1009 Chapter 194- Epilogue 5 (VOLUME 5)
Protector
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Zayden
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I was not sure what was going on. I knew that Mommy and Daddy were away a lot right now. They had left a few days ago and we weren’t really told what was going on. I knew that we all were going to miss them, but it was probably Zaley that was going to miss them the most. She had been going through a lot that I was sure Mommy and Daddy didn’t know about. Actually, I was probably the only one that knew just how bad it was. I tended to listen more than Zachary and Zander did, so I caught more than they did.
Zaley was the most different of us. She was the one that had pale hair, white skin, and bright eyes. The eyes perfectly matched Mommy’s, that wasn’t odd, but the rest of her was. And that was why people made fun of her.
Zaley was sad a lot. She didn’t cry or anything, but I saw it in her eyes. She was sad that people thought of her in a bad way. They saw our grandfather in her. They knew that she was him reborn into this life. Mommy and Daddy had even told us about him. Not all that much, but enough.
We knew that he was a bad man, but he wasn’t born that way. He turned bad, and he did a lot of things that hurt a lot of people. Mommy stopped him, and I know that means that she killed him, but I don’t blame her. It was that or more people getting hurt.
Something happened to Grandpa Edmond though. He had changed in the afterlife. When Mommy was in the underworld, where she saw me, Zachary and Zander there with her, she found out that Grandpa Edmond wasn’t bad anymore. The punishments had worked for him. And now he was good. Or at least willing to be good. And Mommy even said it was him that saved us all. He sacrificed his soul for us. And when Zaley was born, she was Grandpa Edmond reborn.
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I knew that he had done things wrong, but Zaley hadn’t. Zaley was innocent. And she was good. She loved everyone, but she was not given that love by others. And it wasn’t always the kids that made fun of her.
Yes, there were plenty of people, mostly humans, that made fun of the way that she looked, but they weren’t the only ones. Lots of grownups, ones that knew who Grandpa Edmond was, that told her that she was an abomination. I had to look that word up when they first said that to her. I wanted to know what it was that they were calling my sister, and then when I did find out, I wanted to hurt them. They shouldn’t say that about my sister. She was too good for that.
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I don’t mean that she was too good as in stuck up. She was a good person, and not an abomination at all. She was a miracle that was the blessing of a second life. And that is why I was determined to help her. So were Zachary and Zander though. We all wanted to protect Zaley from the stupid people of the world.
At school, the kids that made fun of her were the ones that were just mean. They weren’t human, just like we weren’t, but they weren’t hybrids like we were. They didn’t make fun of me and my brothers though, just Zaley. I think that they often forgot that she was the princess, because they acted like she didn’t matter. Or maybe they all thought that Mommy and Daddy didn’t love her because of her being Grandpa Edmond reborn. Well, they were wrong about that.
This morning, Johnny Lowell was making fun of Zaley really badly. The adults knew that Mommy and Daddy left for work, and some of them told their kids about it. Johnny was telling Zaley, while me, Zachary, and Zander weren’t around, that she was the reason that our parents left. He was telling her that she was so repulsive, another word that I looked up, that she had driven them away. He was calling her ugly and vile, that was what the word meant, right? Something like that anyway. Well, that was wrong. And he needed to know about it.
My brothers and I were walking toward Zaley and Johnny when he had been saying these things to her, and I just saw red. I knew that I was too young, but I almost shifted right then and there. Or it felt like that anyway. I had felt some sort of power rippling through me and I knew that if I had fangs and claws, I would rip the older boy to shreds.
“JOHNNY!” I snapped at him, my voice way louder than it usually was. I even got stares from my brothers who never saw me get this angry.
“What do you want, shrimp?” He glared at me. I was not a shrimp. I was far from it. As I was always told by others, my brothers and I were tall for our age.
“Shut your mouth!” I snarled at him, or at least I tried to. It didn’t sound like Daddy’s snarls, or even Mommy’s, but I think it was impressive. And it must have been too, because I saw Johnny take a step back even though he was six years older than me.
“What did you say?” He asked me when he recovered.
“You heard him, puke breath.” Zachary snapped at him. “Shut your mouth. And leave our sister alone.”
“And who is going to make me? Huh? You three? Ha ha ha. Your parents couldn’t stand the three of you so they ran away from The Kingdom. They abandoned us all.”
“They are away on business, you butt face. They will be back soon.” Zander yelled at him.
“Ooh, butt face. Is that all that you can do, you little shit?” Johnny sneered. He was a wolf like us, but he was a bad man. I knew that now and he wasn’t even a grown up yet.
“Fuck you.” I snapped at him, saying something that I had heard Daddy say quite a bit.
“Oh, you do have a little bit of a bad streak. I’m impressed.” He shook his head and started to turn back toward my sister. “Leave me alone though. I was having fun here.”
“No.” I yelled as he reached out toward Zaley. He was going to either push her or punch her, but I wouldn’t let him do it.
“Stop it, asshole.” Zachary growled at him.
“Bitch.” Zander, not wanting to be the only one not to use curse words, yelled at Johnny as the three of us jumped at the same time.
I don’t know if it was some sort of telepathy or if we just had the same instincts, but we all moved to protect Zaley at the same time. And the result was that the three of us hit Johnny all at the same time. He was bigger than we were, so there was more of the target to smack into when we leapt, but there were still three of us, and we almost ended up colliding. It was lucky that we just barely missed each other when we knocked him to the ground.
“Oomph! Huuh!” First Johnny grunted and then all the wind was knocked out of him when he landed on the ground, the three of us on top of him and hitting as hard as we could.
“You shithead!” Zachary was yelling at him.
“Asshole!” Zander’s voice was louder than Zachary’s.
“Fuck you, dickhead!” I was wailing on Johnny near his right shoulder and collarbone when I heard a snapping sound. The snapping was followed by a blood curdling wail from Johnny.
“ENOUGH!”
I hadn’t even noticed that teachers were coming toward us. Nor had I heard them yelling at us before that moment. They were pulling at me and my brothers though, so it was hard to ignore them now. Especially when the P.E. teacher, Mr. Strong, was holding me in the air as I kicked and screamed.
Zachary, Zander, Zaley and me were all taken to the office to explain what happened. Johnny was taken to the nurse’s office to get healed, she was a witch that was good at using spells like that. The rest of us though, I knew were in trouble. Even though Zaley did nothing wrong, they were going to punish her too.
I was wrong though. We didn’t get in trouble. Apparently, someone had gone to get a teacher when it was just Johnny and Zaley. There was a new girl that had started at the school and was in Zaley’s class. Her name was Breanna, and she was really nice. She told the principal what had happened to Zaley and why it was that we had all attacked Johnny. She even told him that Johnny was about to hit Zaley, and we were protecting her.
We got sent home for the day, but school was almost over anyway. And the principal called Lola and Nona about what happened, but we didn’t get in trouble at school. I knew that we had a lot to explain later to them and eventually Mommy and Daddy, but for now we were OK. I was surprised by that.
I didn’t care about being in trouble though. I had been there to protect my sister, just like I wanted to be. I knew that no matter what happened to her, I would always protect her. That was my job as her brother.