His Untamed Mate (Swarii Mates Book 1)

by Korey Mae Johnson

  Peyton tilted his face up at the ceiling, exasperated. “I don’t need to explain!” he groaned. He looked back at her, trying to look firm as he added, “I have a job to do, and I do it.”

  “You do have to explain,” she assured firmly, “because even though Ellie’s a little hard to bear sometimes, she has pulled us both out of the fire numerous times. I’ve never been in Jazeel’s chamber other than during an inspection, if you haven’t recalled. I haven’t been abused or manhandled. And why? Because you asked her to make sure it never happened, and she did. She’s hidden our relationship from everyone, she’s kept us both out of harm’s way. Now, what could she have done that was so wrong that it didn’t warrant a little leniency from you?”

  Peyton muttered that he didn’t have time for a full explanation, but it was clear that if Mary had a rolling pin on her, he’d be beaten about the head with it before he could say ‘angry wife.’ So, he made time to tell Mary everything Ellie had told him, making sure that he made it clear just how stupid Ellie had been that entire day.

  He was surprised that, even at the end of his story, Mary’s calmness only reminded him of an oncoming storm.

  “She could have gotten me killed!” he recapped defensively. “Her tits were out of her shirt, there were buttons all over the floor…” He threw his hands wildly into the air, since apparently words alone weren’t enough of an illustration for Mary.

  “She might have lost her mind, yes,” Mary said, reaching up and giving him a calming pat on his chest. “But c’mon, now. We both know Ellie’s not a hussy. She still calls penises ‘things.’ She’s not very mature for a nineteen-year-old, and she’s never been anything like a sexual creature before now. So that means something must have happened between this Swarii commander and her, and she’s telling the truth. Something we can’t understand.” She shrugged her shoulders and looked up at him with her beautiful green eyes. “Perhaps they did accidentally mate, like the Swarii said.”

  Peyton made a guffawing noise in his throat.

  “Why is it so impossible?” Mary asked him. “You know me—I’m not one to trust other species, either, but we’re running out of time. Galaal will be here in just a couple of days, and our lives will change. What if they plan to breed me? Or sell Ellie? Or vice-versa?

  “I’m scared, Peyton. I wake up every day scared of what’s going to happen to us. You’re too important to me to lose.” She put a soft hand on his cheek, and then lowered her voice and spoke in low, quiet tones. “Now, if these men actually think Ellie’s their commander’s mate, they’re going to try to escape with her. We need to help them get out, and we need to make sure they don’t leave us behind.”

  Mary always had a way of quickly transforming Peyton’s heart into an unraveling ball of twine. The strings of it felt pulled taut. “Mary,” he said, with feeling, “we haven’t not gotten out of here yet because I’ve enjoyed myself. It hasn’t been because I’m too lazy to find a way out, or that I don’t want it more than anything. But humans can’t use Frian weapons. They can’t fly Frian ships. How are we supposed to get anywhere? We can’t use their stupid crystal technology.”

  “Are the Swarii able to use crystal technology?” she asked. “I’ve heard they can shal’ta—so why couldn’t they use whatever telekinetic energy they need for the ships?” she asked, lifting her palms upward as if she was physically serving this idea to him on a platter.

  Peyton stilled and his eyelashes combed together as he considered this. “I don’t know…” he admitted, but then quickly waved off the idea and any hope that was attached. “Let’s say they can. It doesn’t matter. We couldn’t trust them, right? They’re aliens!”

  Mary groaned and rubbed her fingers delicately against her temples in a circular motion. “Peyton!” She rolled her eyes and then shook her head at the ceiling. “I mean, when Ellie was talking about them earlier, I had my doubts. But prejudice against all other species this week is a luxury we don’t have. Perhaps this is the time we should start looking for allies and friends. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  He continued to think about this.

  “I want a life with you. I want to be married to you, and sleep with you, and have kids with you. Your kids,” she clarified, reminding him that if she had to be bred with someone else, he would feel like his heart was ripped out. To have to stand by and watch that… how could he?

  “This could be our last chance,” she reminded him, bunching his shirt in her fingers.

  He slowly pulled her fingers free, and then brought up her hands to kiss her knuckles. She was never rash, he reminded himself, and she was extremely intelligent. If she thought that this was a risk worth taking, he decided, than it probably was. He liked to think of himself as the head of their relationship, but then again, he knew he had all but lost hope after being a slave for five years under these conditions. Maybe he had become too wary of taking risks.

  She was right. This might be their only chance… and there was only one way to find out.

  He had to go talk with the Swarii.

  * * *

  Ellie’s new boyfriend was pretty terrifying, Peyton decided. He hadn’t noticed before because he had been so aghast by how close Ellie was to having sex with the guy, but now that he was trying to ‘make nice’ he was noticing that the commander was not the kind of man that most would want to fuck around with.

  Luckily, three of the five Swarii spoke very good English. The other two just stood to the side, looking grumpy and intimidating. Luckily, the commander himself spoke English fluently, and after some angry words when Peyton first entered, he finally let Peyton say his piece.

  Unfortunately, as soon as Peyton was done saying his piece, five sets of eyes just blinked at him judgmentally. The commander looked extremely pissed, but at least he had stopped baring his canines at him.

  After the silence had gotten unsettling, he turned to the shortest of the Swarii. “Did he… understand all that?” he asked with uncertainty.

  “Yeah,” the Swarii replied. He was also the bulkiest. Out of them all, he was the one who looked most like a pirate, Peyton decided. “He’s had a rough day and thinking’s very hard for him right now. He’s usually a little more… sane.”

  “There seems to be a lot of crazy going around these days,” Peyton admitted, shrugging apologetically. “In my defense, though, I got in a twist because Jazeel loves surprise inspections. He checks the virginity of every girl in here about ten times a year. If he finds one that’s not, he blames me. And then it’s snip-snip.” He snipped the air with invisible scissors.

  All three Swarii who understood him winced. “Urgh.”

  “Yeah, eunuchs are a thing here. I really don’t want to become one,” Peyton stated flatly.

  He said this because he knew it would lighten some of the hostility toward him. It immediately did, even for the commander. After his words were translated to Swarii by the tallest of them, who could easily be called a blond giant, even the other two dramatically lightened their stance.

  “I don’t appreciate anyone chastising my mate without my permission,” Graham finally told him, but at least he didn’t snarl the words, which was how he had been conversing previously. “And you did, didn’t you?”

  Peyton hesitated for a moment but then nodded. “I took a switch to her ass, not anything more. I’d never smack her around or do anything like that. I love Ellie.” He raised his hands when the commander’s eye darkened at the words. “Like a sister,” he firmly clarified. “I have my own—erhm… mate.”

  “Explain to me what a switch is,” Graham replied, narrowing his eyes at him like a sleepy cat might.

  “It’s a whippy little stick that you strip the bark off of. It doesn’t cut the skin or anything. Just makes ‘em think twice.”

  He nodded and rubbed his hand over his face. “We punish wives in the same way,” he admitted to him wearily. “Just… never touch her again and I think we can come to terms. Yes—to your question about cry
stal technology. My people don’t build it into their own equipment, but we do have the ability to utilize it.”

  He squinted, as it seemed that the commander was using bigger words than he normally did. “Where’d you boys learn to speak my language?”

  “That is actually an awesome story,” said the shorter, bulkier one. “So, there was this huge slave uprising on Klandara in the Northwest Region, and—”

  “Thorton,” the commander sighed, silencing him. He waved dismissively at him. “Bedtime stories can wait for later. Prime, what are you down here for?”

  Peyton straightened. “My wife and I need to leave this planet, and if you know crystal technology, then I can tell you how to get to a ship. If you help us escape, then we’ll help you.”

  “How soon?” the commander asked, his eyebrows raising up.

  “As soon as tonight,” Peyton replied. “Once everyone’s in bed and there’s a change of the guard.”

  The commander looked over at the short one, who Peyton had now gathered was named Thorton, and they exchanged a couple of words.

  Thorton shook his head, and said in English, apparently for Peyton’s benefit, “I say we listen to what Muscles’ plan is. I might be able to get us out… but not that fast and not that pretty.”

  Peyton smirked and stepped forward when the commander crooked his fingers at him and said, “Alright. Tell us your plan. I’m ready to take my mate home.”

  “That makes two of us,” Peyton assured, feeling the first surge of hope he’d had since he was first abducted. He just prayed to God that his hope wouldn’t be in vain.

  * * *

  Thank God. The human had led him right to her room.

  Thorton had been more taken by the prime than Graham had been, saying that not just anyone could toss him around, and he might be useful in the future. Graham was still a little hesitant to trust a human slave—Eleanor herself said that most human slaves weren’t to be trusted.

  But there he was. And there she was: naked and bathed in moonlight. His mate.

  She made little grunting and squeaking sounds when she slept. It was adorable; Graham was certain that he could stand there and watch her all night… Especially that amazing, round little bottom.

  She was sleeping on her belly, probably because of the little welts that had risen over her skin in several areas. There were a few bruises on her thighs, as well, but he was certain those were from Jazeel.

  He crouched next to her and slowly reached his hand out and touched her skin. He thought she would wake up immediately, but she didn’t. With a curious eye, he stood transfixed, watching his hand move over her hip, pressing his fingers bravely against her flesh.

  It was hard to breathe. He had never been this close to a naked woman before, and he had certainly never touched one. He hadn’t any idea how soft or smooth they were, or how warm.

  He traced his finger down what seemed like a bump, but then he realized it was a welt. He inspected it with a feather-light touch, and her body shifted slightly. Her legs were spread wider, and he found himself drawn to what was between her thighs.

  Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to get that far. She woke up, groggily at first, and then took a deep breath. He quickly slapped his hand over her mouth, covering it before she could start shrieking. “Shh!” he said, putting the index finger of his other hand to his mouth. “Shh, Eleanor. It’s me—Graham,” he whispered.

  Her round eyes blinked at him, looking somewhere between surprised and panicked. “I’m going to let you go, now. You need to get up, and get dressed. Understand?”

  She nodded, and so he slowly let her go.

  She took the pillow she had been laying her head on and whacked him with it. “What’s the matter with you?” she hissed. “You scared the ever-loving shit out of me, you pervert!” She slapped him with the pillow again. “Were you touching me?” she demanded, then hit him once more before picking herself up from the bed and using the pillow to shield the front of herself from his sight. “How’d you get in here?”

  “No time to explain. We need to hurry. My men went ahead without us, and they’ll be waiting,” he whispered, pulling himself up on his feet and stretching out his hand to help her up.

  Her mouth hung open. “I can’t just leave,” she told him.

  “Yes, you can. Get dressed.”

  She didn’t argue with him about this; she seemed happy enough to dress. Despite the fact that her master had no scruples about undressing her in front of his company, she clearly wasn’t comfortable being nude in front of people. Shielding herself the entire time, she scurried to the closet, pulled out some clothes, and dressed quickly.

  “Pack. Not much. Just a change of clothes or two for the journey,” he advised, coming into the closet behind her as soon as she had tugged on a dress over her head. He pulled the pillow out of its case and began to throw clothes inside.

  “I’m not just going to go. If I disappear, my friends will get punished!” she told him firmly. “We have to take them.”

  “Eleanor, hurry,” Graham demanded.

  “What is taking you so long?” a gruff voice said behind them. He turned and saw Peyton himself, holding the hand of a blonde girl who was standing behind him, eyeing Graham wearily. “They’ll leave without us! We have to cover two kilometers in ten minutes!”

  Eleanor startled for a moment and said, “Peyton! I didn’t know that—”

  “Come on!” Peyton demanded, waving his hand toward him. “Our window of opportunity is closing fast.”

  Graham was kicking himself. He should have woken Eleanor up right away, not gawked at her. He knew that they hadn’t much time—what was the matter with him? Where had his mind gone?

  Scolding himself inwardly, he grabbed Eleanor’s arm and pulled her behind him, following Peyton from the room. With his free hand he pulled a blaster that Peyton had procured for him from where he had stored it inside of his jacket.

  His mate was not very silent when she moved. As he followed Peyton out into the hallway, behind them all was the clapping of Eleanor’s bare feet as she tried to keep up. Graham sighed and picked her up.

  She huffed uncomfortably as he toted her under one arm.

  Peyton bent down and plucked his fingers at a steel grate on the floor until it came loose. “Go through there. It’ll put us outside on the right side of the building,” he promised, leading his blonde-haired mate to the tunnel and then picking her up and carefully lowering her down into the tunnel until her feet touched the bottom.

  Suddenly, a Frian came around the corner, right behind Peyton. Graham lined up his blaster, but Peyton turned around, reached up, and grabbed the taller Frian on both sides of his head. There was a loud ‘crunch’ as he twisted the Frian’s neck awkwardly to the side with one powerful motion.

  Graham had never seen anyone kill a Frian with his bare hands. He stood there and took account—thinking how Thorton simply wouldn’t believe this when he told him. Peyton turned back, his face looking disgusted. “Hurry,” he whispered.

  Graham lowered Eleanor down into the tunnel with one arm until the blonde helped her down the last couple of feet to the ground. Peyton picked up the body and followed them both down, leaving Graham to follow them and seal the grate behind them.

  “Can you make it to the ship dock in eight minutes?” Graham asked him, grabbing Eleanor’s hand into his own.

  “Can you?” Peyton challenged.

  “I can’t,” Eleanor put in abruptly, putting up her hand. “That’d be a way hella fast run in the dark, guys. We ain’t gonna make it.”

  “I can see in the dark,” Graham told Peyton, picking up Eleanor like she was a doll. “I’ll lead the way.”

  Peyton mirrored Graham and picked up the blonde into his own arms, saying, “Well, at least you’re good for something.” Graham thought that Peyton was slighting him until he noticed his slight smirk.

  He smirked back. “Just keep up, human.”

  “Let’s kick this pig,” Peyton sai
d, and Graham turned, wondering what exactly he meant by that. Peyton just shook his head and said, “Never mind. It means ‘let’s go.’”

  Graham raised an eyebrow and grumbled, “If you say so…” Then he took off down the tunnel.

  * * *

  Even though Graham had actually carried her, while running at least two kilometers toward the ship dock, Ellie could not see any of his crew there at all. It looked as calm as the grave except for themselves and Peyton huffing along behind them.

  Graham stopped and scanned around, and upon seeing something that must have drawn him, continued to race toward a ship that didn’t stand out to her at all until the entry ramp lowered from the back of its relatively small exterior. Lowering with it was the shortest of the crew, who was easy to spot because of his stocky form. She remembered his name was Thorton.

  He was grinning. “Nice to see you’ve made it! We were set to leave without you.”

  Graham grunted, and as soon as he walked up the ramp, he put Ellie on her feet. “Everything under way, then?”

  “Yeah. It’s not a great ship by any means, but it’ll do for a while as long as it holds together,” Thorton replied casually in English.

  When Peyton put Mary on her feet and she looked up at Thorton with wide eyes, obviously a little intimidated, Thorton smiled at her. Looking over her head at Peyton, he said, “How thoughtful! You brought along lunch.”

  Ellie whirled around, startled, and saw that Mary looked pale. Peyton, on the other hand, just looked extremely annoyed. After a supercharged three seconds, Thorton gave a laugh. “I’m just kidding! You all need to learn to relax!” Over his head, he called out, “Close the hatch!” and the hatch immediately began to close.

  She pursed her lips at the jokester for a second, but then Graham grabbed her hand and tugged her along behind them through another door that led into the main part of the ship. She looked around. She had been on several ships before as a mechanic’s assistant for Jazeel, but this one looked ancient in comparison to what she’d seen.