Mated to the Beast of the Wasteland novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Eight Minutes to Midnight

Brand refuses to bond a Haven stranger until Ember and his sister change his mind; the bite on her wrist is registered at 11:52, and Perrin arrives to promise an inspection that can void a paper bond.

"No," I said. "I've got the right one."

I walked across the yard to the cage.

The floodlight buzzed over us. Dust drifted through it.

Up close he was bigger than I remembered.

His wrists were chained to the bars at shoulder height. The cuffs had rubbed them raw.

There was a burn on his neck where somebody had used a shock prod.

"Brand Tarrant," I said.

His eyes narrowed. "How do you know my name?"

"It's on your clock."

It wasn't. The card on the cage just said WASTELAND, MALE, 3 MIN.

"What do you want, Haven girl?"

"I want to bond you."

Brand didn't laugh.

He looked at my badge, my jumpsuit, my shaking hands.

"Who sent you?"

"Nobody."

"Registry? Hawthornes?" His voice stayed flat. "You want a beast on a leash for some Haven game. Find a collar. They come cheap."

"I don't want a collar. I want a husband by midnight."

"Why?"

"Because at midnight Perrin Hawthorne collects me like a parcel."

"So I'm your way out," he said.

"And I'm yours. A bonded beast doesn't get culled. It's in the Gate rules."

"I know the rules."

"Then you know you're dead at sundown tomorrow, and I'm the only one offering."

"Go home. You've got your whole life in there."

I had. I'd seen how it ended.

I crouched down so my face was level with his.

"You have a sister," I said quietly. "Sable. She's twenty-five and she fixes anything with a wire in it."

"She's sitting in your truck at the top of the ramp right now, counting coins."

His eyes opened.

"You've got a grandmother's sister back home who coughs every night and pretends she doesn't."

"You've got a town that eats because you go out past the wall when nobody else will."

"How do you know that?"

"If you die tomorrow, Sable drives home alone. Think about her face."

He stared at me.

Then the yard door banged open.

A short, wiry woman came through it at a run with a cloth sack in both fists.

Choppy black hair, a grease streak, amber eyes exactly like his.

She slammed the sack on the officer's counter so hard it split.

Coins went everywhere.

"Appeal fee," Sable Tarrant said. "Sixty. Count it. I want him out of that cage till the hearing."

The officer looked at the coins and then at me.

"Funny," he said. "Bond fee's sixty too."

Sable turned around and saw me for the first time.

"Who's the princess?"

"His wife," I said. "If he'll stop sulking."

In my first life, Brand told me he'd been waiting on a permit that night.

He'd been a cull on a two-hour stay, bought with his sister's last coins.

He never said.

Sable's mouth fell open. She looked from me to her brother.

"Brand. Is this real?"

"She's Haven," he said.

"She's a Haven girl offering to keep your head on."

Sable picked a coin off the floor and threw it at the cage.

"An appeal buys you a hearing. You've lost every hearing you've ever had."

He caught the coin in his chained hand.

He looked at it a long time.

"Why me?" he asked me.

I couldn't tell him that he'd already said yes to me once.

That I'd lived two years in his shack and slept on his chest every night.

That I'd held his tag in my hand when it came back without him.

"Because you'll let me go if I ask," I said. "And because you're not three minutes of anything."

Something moved in his face.

"Open the cage," he said to the officer.

It was eleven forty when he unlocked the cuffs.

Brand stood up and kept standing. He was a head and a half taller than me.

The rite took place under the Gate clock, on the painted line between Haven and the Wasteland.

The officer read it off a card in a bored voice.

"Ember Faraday. You take this beastman into your household, under your roof, of your own will?"

"Yes."

"Brand Tarrant. You take this woman into your household and give her your mark?"

He looked down at me.

"Last chance," he said low. "It doesn't come off."

"I know."

"Yes," he said.

He took my left wrist.

His hand was hot and rough and twice the size of mine.

He turned my wrist up to the light, slowly, and ran his thumb once across the inside.

I felt it all the way up my arm.

"It's going to hurt," he said.

"Do it."

He lifted my wrist to his mouth.

He didn't look away from my face.

His teeth sank in.

It burned. I gasped and grabbed his jacket with my other hand.

He held still, his breath hot on my skin, his eyes locked on mine.

Then his tongue swept over the bite, once, slow.

My knees nearly went.

He let go. A neat ring of red marks circled my wrist.

He was breathing hard. So was I.

"Registered," the officer said, and stamped the screen. "Eleven fifty-two."

At eleven fifty-eight the yard door opened again.

Perrin Hawthorne walked in, still in his pale gray suit, with two collars behind him.

My uncle came last. He wouldn't meet my eyes.

Perrin looked at the clock, then at my wrist.

His smile never moved.

"Congratulations," he said. "Officer, read Miss Faraday the thirty-day rule."

The officer didn't need to. Perrin did it himself, pleasantly, so the whole yard could hear.

"A paper bond is void within thirty days. The Registry will inspect your household, Ember."

He glanced at Brand.

"And I'll be the one inspecting."

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