Page 1 of Free Beast Mate

Chapter One

Emma

The crowds clearedout after Sunday mass, and Leader Tom closed the sanctuary. He leaned his forehead against the heavy iron doors and sighed, his shoulders slumping. Once a five-foot-ten, broad-shouldered, fearsome man, he now appeared small. In the past half year, he’d been showing his age, which I estimated to be around sixty. Gray replaced his otherwise jet-black hair, his gray eyes had sunk in from the weight he’d lost during our months of hunger, and he walked barefoot more often than not. It could be the August heat. It could be that he needed new shoes.

I lifted my dress and peeked at my own shoes. The tip of my big toe greeted me. I wiggled it and continued with the after-mass cleanup.

Cole, a nine-year-old boy who had come to us from the beast-infested Community Forty-four somewhere Above, nudged me and whispered, “Who do you think is next?”

We needed to find a mate for the Beast Father’s son, Amoris, whom we had captured some…three years ago, I believed, and so Tom offered him girls for his taking. When we ran out of girls, our warriors went Above and brought more down to the community. “Whitney and Maria.”

He looked up at the ceiling. “Nah. Not those two. I think it’s Celia and Jasmin.”

I extended my hand. “Let’s bet on it.”

He clasped it, blue eyes twinkling. “If I guessed right, I get your pocketknife.”

I threw my braid over my shoulder. “If I guessed right…” I frowned. He didn’t own anything but the clothes on his back. Oh! “Your backpack.”

He made puppy-dog eyes at me. “Not that.”

“Well, what else you got?”

“Stories.” He pointed up, indicating Above.

I bit my lip. Tempting. Born and bred in Community X, I’d never been Above, and we prohibited those who came from aboveground from talking about it. Only warriors told stories of Above. Warriors did what they wanted. “No deal.” I wanted his backpack.

Cole whined but continued mopping the floor while I put out the incense and threw the trash I’d collected in the dustpan into the bin, wondering for the millionth time where all our garbage went. How did we dump it? Where? I knew my community like the back of my hand, every hut, every family, every man and woman and child. I knew where and how to eat when nobody else ate. But I had no clue where the trash went. The incinerator?

Oh! I smiled to myself and glanced back at my shoes. I’d need to visit one of the incinerators to see if anyone’s shoes lingered after their death. We couldn’t bury anyone ’cause it would take up space, so we burned them in the incinerator. That was the Beast Father’s idea, not ours. Tom found it brilliant, and so we all found it brilliant, as with anything else Tom had come up with to keep us alive.

But even Tom couldn’t come up with a way to reason with the Beast Father. We’d displeased him and continued to anger him because we couldn’t find a mate for his captured son, Lord Amoris, the beast kept secured inside Sector Zero. We’d prayed for food supplies, we’d sacrificed virgins previously offered to Lord Amoris, and the Beast Father promised more supplies if our warriors found his mate. This was back in September, almost a year ago, when our warriors had set out on a mission. From what I understood, the warriors spread out and gathered as many women and girls they could find and delivered them down the tubes leading from Above into Community X. Tom had greeted them and inaugurated them into our community.

With a supply of hundreds or maybe over a thousand women, you’d think one would be a mate. But no, we found nothing, and the Beast Father got mad. I didn’t know the details, but I knew some of the warriors from the last search party never returned. Their mothers, wives, and daughters all wore black on the day they were supposed to return. I presumed the unholy beasts up Above ate them. I shivered at the thought. I was safe here in my Community X. I would never have to face the unholy beasts from Above.

Also, I would never be offered to Lord Amoris. Tom had prophesied that Amoris’s mate would be “a perfect human female who would breed him an Alpha unlike any the beasts had ever seen.” This Alpha child would be the blessed child. I wouldn’t be considered for a sacrifice to Lord Amoris because I was born imperfect, so as far as that went, I felt lucky.

I had stacked the last three plastic chairs the elderly had used for sitting during our four-hour-long mass and was putting them against the wall at the same time that Tom called out to me.

Cole lifted his head and waggled his eyebrows. “I’m in with the backpack.”

Game time. I approached Tom. “Yes, Leader Tom.”

He leaned his shoulder on the door. “I need two girls, Emma. Who is left?”

“Shall I get your list?” Tom kept a list of breeders in his desk. They each reported their cycles to the orderly of their community sector, and the orderly reported to Tom. They’d been presenting Lord Amoris with two virgins every Sunday. They didn’t used to do it so often before, but Tom feared we’d starve without the Beast Father’s help, so he needed to find Lord Amoris’s mate.

“Just tell me who’s left.”

“Whitney and Maria,” I said.

Cole groaned.

I smiled. Got your backpack, buddy.

“How about Celia?” Tom asked.

Ouch. There went my pocketknife. “Maybe after her next cycle?”

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