Charming (Exiled Book 3) (19 page)

“Okay, but there’s something I need to know.”

“What?”

“Everything I don’t know about you. Your childhood, your life in the other world, and what happened that made Rosie decide the best thing was to bring you here. To hide from somebody or something.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “That’s a tall order.”

“I’ve got all night. If you need longer, I’ve got a lifetime.”

“You always know the right thing to say, Charming.”

“Believe me I don’t. I’m just a better version of me when you’re around I guess.”

That made her heart flutter. “So what else does mating mean?”

Instead of answering, he scooped her up in his arms. She squealed in surprise, but nestled into the warmth of his body as he carried her back to bed. She curled into his side as he lay on his back, head resting in the crook of his shoulder.

“It’s a lot like human marriage, but there’s no divorce. If we have trouble, we’ll work it through and we’ll always be together.” Ana snuggled in closer to his side and sighed. “There’s a ceremony. Food. Dancing. Silly clothes.”

She angled her head so that she could see his face. “What do you mean silly clothes?”

“I have a feeling I’m going to live to be sorry I said that. Don’t listen to me. Talk to Dandelion. Rosie sent her a special outfit for the ceremony when she mated my brother then all the females wanted something like it. Now there’s a shop where humans design and make clothes for the special day.”

“Oh.”

“
Tomorrow I’d like to take you to meet my family. They all live in Newland. You’ve met Dandy, but not Crave or my parents.”

“Okay.”

“So you were going to finally tell me how you came to be living with me?”

Ana took in a big breath and let it out. He thought she was going to say something significant, but what came out of her mouth was. “You want another cookie?”

“Are you stalling? I should have pressed a long time ago. Females don’t usually have to be prodded to talk about themselves. The fact that you evaded all my questions should have been a signal.”

“I don’t really…”

“Ana, being mated to each other means that you can trust me. There’s nothing you can say that will make me feel differently about you, but I do want to know who you are. Everything about you. Starting with when you were born. Don’t leave anything out.”

She laughed quietly. “I think I’m going to have to leave something out, unless you want to be here for twenty years.”

“So. That’s how old you are. Twenty.”

“How old are you?”

“A little older. Not much.”

“That was a dodge.”

“Twenty five.” He ran his hand down her bare arm. “You can skip things like breathing in and out. And breakfast. But don’t leave out anything important.”

A big part of her didn’t want to trust the situation, but she felt safe. Safer than she’d ever felt in her whole life, even when both her parents were alive.

“Why do you care so much? What counts is what’s happened since I got here. If I could, I’d wish everything else away and just have my life start when I ran into that woman. Um. Rosie.”

“If it was really that bad, that’s all the more reason why I want to know.”

“Bad is relative, right? There’s always somebody who’s got it worse.”

“Stalling.”

“I had a normal childhood, I guess. Just my parents and me. No siblings. It was okay until I was fifteen. My dad died and things kind of fell apart. My mother had a clerical job, but it didn’t pay much so we were close to running out of money by the end of the first year.

“She was starting to drop hints that we weren’t going to be able to stay in the same house or neighborhood. I acted like a brat about leaving friends and familiarity, but I was afraid of change because I’d never lived anywhere else. That was my whole reality.

“That all became a moot argument. A social worker came to the door one afternoon after I got home from school. My mom had been in a car accident. She took me to the hospital, but Mom never regained consciousness. She died without a goodbye or a relative who would take me. So into the ‘system’ I went.”

“I don’t know what ‘system’ means.”

She sighed. “It means I went to live in a foster home and it sucked. The other kids in the house were, well, they weren’t like me. They were all tough and hard edges, never expecting that one good thing might happen for them. Soon enough I found out what made them that way.

“Some of the people who take in foster kids are nice enough folks with decent motives, but some are double dippers. They get money from the government for housing and feeding orphans and they get off on making life hell for kids.

“I managed to stick around for a year or so, but then this one guy… Well, he thought the girls that came through his house owed him more than what he got from the state. I took off and I was still under age. Where I came from that means under eighteen.”

Charming listened quietly stroking her shoulder while she talked. “Go on.”

“There was no place to go but the streets. I had no money, no relatives. There’s only one way to survive that.” She paused and Charming waited patiently for her to be ready to tell what she wanted to tell in her own good time. “Do you know what drugs are?”

“Drugs? Uh, yeah. It’s chemicals that doctors use to heal people.”

“That’s what drugs are supposed to do, but in my world bad people got ahold of the idea and used it to create drugs that make people feel good. Those drugs weren’t illegal because they made people feel good. They were illegal because they’re addictive and sometimes they change people’s personalities so that they do things they wouldn’t want to do if they were themselves.

“Anyway, it’s not a good life, being around drugs, the people who use them, or the people who profit because of them. It’s a nasty business, which is why they can get street kids to commit crimes in exchange for a sandwich.”

“What kind of crimes?”

“Usually just carrying illegal drugs from one place to another. When I was first on the street, they said I looked cornfield fresh and innocent. But the thing is, I met a boy.” She felt Charming stiffen and heard the rumbling of a little growl. “There’s no point in being jealous Charming. He doesn’t even live in this world. And I’m over him. Really over him.”

When she felt Charming relax again, she continued.

“He told me he’d be able to protect me. A teenage girl on the streets of a city is a target, you know? Protection was the one word I needed to hear more than anything. More than food, water, place to sleep. So I stayed with him.

“After I turned eighteen I could have left him, but I
still
didn’t have any place to go. I still didn’t have any money or any relatives. I hadn’t finished school. I pretty much just owned the clothes I was wearing. So I was trapped with no way out.

“Well,” she laughed derisively, “I guess this was a way out. Far out.

“My boyfriend stole drugs worth a lot of money from the guy he worked for. He left without even telling me what he’d done or that he was running. This guy he worked for, Ernesto, was a seriously scary individual. Probably psychotic if I understand what it means.

“So Joey, he was my boyfriend, left me to deal. Ernesto isn’t the kind to accept an apology and go away. He’s the sort who lives on a reputation for being cruel. Ruthless.

“When I figured out that he and his minions were after me, I was running for my life. I knew that, if they caught me, they’d torture me for information about Joey or the drugs or the money and I didn’t know anything about any of it. I knew they’d do stuff that would make me beg for death until they figured out that I didn’t know squat. They they’d kill me. End of story.

“Like I said, I was running. Literally. Two of Ernesto’s guys saw me. I ran around a corner and right into that, um, Rosie. She could tell how scared I was. I asked her for help and the next thing I know we were someplace else.

“I told her my story and she brought me here. She’s either my guardian angel or I’m really lucky.”

“She’s no angel.”

“What?”

“I know an angel. He’s the one who dropped
her
off with us in the first place.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being serious.”

He chuckled and gave her a little squeeze.

Ana was quiet for a few seconds. Then she said, “So now you know why I don’t know how to do anything.”

Charming encircled her in his arms and pulled her closer. “You know how to do much more than you give yourself credit for. Scar gave you five days to learn how to bake cookies good enough to sell at the pub. Five days. You know how long it took?” He felt her nod her head. “That’s right. One day. And you know those cookies are better than anything they sell over at Cookie Man’s Bakery. And don’t even get me started on your Shepherd’s Pie. It’s worthy of poetry.”

She smiled. “Okay. I get it. You think I’m salvageable. Still worthwhile.”

“I don’t think you’re salvageable because I don’t think you’re salvage. If anything, you saved me.”

“From what?”

“Loneliness, for one thing. Had no idea that I was lonely before you came, but if I woke up tomorrow and you were gone? Well, I hope I never have to face that.”

“Charming. You make it sound like you need me.”

“I do need you, Ana.”

“But Snow…”

He rolled over on top of her and nestled into the cradle between her legs, demonstrating how perfectly right it felt to be in that position.

“Snow’s not here. Snow will never be here. You’re mine. I’m yours. That’s it.”

She smiled. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

As he began to kiss her softly, he also began to purr. It was a deep, but gentle rumbling that vibrated against her body.

“What is that?” She jerked away, alarmed.

He chuckled. “The purring? It’s an indicator that this is exactly where I should be and exactly who I should be with. There’s one more thing I need to know.”

“What is it?”

“Someday Rosie will come back. When she does, are going to want to go back? Where you came from?”

Ana was shaking her head no before he finished the question. “Never,” she whispered. “As long as I’m with you, this is where I belong.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Excitement had been building in the city for days. Tents, temporary buildings, and makeshift booths were erected all over the park. City Hall had been unexpectedly open to the idea of changing the name and focus of the event to Jubilee: A Multicultural Festival. They were still planning a massive fireworks display directly over the park just after dark.

Charming and Ana had decided to put off their mating ceremony until after Jubilee. Free and Serene would be using the bedroom in Charming’s apartment that had recently been vacated, since Ana slept with him.

As he’d predicted, his family had welcomed Ana and seemed to be genuinely pleased.

Crave and Dandy were splitting up to help chaperone Newland kids who were being farmed out to a host of different homes providing an overnight stay.

Charming had been on edge, hoping they could get through Jubilee without another murder. There had been reports that the hate groups planned to turn the park into a melee of anti-hybrid demonstrations. Apparently their goal was to get one of the hybrids to lose control and attack a human in front of a large gathering.

He was asking all the hybrids to pass the word that they were not to react
no matter what
. He knew that was a lot to ask, but they’d been putting that burden on their adolescents for years. If the adolescents could manage to confine their aggression to the scruffal field or the iron gamut, then he should be able to expect their more mature counterparts to do the same. The uncertainty of that was a worry like a mental plague that clawed at him night and day.

Everything they’d worked for could be undone in one random act of violence.