16. Bunny Moon Tag

16. Bunny Moon Tag

Ruth

“I hear it’s time tocelebrate, Beetle Brain!” Helga Bee does a cute, jiggly dance around him.

Dessin sighs. Skylenna laughs.

“Saw you had to hack off the grimy old kitchen hag! I thought y’all would have settled for sucking some dick to get food again!”

Warrose scoffs with an eye roll.

“No dick sucking necessary.” I snicker at the unamused expressions between Dessin and Warrose. “Not when we have old grumpy Dad to filet our enemies.” I slap Dessin on the shoulder.

“Don’t call me Dad,” Dessin grumbles.

“Daddy Dessin!” Niles slaps his knee. “Haha!”

We sit on the stage during the regale hours. Prisoners nurse their wounds, exercise, or nap in the stadium seating. The glowing red light makes Helga Bee’s face look rounder than normal. Her giant blue eyes shine with a tint of pink.

“Impressive. But how are we going to party?” Helga Bee searches our faces for an answer.

Party? We’re in prison.

“No one is partying.” Skylenna chuckles. “We’re just happy to have food in our systems.”

“Nonsense! You’re a family, aren’t you? A pack? A squad? A sneaky little sixsome?”

“Don’t say sixsome.” Warrose grimaces.

“What about Bunny Moon Tag? You must refuel your pack culture! Your family spirit! How do you expect to keep the squad morale alive?” She ruffles Niles’s perfectly coiffed hair. He curls back his lip in annoyance.

“What’s Bunny Moon Tag?” Marilynn asks.

“What’s Bunny Moon Tag she asks.” Helga Bee snorts, elbowing Gerta in the bicep like it’s an inside joke. “It’s only the most iconic game us East Vexello Mountaineers play after a hard-hitting battle!”

“How do you play?”

“Simple! We wait until a full moon and spread out to find a white spearheaded bunny. Whoever finds it gets to chase after the other players until they pummel them into the dirt! Then they hand over the bunny, and it’s that person’s turn to chase!”

Warrose arches an eyebrow. “Why does it have to be a full moon?”

“And why the bunny?” Skylenna adds.

“Dunno! It’s just tradition!”

We all stare at her blankly, then, in one giant rumble of sound, burst into contagious laughter. Helga Bee and Gerta flinch at our hilarity but grin widely as if they told a joke on purpose.

“And you want us to find a bunny and play this moon game?” Niles stretches his arms, smiling as he yawns.

“No! Do you knuckleheads think I’m nuts?”

Dessin stares without blinking.

“Have a fun day together! Play a game! Must I spell it out for the supposed geniuses?”

“Only one genius, actually.” Warrose nods his head to Dessin.

Skylenna coughs out a laugh. “Thanks for the suggestion. But—”

“Helga Bee, can those swings be lowered a bit?” Dessin asks with a change in tone, pointing to the trapeze bars forty feet in the air.

“Sure can!”

“What’s going on?” Skylenna asks.

“One person swings at a time, the rest lock arms on the stage and catch the swinger as they come down. The most creative way of swinging and falling wins.” Dessin huddles us together.

“Did the fumes of the dead body you just cooked kill your fucking brain cells?” Warrose lets out a breath of nervous laughter.

“I’m with Warrose on this one.” My eyes meet the piercing hazel stare across from me. He narrows them in suspicion, like what could he have done to win my agreement on something.

I’m over the snide remarks he made in the commissary. I get it. He’s an oblivious idiot who has no way of understanding the pressure to maintain a specific body type. It’s fine. It’s not as though we’re friends anyway. We’re sort of stuck together like stepsiblings. Family, out of pure coincidence and lack of freedom.

“As reluctant as I am to say this, I agree with Helga Bee. We need something just for us. A fun day. Let’s make some good memories in this shitshow, yes?” Dessin rubs the back of Skylenna’s neck as she grins up at him.

“Really?” she squeaks, practically levitating with excitement.

“Yeah. I’m not a grumpy asshole all the time.”

“Only like ninety-nine-point-eleven percent!” Niles chirps.

We lock eyes like children. Niles grabs my hands as we start bouncing around with glee. He yanks me toward the ladder, looking up at the swings lowering halfway to the ground.

“Ruthie should go first since she only weighs four and a half pounds!”

“Never comment on a woman’s weight, Niles,” Marilynn tsks.

“Right. Sorry. Ruthie should go first since she has the worst attitude!” he corrects himself.

I snicker, slapping the unharmed skin on his arm. He assists me on my first step up the ladder like the unrefined, prickly (almost) gentleman he is.

“The cost of failing is being a little loser, Ruthie!” Niles shouts up at me with a self-satisfied giggle.

He skips over to the others where I hear Skylenna say, “Since Chekiss isn’t here…” Pop! She swats him on the back of the head. The group cracks up.

As I reach the swing, I look down at my friends linking arms, forming a human net. Now that I’m up here, this feels stupid for no damn reason. Nerves bubble under my skin, making me laugh loudly to release the building elation. I bounce on my heels, grinning like an idiot down at them. They peer back up at me, mirroring my exact expression. Except Dessin, which makes me grin harder.

“This is so stupid!” I yell down with another laugh. “What if I break both my legs?”

“You could also break your neck!” Warrose adds with a deviously handsome smile.

“But she’s worried about her legs because she thinks she’s a fast runner, you see,” Niles explains in what he believes is an appropriate volume. “Run around a tree a few times, and she’s suddenly a speedy gazelle!”

Dickhead. “Skylenna…”

“I’m on it!” she hollers back. Pop! I throw my head back to cackle.

“We’re ready for you, Ruth!” Dessin shouts, adjusting his footing near the others.

I squeal, tapping my feet simultaneously on the ladder. Adrenaline, jittering anticipation, and youthful happiness flooding my veins. “Ahhh!” I screech, jumping forward, and latching onto the swing with success!

“Yeah!” I cheer, swinging my legs back and forth to get some momentum.

The stadium blurs into a smear of glowing red and charcoal black. I laugh again, kicking my legs around like a toddler.

“Promise you’ll catch me?” I screech.

“It’s certainly a possibility!” Niles shoots back.

“We’ll catch you! And I’ll smack Niles again when I have a free hand!” Skylenna promises.

“I’m not going to let you fall.” I can’t look down, but I know the texture of that low, rugged voice. His statement makes my toes curl. It’s enough to make me let go.

With a yelp like that of a small animal, I drop through the cool air, hair flying wildly around my face. And like the chicken coward I am, my eyes squeeze shut. Just as my stomach dips, taking a dive into my throat, a firm web of arms breaks my fall. Breath whooshes out of me as Niles groans dramatically.

“You didn’t break your legs!” Warrose whistles, helping me stand upright.

“There wasn’t an ounce of pizzazz in that performance, Ruthie! Watch the master take a whack at it.” Niles lets go of the leg he caught and struts up to the ladder.

“Anyone wanna have some fun with Asshole Niles for this round?” Dessin asks us with raised eyebrows.

We answer in yeps, mm-hms, and say more.

“That’s what I thought.” He smirks with menacing thoughts swirling behind his eyes. “When we catch him, everyone needs to make noise like he’s the heaviest fucking human you’ve ever encountered, then bend your knees to cushion his fall and collapse onto the stage.”

“So, catch him, then flatten like a house of cards.” Warrose grins, and I’m ogling his stunning face with a huge smile back. He blinks as his intense, fiery eyes cross paths with mine. And something about how he won’t break eye contact, how he holds my stare like he’s trying to figure something out, like he’s digging into the earth of my soul. Something about it drops into the pit of my stomach.

“Are you peasants ready for my godly descent to the mortal world?!” Niles spreads his arms wide at an invisible sun that’s shining down on his overinflated ego.

Regardless of his idiocy, Skylenna and I snigger.

“Oh, we’re ready,” Dessin mutters to just us.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen so much merriment on his face. He’s not exactly smiling. But that stain of a permanent scowl isn’t present either. The pronounced brooding that makes him so unapproachable is lessened. His features are somewhat lighter. And I’m sure it has to do with the fact that he keeps stealing glances at a tittering Skylenna, her cheeks bright red from sporting a constant grin.

“You got this, Niles! The worst that can happen is a broken neck!” Warrose taunts with a falsely supportive tone.

“And there’s certainly a possibility that we’ll catch you!” I mock.

We all sag forward and chortle obnoxiously.

“Ha, ha, ha!” Niles drops into a squat, positioning his arms outward, and leaps like a cute little frog. “Wheeeeeee!”

He sticks the landing, whooping breathlessly.

“If anyone gets wet or hard from having to touch my body, don’t be embarrassed! It’s totally normal!” Niles calls out.

“Pfft,” Skylenna chuffs.

Dessin closes his eyes to suppress an eye roll.

“He’s certainly confident,” Marilynn says, watching him swing back and forth over our heads.

“Here I come, little losers!” Niles twists his body sideways, spinning in the air like a ballerina attached to a music box.

“House of cards,” Dessin reminds us.

The second he hits our interlocked arms, I wince at how much heavier he is than I would have imagined. We beam like drunk fools as we groan boisterously, swaying under his weight.

And Warrose just can’t help himself as he says, fighting a groan, “What’s the status of your current weight, Niles?” And we flatten to the stage like a house of cards.

Niles squirms on top of us, gasping and trying to form words. He rolls to his side to peer down at us with shock and disapproval. “Are you kidding me? Where’d all your showy muscles go? And we call ourselves an elite unit? The fuck happened?!”

“No one calls us an elite unit,” Dessin says.

“Niles, you’re crushing my arms,” Skylenna grunts.

Warrose and I have tears forming from laughing our asses off. My belly is clenched so hard, I’m in physical pain. Seeing Niles’s astonishment at our failure was one of the greatest rewards in life.

“You guys have all lost my trust,” Niles barks.

“We’ll live, fat ass,” Warrose counters.

Our perfect symphony of laughter is interrupted by a foreboding shadow shifting over us. His hulking posture is as chiseled as Dessin’s. But those scars covering his face and neck, those piercings, that beard. They couldn’t be farther from each other.

“Don’t stop on my account,” Kaspias purrs.