Chapter 120
Ghoul
“The fight is over,” I tell the children of Serpent Court as they huddle at the side of an overturned Jeep.
“It’s time for everyone to go home.” And what a mess it is.
Around us are the smoking carcasses of beasts and vehicles.
It’s just a shame none of them is Mace. I may have been denied his corpse, but it is a small price to pay for what I have gained.
“General Ghoul, what do we do?” one of them cries, eyeing Savage, who stands beside me with his ridiculous jewelled goggles on his forehead.
He looks like a mad pilot with that thing, and Eugene’s carrier still strapped on his chest just makes it worse.
How this creature is my bond-brother is…
well unfortunately I’ve come to realise that it makes a whole lot of sense.
“Don’t worry about him,” I say, gesturing to the wolf. “But don’t talk to him because he bites.” Savage makes a dramatic chomping sound in their direction, and one of the younger children whimpers.
I sigh heavily. “You should never have been ordered here. We’re going to get a bus and get you back into town. If you have living parents, they can pick you up.”
“My parents were enlisted,” says an older girl, looking out at the smoking chaos of the field with tears in her eyes.
“We’ll tally the dead and find you accommodation. Don’t worry.” The girl looks at me like I’m mad. And I agree. Someone else would be infinitely better at this than me.
Somehow, Savage takes it upon himself to step forward. “I’m sure you guys are hungry, right? I know I am! Did you know we have a gargoyle that spits hot chocolate in our dining room?” There are multiple gasps to which Savage nods seriously.
“Hey, I thought this was a jail for ferals?” one of the more discerning boys asks. “We’re not going in there!”
“It’s actually more of a boarding school for naughty people,” Savage says, taking off his goggles. “We have classes, and there’s ice cream all the time. And if you ask nicely, Bastien, who’s the gargoyle on the animus dorm, will tell you dirty jokes.”
“I need to pee,” a small child complains.
“Oh, you can’t do that on the floor; you’ll get in trouble,” Savage says, holding his hand out to the child. “I’ll show you where the toilets are. Everyone can go.”
“You hit me with a Nerf gun,” the child says accusingly.
“Yeah, and you’re not dead, are ya?” Savage responds proudly.
“I guess so.” She takes his hand, and they all walk toward the academy gate together.
Lyle’s teacher’s sixth sense catches on, and he hurriedly joins Savage in herding the children inside.
I follow them because the serpents are still my responsibility in my eyes, and I don’t trust Savage as far as he can be thrown.
Lyle has them all in single file by the time they arrive at the toilets near the dining hall, and the children obediently take their turns under our supervision.
Once Lyle is satisfied that no one’s going to attack anyone, he turns to me. “I’m going to see about the food.” I’m disturbed by his need to tell me this as if I’m his staff, but he leaves, stalking towards the kitchen. I stare after him, frowning deeply.
My regina’s voice charges panicked in my head. “Where are you?”
“With Savage.”
“What?” she cries. “What are you doing?”
“Are you worried about what I’m doing to him?” I ask. “Or what he’s doing to me?”
Savage’s mental voice joins ours. “We’re all weeing together. Hey, is Ashy in the group chat now? I thought we’d at least give it a week, regina.”
“Weeing together?” Aurelia’s voice is incredulous.
“What Savage is trying to say,” I clarify, “is that we’ve brought the serpent children to relieve themselves in the bathroom. Savage and I are supervising from outside. I am not urinating with Savage, regina.”
Savage turns from his observation of the children to narrow his eyes at my unmasked face. “Where did you go to school? You use a lot of big words.”
I bare my fangs at the wolf. “Mace Naga liked his generals educated. We went to a boarding school like this actually.”
One of the children starts wailing. “Shit!” Savage cries. “What do we do?”
I suppress a sigh before going over to the little one and patting him on the head. “It’s alright. We’ll get you home soon, hatchling.”
“They saw Mace die,” Savage tells me with his arms crossed. “Now they’ll all need therapy like me. And now that you’re in the pack, you’ll go to therapy too. Lyle makes us all do it.”
“I don’t need therapy,” I say. “My basilisk doesn’t function like you weaker orders.”
I know my regina is behind me before I scent her. Savage’s eyes light up as he sees her coming down the corridor. The child I’m patting wraps his arms around my leg, and I can’t move, so I wait for Aurelia to come to my side.
She has always been beautiful, but when battle-weary, with dirt and blood all over her body, she is a stunning creature from my dreams. I can’t help but raise a hand, still gloved, and brush it over her cheek.
Her eyes, red-rimmed but alight with new hope, bore into my eyes in the way she knows I like. “Are you alright?” she asks softly.
I look at my hands and decide then to take the gloves off for good. She watches me as I tug them off and put them in my pocket. “I’m only okay when I have you in my line of vision.”
She gives me a wry smile. “Don’t start going soft on me now, Ash.”
My fangs are out at that. My new name. Is it a new start? “Unfortunately, I’m still the same person, regina.”
The children crowd around us, gaping at the revelation, many of them too young to be on social media. She smiles at them all. “Who’s hungry? We’ve got burgers and fries already cooking.”
The children are reluctant and confused, but Savage starts blabbing about how good the academy food is, and they have no problems walking to the dining hall with us.
My regina sticks by my side the entire way, and I cannot help but revel in her closeness. The casual nature of it and how—
It hits me then, walking into the dining hall, that I don’t have to leave her. That I don’t have to go back to Serpent Court and attend to Mace’s orders. Ever again. It’s been so long since I knew freedom that I’m trying to understand the shape of it.
“Hey, isn’t that serpent scum?”
I cast a lazy look at the group of males sitting at a table together. These look like Scythe’s sworn beasts, called in from his various outposts to help in the fight. This is only the first of what I’m sure will be many more unnecessary questions.
I’m about to reply that they should run, but my regina growls at them. “There are children here.”
“He’s wearing the serpent general’s uniform, Lady Boneweaver,” says the feline.
“The last one standing,” says another.
“We’re all on the same side now,” Aurelia says. “If you have—”
“Is there a problem?” Scythe’s voice cuts through the hall, and the group visibly straightens.
The shark stalks through the outside door, scanning the room and finding his regina.
There is wet blood on his shirt, specks of it on his face, and a sudden wind chills the air as the great white pins his gaze on his beasts.
“We…We’re just saying, sir,” the feline says, “that a serpent general shouldn’t be allowed in here.”
Scythe’s eyes land on me before his men. “You should be aware that Ash is my pack-brother. You are to give him the same respect as you do me, Savage, Lyle, and Xander.”
The males quieten. A long-dead part of me pokes his sleepy head out from his cave and looks around with bleary eyes. My regina’s smile is smug as she glances at me, then sashays forward to help the children with the hot chocolate gargoyle.
Xander, now wearing track pants but nothing else, is fiddling with a coffee urn, and Lyle comes out of the kitchen wearing an apron, both hands carrying baskets of fries, fresh from the oil.
Savage lets out a cheer, to which Stacey, Eugene’s flock, and the Devi pack let out a returning cheer from where they sit at the back of the hall.
Nimpins zip around the room, chirping with excitement.
My regina returns to me with a chipped white animus mug in her hand.
She offers it to me with a tired smile. It seems like so long ago that I’d found her, sitting in my old bungalow.
It seems like an age since I watched over her from the shadows, always alone in my darkness. But now I get to be out in the open.
I accept the mug from her, our bare fingers brushing against each other. She takes a beat too long to remove her hand. “It might take some getting used to,” she says. “But I think you’ll come to like them. We’re all just as crazy as each other.”
Xander frowns at his reflection in the urn. I murmur, “Like is a strong word, regina.”
I gesture at the dragon, and Aurelia turns to look at him, gasping a breath.
Scythe, Savage, and Lyle all turn to look at the dragon too.
Because on his neck, Xander’s mating mark is no longer void black, but has reclaimed its celestial glow.
I allow the shadows to recede from my own neck, an old habit of so many years.
The light must catch Xander’s eye because he looks towards me too. I nod stiffly at him.
Xander sets the urn down and reaches for his headphones, tentatively plucking them out. I narrow my eyes at him, watching the golden orbs for signs of the Berserker madness.
But it doesn’t come. The dragon takes a deep breath and his shoulders sag as if he has been relieved of some great weight.
Aurelia’s eyes fill with tears as she beams at him.
Xander looks to his regina and something private passes between them, tiny multicoloured lights flashing in his eyes like opals.
And then everyone is going back to what they were doing and I watch them with a strange sense in my chest. Just for a tiny, infinitesimal moment in time, I allow that secret part of me, hidden in his cave, to believe that we’re not entirely alone anymore.