Chapter 4
Medwin Smokescale
Moonscale London Under the Reign of Roster and Ferrick Moonscale
I shoved all the bedding into the washing machine and jumped into the shower.
My heart pounded behind my ribs and vibrated me all the way up to my eyes.
Reinterring my panic was nearly impossible.
I breathed deep and exhaled hard over and over, sending puffs of smoke all over the bathroom again and again.
Alrick was dead. He had failed and they were covering up the real assassination attempt.
Poor fucking Alrick! I wanted to roar but there wasn’t time.
I had to be dressed. I had to get it together.
The others would be here soon. We had to regroup and decide how Clarence Fucking Moonscale changed things.
Was it all moot? Was he destined to die trying to save Moonscale London like his uncle had?
“No!” my dragon roared from inside his inner sanctum. “We can do this. We’re not letting Alrick’s death be in vain. He was a good dragon. He was a—”
He was raped by Roster and his eggs smashed by Ferrick – by his own brother.
His own bloody clutchmate! My dragon reared up shooting out fire.
The flame surged up my throat and into the shower.
The water extinguished it but smoked up the place more than ever.
I sent my mate home to those horrible people.
I should’ve hit him over the head and tied him up.
I could’ve shoved him into the closet and kept him there until we figured it out.
The first one to scratch at my door was Pras.
“He’s home. Ferrick had a field day that he was out frolicking with some whore – his words not mine – while Alrick was murdered in cold blood,” Pras said
“Ferrick wouldn’t have been able to kill him so easily if Clarence had been there,” I sighed and crashed into Pras for a hug.
Before he met Haen Greenscale everyone whispered that it was only a matter of time before Pras and I chose each other.
Even my parents thought I should settle for him.
They were right. There were way worse choices I could’ve made but Pras was like my brother.
From the moment we struck up a friendship in the library both researching poisons we were brothers.
Besides he and Haen were a match made in heaven.
Sometimes I forgot that they were chosen mates.
“You and Clary, huh?” Pras asked, hugging me tight.
“I’m shocked too,” I nodded.
“I’m not,” Pras shook his head. “I’ve been saying for years we should’ve brought him in, but that bloody fucker wouldn’t have believed us about Ferrick and Roster. Poor chap had to hear the words from their mouths otherwise I was just a jealous fucker.”
“Did you ever try to tell him?” I stepped away and met Pras’s gaze.
“No, like I said, I’d have sounded like a jealous fucker, or worse, a bloody lunatic shouting out conspiracy theories,” he said.
“I had to double-check. I want to love that dragon but…”
“Clarence has never been one of them,” Pras sighed.
“He’s tried to act like them. Act like what he thought they were anyway, but he doesn’t have enough rotten scales to be a monster.
He was what every monster needs, though.
Someone who believes the world is a good place and will fill in all the blanks and questions with answers that say it is.
He knows now and it’s changing him. You’re changing him too.
He just met you and I can already tell the difference in him, Smokey. ”
“Do you think his parents will notice?” I asked.
“No, they’d have to pay attention to him to notice. Roster might think he has some piece of ass he likes, but you know Roster Moonscale. He wants his line to spread far and wide. That’s his version of seed bombing. Thanks for not asking what went wrong.”
“I figure once everyone is here… It’ll be easier to tell everyone at once.”
Another scratch at the door brought in Haen. He’d been downtown like I was. All of us who weren’t at the castle needed alibis. He made a scene at a local restaurant while I babysat his notoriously alcoholic younger brother, Earl. It was a miracle that downtown wasn’t burning to the ground.
Next came Volex, swearing under his breath with big, fat trembling smoke rings wafting from his nose.
Volex Moonscale was the grandchild of Frost and Juda.
His sire was their firstborn son, Cyrus.
Unlike most of his siblings, Volex ventured to Earthside and concerned himself with the ongoings of their lineage over here.
He was not the ancestor that Clarence and his family directly descended from, but he was the one who cared that Roster Moonscale was a serial rapist and that his mate had smashed more eggs than any other dragon he knew of in lore or recorded history.
That’s what drew him into our little group.
So many people he knew were trying to be born into Moonscale London only to be smashed out of their eggs before they even hatched.
Under normal circumstances, there were about a dozen of us, but now we were eleven with Alrick dead.
The four of us starred at each other for several long minutes.
The others might show up. They weren’t dead.
They were merely scared out of their minds.
Ferrick’s assassination on the night of Clarence’s heir coronation had been planned for a long time.
Alrick’s death made everything that much more real.
Some of them could walk away without a care in the world.
I wasn’t one of them. I never had been. Even before I met Clarence Moonscale I was in this for the long haul. That’s how I met Volex.
Five years ago, my best friend, Hanmitch, killed himself because of Roster.
So, I singlehandedly planned to storm the castle and castrate him.
Volex happened upon me trying to sneak in and dragged me off like an unruly hatchling.
Standing here with him now, he was the tallest of all of us and his belly glowed hot with his fire.
Most dragon shifters never stopped growing and Volex was no exception to that rule.
He stood at nearly eight feet with hair that fell to his shoulders.
His eyes were big and the color of a stormy sky.
If he hadn’t dragged me away that day, I’d either have a crush on him or be dead.
You can take your pick of which you want to believe would’ve happened.
When it was clear that the others weren’t showing up that night, we moved into the kitchen and I made coffee.
We all gathered around my kitchen table and Pras, who had been at the castle as planned because he and Delin were regular sights there, told us what unfolded.
Delin was now in hospital because a piece of wall had crushed his leg.
The healers expected him to make a full recovery in just a few weeks.
Poor Delin. He didn’t know what was really up.
He adored Clarence. Practically hero-worshipped my mate.
He’d always been too close to him for us to tell him the truth.
He was one of the people who really thought Pras and me were romping every night.
Alrick, who was Ferrick’s clutch mate, was the only one able to slip in through the shields Ferrick had on his family’s living quarters because he feared someone would assassinate his only son.
Only, Ferrick wasn’t as drunk as he thought, and their battle didn’t go to plan.
Now, Roster and Ferrick were blaming traitors for killing him.
Dirty, rotten traitors had broken in and tried to kill Ferrick.
His fearless brother gave his life to save him.
Haen sobbed at the table and Pras rubbed circles on his back.
I hadn’t planned on telling the others the exact relationship between me and Clarence Moonscale, but it was all over the link Volex had forged for us years ago when we decided it was time to take this seriously.
At the time, we assumed that Ferrick would have to die first because despite all his jealousy he was derangedly devoted to Roster.
It was as if he hoped if he smashed enough eggs that Roster would get the hint and love him again.
I wasn’t convinced that Roster Moonscale had ever loved him or anyone else for that matter.
“Well, now we have two reasons to trust the heir,” Volex said, leaning back in his chair, my little floral print coffee mug was comically small in his big hand.
His knuckles were marked with vibrant orange scales that were black around the edges as if they had been burnt to a crisp.
“Pras vouches for him and you’re twice as likely to kill him if he’s like them.
” Volex’s stormy eyes settled on me as he sipped from the dainty mug.
“You have too much honor to let him get away with such things, Smokescale.”
Volex wasn’t wrong. If my heart had to be carved from my chest and tossed into the forge, I’d rather do it myself.
There was no excuse to protect a predator like Roster.
None. Not love or blood or fear. Every day that he walked Earthside was another day he was here to harm good people without consequence.
We were determined to be that consequence for him and his loose-screw mate.
***Notes from Clarence: If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard of Volex he has lived under various aliases.
To the best of my knowledge, he’s currently back in the Other World awaiting his true-mate’s rebirth.
We have no reason to believe that he will be reborn anywhere other than Earthside, but since we’re not fate nor the sort to trust the Book of Possibilities, we don’t really have a clue.
If by chance, you’re reading this, Volex, send us a postcard and let us know what alias you’re going by these days.