Page 5 of His Beast Mate

“All right. You can have the entire weekend with the beast bitch. No more. But I wonder—”

“Wonder later.”

Owner wouldn’t fold. Pride was a vice, and he had it in spades. The last card dealt was a deuce. Neither of the men bet anymore. Owner flipped his cards. A queen and an ace. Owner had a full house, ace high. I’d seen my mate, who had a wife somewhere out there waiting for him to come home. And I would get a night with him, but not the entire weekend, and definitely not an eternity.

John watched Owner gloat and said, “Nice hand.” He reached over the table and flipped his cards. A pair of deuces. Hm. What did that mean? His pair of deuces and the pair of deuces on the table made four of a kind. Did that beat the full house? I hoped not. John would die after our time together upstairs. He wouldn’t go home to his wife. Oh Mother, what do I do?

John pushed the stack of money toward Owner, then he lit up a cigarette he’d rolled and leaned back. Casual. What the fuck was he doing?

I glanced at John. Impassive, he blew smoke in the air as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Finally, I asked, “So who won?”

“He won,” Owner said and stared down at the pile of chips. “The beast bitch is not for sale.”

What?John had offered to buy me again? When had this occurred? Gosh, it must be a man thing, or human thing, because I sure as fuck didn’t read minds, and my hearing was superior to theirs. I’d heard the mention of a sale and Owner’s refusal.

John chuckled. “I kept saying the same thing about my kid. Not for sale, and yet he took her anyway.”

Owner matched John’s smile. “I like you, man.”

“I’m buying the kitten.” John finished his smoke and put it out in an ashtray. I sneezed.

“You don’t have that kind of money.”

“How much are we talking?”

Was this how human women felt when the community leaders bargained for their bodies with beast males? ’Cuz it was pretty shitty. For the first time in my life, I understood Jamie’s mate, Rey, who’d said the Pairing Program was wrong, called him out for buying people, but I’d disagreed with her. We needed mates. Now as I sat here feeling like a prize cow, I understood her.

“Two hundred thousand more and you can walk out with her.”

John reached into his back pocket and retrieved a worn brown wallet. From the inside, he pulled out a leather pouch and spilled it on the table. Several diamonds bounced against the green cloth. “Roughly ten K each one. Plus my winnings.”

“You want her bad,” Owner said.

“I want to fuck a beast bitch. Tie her up and do what I want to her. It’s not every day that I stumble upon a trained one. You feel me, friend, don’t you?”

Owner stood and undid his tie. He picked up the diamonds and put them in his pocket. “Kitten will show you out.”

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