Caught Beast Mate(52)
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.”