Page 76 of Carnal: The Beast Who Loved Me

“I didn’t hear anything.”

Charming laughed at her. “Come on. Let’s go find out how it went.”

She slammed the book closed and pushed up to follow him downstairs.

As they entered the kitchen, Serene reached up with the corner of her apron to dab at her temples. She’d been carving up the roasted haunch of some beast or other. She was smiling as Free stood pressed behind her, hands on her hips, whispering in her ear.

“Ew,” said Charming. “It’s thekitchen!”

At that Free grinned into Serene’s ear.

Rosie watched the exchange wistfully, thinking she wouldn’t mind having exactly that. A man like Free utterly devoted to her after thirty years. An unbidden image put her in a kitchen with Carnal smiling into her ear as their children complained about parents making out before dinner. It was a vision that was shockingly pleasing, especially since the last thing she’d ever imagined for herself was domesticity.

Free reached around Serene, grabbed a carrot, stuffed it in his mouth, and stepped back, smiling at Charming.

“We’re dying to know what happened,” Charming said.

“You don’t look like you’re dying.”

“Ha. Ha. Tell us.”

Free took his chair at the head of the table. “It went as well as expected.” Serene set a platter of meat and veggies in the center of the table and took her chair at the other end, looking just as curious and eager as Charming. “Carnal did a good job with the watcher schedule. Everybody’s been briefed. No human is to take anything away from any of the facilities and no hybrid is to leave a post without a replacement. All key buildings are covered.”

“I’m on duty tomorrow,” said Charming. “Been paired with Jagged.”

“Where?” asked Free.

“The lab. It’s in the city near the…”

“I know. I was there,” said Free.

“Oh yeah. Well, anyway. I’m supposed to watch and learn. And, like you said, make sure the humans don’t leave the premises with anything.” He put a chunk of meat in his mouth. “And I’m supposed to make nice with them.”

“Did Carnal tell you that?” Serene asked.

“I guess you could say hetoldme that. It was more like his highnessorderedme.” Free and Serene both turned to look at Rosie when she giggled at that. “But what I really want to know about is the mating decree.”

“What mating decree?” Serene looked at Free.

“That’s what they’re calling it,” Charming said as he tore off a fistful of fresh baked bread. “Tag and I are talking about teaming up if we find a human girl we both like well enough. The only thing is I like small and perky,” he formed cups with his hands at chest height,” while Tag likes…”

As Charming was enlarging the space indicated by his hands, Serene blinked twice, then looked at Free with a darkening expression.

Seeing that, Free cut off the rest of that sentence. “Um, well, son, you make it sound like a much more casual proposition than what we were thinking.” He looked at Serene to judge her reaction to the direction his response was taking. When she nodded, he continued. “You have some maturing to do before you’re ready to, ah, team up.”

“Oh yeah. Well, sure. Gotta shop around.” He grinned.

Serene stared. “Right now, you’re concentrating on your education. Not ‘shopping around’.”

Charming grew instantly serious. “Of course,” he nodded. “My education.”

Rosie looked down at her lap and snorted. Everyone heard it, but ignored it.

Free steered the conversation back to something more salient. “Stood next to Comstock while he told his people about the changes. Then Red and I started looking around for ideas about how to house Exiled close together in the middle of the city without uprooting humans who already live there.

“A lot of the taller buildings have upper floors that are unoccupied. They would never have been built if it wasn’t for elevators, but of course those are inoperable. Humans don’t like to climb multiple flights of stairs so the upper parts sit empty. Since that’s not a problem for us, it would work, but it would also be easy to trap us on upper levels. So we decided against that.

“Same thing for sublevels. Too easy to be trapped. We decided that our people need to be in ground level housing and, of course, that’s hardest to come by because that’s what everybody wants. There are a few buildings that are in such a serious state of disrepair that they’re not being used. Those are possibilities. If necessary we can also build temporary housing in the big park in front of City Hall.”