Caught Beast Mate(9)

His brows furrowed. I didn’t elaborate.

The door opened and admitted Hasel, a clean white towel obscuring something in her hand. Sienna walked in behind her and closed the door. My whole body tensed. I kept expecting her to recognize me, but she didn’t even look interested. Instead, she dug into the first aid kits. Was she gonna mend me? Clean me up? It was customary for the female to tend to the warrior, but I was no warrior. Not anymore.

Hasel approached and put her aged hand on my chest. “You’re hot.”

I winked at her. “I know.”

She slapped my chest. “I have a boy your age. Don’t go flirting with me. You’ve got a raging fever.” She sat next to Zarik on the bed. Her face dropped, and her black eyes paled, a gray color now. A female ready to deliver bad news. I braced for it. “I ain’t nothin’ but a cook who’s lived long and hard enough to know a thing or two about wounds. You have a warrior spirit, and you will need it.” She lifted the towel. Under it was a saw.

“Oh God,” Sienna whispered.

I swallowed hard, and Hasel sniffed. They smelled my fear.

“If I don’t saw it off,” she continued, “you’ll expend all your energy on mending it, and there’s no mending to be done.”

“I hoped it wasn’t so bad.”

“Have you even looked at it?”

“No.”

“Look at it.”

I sighed and managed to lift onto my elbows. From the knee down, my leg was flat. The only thing holding the bones and muscle inside was the bruised blue skin. “It’s dead already,” I said.

“Do you want a horse bit?” Sienna asked me, her voice flat, her demeanor calm. She moved to stand on my right. Her blue eyes, although expressive, didn’t hold sympathy, but she was pale and didn’t look well. She’d faint.

“Leave,” I told her.

She shrugged and turned for the door. “Suit yourself.”

“The girl stays. Take the bit if you need to,” Hasel said.

“The girl leaves,” I countered.

“This is my house,” Hasel said.

“This is my…” Nothing. And everything. Sienna didn’t know I was anything other than the shell of a male on the floor about to get his limb severed. Still, if she didn’t want to be here, she wouldn’t be here. “Get out!” I bared my teeth and snapped at Sienna’s ankle.

Hasel shouted.

Zarik kicked me in the jaw. The force of the impact rattled my head, and the last thing I saw before checking out was Sienna’s skirts fluttering as she fled the room.



Soft pillows under my head and a soft bed under my body, I awoke with a sense of relief. At least both my eyes opened, no sand scraping my eyeballs. At least I wasn’t sleeping in the middle of the desert anymore. At least I’d survived. At least my mate was near. I tried to think of several more positive things I should be grateful for. My leg jerked. A reflex, I supposed. I looked down at the empty space below my right knee. Men of Earth had picked my strongest leg. Crushed it. It had healed. They crushed it again, finding it amusing that my body regenerated at a much faster rate than a human’s.

An amputee beast. A useless warrior. What the fuck was I supposed to do with my life? Become the High Priest of Earth, Jamie’s voice echoed in my head. My father and his father before him were Tineya’s priests. They served Tineya’s Alpha, counseled him, and cared for the spirit of our people. They hadn’t led any conquests. After I’d seen my father condemn a beast to death for not believing Alpha Nie was Zivot Maka’s descendant, I followed Goner into outer space.

He’d told me Earth, although primitive and ravaged by her natives, would recover and become the most beautiful planet in the universe. He’d said we would need every beast we could summon to defend Earth from other species in case they wanted to come. When I landed, I found one city and the rest of the country deserted. Compared to Tineya, it was a shock. Everything flourished in abundance on Tineya, whereas here, the only thing I found in abundance was alcohol. The humans drowned their sorrows.

A soft blue linen covered my body. I threw it to the side. An empty space from below my knee stared back at me. The nub was covered in gauze, and plastic covered the bed so I wouldn’t bleed all over the sheets. I exhaled a breath and scrubbed my face. My hands still came away filthy. I needed a bath. And a beer. An ice-cold one. Humans brewed good ale.

I sat up, and my one good foot touched the cement floor. I stood on it, wobbled, and sat back down. Growling, I stood again, arms outstretched, trying to balance myself. I leaned, leaned, and then found my balance. An empty iron bath sat in the corner. Under the window there was a small table with two chairs. Right next to it was another door, presumably leading into the bathroom. I could try to make it across the room to the bathroom. Or I could make it to the table, then from there a few steps to the bathroom. No big quest.