That was close. That was close. That was close.
Charlotte couldn't seem to shake the thought as she limped into the center of town, five wolves surrounding her, snarling to the pavement like even the road was an enemy. In the distance, she could see the group of women and un-shifted children going to the shelter. In the background, she could still hear the snarling.
That was close.
She was no beast, had no beastly traits, but she swore that she could smell her own blood in the night.
There was a piercing howl, shot up to the clouds briefly obscuring the moon, that was cut off with a vicious growl and sharper yelp. Charlotte winced, felt her insides turn at the thought of one of them being her own. There was no thought towards the fact she considered these people hers now, like she really was a queen. Just the fear that someone was dead.
A man, clothed with only a pair of shorts, darted out into the streets. She recognized him as one of Gabe's warriors, a man built like a soldier with broad shoulders and a chin lifted high.
"Queen, you'll be in the back of the shelter, with no less than three guards at your sides—"
"The others?" she cut him off, wincing as her ankle turned on a rock, her bleeding calf screaming in protest. A wolf stepped to her side, offering support. Her fingers dug into his fur, softer than she'd expect, and she mumbled a quiet thanks.
"The other women and children will be guarded as well. Everyone in the shelter is guarded—"
"But me more than others?"
A pause, then a nod of the head. "You are our queen—"
"And as you queen, then, I demand you put those three men on the normal perimeter guard of the shelter. If we get attacked, someone else shouldn't die in my place just because I have a title."
Her lip curled up, disgusted at the thought, and even when the man— Sam she remembered now— opened his mouth to protest she cut him off. "Listen, I know Gabe would probably have your head otherwise, but he's not here, is he? He's off doing something that I'll yell at him for later if we all get out of this. So I think I have a pretty good idea of the authority chain in this place, which puts me in charge since he's gone. I don't want to go throwing orders about, but I will if I have to."
Another pause, even the wolves surrounding her slowing in protest. "Alright." Sam conceded bowing his head. "As you wish."
She nodded, then swallowed. "How bad is it?"
"We've got about two dozen rogues." he said, voice cutting to something different, something more usual for a man like him. Direct, factual, comfortable. "They passed our north boundary, as you very well know."
Yes, she did know. Her calf seared to remind her how they'd gotten into the living room before Odin stopped them, just long enough for the reinforcements she hadn't known were so close.
"How many— I mean, well, how many of our own are injured?"
"Three injured, ma'am." he ticked off quickly. "One dead."
She winced, but held her head higher. She didn't know much about this place, but she did know that they were a strong, incredibly durable community. That one man would be mourned like a son to all, but they would fight three times as hard because of his loss.
"How's they get in without detection? I thought you guys had patrols." After all, that was the bullshit lie Gabe had told her he was doing tonight, instead of running off to her old town without her.
To this, Sam had no quick answer, and that seemed to frustrate him. His close cropped blonde hair shifted a bit in the slight breeze, thick eyebrows pulled down in irritation.
"We're not sure. They seem to have drawings on their sides in pigs blood from the smell of it, but we've never seen—"
Charlotte froze, hand lashing out to grab onto Sam's arm and pull him to a stop with her. The five wolves tensed and turned, looking for a threat, growling with their lips pulled back but Charlotte could hardly care. Her heart was in her throat and she felt like she needed to throw up. Earlier, she hadn't noticed anything in the dark other than fur and teeth and claws. She hadn't seen any runes then.
"What drawings." she asked, voice not sounding like her own.
Sam raised an eyebrow, glancing at the nails digging into his bicep. "A bunch of swirls, ma'am, they don't look like anything—"
"But they're all the same? The symbol? On every wolf it's the same symbol?"
Sam nodded slowly, concerned, his own head lifting and searching around them warily as Charlotte's dread infected the air. "You need to draw it for me. Draw it for me now, in the dirt."
"Ma'am—"
"Now!"
There was no hesitation, just a quick detour to the side of the road where Sam knelt on one knee and drew into the soft dirt with the pads of his fingers. Charlotte watched with intense green eyes, so bright in the night that even the beasts had trouble looking. She watched each curve, each swirl, each interconnecting loop being formed. It was like she was back in her lessons, like her grandma was standing beside her, teaching her, testing her.
Her dread was replaced by a cold calculation, her mind switching to that ever present, ever tactful logical side.
When Sam was done, he stood and brushed his hands on his shorts, then looked at Charlotte. "You know it?"
She nodded her head, thinking so fast she could hardly grab on to any of her thoughts.
An elder had drawn that, that was the first thought. There was no one with enough power, other than the elders, to create a rune of that magnitude.
She couldn't think of the who right now, or the how, or the why.
Right now, she needed to think of the counter strike.
"How fast are they closing in?" Charlotte asked.
Sam's face turned grim, lines hardening across his jaw. "Half our warriors are out on the run, ma'am. We've never had the rogues team up like this before. They're closing in fast."
"Can they hold them five houses back from the west end of town for another twenty minutes?"
A pause. A nod.
"Then do it. Send these guys out too. I'd like one to stay with me, if that's alright since the only think I've got is a set of nails that need clipping, but I don't need five."
"What are you thinking, ma'am?" Sam asked, ever the soldier, always thinking. "Eventually, we'll fall back in further, keeping them five houses out on all sides is only surrounding ourselves."
"That's fine, it won't matter. What I do need is for every wolf on our side, within fifty feet, to be within that perimeter on my signal, got it?"
She didn't give him time to respond, just started limping in the other direction, calculating distances, runes, times, in her head like she was a calculator. The beasts paused, watching her back for a dumb moment, before swiftly doing as their queen demanded while she silently cursed Gabe for leaving, and prayed even quieter for him to be alright.
.
.
Barbara Strite was waiting for him on her front porch, sitting in the old wicker rocking chair with a cup of sweet iced tea beside her.
She didn't look like a grandma. In fact, she could rival most thirty year old mothers with her strawberry blonde hair piled in a neat bun atop her head, pink lipstick sharp and proud, green eyes vibrant and full of endless life. There wasn't a single wrinkle on her beautiful face, not one worry line. She sat proud and tall in her chair as Gabe approached, and even motioned to a pair of shorts resting on the matching chair beside her.
"I had assumed you'd like to have this conversation clothed." she announced to the beast before her, unfazed by those intense, iridescent blue eyes. The beast stayed still, calculating the woman before him, before padding up the porch steps and grabbing the shorts between a pair of irreducibly daunting teeth.
He disappeared into the shadows, only to return a moment later in his human, sculpted glory, still moving in that careful way as though he expected the three hundred something year old woman to draw a knife and shank him in the side.
Barbara motioned to the now empty chair, but Gabe didn't move from his spot by the porch railing. "If you insist to stand, I have no problem." she announced, sighing deeply. She grabbed her tea, and took a gentle sip. "Although I can insure you that you're in no danger."
Gabe didn't move.
"This is about my granddaughter, yes?" No answer. "Her soul?"
To that, Gabe tensed ever so slightly but she saw, and offered a gentle smile. "I've seen the scar." Gabe said, his first words aloud. His voice was stiff and rough, the beast still tumbling right under his skin.
Barbara frowned, revealing the first wrinkles Gabe had seen on her face. "Yes, what a terrible day that was." she muttered, more to herself than to him. "Jeremiah surprised us all I'm afraid."
"Tell me how to fix it." Gabe demanded. "Tell me how to unlock her soul without killing her."
Another sad smile was offered, to which Gabe wanted to strangle the old/young woman. He didn't want sympathy. He wanted solutions. "That's the point, my dear. Locking her soul was the only way to keep her alive. There's no way to live without it in place."
Inside, his beast roared, but on the outside, Gabe didn't move a muscle. "There's another way." It wasn't a fact, just a demand.
"Sit down, please, I insist." and when he didn't, she heaved a heavy sigh. "Jeremiah was a sick man. He knew our Charlotte had a very, very powerful soul, one that could rival our own. He wanted to harness it for his own. When we arrived, we were able to pull my husband away from her, but she already had a blade through her heart. Her soul was leaking out onto the kitchen floor right beside her blood. It was . . . beautful, her soul. I've never seen anything quite like it. She was dying, Gabriel, like most people do when stabbed in the chest.
"There is no hope of saving a human with such a wound. They have fragile souls that like to slip through the cracks. It'd be like locking gas in a wuffle ball. But Charlotte isn't human, as I believe you've discovered. The only way to really, really save her was to take her soul, and lock it within her own body. Now we've locked the gas in a seamless steal cage. No chance of escaping. Unless you drill a hole in it, like you're insisting you do. Then the gas will just slip out. You can't grab it, you can't hold onto it, you can only watch it go."
Gabe snarled, and threw his fist through one of the porch beams. "Where is he?"
"Jeremiah? Oh, he's locked away, dear. My husband is in a place where there is no chance of escaping. You have nothing to worry about."
"I'm not worried about his escape." he breathed out through clenched teeth. His beast as snarling, itching to be let out, to go home, to be with his Charlotte whom his could never fully, fully be with. That ached somewhere deep, deep within him.
Barbara sighed once more. "Well then I'm afraid it's not that easy to kill one of us. We're a tricky species."
"I will find a way!" he roared, shaking the house on its hinges, waking the neighbors. The beasts were still roaming, though, and as such not a single light turned on, not a single head poked out from behind the curtains to investigate.
"If you were to bring her back, I could look." Barbra offered, standing to her small height as she spoke. "There's not much hope, but I can try."
That was . . . off. Gabe was a keen and calculating ruler. He knew how to size an enemy up, how to read everything about them by one look. And Barbara was eager.
"Why have you not come for her yourself, if you knew?"
"It's in our agreement." she said. "I cannot harm your people anymore than you can harm mine, and I certainly cannot take a mate."
They were silent for moment, both agreeing for once.
"This Jeremiah, her grandfather, would he know anything? Someway to reverse what he'd started?"
She was silent, head tilted to the side. "He knows no more than me."
"But it's a possibility."
"Gabriel—"
"Ask him." he demanded, standing to his full height. "You and your kind condemned my mate to this, you owe her. Ask him."
Her eyes hardened to green slates, jaw clenching. "Fine." she relented, voice sharp. She disappeared in the house, then returned with a small piece of charcoal. She drew on the railing, beside Gabe. It by far the most complicated rune he had ever seen, looking like four interconnecting ones that Barbara drew so seamlessly there was no doubt she'd been doing it for a long time.
She pressed her hand to it, and to Gabe, it seemed like she had only blinked before her hand retracted, a gasp escaping her lips. Several emotions splashed over her face, first surprise, then confusion, then fury. Her eyes blazed a forest green, her teeth grinding.
"He's gone." she said, turning on her heal to disappear into the house.
Gabe, confused beyond his wits, took only a moment longer to realize his mate's attempted killer was gone from whatever impenetrable prison they'd had him in, and Charlotte was by herself.
He leaped from the porch, turning into a beast mid leap, and howled into the night sky just as the moon broke free from the confines of the clouds.