Guardian
In the morning after dark….
The sunlight hits her square in the eyes none so gently. She hates it when she is forcibly awaken. She stirs and blinks open her eyes, only to be welcomed with unfamiliar sight. First of all, it is not even the ceiling of her bedroom—she knows because hers has a custom-made mirror embedded. Second of all, realization finally hits her when she realizes that she is not alone.
She abruptly lifts herself up to a sitting position, causing the men on her bed to stir and grunt in respond, and triggers a slight pain to her nether region. To her right is Charles, who has an arm circled protectively around her waist, while the other folded under his head.
Erik is lying at her left, whose hand disappears under the blanket that is now pooling on her waist down. It takes her a second to fully realize that his fingers are resting inside her core, and another second to make him pull them out.
She bites her bottom lip when the action hurts more than she first expects.
At the bottom of the bed, she spots Gabriel sleeping soundlessly. If not for the state of his nakedness, she wouldn’t think that he was involved in this.
She tries to leave the bed, but realize that something—or better yet, someone—is weighting her hair down. She turns around to spot Warren having his arm wrapped around a pile of her hair by the end. Oh no. Not him too.
She tries to control her thoughts, carefully not freaking out internally, unless she wants to wake Charles up. Skillfully, she grabs a robe and puts it on, before slipping out of the room.
It takes her a solid five minutes before dressing up and grabbing her car key.
She does not dare to freak out before driving away from the mansion.
The disappearance of guardian….
“Where is she? She’s nowhere in the mansion. I’ve searched though every corner of this building and the surrounding.” Charles can’t help but panic, walking back and ford in the living room. “She’s nowhere near. I think I should use the cerebro.”
When he woke up this morning, he found himself naked with three other men and a small patch of blood on the bedsheets. But no sign of Amethyst.
He dressed himself up briskly and searched around the room. Then the entire mansion. Until he is sure that he can’t sense her, he woke up the rest in panic. Ever since he was little, he has never been separated from his childhood friend before. At least not without knowing where she would be. And now that she was suddenly gone, he couldn’t help but fear for her.
Where did she go? Why didn’t she say anything?
Charles should know the answers, but that does not make it okay.
“She’s probably just out alone. She does this sometimes, whenever she needs time to think,” Charlotte, Amethyst’s 10-year-old cousin explains. “And when I say think, it probably involves smashing a car or a tank—whichever she can find first—away from anyone mortal.” That part she doesn’t say out loud, but Charles picks it up with his mind-reader skill.
“You don’t supposed she is upset, do you?” It is Gabriel who asks.
“Whatever do you mean?” His mind is suddenly raged with the other man’s tone of voice. “You think that she would just…. did that and be fine with it?”
Gabriel throws his hands up in surrender. “I was just guessing. They way she moved….” he stammers, “I never thought that it was—”
“Well, it was! You saw the blood. She….” Charles bites his lip, a pain expression on his face. “She’s not like that. It wasn’t her choice.”
“Can someone please tell me what the heck is going on?” Raven asks urgently, who can’t help but worrying about her almost-sister. “What happened to Amethyst? What did you guys do to her?”
Oh, it was nothing, Raven. The four of us just fucked her seven ways to sundown. Oh, and we took her virginities, too—all three of them—in one night. We had so much sex, our cum would probably have covered her entire body throughly. No big deal! Like hell is he going to admit that.
Raven knows that Charles knows something, but he won’t say anything. She looks at the other three men—Warren, Gabriel and Erik. They all look like they know something too, but none of them says anything.
“Well, since she is away, I guess I am in charge,” Charlottes says, drawing attention back to her.
“Woah, woah, woah. Who says you’re the boss of us?” Sean interjects.
“She means as house guardian,” Charles quickly explains, “But I think I should handle things for the mean time. You’re too young to manage the mansion.”
“How would you know? Besides, the mansion belongs to my family, not yours,” the girl retorts back. “Unless….” Did he sleep with her?
“What does that have do to with anything?” Charles asks, now sounding curious.
Charlotte straightens her back, suddenly realizing that he can read her mind. She blinks, uncomfortably avoiding his stares. “There is a tradition in our family. If you sleep with that person, then you are as good are being married to them. If you did, then the guardianship of the property automatically falls upon the next in kin in the family.” There is nothing closer than that of a husband.
“Wait, what? What the heck did you just say? Charles, did you sleep with Amethyst?” Raven is ecstatic. About damn time. “And even if he did, how do you know that?” She asks the little girl.
“Come. I’ll show you the family tree.”
They go into Amethyst’s office, where they find the Proteria’s family tree illustrated on one side of the wall. They check on her name, almost at the bottom of the branch. On there, they find not only one, but four new names.
Charlotte scowls at the names, not really understanding its meaning. Is this an error? But the family tree never shows mistakes.
“I don’t get this,” she mutters in confusion, but the adults can read in between the lines.
“Wow. Okay. If what she says is true, then this is more than I need to know,” Raven comments uncomfortably.
“You know what it means?” Charlotte asks innocently.
“Kid, I don’t think you need to know what it means until you’re… at least 30 or something,” Raven mumbles, before looking at the men.
Gabriel blushes. Erik looks at anywhere but anyone’s face. Warren’s eyes are glued to their names. And Charles is still in shock by the new information.
On the family tree, he can read his name next to Amethyst’s written in handwritten calligraphy. Next of his are the names of the three other men, each has a branch linked back to her. But that does not stop there. If he look really closely, he can see lines starting to branch out from her and his name, uniting and forming a question mark underneath.
“What is this?” he points at the question mark, though he got a strong gut feeling of what it might be.
“Oh, that is quick. Well, I guess that means she is healthy. Congratulations!” Charlotte is able to pad his shoulder because he is bending down on eye level with the names.
“What? Why are you congratulating him?” Warren asks her.
“Why else? My cousin’s pregnant!” she says ecstatically.
“How come you know so much about this?” Erik opens his mouth for the first time today, a little bit disturbed by the though of the little girl knowing what they had done—at least to a certain extend.
“My mother told me.”