The Rebel and the Rogue. Grace Goodwin
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was a facade. Somewhere, hidden within the folds of her clothing, would be both a blaster and several blades.
Astra had not held power over the legion for more than twenty years by taking unnecessary risks. I’d seen her kill with an efficiency many envied, but always for her people, for the legion. That’s why we were loyal to her. She’d earned the right to lead us, her devotion and protection as fierce as any male’s could be. Perhaps more so because she was female, a matriarch, the ultimate protector. She never placed her own needs above the needs of her people. Never.
Much to Barek’s disappointment. He wanted Astra for a mate. The other hybrid Forsian males knew this fact to be true. Astra, however, seemed oblivious to his interest, even as he sat beside her now. Or perhaps she pretended ignorance to avoid the inevitable confrontation of what could never happen.
In the end they could never be together, not if one bite from his fangs would kill her.
I entered and took a knee a few paces from where she sat, head bowed, waiting for the questions and the permission I needed to fully enter her domain without the giant hybrid Forsian male at her side ripping my head from my body. They were not mated, but Barek protected her as only a true mate would, without mercy or divided loyalties. He didn’t leave her side. Not to eat. Not to sleep. Not to fuck. He slept on a thin mat outside her door, guarding her even as they slumbered. He was hers.
The others sat around Astra at a small table. They were gambling. Drinking. Killing time and keeping their minds off the mission ahead of us. I’d gone to the canteen for a drink, to sense the mood of the transport station. To listen to what was going on around us. Astra had sent me because out of all of us, I was the most subtle of the bunch, which was truly absurd. The group from Astra Legion were all here for one reason and one reason only, to obtain the antidote to a hybrid Forsian’s bite.
I was far from subtle, and the hot human whose taste was still on my tongue knew that well enough.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Barek asked.
I did not envy him his devotion to this female. His mating instinct, nearly as strong as the Atlan’s fever, had been riding him hard the last few months. If he buried his cock in any willing female in his current state, he’d probably kill her. If not with the poison in his bite, with the sheer strength in his frame. Since his cock wanted Astra, he wouldn’t kill any female, he’d kill the leader of the Astra Legion.
Some of us born on Rogue 5 had inherited a deadly cocktail of Hyperion heritage mixed with Forsian DNA. As a result we endured both a blessing and curse. We were bigger and stronger than any others on the moon base, larger even than the few Atlan hybrids. But it turned out the Forsian part of our physiology did not blend well with a Hyperion male’s mating venom. A pure Hyperion male on the planet below Rogue 5 would bite his female to induce a state of arousal and fertility, to increase her pleasure. But when mixed with Forsian bloodlines, that venom became a deadly poison.
We few hybrid Forsians who survived on Rogue 5 were doubly cursed with the locking mechanism of the Forsian mating cock and the Hyperion instinctive need to bite our females. The two instincts were so deeply ingrained in our natures that most females on Rogue 5 were not willing to take the risk of bedding us at all, not even for one night of pleasure. When we found a female brave enough—or adventurous enough—to express interest, we always ended things after one or two sessions of sex. We never kept any female close for an extended period of time. Hybrid Forsians always distanced ourselves before the instinct to permanently claim the female we fucked overwhelmed our self-control.
To die with honor was preferable to killing a female during a failed mating. In all my life, I’d never heard of one of us successfully claiming a female until Makarios of the Kronos Legion. I’d heard horror stories from the past, stories of females dying in agony as the males who loved them looked on in helpless agony and guilt at what they’d done.
Bitten her. Injected her with poison. Lost control.
More than one female had accidentally been killed by her lover over the years. Those of us with honor did not take a female to bed unless we knew we could control the urge to bite. To mate. To claim.
And that was one of the reasons the hybrid Forsians on Rogue 5 were dying out, born from those bite-free one-night stands. Without a true father. Without mated parents. Most Forsian hybrids refused to lay with a female, afraid to lose control. But now, Makarios of Kronos had become a legend among us. He’d disappeared, then turned up alive on The Colony, his body enhanced with Hive technology. That was fact, what we knew to be true. After that, we knew nothing. Had the Hive integrations been what had changed him, had the Hive made it so that Makarios no longer had the poison in his fangs? Or, as rumor claimed, had his female, a human female, actually created an antidote to the poison? Had she found a serum to counteract the venom in my fangs? In Barek’s fangs? In the fangs of all the desperate hybrid Forsians left?
We were here to find out. Anxiously awaiting the upcoming meeting. To finally get our hands on this supposed antidote.
Fucking a stranger made denying the basic instinct easier, but still difficult. And the female I could still smell? Still taste?
Gods help me, I’d never had my fangs descend during sex before.
I wanted her. Badly. And more than once. My cock was still hard and eager for her. Her denial, her refusal to give me her name, had only made me crave her more. I felt wilder than usual. Hyperion DNA made all of us wilder, difficult to control. We had fangs, each and every one of us. We bit. We fought. We raged. And our new people did not fit into the Coalition worlds. Especially the few of us who had poisonous venom in addition to our ion pistols and lethal blades.
I was a hybrid freak who would never set foot on the planet Forsia. I was blessed and cursed. Barek and I, and the other hybrid Forsians like us, were not built to mate. Yet we craved what all males did: hot, wet pussy. Soft cries of pleasure from a willing female. Release.
Peace.
I’d found it for the short time with the human. Despite my eager cock, my balls were drained, my body relaxed for the first time in forever. She’d been insatiable. Passionate. Powerful in the knowledge of what she wanted. Shared it with me, with words, with her body. She wasn’t an Everian virgin. She wasn’t what I’d expected from a human, for they were small and weak.
Not her.
No. She’d taken everything I gave her, and I hadn’t gone easy. It wasn’t in my nature. I fucked wild. I fucked hard. I fucked to ensure she’d feel me for days.
And she’d not just cried out with pleasure, she’d demanded more. Needed everything I had to give her.
With my return to the suite, the sated pleasure I’d enjoyed bled away. Reality returned, and I found Astra watching me with raised brows, realizing I’d never answered Barek’s heated question. “Well? Where have you been, Zenos? I sent you to the bar two hours ago.”
“Drinking.” My answer was one word, but I knew it would be enough. No one would assume I had been with a female. Not me. Not a hybrid Hyperion animal who’d gotten the worst of two worlds, a cock that swelled and locked our female in place, a mating instinct so strong it could drive us mad, and poison in our Hyperion fangs deadly enough to kill with one bite.
“Do not lie to me.” Astra spoke, her voice stern even as she ignored me now to stare at the small, square cards in her hand. “You smell like sex.”
“Yes. A distraction to help pass the time.” No sense denying it. Rumor was, Astra had Everian Hunter’s blood in her veins. The gods knew she could smell better than any living being should wish to. I didn’t like having poisonous fangs, but I’d hate to be able to pick up scents as acutely as she did. And smelling sex on another? No, thank you.
“Did you kill her?”
Practical. That was our Astra. Our leader. I did not know her true name, the name she’s been given by her mother. When one assumed head of a Rogue 5 legion, the leader embodied all that we were, including the name. That day, when I was but a small boy, she had become simply