Caught Beast Mate (Beast Mates Book 4)

by Milana Jacks

  Vice guided me into the round slick black space vehicle they called a pod. The interior was simple, with two leather seats at the helm, five in the back, with a two-one-two formation. Vice showed me the single seat in the middle and strapped me in with a seat belt, then sat down in front of me when another beast took the front passenger seat. Daddy sat behind me, a shotgun over his lap. I expected someone would load up Torrent, but the doors swished closed and locked.

  “Prepare for liftoff,” a woman’s voice said, and I snapped my head to the front. “Seat belt safety, yada yada, and go.”

  Dewlyn. We lifted, and so did my stomach.

  “Christ,” Daddy mumbled from the back.

  I spun around as much as the seat belt allowed. Daddy’s eyes met mine, and his went soft. It didn’t agree with his hard features. With his hair buzzed to a half an inch, and his cold gray eyes and multiple scars, not to mention his broad strong build from years of manual labor, Daddy looked rough for a man in his early forties. But Daddy was not cold or rough, not even a little bit. “What happened?” I asked. Another loaded question.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, baby girl. I don’t know. This past year was a complete mess. After he took you, I crawled back to the bunker, got on the radio, and called Roy. Remember Roy?”

  “Twenty miles south. Marker one hundred.”

  “That’s right. Roy came up and took me down to Larry in the community. Got treated there. While I was in recovery, that motherfucker Torrent stopped by looking for one Sienna with blonde hair. I’d hoped he’d fallen off the bike and died when I shot him. He lived, but I took comfort in knowing the asshole didn’t have you. You ran free. That’s my girl. Always free to do whatever she wants. That’s how we roll. Damn proud—”

  Vice cut him off. “I take it Torrent took you without paying. I take it, it was done by force.”

  “Fuck off, Red-eyes. I’m talking to my kid.”

  I’d never seen Daddy speak in such a way. Or curse as much. The time apart had changed him, made him tougher, as if he wasn’t tough enough before.

  Vice ignored him and spoke to me. “It is unlike Torrent to become violent without provocation. He is a spiritual male, our future priest, we hope.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Dad said.

  Vice continued, “But I believe you. She is his mate, so anything is possible. I’m interested in how this happened so that I may find a way to compensate your family.”

  “Fuck your compensation.” Daddy leaned in. “You fucking blackmailed me.”

  “Mayhem did that.”

  “Y’all are the same to me.”

  “Are we now?” Vice’s eyes paled.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “They put two and two together after I burned that shelter down. Me, old man looking for his kid. You, the kid they had in the community. I agreed to go back in with Men of Earth so they’d keep you safe. And I honored my side. Unlike them. It was a complete and utter accident I heard about this coup. I was in the right place, diggin’ up the right potato, putting it into the bag at the right time when I overhead them talking about the com in New Mexico and planning to take it back. I’ll never forget the fucking potato.” He dug into his pants and got a round baby potato. “See this, Red-eyes? That’s the potato I dug up when I heard about a coup. The women would handle it, guy next to me said. Martyrs. All of them. So then I had to find my way out. I wouldn’t have called Mayhem if I thought I could kill them all with my two bullets. But as it seems, I didn’t even use my two bullets.” He smiled. “That’s all right. I’m a patient man. Motherfucker’s still breathing. Someone got his leg, though.” Daddy waggled his eyebrows. “You know who got his leg?”

  “You?” Vice asked.

  “Not me. Karma. Karma got his fucking leg.”

  Something exploded. We looked down at the community that, if only briefly, had served as my home. The east wing crumbled in upon itself, carrying the sanctuary with it. Several piles of bodies burned in the yard. Near the gates, Mayhem and Lore stood around one body while those two people in blue hustled. Lore lifted his mother’s body. Hasel stayed limp. She’d died. I looked away.

  Vice twisted in his seat and put a hand on my shoulder. His red eyes locked with mine. I teared up again. “I minded my business. I tried to not see things, not say things, not hear things. I should’ve said something. And the boy? Cole? He…he locked us in. He locked us in. I can’t even believe it. Did he really lock us in? It couldn’t be him. I refuse to believe it. He’s just a boy!”

  Nobody answered me. Just as well. I rambled on. “Poor Hasel. She made olive bread. I used to sneak into the kitchen and steal it. It was so good. Poor everyone. What a horrible mating party. I should’ve stayed in my room. Torrent would have stayed too. If I stayed, they wouldn’t have come. No bride, no party.”

  “You couldn’t have known.” Then Vice added, “Correct?”

  “Even if she knew, you’ll turn us free,” Dad said. “My girl and I have done enough for y’all, have suffered enough.”

  “But I knew, Vice, I knew. I saw Momma Jo cooking up shit in the back. I said nothing. I thought it was contraceptives for the other women in case they were paired. I knew she kept—” I said nothing more. I wouldn’t mention poison. Deny deny deny. Torrent promised me he would deny, and so would I. He’d said we had to stick together. He’d killed for me.

  Vice comforted me. “Regrets will tear you apart,” he said. “I understand how you feel.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “There are no winners,” Vice said. “We’ll never leave Earth. We all must learn to coexist, accept each other’s differences, and live a prosperous life. This, what happened in the community, serves neither of our species. Men of Earth must be uncovered and shut down. Using women and children to fight their wars is cowardly.”

  The memory of Georgina made me shiver. With her lips pulled back in a snarl, the hate in her eyes, and the fork poised to stab me, she’d looked like a….monster. “We are monsters too,” I said.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Torrent

  Midway to the medical bay, I awoke. Lights burned my eyes, sensitive from the chemicals. Memories rushed me and I snarled, sitting up. A familiar face greeted me. A beast male with short black hair, dark brown eyes, and a bushy mustache he twirled into pointy tips. Our healer, Lers, pressed a hand on my chest and pushed me back down on the bed. He wheeled the bed into a room I recognized as a recovery room. Lers fiddled with the instruments. “Welcome back. Sorry about the lights. A minute. Close your eyes, they’ve been treated.”

  “Good to see you, Lers.”

  “Priest no more.”

  “Nah, still Torrent. Half of Torrent.”

  “What do you mean half?”

  Something sharp jabbed my temple. Current shot straight into my brain and down my spinal cord. I winced. “Fuck.”

  “No pussies in my med bay. Stay down, warrior, don’t embarrass yourself.”

  “It fucking hurts.”

  “You will live. Tell me about half of Torrent.”

  “Don’t go psycho on me.”

  “It is not psycho, for I am sane. The word is pushy, and mental wellness is a part of my job.” He jabbed me again.

  “Stop that.” I snapped my eyes open.

  Above me, Lers smiled. “I’m enjoying it. Talk.”

  “Quit jabbing me.”

  “Only one more.” Jab! My back arched from the sharp pain. I nearly came off the table. “Done.” He patted my head. “Good boy.”

  Lers was one of the oldest beasts on Earth. He’d delivered Jamie, Vice, and Goner, and was their family’s healer.

  “I lost my leg.”

  “You did not lose a leg, for it implies you’ve lost the entire limb. You lost it below the knee, which I aim to fix.”

  “How?”

  “With my magic fingers.” He twirled his mustache.

  “How?”

  “Are you half the b
east you used to be? Is that how you’re thinking of yourself?”

  Lers spoke casually, but I’d been around long enough to know that if I told him how I felt, if I told him I thought about giving up even for a second, he’d commit me into treatment and try to revive my spirits by making me retreat back into self and my father’s teachings so that I might regain my spiritual connection with our Beast Mother and heal from within. I knew all this. It had crossed my mind to reconnect with Her, but I refused it. And now? I didn’t have time for it. “Sienna. Is she here?”

  “Your mate has been treated.”

  “Well, how is she?”

  “She will also live.”

  The doors banged open. Lers jumped and snarled. “Bitch’s holy pussy! Announce yourself.”

  Alpha Beast Jamie’s ugly face hovered above me. He was all jacked up. His eyes were the palest silver I’d ever seen, and his white hair had gone even whiter if that were possible. But he smelled like an Alpha. I inhaled his scent, let it revive my lungs, let the strength of this male seep into my pores. I’d gone months without his presence, without him getting rough on me whenever I stalled or doubted myself. It felt good to be home.

  He trapped my face between his palms and landed a kiss on my mouth. I couldn’t even… My brain froze at the greeting. Since he held my cheeks, I managed to say, “It’s nice to see you too, Alpha.”

  “Where the fuck have you been?”

  “Nowhere I wanted to be.”

  He let me go and got a chair on my left so Lers could continue working from my right. Jamie flipped the chair and straddled it, rested his arms on the back. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Start tomorrow,” Lers said. “He’s going under in…” He glanced at the clock on the wall. I did too and found an ancient wall clock similar to the one from my room at the community. I stared at it for a while, not seeing the time. “Fifteen minutes.”

  “You’re putting me under?”

  “I am. Gonna fix you.”

  “Right now?”

  “Can’t do,” Jamie said to Lers. “We got problems.”

  “He is my patient, and this is my med bay. I must start on his leg.”

  “Can’t do,” Jamie repeated and locked gazes with Lers. “Can’t do because we don’t know what’s in the future for him. Stand back.”

  “I want to see Sienna,” I said, trying to ease the tension.

  “Yes, Alpha Beast.” Lers lowered his eyes.

  “Tell me where you’ve been?” Jamie said. “Start with the community raid, which was the last time I saw you. Let’s see, November. Start from there.”

  “Is Sienna gonna stay onboard?”

  “I gave you an order.”

  “Sienna!” I sat up. The lights swirled, blinked. Everything spun. Their faces, the white walls, the taming device in Lers’s hand poised to strike. Fuck it. “Sienna!” I tried rolling off the table.

  Jamie wrestled me back.

  Lers commanded restraints. They locked my wrists, and one metal belt stretched across my middle. “Don’t make me put you down.” With a gentle hand, he wiped the cold sweat from my face and tugged on my braided beard. “I’ll tend to you, make you look decent again.”

  “Don’t shave it.”

  “You’re not one of Mayhem’s people. You’re to be our spiritual healer.”

  “Beard is the only thing my mate likes. And the kilt. Leave that too.”

  Lers’s eyes widened. “I’d heard human females like the kilts.”

  “They do,” I confirmed.

  “I’m getting one,” Jamie said.

  “Please don’t,” Vice said. I hadn’t even noticed he’d entered the room.

  A smile tugged at my lips as Vice leaned a shoulder on the wall by the door.

  “I’m listening,” Jamie said.

  Lers forced an ice cube in my mouth, and I crunched it. “After Men of Earth loaded me into the truck, I awoke with a pounding headache. My head felt like I’d gotten beat up. My throat felt like I’d swallowed a melon and it got stuck in there. The arrow was out of my neck, and they’d stitched up the entry wound. I remember waking on a cold floor and rocking left and right, up and down. They probably drove on an unpaved road. The rocking made me nauseous. I tried to get up, but Felicia—”

  “Felicia?” Vice asked.

  I nodded. “I tried to sit up, but Felicia vomited at the same time. I couldn’t keep anything down. We were sick as dogs.”

  “She’s alive,” Jamie said and stood. He paced the room.

  “Last time I saw her, she was. We rode in the back of the truck for a long while, then they dumped us into what I presume was an underground bunker. We stayed there, underfed and weakening as the days past. Still, they kept us alive, gave us water. It was on day twenty-one by my count when Felicia went into heat.” Jamie stopped pacing and crossed his arms over his chest. I continued. “At first, we hid her condition, but they picked up on it within two days. At that point, Felicia was desperate and asked if I’d service her.” Lers hitched a breath. “Had I not been mated, I would have. I wanted to ease her pain. Had I been able to ease her pain, they wouldn’t have declawed her, then raped her.”

  The buzz of medical instruments was the only sound in the room. Not a single male was breathing as what I’d said settled into their minds. Jamie found his voice first. He whispered, “Some days, I want to load my people onto ships. I want to reactivate the nukes we’d seized from the humans and let this whole place blow.”

  “True,” Vice said. “How long were you in the bunker?”

  “I believe we spent the winter there. They starved me and used her, meanwhile running low on supplies and not getting out there to get food.”

  “Why did they keep you?”

  I shrugged. “I tried to come up with a reason. The only thing I could think of is because they could. They liked beating me, they liked raping her. It made them feel powerful.”

  “How did you end up in the community?”

  “We heard them arguing about supplies and wanting to join the main house in Texas. They contacted Tom, their leader. He told them to sit tight. That’s when they went nuts. That’s when they took a hammer to my leg. Kept crushing it until I couldn’t use it anymore. We relocated shortly after. Felicia threw me out of a moving truck.”

  “They’re hungry,” Jamie said. “He’s recruiting an army with no way to feed them. Where is the bunker?”

  “I believe in New Mexico.”

  Jamie scrubbed his face, a growl in his throat. “We have to get Felicia back.”

  “If she’s still alive,” Vice said.

  “She’s alive,” I said. “What with the food shortage and all, they fed us anyway.”

  “What did they feed you?”

  “People who wouldn’t join their cause. At first, we refused to eat. Later, they killed them and dumped them for us.”

  Jamie sighed. “Disturbing.”

  “Yup.” I tried to find a more comfortable position on the bed. My ass was going numb.

  “Stay in place,” Lers said.

  “I’m not one hundred percent on what I’m about to say. I wasn’t clearheaded, and Felicia didn’t confirm what I’d overheard.”

  “Noted. Tell me,” Jamie said.

  “After Tom refused them entry into their safe house, I swear I heard them planning a route back to Beast City.”

  Jamie bared his teeth. “My city. They’re coming back to my city.”

  “I can’t be sure, because it sounds insane. Why would they come?”

  “Maybe thought we’d agree on a prisoner exchange. I’d pay for you,” Jamie said. “They need money, and I need my people back.”

  “Makes sense,” Vice said, “Speaking of payments, we need to talk about Sienna.”

  “I know.”

  “Tell me what happened that day.”

  I told him the truth. Vice put his hands on his hips, and I prepared to get chewed up. Vice said, “I remember when you came in with a wound. I asked
you what happened. And I remember your answer. You said you browsed the community and got shot. That you’d return and get even with the asshole who shot you. I remember asking you if you needed backup. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, Vice.”

  “Address me!”

  “Yes, Tineya’s Second.”

  “What the fuck were you thinking?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about her?”

  I shook my head. “I was…ashamed of my actions. Thought I could fix it on my own.”

  “But you fucked it up all on your own.”

  “Yup.”

  Vice sighed. “Sienna was seventeen. Did you know that?”

  “Not at the time.”

  “You couldn’t have registered her for pairing anyway. So now what do I do with you, hm?”

  “Oh, I can think of things to do with him,” Jamie said and bared his teeth. “I ought to put you away for a decade. Let’s pack it, Vice. Gotta go next door, kiss Big Daddy’s ass. Fuck me.”

  In spite of Lers’s protest, I tried sitting up. “Wait. Let me see her, first.”

  Jamie paused at the door. “I need the human. I need him to go back inside, Torrent. You can’t see her.”

  “He’ll want my head,” I said.

  “Because he gives a shit,” Vice said. “I think he really gives a shit. And not just about his kid, about humans as a race. Even if he didn’t, we need him to go back inside.”

  “He’s a unicorn,” Jamie said. “And you fucked with my unicorn’s kid.”

  Vice nodded. “You crossed the line with your mate. I can’t let it fly, or the Pairing Program will be placed in jeopardy. Her father will either take the money we offer or your life.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sienna

  A pair of male beast nurses cleaned us up, then moved us into a room with two beds, a table, and a view of the Beast City only a handful of humans could say they’d enjoyed. At the wide window, Daddy stood next to me and nudged my elbow with his. “You should get some rest,” he said.