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.