Warrior's Mate: A Sci-Fi Shifter Romance (Warriors of Vor Book 1) Read online

  Warrior’s Mate

  Tehya Titan

  Warrior’s Mate

  Army Lieutenant Jordan Ramsey is having the worst day of her life. Kidnapped, Jordan is taken from Earth and brought to a new world where she is to become the property of an alien warrior that is more demon than man. But even though her future is no longer her own, she won’t go down without a fight…

  Kadan Krell is the King of Vor. As a ruthless warrior, he never thought he would find his mate, but when he sees the beautiful human named Jordan, he knows she is destined to be his. Nothing will stop him from claiming what belongs to him, and showing her exactly what it means to be a warrior’s mate.

  WARRIOR’S MATE

  Copyright © 2015 by Tehya Titan

  First E-book Publication: June 2015

  Kindle Edition

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental. It is fiction so facts and events may not be accurate except to the current world the book takes place in.

  DEDICATION

  To my good friend, who encouraged me to write this story.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  Army Lieutenant Jordan Ramsey glanced over at Private Dobbs, the driver of the Humvee, and had to stop herself from agreeing with him out loud. They were on a bullshit recon mission that had no purpose, and they all knew it. But she was rank, and as such, she shouldn’t bitch to the members of her squad…no matter how much she wanted to.

  The day was hot, just like every day in the Sandbox was. Iraq was a myriad of desert areas that was occasionally diversified by various cities of different sizes, but the American base that Jordan’s unit operated out of was smack-dab in the middle of nowhere. The light sand color of her camo gear did nothing to help combat the raging heat inside the Humvee, and the armored tactical vest she wore felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, making it difficult to breathe.

  It was supposed to be Jordan’s day off, but nothing ever went as planned, especially when their small base was run by a dick of epic proportions. A few days ago, some of the guys from Jordan’s unit had played an impromptu game of basketball after their duties were finished for the day. When Post Commander Major Tim McCall saw that the guys were drinking numerous water bottles—at least what he considered was more than their share—he went ballistic.

  Jordan had been incredulous when she’d seen the locks on the coolers holding the water bottles the next day. Major McCall—or as the soldiers on base called him, “MPA,” which stood for Major Pain in the Ass—had the only key, and he’d left the base for the day. What he’d claimed was a lesson to teach the soldiers not to waste resources was really a colossal error made by a man who sat on his pampered fat ass, sipping imported coffee his assistant made him most days.

  Unwilling to let the soldiers on base suffer from dehydration just because some asshole wanted to keep costs on the base down, she’d shot the locks off the coolers. When Major McCall returned, he’d been furious and had threatened to have Jordan court-martialed for going against direct orders. Knowing that would be his reaction, Jordan preempted the Post Commander by contacting Colonel Davis, the commander at the larger base close to them, reporting the incident and explaining her actions.

  Colonel Davis had made a special trip out to their base, putting Major McCall on notice that he wouldn’t tolerate taking necessary resources from the soldiers on the base and putting them at risk because of stupid decisions. Jordan had known Major McCall would exact his revenge, and she hadn’t been surprised to find herself scheduled for patrol missions three days in a row.

  Jordan had expected extra duty, but Major McCall had decided to punish her men along with her, and that was something that pissed her off more than she could say. Every time they left the base, they were put at risk. And these extra patrols were pure bullshit. It sucked, but there was very little she could do.

  However, it was hard taking orders from an asshole, but Jordan was used to doing the hard.

  Growing up in a trailer park with parents that were drunk more often than they were sober, Jordan had to take care of herself at an early age. When most kids her age had been playing with dolls and having tea parties, Jordan had to learn how to keep out of the hands of the monsters that tried to prey on pretty young girls. Born with skin the color of Irish cream, bright green eyes and fiery red hair that matched her temper, she had always had her share of male attention, even when she didn’t want it.

  She’d always been smart and tough, and she’d used those skills to keep herself out of trouble until she’d been old enough to enlist and get the hell out of her parents trailer. Once she’d joined the Army, her looks had been a hindrance, but as she rose in the ranks, her intelligence and natural leadership abilities gained her the respect of her peers and the soldiers under her command.

  The men and women she served with were her family. She’d kill for them, but more importantly, she’d die in order to keep them safe.

  “Too bad you didn’t shoot MPA instead of the damn locks on the coolers, Loot,” Sergeant Rick “Tex” Calhoun said from the backseat of the Humvee.

  Jordan turned in her seat so she could shoot him a look. “If I did that, I wouldn’t be going out doing recon with you, Tex. I’d be in the brig, waiting to be shipped home where I’d spend the rest of my life in prison.”

  “True. Maybe I should have shot him,” Private First Class Tyler Morris said from the other seat in the back. “MPA already hates me, and I was one of the guys playing ball the other day.”

  “He hates all of us,” Tex argued, his irritation clear despite his slow Texas drawl. “We shouldn’t be punished for fucking drinking water when it’s hot as Hades outside.”

  “We aren’t being punished for drinking the water. We’re out on patrol because I disobeyed a direct order,” Jordan clarified.

  “It was a bullshit order, Loot,” Dobbs said as he continued to drive down the barren roadway. He glanced in the rearview mirror and slowed the vehicle. “Jesus, Accardi is one slow mother fucker. Why the hell is he driving again?”

  Jordan glanced in the side mirror and saw the Humvee behind them had fallen way behind….again. “He’s telling another damn story,” she muttered as she picked up her radio to contact the other vehicle.

  “New York never runs out of stories,” Morris said with a chuckle. “I swear, he talks more than anyone I know.”

  “Accardi!” Jordan shouted in the radio. “Shut your hole and get your ass in gear!” She watched as the other vehicle swerved slightly, then picked up speed.

  “Sorry, Loot. Ass in gear now,” came the voice from over the radio.

  “What the hell are we supposed to be doing out here anyways?” Morris bitched as he stared out the window at the desert landscape. “We’ve been driving around looking at nothing for days now.”

  “We went south yesterday, and west the day before. Since we’re going east today, I’m guessing we’ll be sent out again tomorrow to complete the hat trick,” Dobbs said dryly. “We can now confirm that all this desert fucking looks the same.”

  “I think you’re right.” Jordan sighed. “Sorry, guys.”

  “Don’t,” Tex ordered. “Don’t apologize because that dickhead was…well, a dickhead. If you got punished for what you did, then we don’t mind taking our
licks with you, do we boys?”

  “Fuck no. We stand with you, Loot,” Morris agreed.

  That made Jordan smile. “Look on the bright side, at least we have a cooler filled with water with us.”

  The men in the vehicle all laughed. Dobbs shot her a smile. “Yeah, Loot. We’re pretty damn lucky.”

  And then the world exploded.

  Jordan was slapped back in her seat as their Humvee went airborne. The vehicle behind them had strayed slightly to the right on the road and hit an IED. The force of the blast sent the first Humvee up in the air, where it seemed to hang suspended for a moment, before crashing down to the earth again with a jarring impact.

  Her eyes fluttered open and it took a long minute for Jordan to unscramble her brain enough to realize what had happened. Her vision blurred and her ears rang from the explosion. She was lying half in, half out of the broken window, held in place upside down by the seat belt in the overturned vehicle.

  Feeling her head throbbing with pain, she was damn glad she’d been wearing her helmet or that pain would be a whole lot worse. Knowing she had to get out of there, she barely held back a scream as she tried to move. Panting, she moved a shaking hand to her stomach and felt a sharp piece of metal sticking out of her.

  Son of a bitch!

  Gut wound…she would be done for if she didn’t get help soon.

  Pain shot through her as she tried to turn her head to take a look around, but it was nothing compared to the grief she felt when she saw Dobbs in the driver’s seat, his eyes wide open and unseeing. Her throat seized up as she tried to speak, and she coughed a little, sending bolts of agony through her system.

  “Tex? Morris?”

  She repeated their names a few more times, hearing the barely veiled panic in her own voice as she did. It made her want to weep with gratitude when she heard an answering groan from one of the men in the back. That brief moment of thanks quickly changed to anguish as she turned her head again and saw the other Humvee had been blown to pieces, the skeleton of the vehicle a fiery inferno.

  Fuck…there had been four good men in that vehicle, and now they were gone.

  The smell of gasoline had Jordan focusing back on her own situation. There would be time to grieve for the others later. Her hands fumbled with the seatbelt release, and she braced herself for the pain to come as she hit the button. She let out a scream as she fell, the pain so great she felt as if she were going to puke her guts out.

  Blood poured from her wound since the movement had caused the metal shrapnel to jerk from her body, and she held a hand over it. Jordan ripped the bandana she always carried out of her pocket, and pressed it against the wound to staunch the blood. The temporary fix wouldn’t last long, but it would have to do for now.

  “Loot?”

  Relief swept through her at the sound of Calhoun’s voice, even if he did sound slightly out of it. “Tex! You okay?”

  He groaned. “Shoulder is fucked, my leg is bleeding like a stuck pig, and my head hurts like a bitch, but overall I’m good.”

  “There’s a gas leak. Get out. Get out now.”

  “Copy that. Morris is unconscious. He’s got a pretty nasty cut on his head. What about Dobbs?”

  “He didn’t make it.”

  “Fuck. You all right, Ramsey?”

  “Still breathing…for now,” she told him. The glass cut into her hands as she crawled out of the broken window. Once outside the vehicle, she pulled at the backdoor, but the impact when they’d hit the ground had sealed it shut. “This door won’t open.”

  “I can get him out on this side,” Tex told her as he used his legs to kick open the door.

  Jordan heard Tex cursing as he pulled Morris’ unconscious body out of the vehicle with him. She waited until she was sure the two men were clear, then she moved away from the vehicle on the other side. Unable to stand, she crawled, but she’d only made it a few feet before her body gave out and she collapsed on the ground.

  “Loot? Ramsey? Damn it, Jordan, answer me!”

  Jordan heard Tex, but she couldn’t make herself answer him. On the other side of the vehicle, he sounded so far away, too far for him to hear her even if she could utter a response. She used the last of her energy to flip onto her back, and squinted up at the bright sun in the clear sky as she felt the life draining out of her.

  This was it.

  Closing her eyes, Jordan allowed herself to give into the lethargy that overwhelmed her. There would be no way to get help to their location in time for her to survive, not with the severity of her wounds. They’d lost so many good men, and for what, damn it? Two of her men would make it back, but she wouldn’t be making it home. Hell, she didn’t even have a home, not really. There was no one to miss her, no one to care that she’d died on some barren roadside in the fucking middle of nowhere.

  Wow, now that was a pretty damn depressing thought.

  The bright red behind her eyelids dimmed slightly as she felt someone standing over her. If it was an insurgent coming to check to make sure she was dead, he would only have to wait a few more minutes. When no painful kick or slap landed, she guessed it was Tex checking on her. She opened her eyes, prepared to say goodbye to her friend, and blinked up in confusion.

  No, the man standing there wasn’t Tex.

  In fact, he wasn’t even human.

  The figure above her was shaped like a man, but it looked like it was made of water or some other type of liquid that glimmered and wavered within the confines of its form. Jordan could still see the sun through the transparent being, but the light was muted, like she was seeing it from the bottom of a pool.

  The being bent over her, and curiosity warred with her delirium. Jordan somehow managed to lift her hand and she poked it, surprised to find that it was solid…somewhat. She saw the form caved in from the pressure as her finger made contact. The thing rippled like a stone being thrown into a pond. Weird, she thought as her hand dropped back to the ground.

  Jordan heard Tex yelling something, but she couldn’t understand what he was saying. The sound caught the thing’s attention, and his head turned. Turning her head, she blinked as she saw another being walking toward them. While the first creature seemed to be made of water, this new one took on the shape of fire as it walked through the inferno that used to be the other Humvee.

  Holy fucking shit!

  Hallucinations. That was all it was.

  She was fucking hallucinating. Giving in, she closed her eyes again and let herself fade away. Apparently, she wasn’t one of those people that saw their lives flash in front of their eyes before she died. No, she got a freaky head trip instead.

  Fuck it, dying really did suck.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jordan woke in chains.

  She thought it had all been some crazy-ass dream, but the reality was far worse than any nightmare that she could have imagined. Turning her head, Jordan saw she was being held in some sort of small prison.

  Faint rays of sunlight filtered into the space through cracks in the wooden beams that made up the walls of her cell. Her initial thought was that she’d been taken captive after her Humvee had been blown to hell, but after a few seconds of studying her surroundings, everything about the situation told her she was in far deeper shit than she’d first realized.

  She wasn’t in the desert…at least she wasn’t in any desert she’d ever seen.

  Not on Earth, that is.

  Slowly sitting up, she took a closer look around her prison. The wooden boards of her cell were a deep sapphire blue, and the dirty floor she sat on was an ashy gray. Around her wrists were black steel bands secured together with a short link of chains. No, they weren’t made of steel. It was a different material that was just as strong, but was flexible and didn’t hurt or break her skin as she pulled against the restraints. She was wearing a cream colored dress that barely reached mid-thigh on her, and even that was a generous estimate. It was made of a material so light and soft it felt like a whisper, and the straps were
so thin it was a wonder it didn’t just fall off her.

  Suddenly, memories rushed through her head, like a movie on fast forward. Jordan’s hands flew to her stomach, running over the soft material of the dress to feel nothing but smooth skin beneath. There was no trace of her injury and she felt completely normal…or as normal as she could under the current freaky circumstances.

  After she’d passed out from blood loss, Jordan had been sure she’d died, but she’d woken up in some sort of medical unit unlike anything she’d ever seen instead. The memory was hazy, but she remembered opening her eyes in a dark grey room. She’d thought she’d been lying on some sort of gurney at first. Pain had shot through her as she’d shifted, but it hadn’t been as bad as it should have been considering how bad she’d been injured. When she’d glanced down, Jordan had realized she was stark naked with a weird, gel-like patch on her stomach over her wound.

  Grateful for the medical attention, she’d still wanted to get gone from wherever the hell she was. She’d tried to roll to her side—wanting to get off—but her palm had hit something, stopping her from moving farther than a few inches. Both of her hands had lifted to feel the thick glass that held her inside the transparent coffin.

  Before she totally freaked out, she’d heard a faint whoosh and a door at the far end of the room opened. Jordan had watched through slitted eyes as two of the transparent beings that looked like they were made out of water walked in. One of the beings walked out of her sightline, and Jordan had turned her head slightly to watch as it walked over to another pod that was off to her left.

  Her heart jumped in her throat when she saw Tex in the pod next to her, with a being standing over him. Her eyes had gone wide when she saw there were a total of ten pods lined up in a row—including the ones she and Tex were in—and all of them filled with people. Horrified, her gaze jerked back to the being standing over her when he’d pressed his hand against the glass of her pod. She’d watched as lights sparked under his palm, then a port opened above her head. She’d jerked to the side, trying to see what was going on, but there hadn’t been a need. A thick gel poured into the pod, quickly surrounding her body.