King of Beasts

Chapter 3

She tracks the coming sounds from the forest so closely that when a man steps from the foliage and not a beast she nearly passes out.  Because she’s relieved, see, because it’s a person and she’ll be saved.

If, say, that man were fully clothes, and if, say, he hadn’t merged from the very woods the beasts came from.  Even as he stepped onto the road, she could see his jaw shifting from wide and pierced, canines slipping from his lips, to that of a beautiful human jaw, and striking, iridescently glowing eyes.

He pauses as he steps onto the tarmac and breaths in deeply, those stunning eyes draping over Charlotte like no one else has.

The beast, she muses, is human.  Or, pretends to be human.  She feels hot, and in pain, and her head is swimming viscously from her blood loss as the man takes another step, and another, and another so he’s running now, running up the road from where he emerged and towards Charlotte as she sways on her only good foot.

She holds up her hand, the ones she’s managed to draw a protection symbol on, and gasps in agony as a spasm hits her spine and the beast/human freezes in his sprints. 

“No.” he says, growls, his eyes turning to slits as he sees the symbol.  It’s intricate, curling and looping but it had to be perfect to work.  But Charlotte loves to draw, and it’d taken her six very, very long years to learn this one.  “No.”

From the woods others emerge but they’re wolves, and these are the real beasts with lips pulled back over snarling teeth.  Her worst reality is presenting itself to her but she’s so far gone with the pain and the swimming of her head she can hardly care.  She sags against the back of her car before letting herself drop down. 

“Take it off.” The man demands as he comes as close to her as the ward allows him.  It burns his skin, makes him feel woozy, but this is his life he’s looking at now, broken and crumpled, this is his forever.  Ad he can’t touch her to save her from dying.  “Take it off!”

Charlotte smiles at this beautiful, beautiful stranger.  “My grandma taught me this one.” She gasps, closing her eyes so the snarling beasts around her aren’t what she remembers when she dies.  “I went through the training to learn it, so you can’t fault her.”

“You will die!” the man roars, so loudly the trees shudder down to their roots.  “Take it off!”

She feel how close he is, just inches from his bare skin touching hers, but he can’t come closer, can’t bite into her neck and kill her, can’t grab onto her and drag her away like a barbarian.  When her mom finds her, she’ll be very much herself, very much in one piece, very much dead, against the side of her car.

“Does it upset you?” she whispers.  “To not be able to take another one?”

The beasts snarl.  “Quiet.” The man hisses, and the chorus of beasts around them silences.  She opens her eyes, surprised at this display of authority.  The beasts, in her mind, seemed like a bunch of lawless monsters.  She’s met with his blue eyes and the raw desperation within.  She watches him quickly scan the ground and splash his hand in a puddle of her blood.  Not touching her, but her blood.

“What are you doing?” she asks, even as her vision clouds over, becomes foggy.  His hand runs over his bare chest, a deep red against a pale white.  A symbol she can just barely recognize, so familiar yet she can’t think— “Don’t.” she gasps, her surprise wakening her for a moment.  Because she remembers the symbol now.  “I’m not yours, you can’t.”

It’s a symbol for a claim, for a claimed one to touch what’s theirs past any other symbol.  Even past her own personal rune, etched into her palm with her own blood.  And that same blood, the only thing that can be used, was now splayed across the beasts chest.

His eyes meet hers, a wild gleam in them, as he reaches for her.  “You will not die.” He hisses.  “And you will be with me.  Always.”

When he touched her skin she sobbed.  She was too far gone to feel it as the beast felt it, feel it like everything he’s never had in his hundreds of years of life rested within the battered girl.  All she felt was a moment of utter loss, her last defense crumbling away.  She didn’t even feel the pain so much when he hauled her into his arms and walked back to the forest, because by then she was already gone.