Mated to the Beast (4 page)

“Let me get the doctor.” The man dashed off before either of us could question him. In seconds, he was back with the small female doctor, her lush curves emphasized by the standard dark green instead of the assistant’s gray. But I was too far gone to respect her knowledge or experience, or the fact that she very likely outranked me. I saw only a woman who needed fucking.

“I am Doctor Rone. I have just been told that while your match has been made, there is a slight complication.”

My hands curled into fists and I fought against the tight restraints as the beast within raged, unhappy with this news. “What is the complication?” My voice was clipped and sharp.

The doctor cleared her throat and looked down at a data stream flowing across the portable tablet she carried. “Warlord Dax, your matched mate is a human woman from a planet called Earth. Her name is Sarah Mills. She is twenty-seven years of age, fertile, and meets all coalition bride processing requirements, but one.”

Sarah Mills.
Sarah Mills was mine. I looked at the back side of the tablet, eager for a look at my mate. “I would see her likeness.”

The doctor shrugged, as if it made no difference to her, and held out the tablet so that I could see the dark-haired beauty staring out from the data screen. She was stunning and elegant, with delicate lines, arched brows, and a strong jaw more refined than any Atlan female’s. Her long dark hair curved in waves and came to rest just below her shoulders. Her pink mouth looked ripe for kissing… or fucking. My hard cock jumped as I imagined her taking me in her mouth. I nearly came right there on the exam table. The sight of her intense, dark eyes made my mating fever so much harder to control. She was mine, and I wanted her now. Right fucking now. “Where is she?”

The doctor averted her gaze and stepped back, the tablet held protectively against her waist as she looked at Commander Deek for permission to speak.

What the fuck was going on with my mate?

“Where. Is. She?” I bellowed the question and all eyes in the medical station turned with curiosity in our direction. I tensed as the male Prillon doctor stepped in our direction, prepared to fight my way out of here if necessary. My little female doctor waved him off, apparently confident I wouldn’t cause harm even though I was ready to rip this ship apart if the doctor didn’t answer me.

Commander Deek rubbed his eyes and shook his head. We both knew this wasn’t going to be good. “You’d better just tell us, doc.”

The small female doctor remained composed, which was remarkable since my anger and frustration were setting off alarms across an entire wall of biological monitoring equipment. “I’m afraid she was reassigned—to a combat unit.”

Chapter Three

Dax

“Reassigned?” What? How did a matched mate become something else? The matching protocols used were precise and had been routine for hundreds of years. Once a match was made, there was no changing it unless the female found her mate unacceptable and asked for another. Even then, the psychological profile used by the process guaranteed the bride would be assigned a mate from the same planet.

“How can that be possible?” Commander Deek asked.

“Your match was made with an Earth woman.” The doctor resumed her matter-of-fact perusal of the tablet data and ran her fingers over it a few times before looking at me again. “When she was processed for a match, you were not yet in the system. And since Earth allows their women to serve in combat positions, she elected to be reassigned to an active duty combat unit.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” I was afraid I already knew the answer and could feel my rage building. What type of idiots allowed their weak, soft, helpless females to fight? “Where is she?”

The doctor’s eyes filled with pity and the beast raged. “She’s in Sector 437, in command of her own recon unit assigned to the Battlegroup Karter.”

“My
mate
refused me to go to the front lines and fight the Hive?”

My bellow shook the chair beneath me and I knew if I didn’t calm down, right now, I’d tear this entire medical station to pieces and be one step closer to execution. Sector 437 was a known hotbed of Hive activity, and had been for the last eighteen months. This meant every second I sat in this damn chair my mate was in danger. The restraints weren’t helping the monster within see reason. I’d expected my mate to be reassigned to a strategic unit, or perhaps one of the guardian ships that accompanied civilian cruisers through relatively safe flight zones. Not to be in active combat, engaging the enemy face to face! Not in one of the most dangerous sectors in the entire coalition front.

Calmer now, I repeated my question with a low growl. “She refused me?”

How dare an alien from Earth deny me and risk her life? Didn’t she know that she was matched to an Atlan warlord? Being mine was an honor many elite Atlan females would fight over. And yet, this Earth female refused me?

“She didn’t refuse you personally. She didn’t know who her match was. In fact, she was processed several months ago. There was apparently some confusion on the part of bride processing center on Earth. It turns out she had never actually given her consent to be a bride, so she was allowed to opt out of the program and transfer to be a coalition fighter.”

I saw red. The anger pulsed through my blood with hot fury. A bellow ripped from my lungs and I tensed, tugging with ease at the restraints and breaking through them. The doctor and her assistant both jumped back and everyone in the room began to scramble.

“Hell, Dax. You need to calm down. Calm down!” Commander Deek shouted.

I stood now, tugged at the wires still connected at my temples and clenched my fists. I was breathing hard, as if I’d fought an entire brigade of Hive.

“Find another match.” Commander Deek held his hand out in my direction, his size and my respect for him the only two things keeping me in place as the doctor shook her head.

“I can’t. It doesn’t work like that. I don’t know why she wasn’t removed from the system when she was transferred to the battle group. I’m not part of the bride processing unit. I don’t have the authority or the ability to cancel a match or reassign a bride. We receive brides here; we don’t process them. I will have to request a formal investigation of the events that occurred to create this complication during her processing on Earth.”

The doctor crossed her arms and glared right back at me, as if seeing an Atlan warrior in battle rage in her medical station was not an unusual occurrence. Either that, or the woman was too brave for her own good. As I looked more closely, I realized the doctor did not look dissimilar from my mate.

“You look like her. Like my mate.”

The doctor held out her hand. “Melissa Rone, from New York.” When I simply stared at her outstretched hand, she dropped it to her side. “I’m from Earth as well. My primary mate is a Prillon captain.”

I wanted to rip the heads from every living person in the room, and she offered her hand to me? Was she reckless or stupid, this human female with long dark hair and dark eyes, similar to my mate’s? “Do you know my mate?”

“No. I’m from New York, she’s from Miami. My dad was from Korea, and she looks like she has Greek, or maybe Italian heritage. We grew up on the same continent, though.”

“That means nothing to me.”

“Find him another match. He can’t wait two years for her military service to be up.”

I had all but forgotten Commander Deek as I studied the woman, but he stood at my shoulder now, two Atlan warriors towering over a small, curvy female. She thinned her lips and I knew I was not going to like what she had to say.

“There is no other match. She is the only match for him. The system will not provide another compatible alternative unless she first accepts your match, goes through the thirty-day trial period, and requests a new mate. Or, she’s deleted from the system.”

Deleted meant dead. Killed in combat.

The doctor smiled and a knowing look entered her eyes. “Although, if you can get your hands on her, I imagine she won’t want to leave you once the thirty days are up.”

I imagined her shared by her two Prillon warriors, begging them to take her, and I smiled back. Perhaps a human woman could handle me after all, if my mate were as feisty an alien as this one. I needed to find my mate. I needed to fuck her. I wanted her now, with a sassy smile on her face and a wet pussy ready for me.

The doctor continued, “I could run the test a thousand times, but the results would be identical. The system will provide the exact same result. She is your only match.”

My commander’s hand held me back from breaking things. “Doctor Rone, this Atlan obviously has the mating fever upon him and there is no time for him to travel to the home planet to find an alternate.”

My body was vibrating with the need to destroy something, to punch something, and the doctor studied me with an intensity and intelligence in her eyes I found disconcerting, as if she could see into my soul. Commander Deek continued when she remained silent.

“He needs his mate to soothe the fever, to ease the obvious… intensity of it. Transport him to her location immediately. He must claim her, or he
will
die.”

The doctor looked at me, then the commander. “It is against protocol to transport an Atlan warrior with mating fever to another battle group. You could wipe out an entire squad before they killed you.”

I growled deep in my chest and took a step toward her. “Send me to her now. She is
mine
.”

The doctor actually chuckled. “No, she’s not. She belongs to the Battlegroup Karter for the next…” she looked down at her tablet quickly then back up to meet my gaze, “…twenty-one months.”

Commander Deek stepped in front of me and pushed me back, once, then twice. He was as big as I was, hulking over the doctor. He was also one of the only ones I’d allow to shove me without killing them, especially now when I fought the murderous rage that knowing my mate was in danger roused.

“There is an alternative, a loophole you could use to claim her.”

He snarled at the woman over his shoulder. “Stop torturing the man and tell him what to do.”

She nodded. “Big, growly males don’t scare me, Commander Deek.” She raised a brow as if for emphasis before putting me out of my misery. “Per coalition regulations, if she agrees to become your mate, she can request a transfer back to the bride program immediately. She would be released from all military obligations at once.”

Finally, the female talked sense. My mating fever could be used to terminate my military service, if I chose to follow Atlan tradition. For my mate, volunteering for the bride program would do the same.

“Good. Send me to her. Now.”

I wasn’t happy with this turn of events, but I could still claim my mate. The way I felt, it would not be a hardship to travel to her sector and kill some Hive while I retrieved my mate. Then I’d punish her for putting herself in danger.

“Do you have her exact coordinates?” I asked, staring at the doctor over my commander’s shoulder. I wondered if she would lie to me, relieved when she did not.

“I do.”

All coalition citizens were tracked at all times.

“Transport me there. Now.”

“You’ll need your cuffs.” The medical assistant came over and held out the cuffs for me, then changed his mind and gave them to the doctor before scurrying away. These were the mating cuffs, the last thing I wanted to wear. Besides being an outward—and obvious—sign that an Atlan was mated, it helped the Atlan males build their mating bond by ensuring close contact with their chosen female. Once I got the cuffs on her wrists, she wouldn’t be able to go more than a hundred paces from my side until the fever was ended.

Up until an hour ago, I’d dreaded the stupid things, never interested in being mated myself or controlled in any way by the cuffs’ technology. Now, everything had changed. Had they done something to me when I’d been asleep? Why did I now desperately need to go and find the one female who was matched to me, pull her from harm’s way, and then turn her ass a fiery shade of red so she knew who was in charge of her safety… and so many other things?

I reached out and grabbed the cuffs, putting them on myself. They were a thick band of gold from the deepest mines on Atlan and had a thin strip of sensors on the insides that remained in contact with my body. They constantly monitored my physical health as well as provided a means of communication with the Atlan systems necessary for transport, purchasing goods, transfer of titles, and every other aspect of mated life, if I chose to continue to wear them after the fever was alleviated. More important, they offered some level of relief from the mating fever, for putting the cuffs about my wrist was proof that I had a chosen female. I was probably the only Atlan in the history of our world who had to hunt down his mate where she fought the Hive on the front lines.

She would be a legend before we even reached the home world. Our females did not fight. Ever.

That made me wonder. What kind of female was I about to be tangled with? The idea of a warrior bride should have made me cringe; instead I imagined her in the heat of battle with fire in her eyes and a female cry of rage that would closely mimic the sound she would make as I made her scream her pleasure while riding my cock. I wanted that fearless fire, that fury, directed at me so I could hold her down and let her buck and writhe and beg for release.

Fuck.
My cock was hard as a rock and not at all comfortable stuffed inside my armor.

I closed one cuff around my left wrist, then the right, the seal on them secure. The match had been made, my mate identified. There was no going back. I would fight until I couldn’t fight any longer, then take my mate home. I would grow old and fat on Atlan with a beautiful and well-fucked woman at my side. I felt the snugness of the bands, felt the weight and finality of my decision and let it settle around my shoulders like a cloak. I took a deep breath, then another, and grunted once the cuffs were secure.