Caught Beast Mate(39)

“Mm-hm. I take sticks and some red cloth pieces. I wrap the cloth around the stick and bury them in the sand around the community.”

“That’s interesting.” I ran a thumb over her pale nipple.

“You think I’m weird.”

“No, baby, I don’t think that. I think it’s…different. Why are you marking it?”

“For my dad. So he knows where I am. When Dad went hunting and took me with him, he’d mark his path so we didn’t get lost. If he saw the marks, he’d know it’s me.”

I didn’t have the heart to deliver the news that her dad worked for Jamie and couldn’t leave or risk his mission and his life. “How do you know he’s looking for you?”

“Reagan told me. Before she left with Mayhem to go to New City. After they got together, really got together, anytime I asked her to tell me more about what he’d said, she evaded.” Sienna shrugged. “She’s one of them now, so…”

“One of who?” I asked, even though I knew the answer. Reagan was one of us. The beasts. The enemy. Her nemesis, she’d called me. I gritted my teeth when she lowered her eyes and didn’t answer. “You are one of us too,” I said.

Her gaze was somewhere on my shoulder, and her hand landed there. She squeezed. I flexed my muscle.

“Reagan eats people,” she said.

My eyebrows shot up. “Very interesting.” I said nothing else because I noticed Sienna’s eyes went out of focus and her fingertips slid up and down my arm, down the side of my torso. Back up. Down my abs. My mate was petting me, and I wasn’t sure if it was absentmindedly or on purpose. I was sure that it made her wet, because I smiled at her growing arousal. Mine had already let itself be known. The tip of my dick poked her belly.

“You have extra muscles,” she said and tapped the side of my hip where we indeed had an extra muscle on each side that helped us move faster. “And bones, I presume.”

“And a boner.”

“Do you have any family?”

The boner comment went right over her head. I kissed her nose. “I don’t want to talk about my parents.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m having a great morning.”

“Do you miss them?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because my parents don’t miss me.”

Sienna smiled. “Feelings don’t work that way. You can’t not miss them out of spite. You don’t miss them because maybe you don’t like them.”

“I don’t like them. I miss my sister.”

“Oh, how nice to have siblings. Where is she?”

“Not here.” Sienna’s eyes were like the boy’s from last night. Wide, innocent, and curious. “Your pussy is wet.” I licked my lips.

She shrugged. “It’s sexual awakening. It will pass.”

“I’m surprised you even know what that is.”

She slapped my shoulder. “I’m inexperienced, not stupid. Now tell me more about you.” She batted her eyelashes, blue eyes wide and inexperienced. I didn’t deserve her. “All right. My father is a High Priest of Tineya, a servant of Zivot Maka, our Beast Mother. He’s Tineya’s Alpha’s closest friend and adviser, a beast with a lot of power. My mother is kind and soft-spoken, a complement to his evil. Every firstborn male in my family, ever since our family was registered in the records, has been a High Priest. So when I was five, our father started taking me to his meetings and functions, showing me around the business, so to speak. I loved it. All of it. The prayer hours, the quiet of our…sanctuary, the counseling he offered to some of our people. At twenty-one, I witnessed a Judgment and didn’t want that life anymore.” I shivered. It wasn’t from the cold.

Sienna noticed and rubbed my hip. “What is Judgment?”

“It’s a part of our court system. Any beast sentenced for execution can call upon the servant of the Beast Mother to grant him mercy. The High Priest is asked to judge the beast for the crime. This particular beast didn’t believe Alpha Nie is descended from our Beast Mother, a crime punishable by death.”

“Oh no.”

“Mm-hm. The beast wouldn’t relent, even challenged the alpha. I sat there thinking he should tell them he believed it and save his life. But he didn’t. Kept calling Nie a fraud. I judged him not guilty, for he lacked education, and proposed we take him and his tribe members into our cities so that we may show them the truth. That’s what I said in a hall full of people while I smelled my father’s fear and knew something was off. The beast didn’t live much longer after that. I tried to convince myself I hadn’t smelled my father’s fear when the beast challenged the alpha. He feared Nie would get defeated. If Nie is holy, how could anyone defeat him? Still, I denied what I knew to be true because I believed it blasphemy. When I returned home, my sister called me on it.”