King of Beasts

Chapter 2

The king lets his wolves roam while he stands at the town line, naked, crouching low to the earth in human form.  His fingers absently grab at the dirt and leaves beneath his feet as he inhales deeply, and exhales slow.

The night smells divine, smells as though something else rides on the winds.  He feels . . . hungry.  There’s a howl in the distance, a victorious sound, and the king smiles.  Another mate found, another pack member to join.

He knew the settlers of this tiny town didn’t understand what they were agreeing to by signing the agreement with his pack.  They overestimated their magic, and underestimated the beasts.  But they crossed his lands, and destroyed his forest and stole his game.  Two hundred years later, and he was still taking his own.

He used to join in on the roaming of the streets, but the edges of town were his home now, his sanctuary, and he balanced into a crouch on strong legs, his torso wrapped in sinewy muscle and tanned skin, his face rugged and sharp.  He was beautiful, all of his beasts were beautiful.  It was their curse, to be trapped to one land where the idea of mates was destined to be from only a handful of options.

The king inhaled once more, tingling with this new hunger inside of him.  It was an urge to hunt, to find, yet he couldn’t fathom its origin.  He hadn’t had an urge to roam the streets in a hundred years.

Yet on this night, he felt his muscles ripple and his bones break and when he stood on four legs and not two, he took off into the night.

.

.

Her phone woke her up.

It sang Beyonce, Charlotte’s idea of a queen among all women.  She felt numb, like she’d been drugged and was pushing and pushing against its effects. 

She hung upside down, the seatbelt bruising her shoulder and abdomen.  In the way you would discover where you are after waking in a foreign place, she panicked. 

The deer, the crash, the spinning and turning and then blackness.  It rushed to her, and she let out a slow, slow sob as the pain met her as well.

Her arm was wrong.  It felt wrong, and it certainly looked wrong even in the darkness.  Oh god, the darkness.

Her phone stopped ringing, then picked up once again and Charlotte realized with a vengeance just how terrible her situation really was.

The beasts.  The beasts were roaming the streets.

Her car was upside down and she fumbled with her seat belt, gasping in air that was hard to breath.  When it released, she dropped to the hood of the car and let out a strangled scream, biting onto her good hand to stop the sound.

The beasts were roaming.

She was panting, and bleeding, but she didn’t know from what wounds.  She seemed to be bleeding from everywhere.  She reached for her phone as it stopped ringing and she cried out, distraught, as panic in its purest form seized her.

Charlotte was always on time, see.  She did everything right, every damn thing.  Yet she crashed when others had practically given themselves to the beasts and now . . . now she’d be considered an offering, and they could drag her away with them.

She reached out with a good arm, across glass that bit her pale skin, and pulled herself forward.  Her arm quaked, her side ached, and something in her leg felt off.  But she pulled forward, and when the upper half of her body was outside of the smashed window, she took a break before continuing.

She knew she shouldn’t’ but she laid on her back anyways, staring up at the moon and the tops of the streets and those tiny, tiny stars when she was out of the car.

Her phone rang again.

She answered it quickly and found it hard to bring up to her ear.  “Charlie?” her mom, crying.  “Charlie, baby, where are you?”

How could she tell her?  How could she tell her that she was done for?  That she’d crashed fifteen miles from the nearest shelter?  She let the phone press into her shoulder while she regained her breathing, stopped tears she didn’t know she was crying. 

“The seminar ran late.” She told her mom, when she was sure she was sable.  Her voice didn’t sound like her own, it sounded distraught and broken and laced with different flavors of pain.  “I’m staying with a friend in Audet for the night.”

“Charlie, you alright?” her mom had stopped crying but her voice was intuitive, nervous. 

Again, she turned her face from the phone and bit her bloodied lip hard to stop from sobbing.  She brought the phone back to her ear.  “I’m fine, mom, I promise.”

She was bleeding, a lot, and she could see the dead deer a few feet away bleeding as well.  How long before the beasts smell it?  Smell her?  Take her?

In the distance, she can hear the music of rustling leaves and twigs snapping.

“Charlotte.” Her mom’s voice is low, astonished she thinks.  “Charlotte, baby—“

“Mom.” She cuts her off, because she knows that her mom can read right through her, she’s her mom and fro crying out loud if you couldn’t tell Charlotte was in pain from her voice alone then you were daft.  “I’m fine.  I’ll be fine.”

“Oh god.” And her mom sobs once more, strangled and pleading for her daughter’s life.  “Charlie—“

The rustling gets louder and before she can say I love you to her mom, or her dad, or her brother or her asshole of a dog, she hangs up because the last thing she would ever subject her mother to hearing is her last breaths while the beasts take her away.

She throws the phone back into the car and reaches up with her good arm to haul herself to her feet.  When they come, she will not be lying down as an offering.  When they come, even if she lands only one kick, they will know this isn’t willing and her death wasn’t by her own choice.

It hurts worse than most anything and she chokes out certain sounds she’s never heard before.  But she’s standing, or crouching but she’s on two feet, or really one since her ankle is busted—but she’s up.  Her head swims and she faces the forest with her back to her beloved ford.  With a start, a terrible realization, she remembers her grandmothers training and she dips her fingers into her blood and draws onto her good hand as best as she can with her broken one. 

Because maybe, with a town founded from magic, surrounded by monsters, she had a chance.  Maybe those six years of training to learn these forsaken runes had been worth it.

Maybe, she had a chance.