Caught Beast Mate(49)

“Hey,” I said and moved a stray hair from his bloody face. I didn’t care if it was bloody. I didn’t care that he’d killed everyone in this place. I didn’t care, because if he and Hasel weren’t here, I’d have joined those women in their sick cause and ended up a breeding bunny for Cole as soon as he understood how to work his manhood. “You are my woman,” he kept telling me, but I hadn’t listened. Not really. I felt sorry for him, kept thinking it was a child crush on an older girl, but now I thought Momma Jo must’ve promised him I’d be his woman.

Nobody was born corrupt or evil; they were taught by circumstance or by others in charge of them. Momma Jo put Cole with the beasts to spy on them, and he’d done a damn good job. I snorted, remembering hiding out and listening in on Mayhem and Reagan arguing about Cole. Mayhem had wanted to eliminate him, and Reagan wouldn’t hear of it. I agreed with her. Now? Well, not so much. This was survival of the fittest, where the mercy and kindness Hasel had shown toward the humans from this community got her killed.

“Leave him,” my dad said. “Their med unit came.” Dad whistled. “Over here!”

Seconds later, a beast dressed in a light blue one-piece outfit knelt next to Torrent. He flipped him onto his back with one hand. With the other, he pulled out a beeping device and stuck it into Torrent’s neck. The device kept beeping, lights scattering over the screen.

“Is he gonna be okay?” I asked.

The beast didn’t lift his eyes from the device. “Mm-hm. Who are you?”

“My kid,” dad said.

The beast glanced at Dad. “John, you missed our last appointment. Your enhancements need a software upgrade.”

Huh?

“Check my girl first, and then I’m all yours.”

A picture of Torrent and a bunch of writing I didn’t recognize came up on the screen. The beast doctor, I presumed, stared at the device. “Priest?”

“It’s him,” I said. “He’s alive.”

“Priest is no more. Hear!” he barked and stared pointedly at me.

I think he wanted me to say something. “I heard you.”

The doctor grunted and pulled out another device from his man purse. He laid it on the ground, then put his palm on it. A thin film coated his hands. He picked up Torrent by his wrists and started dragging him outside. “Follow me.”

Outside the sanctuary, he dropped Torrent on the ground and lined me up against the wall while Hunters of Mayhem went inside.

“John,” he said to my dad. “Bring two water buckets. We need to wash the sulfur stuck on their skin.” To me, he said, “Undress your mate, then undress yourself.”

I got to it, aware Dad hadn’t followed Doc’s orders. Not right away, anyhow. He lingered and watched me strip Torrent’s clothes off. Once done, I removed my ruined dress.

“This particular mixture of chemicals,” Doc said, “makes me believe the combination of sulfur and other elements is delayed. So, John, you have forty seconds before your kid is burned and sports the same scars as those on your arm. Take a break, would you? A cigarette. Beer?”

Dad sprinted away.

Doc smiled. “Now, where were we? How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“I treat Rey of Alpha Beast. Fine is equivalent to I feel like shit, but I’ll make it. So, how are you feeling?”

“That’s a loaded question.”

Daddy rounded the corner and threw a bucket of water at me.

I screeched and hugged my body. Goose bumps rose all over my skin, and I shivered.

He threw one over Torrent too. I thought he’d wake due to the sheer freeze, but he didn’t. The doctor pointed the beeping device and scanned our naked bodies. He declared us safe for contact when his device must’ve told him Dad had already come in contact with me. A few minutes later, after Dad was cleared and beasts on sky bikes dropped from the sky, a big black pod landed. The doors slid open. Vice jumped off and approached us, red eyes watchful. “What the hell happened here?” A glance at Torrent on the ground made him pause. He blinked. “Is it…him?”

“Torrent lives,” Doc said.

“Hurray,” my dad pitched in.

Doc updated Vice while Dad and I dressed in dry clothes and stayed out of people’s way. Hunters brought out their dead. Lore knelt over his mother’s body while two people wearing the same clothes as Doc hustled around them. Daddy excused himself for a second. He spoke with Mayhem, insisted they dig holes and bury the human bodies, not burn them. Mayhem agreed and said he would chop them into pieces, then bury the parts at random. Doc intervened, suggesting they incinerate the entire place so that whatever chemical they’d used would burn. They didn’t know what it was but wrapped then loaded up Momma Jo’s body in the back of one of the pods. I looked up. The beast fleet covered the sky like stars in the night.