Page 3 of Free Beast Mate

“Because… Just because. Don’t ask too many questions either. Just don’t do it.”

“You’re no different from Sienna.”

The canoe bumped the channel’s side. I slid on the seat, water splashing all over my dress. “Great.” I scrunched up the hem and wrung out the water, shivering from the cold touching my thigh. I picked up the paddle again and moved into the path leading to Sector Twelve, the girls’ sector.

“Se-kor Twe…twenty.”

Cole was learning how to read. “T,” I said. “Sec-Tor. And it’s twelve. You’ll know a twenty because it ends in a y, and y is a nice, curvy letter.” It was also a question everyone around here avoided. Why?

I parked the canoe, and we unloaded. My foot hit the wet stone, and I shook out my dress.

“Boy, what are you doing here?”

I looked up to see Adam, the beast’s keeper, strolling out of the sector’s entrance, a hole in the wall, basically. The community’s architecture had been inspired by the structure of a beehive, albeit with human modifications. Many small huts carved into walls made up one sector, and many sectors made a community. Each sector had an orderly, and Evans ordered Sector Twelve, not Adam. Adam should be with the beast, not out here, so I could ask him the same thing he’d asked Cole, who hadn’t answered him. Instead, the boy hid behind me.

I moved toward the entrance.

Adam caught my throat and brought me against his chest. His breath smelled fresh and clean, unlike the stench of odor from all those people lining the paths of the community. He squeezed, and I pinched my lips. If I opened my mouth, I’d spit on his face.

“That new boy is a breeder,” he said. “You know he is, and you hang out with him anyway. Don’t let me fucking see you with the kid. He’ll get the wrong idea.”

Cole might grow fond of me as he grew older and want to breed me, which was something nobody could allow. If such a thing happened, Dr. Dolly would sterilize me. I didn’t care about sterilization. I would never breed, and judging by the way most men around here responded to my limping around, I’d never have sex either. Whatever, it wasn’t worth the fight. “Okay,” I said.

Adam let go of my throat, and I rubbed it, swallowed, making sure he hadn’t hurt me. Cole had run away already, so I shrugged. “Tom wants Whitney and Celia this Sunday.”

Adam nodded. “I’ll talk to Evans and bring them in. Go change before you catch a cold.”

“Aw. You worried about me?”

Adam smirked. “You know what I think of you.”

I did know. Adam liked pain pills, while we still had supplies. He would take more than a few during his watch days, mainly because watching over a beast was boring. Once, when I’d gone to clean the beast’s quarters, Adam had told me how my dad made me. He basically said my dad had gotten drunk one night and raped my mom. Adam added that he’d love to fuck me, that I was prettier than most breeders, but he dreaded the thought of crippled offspring. He’d tried to flatter me, I believe.

I entertained fantasies of jabbing my pocketknife into his temple, but smiled and walked away instead.

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