Caught Beast Mate(2)

Inside the sealed underground bunker that he’d been building all his life, he watched them plead for mercy. He didn’t let them in. Not enough supplies, only enough food for him and his family. When Daddy told me this story, he said we should always help out others, but never at our expense. We had to learn to say no if it threatened our survival.

The alien beasts threatened my survival.

Daddy had told me about the beasts too. He painted them on the canvas of my mind as hairy werewolves who stood on two legs, with blood dripping from their canines and down their chins. At seventeen—the first time I’d seen a beast—I knew he spoke the truth. That beast male who attacked us was a monster found only in horror tales, and although the beasts looked humanoid, I’d seen the monster behind the humanoid form. As much as possible, I avoided them. Here, at my temporary home in Community Forty-four, my gut told me I should make myself invisible, stay out of trouble until Daddy came for me.

Behind me, footsteps sounded. I looked back to see Cole running after me. Great. I sighed and leaned my bike on the gate. He’d run himself into exhaustion, and I’d feel bad about it, so I left my bike, and we walked out into the desert. Besides Cole, avoiding others at the community had proved easy. I spent my days ghosting through the halls, doing whatever chores Hasel assigned to me. The pair of beast hunters who lived here didn’t bother me, only Zarik sometimes asked I help him bathe. As long as I kept my mouth shut, Hasel didn’t bug me either. I did what she asked, and she let me live here. I existed. Nothing more. Though once in a while, Hasel would get into those weird moods where she would play a mother to me. She’d get all mushy, pitying me, and ask about my life before I came here. I deflected until I grew tired of deflecting and told her I came from some dead girl’s womb. A truth. Mom couldn’t deliver naturally, so they cut me out of her. She bled to death.

Dad had raised me on his own and far away from anyone. Apart from my dad and me, nobody had climbed that high up the mountains for about a decade, not until the beasts started planting the forest. In my teenage years, Daddy tightened his leash on my outings, thinking it would keep me safe from the beasts.

It kept me safe, until one day, it didn’t.

One beast attacked my dad, took me on his bike, and changed my life. The beast was dead now, but if he were alive, I would have killed him myself. I also knew Daddy would never sell me to anyone. He’d refused the beasts’ Pairing Program registration and the community life, and forbade me from venturing outside our perimeter. We hadn’t had much, sometimes we were hungry, but we had each other, and I had the reassurance Daddy would never sell me.

Now I walked alone.





Chapter Two





Torrent



If I never felt sand stick to my open wounds again, it would be too soon. Also, if I never felt the sun burning my skin again, never felt the desert wind crack my dry lips or chill my bones, it would also be too soon. I dragged my broken leg through the sand and ate the dirt on my lips as I crawled. I could barely see ahead of me. Too hungry, too thirsty, I’d survived for days on pigeon crap and one snake I’d managed to catch with my teeth about five days ago. My stomach rumbled like an old Harley engine. I would give my left nut for a human right now.

Or even a fucking cucumber.

I hated vegetables, but damn if even salad didn’t sound great right now.

I lifted my head, wiped the sand out of my eyes, trying to assess my surroundings. As if they’d changed from nothing but sand to something else. Maybe a tent pitched in the middle of nowhere. A coyote, even. Nothing. A whole bunch of nothing. That was the thing about this fucking planet. It was a whole bunch of nothing, and in the past few months, after Men of Earth had captured me, I cursed my sister for making me leave Tineya with Goner, Alpha Beast’s brother. On extremely bad days, when my captors had beaten me, when I starved, I even regretted leaving my parents. My family wouldn’t follow Alpha Beast Jamie, too comfortable inside the high towers of our home planet. Why had I followed Jamie again? Ah yes. I’d witnessed the horrors Jamie’s father, our Alpha Nie, had wreaked on other beasts only because they hadn’t believed he was descended from the Beast Mother, our deity.

Fuck Nie. I managed a snarl and pushed forward. At twenty-five, practically a baby by beast standards, I’d come to Earth. Here, Jamie trained me, and I moved up the ranks, got closer to the brothers. They were a tight bunch, stuck together like glue, and they’d let me inside their circle. When Jamie happily mated, I envied him because I’d royally fucked up my mating.

Overall, I’d made many mistakes. Should’ve stayed on Tineya, turned a blind eye to the injustice, and became a spiritual guide, a priest in human terms, like my father and his father before me. What the fuck was I doing here? This planet was a dump. Even the natives thought it was a dump. Why else would they activate weapons of mass destruction and commit global suicide?