Cyborg Fever

by Grace Goodwin

  No, this wasn’t like that. I didn’t feel it in my soul. This I felt in all my female parts. Every single one of them. This was pure lust. I was aroused by him. Seriously turned on. I wanted him. Not to keep, but to make this ache go away. And if he was as big everywhere as Melody had been joking about, then it would be an amazing ride.

  I did have twelve hours free and clear of my duties. No teaching, no missions for the I.C. Nothing but downtime where I could relieve this ache that was growing by the second. And I wanted the Atlan to take care of it for me.

  If he didn’t end up in the med unit first.

  The Prillon let out a bellow and attacked. I sucked in a breath as he charged, fists at the ready. The Atlan didn’t look away from me, not until the very last second when he punched, lightning fast.

  The crunching sound of bone breaking could be heard over the din of the crowd. Blood spurted from the Prillon’s nose as he fell, like a redwood in the forest, to the ground. His arms didn’t go up to stop his fall, indicating he’d been knocked unconscious immediately.

  One punch. That was all it took. The fight was over.

  The Atlan took a deep breath, let it out, and I watched the ripple of his eight-pack abs as he did so. He gave the Prillon a quick look, glanced at the medical team, who was already running toward the fallen warrior, then looked back at me.

  He strode across the pit and to the edge of the stands, straight toward me, like we were connected by a wire.

  The crowd parted like the Red Sea before Moses and they turned to see what held the Atlan’s attention. Behind him, the Prillon was being assisted and I could see he was coming to, his blood staining the dirt. His jaw at an awkward angle, obviously broken.

  Ouch.

  “Um, Dahl, he’s really staring at you.”

  I glanced at the others who had come to watch the fights and they were all looking at me, too.

  When I looked back at the Atlan, he had his hand up and he curled his finger. Beckoning me.

  I gulped. Swallowed. Was he really talking to me?

  I looked around. Everyone was watching me, waiting to see what I would do.

  Oh, shit. All me. I wasn’t imagining things.

  Melody pushed me and I stumbled forward. “Go, woman!”

  I stepped down a row, closer to him, glanced back at Melody. She had a sly smile on her face. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Well, no, do a whole bunch of things I wouldn’t do.” She nodded her head, giving me some kind of reassurance for going after the Atlan.

  I licked my lips, looked at the Atlan again. Oh yeah, I wanted him and he obviously wanted me.

  His skin had a slick sheen of sweat that only highlighted each and every one of his rippling muscles. He turned his hand over, palm up, saying without words that I should take it.

  I went down the rows, one after the other until I stood before him. He was so damned big, well over a foot taller than I was, closer to two.

  Pheromones must be pumping from him because all I wanted to do was lick his neck and taste his salty skin. Run my palms over his torso and lower to the button on his pants. To grip his cock, stroke it. Rule him.

  I wanted to own him. Pet him. Ride him. I wanted him, all of him, just for me. Filling me up. Making me beg. Making me come all over his huge—

  His fingers came up, stroked over my cheek and I held my breath. The feel of the gentle caress was unnerving and surprising considering his size.

  “Mine,” he said, his voice loud, as if he were telling everyone who could hear that I was off the market. I thought of the crestfallen looks that were probably gracing the faces of the two Prillon warriors behind me and stifled a smile.

  For now, for tonight, he was all mine.

  So I put my hand in his, ready to spend a wild night with an Atlan—and hopefully, his beast.

  Chapter Two

  Warlord Anghar, The Colony

  My beast was raging. The Prillon standing across from me in the fighting pit had not chosen a second to fight beside him. Either the poor bastard was an idiot, or this stubborn Prillon hadn’t been in The Colony long enough to choose one.

  I would place a wager on the second. I saw the need in his eyes. The need to rage.

  To hurt.

  He wanted to come at me. To fight. To hold nothing back. I knew that feeling, that desperate, clawing need to punch, kick. Beat.

  To hurt. To bleed. To feel something real.

  I missed the rush of battle, the elation of victory. When we fought the Hive, we were important to the Coalition. Protecting others. Doing important work.

  Now? We mined for the transport system. We counted the days and fought off boredom with every waking breath. Irrelevance. We were nothing now, and that was like swallowing a blade. It hurt, all the way through.

  “I’m going to make you bleed, Warlord.” The Prillon was panting, eager to get the fight started. His hands were in fists at his sides, his chest thick and well-muscled. Anger and anticipation simmered.

  I welcomed the challenge. The distraction. The only thing I wanted more than to spend a couple hours in this fighting pit was a warm, wet pussy. A mate begging me to fuck her. Taste her. Fill her with my seed. My beast prowled within me at that thought.

  But there was no bride for me. Never would be. I’d taken the bride testing more than three years ago with no success. I happened to believe the ban on brides for contaminated warriors was a valid one. We were not whole. Never would be. Not that my opinion mattered. Most of the warriors here had submitted to the Interstellar Brides Program testing protocols when Prime Nial lifted the ban for Colony exiles more than a year ago. And we could count the brides that had arrived at Base 3 on one hand.

  Just because he’d allowed the contaminated to be matched didn’t mean there was hope for any of us.

  Brides were few and far between here. Some said their presence gave the other warriors hope. But I’d always been a realist. There would be no saving me. No soft, beautiful female deserved the monster I carried within. He was too feral. I doubted even the legendary Atlan mating cuffs would affect him, would soothe the animal within.

  The Hive had taken too much. Forced me into beast mode and tortured me for days. In the end, they had broken me, and my beast, and I still carried the shame.

  I should have made them kill me. And when Seth Mills had the chance, he hadn’t done it either, taking away the quiet of death. And now I lived. And fought. Not for life or death, not against the Hive that still stalked us all, but in a round pit on a desolate world with other fucked-up and exiled warriors. Not to save people, but for a break from the monotony of this new existence.

  If I wasn’t such a bastard, I’d end it. But despite all the rambling that went on in my head, I was a survivor. Always had been. Hope or no hope, I’d hold on until the bitter end, until my beast raged and they were forced to execute me. I was too stubborn to die.

  “Fucking Atlan. What are you waiting for?” The Prillon was pacing me. Circling. His gaze filled with horror and rage and hatred, all directed at himself. We were one in that moment, and I knew my gaze matched his. Broken. We were both broken.

  “You can’t beat me, Prillon. But you already know that, don’t you? That’s not why you’re here.” I threw the taunt, knowing it for truth. He wanted to feel the pain. To attack with nothing held back. He couldn’t kill me. Not without a second Prillon warrior to back him up. And I wouldn’t kill him. He was a warrior, an honorable soldier who’d survived the same horrors I had. Death matches were not allowed in the pit, so fighting me was the closest he could get. But I could make him hurt. Bleed.

  Feel.

  Two more steps. Three. Screaming voices fueled us both, but there was one sound that drew my beast’s attention away from the match and my gaze lifted to scan the crowd before I had processed the instinct. I never looked away from an opponent in the pit. It was a rookie move. A stupid one. But I had no choice. My beast forced my hand.

  It was a woman’s voice. A female.


  My beast awoke, practically howled as fire rolled through my veins and my cock grew hard.

  I shook my head, trying to blink away the urge to hunt down that voice. To claim her.

  She was probably one of the Academy cadets here for training but leaving tomorrow.

  I should ignore it. Let her go. She wasn’t my matched mate. Couldn’t be.

  I didn’t have one.

  Another reason my beast was so edgy. There seemed little hope I’d be able to hold on long enough to discover a mate that my beast would want to claim. Of the warriors here, only Warlord Braun understood the monster inside me, raging to break free. Every moment was an act of discipline. Every step. Every breath. The beast seethed, and I held him down with an iron fist, my will the only thing standing between me and execution.

  The fighting pits helped release some of the beast’s restlessness, the hunger. But my time as a Hive drone hadn’t dimmed the beast’s fury, as it had with Warlord Rezzer.

  Feeling helpless to resist the Hive’s commands, the constant buzzing in my head that never completely went away, that just made me edgier. The battle against the internal enemy was constant. This Prillon before me was the latest outlet available, and I planned to make him miserable. Beat him bloody. Let the beast have some fun. Give him what he wanted.

  I saw the hopeless rage in the Prillon warrior’s golden eyes. He was new here, having just arrived today. I didn’t know his name, but I didn’t need to. I recognized the wrath, the trapped feeling. We all did. Every single warrior banished was here on The Colony, not by choice, but because we’d been contaminated with Hive technology. Captured. Tortured. Modified.

  We were no longer wanted by the people on our home planets, the people we’d sacrificed for. We were too dangerous.

  Me, especially.

  I wanted to hate the policy that required all contaminated warriors to live out the rest of their lives here, either working in the mines or protecting those who did, but I couldn’t. The truth was that we were dangerous. Unstable. The Hive implants had strange effects on some warriors. And some, like me, never quite got them out of our heads. For me, the constant hum never left. Not even here, where the planet’s defense systems were designed to keep out Hive communication frequencies.

  But then, from what I’d been told, the Hive were here, hiding in the caves below the surface. Someday, there would be a reckoning, and then I’d hunt them, kill them. Tearing drones in half with my bare hands would bring me nothing but pleasure. Other than a mate’s warm, wet pussy—which I had no hope of enjoying—killing the Hive was all I could think about.

  Unfortunately, Governor Rone, the hard-ass Prillon warrior who ran Base 3, didn’t feel turning me loose in the caves was a good idea. Not even during simple training runs for a new batch of Coalition Academy cadets. The training program was experimental, the caves below the surface a perfect simulation of several planets that were battle zones, hotbeds of Hive activity.

  The Governor was right. First sight of a Hive here on The Colony, or of their leader, the Prillon warrior, Krael—the fucking traitor—and the beast would own me. There would be no coming back, no control.

  By the gods, I wouldn’t even try. I’d eviscerate them with my bare hands and howl with joy while doing it.

  Fueled by my thoughts and the coming fight, the beast rose within me, eager and strong. I pushed back. Fought for control. Focused on the threat before me. His face. His fists. The lightness of his steps in the soft dirt. He was not a young, inexperienced fighter. He was a Prillon warrior in his prime. Strong. Fast. Deadly. And he’d just arrived after his own personal hell with the Hive.

  Not that it would save him from a solid beating, but it would at least make the fight interesting.

  We paced. Ready.

  I heard her again. My cock, already hard, throbbed painfully.

  The beast clawed at my insides, fighting to break free. Not to fight the Prillon. For her.

  It wanted her.

  Fuck.

  Gods help me if she was the mate of a Colony warrior, or some innocent young cadet barely more than a child.

  Keeping the Prillon on the edge of my vision, I scanned the crowd again. Found her.

  Stilled. Stopped breathing.

  By the gods, she was beautiful. Golden hair was pulled back from her face, and my first instinct was to break it free from whatever held it. Her eyes were like glaciers, too blue to be real. And she was human. I recognized her species from meeting Governor Rone’s mate, Rachel, and because the warrior who had saved my life before coming here, one of the bravest fighters I’d ever met, was a female from Earth. A female who had earned my loyalty and respect. Commander Chloe Phan.

  But her eyes had been dark. Her hair black. And she’d been small and mated to a Prillon warrior and a human I respected, the human who’d saved my life, Captain Seth Mills. I’d known the fearless commander wasn’t mine. But the knowing had been easy. My beast hadn’t been interested in her as a potential mate.

  This human was completely different.

  Fascinating.

  Every curve was outlined to perfection by a tight black uniform, and I recognized the design as belonging to one of the instructors from the Coalition Academy on Zioria. Her hair was golden, her eyes a liquid blue that made me feel like I was falling. Her lips were a pale pink, and she was tall. Curvy. Her breasts were large and would be paradise in my hands. My mouth. I wondered what she tasted like. Her skin. Her kiss. Her hot, wet pussy juices flowing over my tongue as I made her scream.

  She was not a child but a woman who knew what she wanted.

  Our gazes met. Held. Locked.

  The Prillon warrior paced. I ignored him. He was irrelevant now. My beast had other priorities. If my opponent wanted to bleed, he’d have to find another to entertain him.

  I wanted the female. And from the way her gaze lingered on me, held mine, I knew she wouldn’t resist.

  She was mine.

  The Prillon charged but I was no longer in the mood to fight. I wanted to fuck. Taste.

  Claim.

  I had planned to toy with the warrior, let him hit me a few times, draw some blood, let him bleed off some of his angst and wear himself out before I ended him. But I no longer felt accommodating.

  Allowing the beast to surge for a moment, I swung hard, taking the glancing punch the Prillon landed on my chest. I connected with his jaw, felt the bone crack, knew they would rush a ReGen wand into the pit to stabilize him before shutting him down in a ReGen pod for a few hours to make sure I hadn’t damaged his brain.

  He hit the ground, unconscious, and I glanced at the medical crew to make sure they were coming. They had been waiting, ready. They’d seen it all before, knowing how this would end, but expecting me to play with my prey before I took him down.

  The crowd was divided, half of the warriors cheering, a fair number booing the lack of a show. They were irrelevant. I only cared about one of them. Lifting my gaze, I found her in the crowd once more.

  She had another female with her, and from the looks of things, they were talking about me.

  Good.

  I didn’t want her thinking about anyone else. Seeing anyone else.

  The Prillon rolled on the ground, groaning as they worked on his jaw. I walked past him toward the female. He was no longer a concern. He was out of my way. And what I wanted was right in front of me.

  I got closer, my beast cooperating, for once in perfect accord with what I wanted. We both wanted her. Hot. Naked. Open. Taking what we wanted to give her. Fucking hard and fast. Slow. Making her lose control. Making her give us everything.

  I reached the edge of the arena and looked up to where she sat in the stands. Her blue eyes remained glued to me and I crooked my finger at her. She knew. She knew what I wanted. Her. We both knew how this was going to go. I could see an equal lust in her blue eyes.

  She glanced at her friend, her delicate skin turning an intriguing shade of pink. She bit her lip as she turned back to me. I
held out my hand and waited. Patient. She would come to me. The pull between us was elemental. Too strong for her to resist. My cock was so hard it was a constant ache. For her. Only for her.

  Thank the gods she didn’t make me wait long. The crowd was hushed, the other warriors and cadets watching with fascination as she walked down the steps and stopped before me, close enough to touch.

  Gently, slowly, with a reverence I had no idea I could feel, I reached up and traced the softness of her cheek with my fingers.

  The first contact jolted me, the rush better than any fight, any victory. The beast was frenzied, pushing at my skin, my mind, demanding to taste her. Touch her. Fill her with his seed. My thoughts went to the mating cuffs in my rooms and I knew what he wanted. What we both wanted. The miracle I had just found.

  My mate.

  “Mine.” The word burst from me, beast and man both making sure every warrior heard my vow. Mine. I had staked my claim. If anyone touched her, hurt her, tried to take her from me, I would destroy them. Harder and more ruthlessly than I had with the Prillon in the middle of the pit.

  Reaching over the barrier, I lifted her. She cooperated, swinging her legs over the waist high wall. When she would have put her feet on the ground, I swooped her up and carried her cradled against my chest.

  Mine. Mine. Mine.

  The thought consumed me until I couldn’t talk. Couldn’t think. Gods help me, if she resisted, I wasn’t sure I could control the beast inside me. He was gone, so far gone. I knew if she denied me, walking away from her would be the last thing I remembered.

  She should refuse me. I wasn’t worthy of being a mate, but my beast disagreed, especially now with her in my hold. I would do it, let her go. For her. And then the others would have to put me down. Execute me. End my fucking misery, because now that I held her, I knew I could never walk away from her. Not and stay sane.

  The beast was tired of waiting, and I was tired of fighting him.