Two Hundred-Thirty-Six

I look past him and expect Darius to come running, but all I hear are the giggles of Jess and Jade coming from the bedroom. I look back at him and frown,

“Zachariah… Wait, you didn’t… Did you?”

The sly smile drops from his face as he looks down at me with a frown.

“Do what?”

“You said that they had been training to be my personal guards, so I gather that before we left King Malik’s, you had them train even more. So they would have been nearly, if not fully, trained to take up that position when they joined us on the trip home. Now their positions would have started as soon as we got into the SUV and started the trip home. Therefore, they would have been following us that day we went to the clearing after the full moon and also on the way back. You would have seen it as a failure when Charles managed to get his hands on me… You didn’t hold them responsible, did you?”

He puts his hand on my cheek and wipes the tear that I didn’t realise was falling as I thought about that day. His f