Page 49 of Free Beast Mate

“Ferry.” My fucking ship, the one I’d used to ferry thousands of beasts back to Earth. I’d retired her in our junkyard and forgotten about her. Only my father would find it appropriate to cage me inside the ship that had saved the people he’d wanted to execute. Every time I’d visited Tineya, my mom had begged me to stay. I still remembered the night before I was supposed to load Keimia, Torrent’s sister, on the cargo plane I’d hidden offshore. Father had asked me if I was the one who’d supplied beasts to Jamie, who’d flown them across the galaxy. I’d denied it. What had stung the most was that he believed me.

I’d always been the playboy, never interested in politics or anything that didn’t please me. It stung that he believed that was all I ever would be, a worthless boy. But he was right. In the end, Father was right. This was all I ever would be. The third son who couldn’t find his place anywhere else but between some woman’s thighs.

Except now it wasn’t any woman. Now it was my mate whose thighs I wanted to lick. In my arms, Emma nearly purred as my dick hardened again. I bent my head to whisper in her ear. “Soon you’ll need all that pussy juice when my dick makes its way inside you. ’cause I’m taking you home.”

* * *

Ferry was a small cargo ship. The control room supported minimal crew space. One chair for the captain in the middle and three other chairs for the crew. Usually I flew with another pilot, someone crazy enough to dare a life sentence on Tineya.

I commanded the lights. Red emergency lights flickered, barely lighting the way. Dust crawled up my nostrils, and my eyes watered. I rubbed my nose, then caught my reflection on the large blank screen. I looked like something out of old Earth horror movies. A psycho? Mm-hm.

Thinking I’d lived caged inside my own ship for three fucking years made me want to tear my father’s throat out. “Let’s move.” I strode across the control room and dropped Emma in the captain’s chair. She looked tiny in it, and I missed the feel of her body already. I strapped her in the best I could.

She curled up and got comfortable favoring her right side. “My lord,” she said, her head resting on the armrest. I didn’t think she could hold it up on her own.

Don’t take her from me.

“My lord,” she repeated.

“Hm?”

“You gotta pilot the ship.”

“Right.” I stood there, paralyzed with fear.

“Maybe today?” She managed a smile.

“Right.”

“Boy, get your fucking ass in the chair and let’s move out.” John knelt beside Emma. Could he smell her heat? My teeth descended, and I growled low in my throat. John was mated. John was mated. If I kept repeating that, I wouldn’t rip into him.

Felicia put a hand on my shoulder. I nodded and spun around, then sat in the pilot’s chair, pulling up the hologram panel. “Felicia, you took Flying 101, right?”

“Nope.”

Fuck. “Okay, then. Take a seat. I could use a navigator.”

“I’m a sailor.”

“We’ll fly over the sea.”

She gulped. I fired up Ferry. Her old engine purred. “That a girl. Wake up the dead.” Ferry got retired because of her ancient engine. Stealth ships replaced her, kind of like the one Vice had won in the blood games. I sure wished for some stealth now. The last thing I needed was Men of Earth damaging Ferry’s frame, then barging in here.

Felicia found her way to the navigation panel and opened up a map. She punched in the codes for Beast City. “Gonna land this bitch on the sea. Can we?”

“We can.”

She rubbed her hands. “Okay, how?”

“Figure it out.” I swiped a hand, and the metal blocking the open screen before us slid away. It showed ground, some squirming worms, bugs escaping into tiny holes. So now I had to lift the ship three hundred feet in the air without bumping the frame against the hole’s walls and damaging my ride. I hadn’t piloted my own ship in…in fucking forever, it seemed. Troy would be a good male for this job. Too bad Troy wasn’t here. But my mate was here and depended on me to get her to med bay.

I cracked my neck and took over the manual controls. Ferry lifted off and hit the ground from the back. I glanced behind me to check my mate. Her head plopped forward, her eyes closed.

John still crouched next to her. “Carry on.”

Cole appeared on my right and sat down, eyes the size of melons.

“Don’t touch anything,” I said and ran a finger over the accelerator while balancing the ship’s path with my other hand. Slow and steady. Iron groaned. Ferry scraped the wall again. Felicia and I grimaced at the loud noise. Okay, so an inch or two to the left. There we go. Slow and steady. “Where are we?”

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