Mated to the Warriors (18 page)

But if Zane didn’t come for me soon, I would disobey him. I could tell by the buzzing numbness in my connection to Dare that something wasn’t right. And I would bet they had taken him to the medical station. Doctor Mordin was probably looking at him right now, making sure he was okay.

The door to our quarters made a dinging sound and I ran for the door.
Finally!

I unlocked the door, expecting to see Zane in the hallway.

Instead, a weapon was pressed to my chest and the old man who’d stared at me like a lecherous toad in the medical station when I first arrived smiled down at me. I’d since learned his name was Harbart, and he was Prince Nial’s future father-in-law, or whatever they called it here.

I felt sorry for Prince Nial. If Harbart’s daughter was anything like her father, the poor girl had to be a horrible creature.

“Lady Deston. I need you to come with me.” His eyes were cold and hard and he pressed the tip of his weapon exactly between my full breasts. I didn’t know exactly how good this armored clothing was, and I didn’t want to test it.

“I can’t. I’m sorry. Commander Zane ordered me to stay in here until he returned.” I was stalling, and we both knew it. The cruel tilt of his smirk made me shiver and I took a step back trying to get the pointed space weapon off my body. I had no idea what the strange weapon could do, but I had no desire to find out.

Harbart followed me into the room and sealed the door behind us before turning back around to face me. I stared up at him in horror. He was huge, like all Prillon warriors. I barely reached his shoulder, and he probably weighed twice as much as I. His blank expression had transformed, from cold and unfeeling to that of a monster. His lips peeled back to reveal his teeth, his dark yellow eyes were wide and wild, and one hand curved around the weapon, the other curled in the air as he raised it to strike me, the gnarled fingers like a withered old tree branch.

He hit me hard across the cheek and I staggered backward, landing on my ass on the floor. Pain sliced through my skull but I welcomed it, knowing Zane would feel it, knowing he would come. I swallowed the bile rising in my throat and tried to think of a way to survive long enough for Zane to get here.

“You cunt whore.” Harbart stepped forward and I scrambled backward like a crab on all four legs, but I wasn’t fast enough and his kick connected with my hip. I rolled into a ball on my side, in complete agony as he leaned over me with spittle on his chin. “Nial was supposed to die today. And you? You aren’t supposed to be here at all. Zane is mine.”

He kicked at me again but I was waiting for it. I grabbed his leg and pulled with all my might. I managed to get him off balance and he fell backward with his arms flailing like windmills.

Gasping for air, I tried to stand, but it felt like I had a knife in the side of my hip. The pain flooded me, but I knew how to deal with pain. Pain woke me up. Pain made me feel alive. And this asshole was after my mate. I had no idea what this monster wanted with Zane, but I wasn’t going to let him get it.

Half crawling, half staggering, I headed for the S-Gen in the corner of the room. If I could get there, maybe I could ask for a baseball bat, or a golf club. Something! I’d never fired a gun in my life, and I doubted the ship’s systems had been programmed for human weapons.

Reaching the platform, I stretched to place my hand on the activation panel—

“Don’t move, Hannah Johnson of Earth. Or I will splatter your brain all over the wall.”

Zane

I paced the medical station and waited for Doctor Mordin to complete the examinations. We’d been back on the ship for nearly an hour, and I could feel my Hannah’s impatience building. But I wouldn’t go to her without answers.

“Well, doctor? Can you save them?” Dare was covered in superficial Hive devices, thin metallic modifications they’d made to his skin and eyes. But Nial? The bastards had obviously started their work on the prince first.

“Dare will be fine, but I’m not sure I can remove the implant from his right eye. It will enhance his vision, but isn’t dangerous long term.”

I released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. So, my second would have a metallic glint in his eye for the rest of his life. But he would be alive, and whole, and
himself
. Hannah would be happy, my family was whole, and that was all that mattered to me.

“What about Nial? What do I tell the Prime?” I turned to the monster on the other examination table and clenched my jaw. Nial was nearly covered with metallic grafts and devices, some protruding from his skull from brain probes and implants. I’d seen this before, and worse. I’d rescued warriors from Hive centers in worse condition, but those warriors were always shipped to a medical station for treatment and I rarely saw them again.

But just because I didn’t see them, didn’t mean I wasn’t aware of Nial’s prognosis. Most men couldn’t recover from the level of genetic manipulation Nial had suffered. He was more machine than man now. Hive.

Something of what I was thinking must have shown on my face because when I looked up, the doctor was watching me.

“He’s not as bad as some I’ve seen. I’ll get to work on him right away. Don’t tell the Prime anything yet.”

“When will you know?” Man or machine? Could the prince survive without the added technology? Had they wiped out too many of his natural systems?

“When I pull the probes from his brain stem.”

A jolt of cold panic struck through my collar and Dare groaned from his exam table. “Hannah.” He tried to sit up, brought back to consciousness by our mate’s fear.

I didn’t bother with explanations, simply ran from the room, with Dare staggering behind me.

The doctor yelled at Dare to stop, but I knew my second. Our mate was in trouble. Unless he was dead, he would fight beside me to save her.

Hannah

I froze for a moment, then pulled my hand back to my lap and turned to look up at Harbart. I knew the moment Zane felt my fear, and his rage gave me courage. He was coming. I just had to stall the crazy for a couple of minutes. “You’re insane, Harbart. What do you want from me?”

“You need to die. Nial will die. I’ll make sure of that. And then the commander will take my daughter as his bride, as he should have when I offered her to him.”

I shook my head, confused. “But Prince Nial will be Prime. Why would you want a commander, when you can have the ruler of the whole planet?”

Harbart scoffed at me as if I were an ignorant child. “Commander Deston controls the entire interstellar fleet, little human. Warriors from
hundreds
of worlds bow to his command.” He stepped forward and grabbed me by my hair, pulling me half off the floor as tears stung my eyes and my scalp burned. “As they will obey yours,
Lady Deston
, once the claiming ceremony is complete.”

I reached for his hand, trying to hold on and take some of my body weight off my hair. “I don’t understand. Just let me go.”

“Of course you don’t, stupid human girl.” He dragged me toward the door and I tried to keep my feet under me but failed. “Our warriors rule in war, but their mates rule in peace.”

What the hell did that mean? My vision was blurred with tears as Harbart stepped to the door. He was forced to stop to wait for it to open and I knew this was my only chance. I scrambled until I had my feet under me, then used one hard kick to crumble Harbart’s knee from behind. He fell back, letting go of my hair to land partially on top of me. The weapon went flying from his hand and I shoved at his huge body trying to get him off me so I could reach it first.

“You bitch. I’ll strangle you with my bare hands.”

His huge hands wrapped around my leg and dragged me toward him. I kicked at his face, my fingernails trying to claw their way through the floor to gain traction.

The door opened and my mates burst into the room. Zane’s roar blasted through my body and I crumbled in relief as my mate lifted Harbart from the floor and threw him across the room. The old man hit the wall with a sickening crunch and I knew his skull hadn’t survived the impact, but Zane wasn’t finished with him.

I buried my face in my arm until a pair of strong, familiar hands wrapped around me. “Come, love. Let’s get you to medical while Zane takes care of this.”

Dare lifted me in his arms and I let him carry me out of the room, Harbart’s screams drifting to us down the corridor.

Chapter Fourteen

Hannah

With a smile on my face, I watched my mates enter the medical station and question poor Doctor Mordin as if my health were vital to the survival of entire planets, not just to the claiming ceremony that was scheduled to begin in the next few minutes.

I was sitting in the medical station wearing nothing but a white robe and the collar around my neck. It was black, but not long from now, I’d have both of my mates filling me, claiming me, and it would turn a dark, beautiful red.

In the bed next to mine, Prince Nial sat with his back propped up by half a dozen pillows. I glanced at him from the corner of my eye, pleased to see him grin as Zane asked the same question for the third time.

I laughed, happy and eager to get to the ceremony. “Zane, I’m fine. I don’t want to delay the ceremony.”

Both of my mates turned to me and my breath caught in my throat. God, they were beautiful, both of them. They wore dark red robes that matched their collars, and nothing else. Their size alone should have scared me, but a shiver of desire made my pussy clench. My mates.
Mine
. Dare, so tender and gentle when I needed it, so sensual and patient in bed, made me laugh and calmed me when I needed to feel cherished. Zane, his power and mastery of me made me feel safe and protected and
needed.
Dare loved me, I could feel the warmth of his emotions like hot rays of the sun shining on my soul. But Zane’s love was more like an inferno of lust and need, of power and surrender. Zane was my anchor, my matched mate, my master. Without Zane, I would truly be lost.

He came to me and lifted his hand to my chin, turning my face to make sure all the bruising was gone. “Are you in pain, mate? I will not do this if you are not healed.”

I slapped his hand away, irritated to be having this conversation again. “I’m fine. Those ReGen things healed me most of the way. I’m a little bruised, but I don’t care, Zane. I want you to be mine forever. I want you both to be mine. I don’t want to wait.”

Dare walked to stand beside Zane, his arms crossed over his massive chest. “Hannah, we will decide when you are ready. The doctor—”

“No! I decide. Not him. Me. You.” I hopped down off the table and poked Zane in the chest with my finger. “If you don’t want me, fine. I’ll go home. But—”

Zane shut me up with a kiss. Dare chuckled. The doctor sighed with relief and Prince Nial cleared his throat.

“Zane, cousin, I have one request before you go.”

Zane ended the kiss and pulled me into his side, his arm around my waist and I settled there, content as a kitten. God, I loved him. So much. So damn much.

“What do you need, Nial?”

The prince looked embarrassed, as much as he could with the odd metallic sheen that remained on the left side of his face. His left eye was a strange silver, and he had metallic implants in his left arm and leg. He looked like a half-finished cyborg, like something out of a
Star Trek
movie I’d seen once where a weird alien race of machines took people and took over their bodies with gadgets and computer programming. It was creepy and weird, but the look in the prince’s good eye made me sad. He looked lost.

“I require transport to Earth, and a ship in that sector once I arrive. I can’t go back to Prillon like this. And the doctor informed me yesterday that my matched mate was selected, from Earth, just like you, Hannah. But she was denied transport due to my… condition.”

I gasped. “But Harbart’s daughter—”

“Was never going to happen, not after I saw you with the commander.” Prince Nial looked at Zane with a sad smile. “I didn’t understand what you meant about not wanting a political match, cousin, until I saw you with her. Now I understand. I want my mate. She’s mine.”

Zane’s arm tensed around me. “You want to go after her? She may not come willingly.”

The prince looked Zane in the eye. “I will have her, Zane. With or without your help. She’s my mate.”

“Very well. Doctor?” Zane shouted for Doctor Mordin over his shoulder, but the huge man was standing right behind Dare.

“I’ve got it all recorded, commander. I’ll take care of it.”

Zane held out his hand, the one not around me, and Nial took it.

“Good luck. I hope you find her.”

“I will. Thank you.”

Zane let him go and looked down at me. I was so eager for my men I could barely stand still.

“Let’s go, Hannah. It’s time for you to claim your mates.”

Zane led me from the room and I walked between him and Dare in the long corridor until we reached the claiming room. I looked around in wonder, anticipation making my pussy wet before I’d cleared the door.

“Stand in the center of the room and face us.” Zane issued the order and I hurried to comply. When I reached the center I stopped and took a quick look around. The room was bare except for one small cushion in the center, but it wasn’t something I’d ever seen on a couch back home. No, this cushion was the size of a bed and hip high, just the right height for Dare to take me from behind while I rode Zane’s cock.

I shuddered as heat flooded my system and Zane cleared his throat, drawing my gaze from the bed thing back to him. Dare stood beside him, shoulder to shoulder, and I admired the view as both of my mates dropped their robes to the floor and stood before me naked. Behind them a curved black glass hid other men, my mate’s chosen warriors, from my view. They were here to witness the claiming and pledge their lives to mine.

I didn’t know who was back there and I didn’t care. I wanted to claim my men forever. I wanted them to fuck me, stretch me, and make me beg—