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.
3
There was a buzzing that filled her ears and vibrations that surrounded her body. It was strange, unusual, but slightly comforting. She opened her eyes, not feeling tired, hungry, or in any kind of discomfort, which was odd since every day when she had woken up, those were the three things that assaulted her.
She blinked several times and kept her attention on the space above her. She was on her back, on something that was warm and hard but not uncomfortable. Steel and bolts, lights and weird pieces of metal covered what she assumed to be the ceiling of wherever she was. Trying to remember how she even got here only brought her to the last memory she had.