Mate Her by Jenika Snow
2
Brawn moved through the thick trees, trying to gather prey for his and his brothers’ meal for tonight. Thorque and Lukin were back at the ship, steadfastly trying to repair it. After one of the engines took a beating during hyper-speed, they were forced to detour to this godforsaken shit of a planet until the part could be fixed.
But they were making good progress and should be on their way to their home planet of Hades before the next nightfall. The toxic Bolla trees opened up, and the clearing showed a field of Daggina flowers with their thorn-like petals that shot out as a defense mechanism for anything that threatened them.
Brawn unfurled his wings, let them stretch out the fourteen-foot span, and felt the power move through him. In one giant flap of his wings, he rose above the tree line and scanned the surroundings. The planet was lush with foliage, but it was a carnivorous world, one that took from anything that set foot on it. He scanned his surroundings, trying to find something more edible than the shit plants they had found.
He needed meat, but as far as he could scent, the animals he had come across were inedible, not unless he and his brothers wanted a lot of pain while eating and digesting their food.
He flapped his wings, let the wind run over his skin, and needed to get home where the heat would protect him as well as help regulate his body temperature. His kind was made for the hot, fiery temperatures of Hades, for the flames and lava, and the black Azteccena Mountains that covered his world. They could survive in this cooler climate for a short time, but not for long, and with each passing day they stayed away from their planet, or the very least out of their temperature-controlled ship, they grew weaker.
A warrior of Hades was never weak, never let something as simple as the fucking temperature let them off their guard. But some things were left out of their hands, so they tried to keep themselves out of situations where they were vulnerable, even to a weaker species.
They killed, maimed, and fought for what was theirs. Their kind was feared amongst the galaxy for their ruthlessness and their cunning ability to fight until the end. But the battles they fought had been when others tried to take control of Hades.
Of course they had ventured from their planet for battles when it was needed, and although they fought to their last breath, Hades warriors always killed immediately, so their weakness for temperature didn’t make them vulnerable.
He scanned his surroundings again and again, training his superior eyesight on anything that moved that could be his prey. And then there he saw it, a nasty fucking Razzora Beast plowing through the Bolla trees, tearing them down in its clear haste to get whatever it was chasing. Brawn looked in the direction of where the soon-to-be meal of the creature was and zeroed in on the spot.
There, lying on the ground with a dart in her neck, was a human female. It only took Brawn a second to react. He used the power behind his wings, spread them out to their full length, and flew in her direction. The beast was getting closer to her, and although Brawn shouldn’t interfere or care if she was about to die, there was something in his gut that told him he needed to get to her.
He dove down, moved through the timberline of the trees, and right before the Razzora reached her, he landed on the ground beside her. He had her in his arms and was getting ready to be airborne again when the Razzora broke through the last tree. The creature roared out when it realized Brawn was taking its meal.
Brawn bent his knees and lifted into the air, but not before the Razzora ran one of its claws down Brawn’s calf. The pain was searing from the toxins the beast excreted, but Brawn pushed through the discomfort and flew toward the ship. It was a few miles away, but he eventually saw the massive silver-and-black spaceship that was a second home to him and his two brothers.
The feel of his blood slipping down his legs and the dizzying feeling of the poisons moving through his system had him faltering in his flight. He tightened his hold on the human female, brought her close to his chest, and dropped low. Once he was on the ground, he made swift work of rushing to the ship.
He was going to pass out if he didn’t get an antidote for the infection that was starting to eat away at his body from the inside out. It was a tactic the Razzora used when trying to incapacitate their prey at a close distance. Brawn could hear his brothers in the rear of the ship as they continued to fix one of the engines.
“If you hadn’t been so quick to run to the auctions, we might not have overheated the rear engine,” Thorque said, and the sound of a tool hitting the ground filled Brawn’s ears.
“Don’t act like you were not just as hard-up to go to the auctions and find a breeding female as I was,” Lukin growled.
Brawn moved swiftly to the rear and stepped onto the loading deck that was lowered. “Brothers,” he said through a tight throat. He needed to get the medicine in his system now before his body completely shut down. Thorque and Lukin looked over at him, and in seconds they were striding toward him with concerned looks on their faces.
They both glanced down at the female, but he didn’t have time to explain anything right now. She had gotten stuck with a quill from the animal, and she needed to have the poison extracted from her bloodstream, or it would do irreparable damage, if not kill her. But his brothers could read him as if he had spoken the words out loud.
Thorque took the female and was striding into the medic room of the ship while Lukin helped Brawn right behind them.
“A Razzora Beast?” Lukin asked in a strained voice.
“Yeah.” Sweat started to cover Brawn’s body as the poison worked faster and harder through him, his twin hearts pumping the toxins through his veins. The interior of the ship was set to well above one hundred degrees to allow their natural settings somewhat similar.
At night, they lowered the temperature, which matched their world, and as the suns were setting now, it was much cooler than during the day. But they’d have to have the female acclimated to a comfortable temperature room, because no way could she survive the over one-hundred-and-fifty-degree temperature the ship would increase to once the suns rose again.
They walked into the medic room, and Brawn saw that Thorque already had her on one of the suspended tables. The tables were welded from the very lava that flowed through the mountains of Hades, and Thorque had made sure that when they were constructing their ship, it matched the warriors’ specifications.
Lukin helped Brawn to the other table, and within seconds, he had a needle in Brawn’s arm and the antidote already injected into his body. Brawn looked over at the female, and as his vision started to clear and his strength returned while the medicine worked its way through him, he finally took note of her.
Thorque had her already set up with a needle and tube going into her arm, and the light-green fluid that would neutralize the poison pumped into her. Thorque had already gotten the quill out of her neck, spread some med gel on it, and was bandaging it up with a thermal gel patch that would cut the healing time down to mere hours.
He then started to make quick work of the broken bone on her wrist. The healing gel they had seeped into her pores instantly started knitting her from the inside out. Brawn looked at her face, saw the blood and sweat that had the dark strands of her hair sticking to her, and looked at the long, crescent-shaped eyelashes that touched her cheeks. She was small compared to them, tiny in fact.
She was also too thin, and he had a feeling it was because whatever camp she was with—because no way could one lone female survive this world—had trouble finding enough nourishment. They would have to correct that, because she needed to be strong, full, and not weak for the trip.
He looked at Lukin and Thorque, saw that his brothers were a few feet back from her, and noticed the deep-rooted desire that covered their faces. The breeding need was upon them well before they found this woman. In fact, they had been heading to the intergalactic auctions several planets away to purchase a female they would share as a mate. But it seemed fate had intervened and given them a woman of their own.
She was of a different species, a weaker one at that, but as there were no naturally born females on Hades, the male population had to get their women from auctions, take them from other planets, or—on rare occasions—actually court one.
The latter was next to impossible for a male of his world to do, mainly because they had no patience, and once the breeding and mating desire hit, they were on the hunt for a woman to carry their sons.
“She will be okay?” he asked his brother.
Thorque nodded and ran a hand over his face. “She will, but, brother—” He looked over at Brawn. “—are you thinking what I am?” Thorque then looked at Lukin, who had his attention fully on the female.
“I am, and I think all of us can agree that we won’t be letting her go,” Brawn said with determination. “She will be ours, if nothing else than because I saved her life,” he said, but honestly it had nothing to do with her owing them anything.
She was a fertile female, they were in need of one to share, and she had been right there for the taking.
“We will take her back to Hades,” Lukin said, and they nodded in agreement.
She probably would not like it, but what other options did she have? They could protect her, would cherish her as a bonded Hades warrior did with his female, and they would make sure she didn’t need anything.
“She’ll be out for the remainder of the night, so I think we need to work on the engine so we can be in flight for when she wakes and realizes we are taking her,” Thorque said.
It might have sounded cruel to take her against her will—well, she was unconscious, so it wasn’t really against anything—but the truth was she would be dead right now if he hadn’t found her. It was safer for her to be with them, because leaving her on this planet was not an option.
“I’ve increased her nutrients through the IV by half to give her a jumpstart on advancing her muscle mass and caloric intake,” Torque said and went over to the system controls that regulated how much or how little both of them got through the IV. “She should put on a substantial amount of healthy weight within the next twenty-four hours.”
“Good, because she’s rail-thin,” Lukin said and moved toward her. He pushed a piece of her dark hair away from her face, and the possessive side of Lukin came through like the Razzora Beast trampling through the Bolla trees. But Brawn felt it too, and so did Thorque.
The ingrained part of their animal side told them this was their woman, regardless of whether she claimed them as well. They were in their breeding phase, and because they found her, she was theirs. It was as simple as that.
“Let’s get finished on the engine, because the sooner we get the fuck out of here, the better,” Brawn said, and his brothers grunted in agreement before leaving them alone. He rested back on the table and closed his eyes.
He felt stronger by the second, but instead of leaving right away, he looked at the woman again. Her breasts tented her ratty, holed-up shirt, and the stiff peaks of her nipples poked through the material. Her concave belly was showing through one of the longer tears in the shirt, and what used to be pants, he assumed, were hacked off in places.
She was also filthy, but that wasn’t a shock, since no doubt she’d been in survival mode while on this harsh planet. It may look beautiful on the outside, but deep in the heart of it all was a planet full of hunger that could strip a person away.
But he could tell underneath all of that grime she was quite a stunning creature. He needed to get her well, needed her body to have curves and fullness, because if she was to bear them strong warrior sons, she couldn’t be a weakling. He rested his head back on the table, closed his eyes, and felt the strength in him reach capacity.
He hoped she’d see what they were doing as keeping her safe and not taking her away from her life.
Humans might be weaker, slower, and inferior to his kind, but if this female had survived even one night in this world, then she had to have some intelligence to her, and that was what he was hoping for.
