King of Beasts

Chapter 12

She sits across from Gabe quietly, so passive he can’t read anything from her.  Not a single twitch, not a single inclination of the head, not a single clue as to what’s happening in that fantastic head of hers.

It’s incredibly disarming.

“So.” She said slowly, biting on her bottom lip as she thought.  “You’re telling me that you’re two hundred years old?”

Gabe nodded.  He knew age was a problem with humans, but he also figured that after about a hundred year age gap, it didn’t really matter anymore.  Did it matter to his Charlotte?  “I was born in 1807.”

“So over two hundred.” She corrects, but her voice is so monotonous that Gabe can’t tell if that’s a bad thing, or a good thing, or if she even cares at all.  Gabe personally feels like a thousand years old, feels like every memory carries the weight of a thousand without Charlotte by his side.  She can ground him now, stabilize him in a way he hadn’t had before.

“And you are twenty.” Gabe says, because maybe she just wants to talk about numbers, maybe she doesn’t care that Gabe is older.  Way older.  Past the point of robbing the cradle, past the point of conviction, past any sort of point, really. 

“Twenty one in two weeks.” She says absently.  She’s staring at Gabe hard now, eyes squinting, like she’s trying to find a grey hair on his head.  “You don’t look a day over one fifty.” She says finally.

It takes Gabe one, two moments to figure out she’s joking before a grin breaks across his face.  “Why, that’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a century.”

She’s grinning too now, and that’s an accomplishment that has Gabe concerned.  Why does he feel like she gives him the world every time she smiles at him like that, like she doesn’t hate him?  “Alright, so let’s cut to it then.” She clears her throat and sits up straighter.  “What’s the deal with you and my town?”

They’re sitting in Gabe’s kitchen once more, and Charlotte had still yet to comment on the fact that they were not staying in his house, her in a separate bedroom down the hall from Gabe’s.  Again, he couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or not.  Women were confusing, and Charlotte was the most confusing of them all.

Gabe licks his lip nervously, trying to find some way to explain.  In his town, this story was just known.  The parents tell the kids, and the story just follows.  Gabe has never had to explain it to anyone before, that job is usually already done when he comes around.

“You’re town is on an energy fault line.” He started, and then when Charlotte perked up he figured he was saying something right.  “And your elders settled there.  Unfortunately, energy faults are binding.  My great grandfather had bound my pack to this land hundreds of years ago, hundreds before you.  Our original pack broke into smaller ones, but they all remained here, bound to this area, unable to leave, or for others to enter.”

He paused, but when Charlotte nodded eagerly for him to continue, he was helpless to do so.  “Our women only give birth to males, though.  And our women were dying.  We couldn’t leave to find the mates of our men, and women couldn’t enter to become the mates of our men.  Then your ancestors arrived, having searched for the fault line, and my grandfather and them settled an agreement.”

Charlotte quirked an eyebrow.  “Let me guess.” She said, bitterness lining her voice.  “They can stay, as long as the women go with the men if a mate is found?”

Gabe hesitated, and then nodded, knowing this would upset Charlotte.  Which it did.  He watched her face heat in anger and prepared himself for the argument.  “They agreed.  They needed the fault line to survive, and we needed their women to survive.”

Charlotte pulled a face that Gabe couldn’t decipher, but knew at the very least it wasn’t good.  “Oh my god.  I’m a breeding machine to you?  That’s what all the women are?  Oh god—oh my god I’m not going to—you—I—“

“No!” Gabe said quickly, catching onto her line of thinking quickly.  “No, no you are life.  You are our lives.  You are everything.  Without you, there is no us.  We have purposes in our lives, clear defined paths, and they always lead to our mates.  There is no other reason for anything without you.”

He had laid it on thick, but by the dazed look Charlotte was giving him, it had been just right.  “That’s . . . intense.” She muttered, blushing.

Gabe grinned.  She hadn’t run screaming yet, and he’d take that as a victory any day.  “That’s why we roam the streets.”

She tucked red hair behind her ear before meeting Gabe’s eye.  “You said that we can’t leave?  That we can’t leave the town?  Or the area, I guess.”

Gabe nodded.  “Once you bind yourself to the area, you can never leave.”

She raised a challenging eyebrow.  “The elders leave all the time.”

“That’s because they’re the elders.  They can leave as they please.” Upon her exasperated look, Gabe continued.  “Your elders settled here with other peplum.  But only the elders could used the energy from the fault line.  It’s in their genes, an ability, a species of their own.  They can come and go as they please, but their settlers cannot.”

“I left.” She counters.  “I went to the community college a few towns over.  I was always running errands for my grandma.”

Gabe felt the blood in his veins freeze, but he was careful, so very, very careful to not let anything show on his face.  His Charlotte had been very good with her runes, and that spoke volumes on its own.  But Gabe had been hoping that it was just thin traces of her lineage running in her veins.  But if she could leave, and not be effected by it, it meant much, much more.

“You’re an exception.”

“Gabe—“

“Did any of your classmates go to the community college?” Gabe cut her off.  She shook her head slowly.  “Did any of the kids go to college at all?  Did they even want to?  Did anyone in that town ever want to leave for any reason?  Maybe to go to a new restaurant a town over, to see a new movie, to just leave and see something new?  Ever?”

She didn’t respond, but he could see the slight tinge of understanding and fear in her eyes.  “That’s still so twisted.” She muttered, looking at the table.  “That because my ancestors a few hundred years ago signed an agreement that we all still have to bear the brunt of it.”

Did she not know?  Gabe tilted his head to the side, regarding Charlotte carefully before deciding she was being genuine.  “The elders, your elders, are the originals.” Gabe said carefully.  “They’re not your ancestors yet.”

She surprised Gabe by laughing.  “My grandma is an elder.” She giggled.  “She’s not two hundred years old.”

Gabe quirked an eyebrow.  “What’s her name?”

“Barbara.”

“Barbara Strite?”

Charlotte froze, eyes hardening.  “How’d you know that?”

“Because she’s the one that signed the contract.”