Chapter 90

I woke to a scream that had me upright, out the door, and halfway down the hall before I was fully conscious.

Lilae stood frozen in the doorway of the nursery, her face white, her small hands trembling.

Inside was a nightmare.

In the few hours we had slept, the infants had begun eating each other.

Three of the nine were dead. Not mauled in frenzy - consumed. The survivors bore bite marks - angry crescents torn into arms and shoulders. Painful. Bloody. Not yet fatal.

They were walking now.

Not crawling. Walking. Unsteady, staggering like two-year-olds, red eyes bright and alert.

Mirri moved immediately, healer instincts overriding horror. She knelt among them, closing wounds, cleaning blood from skin and teeth alike. I said nothing. I simply gathered what remained of the three small bodies and carried them out.

I buried them beside the three undead. Beside the three dragons.

Everything came in threes lately.

I didn’t know why. I only knew I wanted it to stop. I didn’t want to bury anyone else. Friend or foe.

When I returned, I opened a vein again and filled jars with my blood. The children gathered, watching the red liquid with unsettling focus. They drank until their bellies rounded and their eyelids drooped.

They were learning to walk at an impossible pace. Growing so fast I could almost see it.

They couldn’t speak yet, not properly - but they communicated. Low growls. Sharp clicks. Shared glances that carried meaning. And they had already formed a hierarchy.

One that did not include us.

Ashlara named her daughter Velgra - Vel for short. In Drath it meant something close to ‘final cut’ or ‘apex blade’. It fit. The child carried herself like a pack leader.

Serah named hers Thaeramyris - Thae. ‘Impossible ember’ in Auralis. The name felt softer, but there was strength beneath it.

Mirri named the remaining girls Tansy, Moss, and Clo. Of the boys, only one remained.

She named him Nim.

All three who had been eaten had been boys. I didn’t know if that meant something. Weakness? Instinct? Chance? This was new ground for all of us.

Velgra bit Tib hard enough to draw blood.

I scolded her.

She turned and bit me.

I bit her back.

Not hard enough to draw blood - but hard enough to hurt. “No!” I shouted. Sharp. Clear.

She blinked, startled. That seemed to register.

Six toddlers who liked to bite meant that we had our hands full and everyone was needed to help out. Tib and Lilae seemed most worried about helping, and for good reason. The toddlers were swiftly approaching their height and Tib had already been bitten once. We watched the toddlers closely and ensured there was always an adult around. We weren’t taking any chances.

By dusk, they had grown again - closer to three-year-olds than infants.

I took them into the bailey to burn off energy. They ran in short bursts, stumbled, pushed, shoved. They had begun forming words - single syllables, broken sounds. Communication became easier.

And the hierarchy became clearer.

Velgra led. The others watched her, followed her movements, fell silent when she growled. Thae deferred only to Vel, placing her second in command without ever declaring it. Nim drifted at the bottom.

They picked on him when they thought we weren’t looking. We intervened when we could.

By dinner they had transitioned fully to solid food - meat. Only meat.

They devoured it with alarming speed, which made sense considering how fast they were growing. Thankfully, we had plenty from hunting. Grain and vegetables were the scarce resource now.

We decided no one would sleep without a watcher again. I volunteered for first watch. Mirri left me with smoked meats and instructions to wake her in a few hours.

I didn’t.

She needed sleep. Ashlara and Serah needed sleep. The kids needed sleep. And I had already proven I could stay awake for days without consequence.

I fed the toddlers when they grew hungry. I told them stories. Sang them songs. Tried to treat them like ordinary children, despite the fact that they were anything but.

Just before dawn, Mirri shuffled in, yawning.

Tansy growled at her. A single sharp word from me silenced the girl. I had been in the middle of teaching them numbers.

I stood and pulled Mirri into a hug, kissing the top of her head.

“You should’ve woken me,” she murmured.

“You all needed rest. I can be a father for one night.”

She sighed, then smiled faintly. “I’ll make breakfast. But we’re going to need more meat soon.”

She tugged me down and kissed me properly before slipping toward the kitchen.

* * *

We finished breakfast.

By the time the plates were cleared, the ferals were the size of four-year-olds.

They were speaking better now - short sentences instead of single words and growls - but they were still hellions. Violent. Defiant. Brimming with more energy than the rest of us combined. We tried integrating them with the older kids, but it was messy. The older ones were afraid. The ferals were territorial. It was like trying to introduce wolves into a sheepfold and insisting everyone play nicely.

“We need to speak with the Iron Nation tomorrow,” I said to the table. “Serah, are you willing to give me another ride?”

She smiled - calm, steady. “Yes.”

“Thank you.” I looked to Mirri. “You and Ashie going to be okay with the ferals?”

“We’ll be fine,” she said without hesitation. “You go stop wars. We’ll still be here when you get back.”

I smiled, though I envied her certainty. Some days I wished I could borrow a little of it.

I took the ferals out to the bailey again. They learned better when exhausted, and right now exhaustion was our most reliable teaching tool.

After an hour of running, wrestling, and chasing, Mirri gathered them on the stone benches and began something resembling school. Numbers. Colors. Names of objects. She kept them moving - short bursts of instruction, little games, constant redirection.

Now that they were two days old and no longer infants, I could see them clearly for what they were.

With the exception of Thae, they were roughly the size of human children. I’d expected that from Vel, maybe from Thae. But Tansy, Moss, Clo, and Nim? Their parents were goblins. Yet here they stood, taller, and broader. Their skin was pink and flushed like they lived with a permanent sunburn, not gray like a normal goblin’s.

All of them had red irises, though the shades varied. Thae’s were the darkest - almost garnet. Nim’s were the palest, more pink than blood. Vel’s eyes were rimmed with a darker ring, giving her an intensity the others lacked.

Thae was the only one who truly looked inhuman.

She walked upright like the others, hips tilted to support the posture, but her body was draconic. Tiny blood-red scales covered her skin. Her wings were stronger now - still too small for flight, but no longer decorative. Her snout was elongated, copper hair spilling over her shoulders and running in a ridge down her spine to the base of her tail. Claws tipped her fingers and toes.

Vel and Thae held attention longer than the others. Vel confronted problems head-on - whether that meant defying me just to test boundaries or tackling another child in a wrestling match.

Thae studied first.

I watched her sit and stare at the curtain wall for nearly half an hour. No fidgeting. No distraction. Just observation. Then she walked over and began to climb.

She made it halfway up before falling. Seven feet.

She hit the ground, blinked once, and stood up without so much as a limp. No tears. No complaint. She looked at the wall again, adjusted her grip, and climbed - this time reaching the top.

Tansy was the most aggressive. Frustration ignited quickly in her. When she couldn’t solve something, she tore it apart - ripped paper, snapped quills, hurled ink bottles. When she spiraled, I pulled her aside and we wrestled until she burned it out of her system. It wasn’t elegant, but it worked.

Moss chewed constantly. Paper. Sticks. Quills. Rocks. If it fit in her mouth, she tested it. She also had the largest appetite. Meat disappeared into her like it fell into a pit. And she preferred it rare. Sometimes raw.

Clo could not sit still. Even exhausted, she vibrated. If **** to remain seated, she fidgeted, picked at her nails, pinched herself, and eventually began inching away as if she could escape unnoticed.

Nim hovered at the edges.

The girls picked on him. A growl from Vel or Tansy would send him retreating. So he watched. And when they moved on, he tried whatever they had been doing. He didn’t get their group experimentation, but he gained something else - he learned from all of their mistakes.

Mirri worked them for two solid hours. She kept it dynamic, adapted constantly, tailored instruction to each child. I could see the strain behind her patience, but she never let it break.

We fed them again. Then I ran them around the bailey until their legs wobbled.

After that, Serah took over. Stories first. Questions. Then manners.

No biting. No hitting. Don’t break things. Please. Thank you. Do as you’re told.

They fought her at every turn. Growls. Defiance. Testing.

She met them with calm authority - a rap on the knuckles, a swat on the backside, a faint puff of smoke when necessary. Stern. Controlled. Relentless.

They were an unstoppable ****. She was an immovable stone. I hoped, somewhere in the collision, something good would form.

It couldn’t be easy for them either. They were growing at a pace that defied nature. New bodies. New instincts. A world full of rules they hadn’t asked for. And beneath it all, whatever ancient drive pushed them toward dominance.

By dinner, they were the size of six-year-olds.

Three years of growth per day. In a few more days, they would be fully grown. I had no idea what that meant for us.

Emotionally, they lagged - but not by much. Their maturation rate was second only to their capacity to learn. They were speaking in full sentences now, when they chose words over growls. They knew their colors. Could count to ten. Understood simple cause and effect. Solved problems with unsettling creativity.

* * *

Mirri forbade me from taking watch over the ferals that night.

Flat out. No arguments.

She, Ashlara, and Serah would rotate shifts. I, apparently, needed sleep if I was going to deal with the Hordes of the Iron Nation tomorrow.

I wanted to protest. I’d stayed up before. I could do it again.

But she was right.

I’d spent the entire day running, wrestling, teaching, bleeding, and trying to prevent six rapidly maturing predators from eating each other or anyone else. Even gods need to rest sometimes.

So instead, I made my rounds.

I didn’t want the older kids to feel forgotten in the chaos.

Lilae read to me from a book about a clever village girl who solved mysteries no one else noticed. She did all the voices. Tib and I staged a naval battle in the great bathtub—wooden ships colliding, water sloshing over the sides as we laughed like idiots. Mak challenged me to chess while Brinja braided both our hair into something elaborate and far too pretty for war councils.

I didn’t make it to everyone that night.

Tomorrow, I promised myself. Tomorrow I’d balance the scales.

I slept deeply. Warm. Safe. Curled between two beautiful women. I woke briefly when shifts changed, hearing the low murmur of voices and the distant thud of feral feet - but I drifted back under.

When dawn began to gray the sky, I was awake before the sun fully rose.

I’d never been a morning person. But over the past few months that had changed. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe the exercise. Or maybe it was the godhood.

Probably that last one.

I bathed, dressed, and then went to rouse the ferals.

They had outgrown yesterday’s clothes. Again.

Normal wardrobes were useless. They ran in loose vests and baggy shorts that barely fit by evening. At least conjuring replacements in my demesne was easy.

At breakfast, I cleared my throat. “I’m taking the ferals hunting with me today.”

Ashlara nodded immediately. “Good.”

Mirri hesitated. “Alone?”

“It’ll give everyone a break,” I said. “And if I can tire them out before I meet the warlords, that’s a bonus.”

Serah weighed it silently, then inclined her head. She saw both the risk and the necessity.

In the end, we agreed.

I gathered the ferals and had them form a circle. We clasped hands.

I stepped.

The world folded.

They gasped when my demesne formed around us - ribbons drifting through the sky, glowing moths weaving lazy paths through the air. They stared, wide-eyed.

I gave them only a moment. Then we gathered again and I stepped to a crossroads where we’d hunted before.

“We’re hunting deer,” I told them. “We take them home. Don’t eat them here.” I looked directly at Moss, who was spitting out a mouthful of grass.

“Stay together. Don’t wander. If you get separated, come back to this sign.” I pointed to the wooden post marking the road to Claramere and Ashhorn. “If you see people, you come back here immediately. Don’t talk to them. Don’t hurt them. Don’t take anything from them. If you-”

Vel’s head snapped toward the treeline.

She’d seen something. She bolted.

The others followed instantly - spreading out like a pack of wolves, instincts overriding instruction. I cursed and ran after them.

A deer burst from the brush and fled into the woods.

The ferals pursued with low growls, legs pumping, fanning out with terrifying coordination. Clo surged ahead and tackled the deer, knocking it to the ground. The others piled on - biting, tearing.

By the time I reached them, it was carnage.

I dragged them off one by one and ended the deer’s suffering with a clean strike.

“No,” I said sharply. “Quick. Painless. You don’t **** your prey. You kill humanely.”

They stared at me, confused.

I exhaled, hoisted the deer over my shoulder. “Back to the sign. Who remembers where it is?”

I let them lead. Only once did I correct them.

At the crossroads, I dressed the deer and stepped into my demesne to store it.

When I returned, Moss was finishing the heart. Vel and Thae had split the liver. Tansy and Clo each held a kidney. Nim chewed thoughtfully on tripe.

I sighed.

They moved like a unit - spreading, herding, taking turns chasing and flanking. Efficient. Brutal. Instinctive. Impressive. And horrifying.

They took down four more deer.

The second still suffered too long. The third died quickly. By the fourth, they were improving - learning restraint, or at least efficiency.

Each time I dressed the carcass and stepped away, I returned to find them finishing the organs.

We paused near the sign, waiting for movement.

That’s when I noticed Vel was gone.

I found her crouched at the edge of the woods - utterly still, coiled tight, a low growl rumbling in her chest.

I followed her gaze.

A warg stood just inside the shadows.

It paced nervously, tail low, ears flattened.

Submissive.

That did not comfort me.

“Vel,” I called quietly. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

Her eyes flicked to mine.

The tension drained from her body instantly. She rose, smiled at me - a sharp, toothy grin. One of her teeth was missing. Then she turned and jogged back toward the others.

The warg slinked away into the forest.