her.
Hysterian rested his palms on the wall as the water washed over him.What the fuck am I going to do with her?
The heat comforted him, took some of the pressure away, and he wanted to laugh because it was heat that could kill Alexa.The same fucking heat I crave.
How was it that he’d spent his life fantasizing about a hot-blooded woman, only to fall for the first cold-blooded one he came upon?
