Mate Her (7 page)

All any of them could do was
stare at her as she crumbled from the reality. But Brawn finally pulled her
close, and she instantly rested her head on his chest. He stroked her head and
looked at his brothers. They were warriors, fearless and strong, but right now
they looked so damn scared for how she was reacting.

“You’re in shock,
Minka
,” Brawn said softly, still moving his hand over her
hair. He felt at a loss right now, vulnerable even, and it was all because this
woman, this little human female, had broken down in front of them.

“I’m sorry. I had it together, or
at least I thought I did.” She pulled back slightly, but he wasn’t ready to let
her go just yet. Holding her felt good,
really
good, and he wanted to let his body heat seep into her, calm the chills that covered
her flesh, and wanted her to know that although they may look like demons, and
held beasts inside of them that were trained on one thing at the moment, they
were not animals that held no compassion. With her it was different. She was
their mate, even if she hadn’t been with them for very long. As soon as he’d
held her in his arms he had known she was theirs, and when his brothers had
seen her he knew they’d felt the same way, too. He looked at
Thorque
, the brother who was more technical with all of these
answers, and nodded for him to say something.

“
Minka
,”
he said, and leaned forward. “The air you breathe here is no different from any
other planet a human can sustain life on.”
Thorque
spoke softly, and it was strange to Brawn that he could hear those kinds of
emotions come from his brother. “We have a water reserve stored in a cavern
within the mountain. Since our kind doesn’t require a substantial amount of H
₂
O,
we have plenty. If we need more we can easily get it.”

“As for a creature coming into
our home,”
Lukin
said, and there was this hardness to
his voice. “
We
are the predators on
this planet, and even if some of the creatures try to challenge us, they find
out with their lives that it was a mistake.”

“
Lukin
,”
Brawn growled out. “You’re not fucking helping.” His youngest brother seemed to
like to let his
alphaness
out when a threat was even
spoken of.

Lukin
stared at Brawn, and then finally breathed out and nodded. “I apologize,
Minka
. If I frightened you further that wasn’t my intent.
My point is nothing will dare come into our territory.”

She nodded, and Brawn felt
movement against his chest.

“Among the three of us we have
lived for a total of three-hundred years, so believe me when I say we know how
to protect what is ours,”
Lukin
said with a hard tone
in his voice, and then he moved toward her.

“Three hundred years?” She had
since pushed away from Brawn and now stared at
Lukin
who stood in front of her. She looked among all of them, and although she
sounded shocked, surely she wasn’t honestly.

“You do realize that humans are
the only beings in this galaxy with a minimal life span, right?”
Thorque
asked.

Brawn looked at her, wanted to
push the hair away from her face, but instead curled his hands into balls.

“Of course I know that, I just
didn’t realize you were that old.”

The silence stretched between
them, and then Brawn started chuckling. That had his brothers doing the same,
and soon the tension in the cavern lessened marginally. “I suppose compared to
your species one hundred and twenty-five would be old,” Brawn said.

She nodded. “And how old are you
two?”
Minka
asked, and she said it softly, but her
voice was steady and strong.

“
Thorque
is one hundred and five, and
Lukin
is only seventy,”
Brawn answered.

“Even the youngest one is fifty
years older than me,” she said and then started rubbing her hands up and down
her thighs.

“Listen, the trip back to Hades
was long and you’re still healing mentally, so how about we rest for the
remainder of the night, and in the morning we can talk about what being our
mate really means?”
Thorque
said.

“I know what it means,”
Minka
said, but stood. “But I think sleeping is probably
better right now for me than talking about…” She paused and stared at each of
them for a second. “I think talking about you three breeding with me right now
is probably going to have me flip my switch.”

Brawn didn’t know what that human
term meant, but he could assume. He stood and led them out of the sitting area
and into one of the rooms in the cavern. There were four rooms, one mainly used
to clean their weapons, and the other three for them to sleep in. And although
he would prefer taking her to his room and being with her in every way possible
as
Lukin
and
Thorque
watched before joining in and breeding with her, he would give her this time to
come to terms with everything. This life wasn’t normal for her in any sense.
She had nothing else out there. He knew that, and she knew that. It was a
dangerous, frightening, and hungry galaxy, and its inhabitants were anxious to
tear the others down.

“You can sleep here tonight, but
it is hard for us to stay away from you,
Minka
,
especially when we want you as badly as we do.” Brawn stared at her, knowing
she wouldn’t possibly understand what was happening between them. He knew
humans didn’t have the need to breed, or have this undisputable and unbreakable
urge to find their mate. They fucked whomever they wanted, and when they
finally found the person they stayed with there was nothing that bound them
aside from this thing they called love. Hades warriors did not have an
equivalent of love aside from the mating-and-claiming desire. They did fuck
females when they needed to relieve themselves, but the only time they took a
female to be their mate was to procreate and to have her as a lifelong companion.

“What about when I die?” She
asked.

Confusion filled him for a
second, and then realization struck him. He took a step closer to her. “Even
though you’re human,
Minka
, once we have completed
the breeding and marked you, a chemical is released into your body.”

She breathed out. “What does that
mean?”

“It means you would stop aging as
long as one of us marked you every time we were with you sexually.”

She didn’t respond right away,
but he could see she was thinking hard about what he said.

“And what happens if you don’t
mark me? What happens if you three die?”

He was already shaking his head
before she finished talking. “If we die, then the chemical wouldn’t be in your
body any longer, and you’d age naturally.” He cupped her face, ran his thumb
over her bottom lip, and didn’t stop himself from leaning forward. He pressed
his mouth to hers, feeling this spark of warmth and need filled him when their
lips were together. She smelled good, felt incredible, and tasted so fucking
intoxicating. His dick was rock hard, and his blood pumped hard and fast in his
body. He pulled back, and breathed out. “But we’ve survived a long time, and we
have no plans on letting anything happen to you.” The kiss hadn’t been anything
enticing, but even the press of their mouths together had shifted something
inside of him. “We just found you, and no way
that anything
or anyone will
take that away from us.”

She swallowed, stared right in
his eyes, and then nodded. “I believe you.”

And he knew she did, even if she
was jumping into this with
both feet
, her eyes closed,
and no idea what in the hell would happen.

Chapter Six

Minka
lay in bed, stared at the stalactites above her, and thought about everything
the brothers had done and said to her this far. It was easy to accept something
when she didn’t have anything to gain or lose, but in all honesty these men had
treated her better than anyone ever had in her life,
Jobe
included. Although
Jobe
had showed her kindness and
pleasure, they hadn’t been in a relationship, and hadn’t really known each
other for very much time. Everyone else that she had ever come in contact with
had treated her as if she were just another mouth to feed, a body to clothe,
and as if she was holding them down. But
Minka
supposed when her species was on the brink of extinction it was a fight for
their life kind of situation.

She moved off the bed and grabbed a light animal
hide to wrap around her body. The lighting was dim, and everything was so
quiet.
Minka
padded out of the room and down the
short hallway. The stone around her was almost ominous with the shadows playing
across it. She couldn’t sleep, and she thought walking around would help clear
her mind. Stepping into the main room that held the sitting and cooking area,
she stopped and just looked around. Everything was so dark, and the few flames
that were in the walls, lighting those little spaces, made everything so much
more frightening. The entrance to the cave was about ten feet from her, but all
she could see
was the small flames
flickering back and
forth. The entrance had many twists and turns, but she wasn’t enough of a fool
to try to escape. For one thing this was not a planet she could live on.
Minka
was smart enough to know that for as unsure as she
was about all of this, she was safest with these Hades warriors.

“Thinking of escaping?”

She turned and saw the dark figure rising from the
sitting bench. He turned and faced her, and the flickering flames illuminated
his face. Even if she hadn’t been able to see
Lukin’s
face,
she’dhave
known it was the youngest brother. He
moved closer, and she took one step back, not because she was afraid, but
because it was like an instinct.

“You weren’t going to try to leave, were you?” he
said with an almost tired tone in his voice.

Minka
shook her head, but then licked her lips and said, “No, of course not. I’m not
an idiot.”

He moved closer.

“I know that I’m safer with you three.”

He nodded, and when he stopped in front of her she
inhaled deeply, like she was instinctively bringing him into her body. “That’s good,
because you are,” he said and reached up. He snagged a lock of her hair, held
it up to the light, and rubbed the strands between his fingers. When
Lukin
dropped her hair and it landed back on her shoulder
he took a step back. “There isn’t anyone on this planet, or in this galaxy,
that will protect you the way we will.”

“I know.” And she did, without a doubt, which was as
strange as it was comforting. She knew this because she felt it deep in her
body, in her bones and cells—in the very make-up of her soul. She relied on her
instincts to help her survive, to have her keep moving away from threats, and
give her strength to fight when she needed to. Her instincts were telling her
that these men really would lay down their lives for her if it meant she would
survive another day. A part of her couldn’t wrap her brain around that because
she didn’t know them, or really understand this whole mate and breeding
mentality. That wasn’t how humans were programmed, but if she wanted to make
this work she needed to accept that this was her fate, and that it could be a
lot worse.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said softly, not knowing why
she even spoke. Maybe she just wanted to break up this weird silence that
stretched between them? She looked over at the bench he had been lying on. “You
slept out here?”

He was silent for a moment, and then exhaled. “I
couldn’t sleep either.” He stared into her face, and despite the fact she
couldn’t see him very well, she had a feeling he saw her as easily as if the
sun was in the room with them. “I usually leave for a few hours when everything
is silent, and my brothers are asleep. It lets me think and clears my head.”
The silence stretched between them for a second. “But I know you need plenty of
water, and I was going to go out tonight and stock up.”

She swallowed, and her mouth and throat were so very
dry, but not because she was thirsty, but because this male made her feel
strange in a good way.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty?” he asked just as softly,
but because his voice was so deep it seemed much louder in this great cavern.

“No.” She held onto the hide tighter and felt sweat
start to bead between her breasts.

Lukin
tilted his head to the side and examined her like she was some kind of
experiment. “I can assume how difficult all of this is for you.”

“Can you?” She didn’t say it with an attitude, but
was genuinely curious if he really did understand what she could be feeling.

“Well, I guess I have never been in your situation,
so I can only imagine. But you’re probably frightened, confused, and not
knowing how everything will play out.” He smiled, and she realized that that
small act changed his entire “demon-like” appearance. He seemed almost softer.