REIGN (A REVERSE HAREM)

95. Roman

**FOUR YEARS LATER**

"Stop blowing that near my face." Luca pulls the cigarette from Asher's hand. "And there's kids around. Fucking know better."

Asher rolls his eyes, literally stepping over a child as it runs past with face paint on. "Why'd you have to come on the worst day?"

"Because it's a nice day today." Luca smiles, sliding his hand into his pocket.

I walk between the two, something i usually have to do because while it used to be Asher and I who would fight majority of the time, now it's Luca and Asher. Luca blames Asher for not stopping Arabella, so they have a grudge against each other.

Sometimes i even take my anger out on Asher, he allows it. I've learnt to accept the fact she's never coming back.

Four years, it's been. She should be here.

Something bumps into my leg and when i turn around, there's a tiny blonde kid sitting on the floor with his hand on his head.

"Luca, the child hit me." I step away from it.

Luca looks at me as if to say 'you're unbelievable.'

"Move it."

"I'm not touching some random persons kid. You deal with it."

I look at the boy, he has curly blonde hair, and he's very small, and skinny and clearly he's like 3 because he can hardly walk properly.

"Where's your owner?" I ask him.

"Oh my god." Luca sighs behind me.

The kid looks up, rubbing his head but his eyes settle in on mine and he frowns. He doesn't look too intimidated by me. He's actually the first child today that has seen me and ran. I don't think i am that scary but kids hate me.

"I don't think it speaks English." I say.

Asher, for some god forsaken reason starts to speak Mandarin to this white, blue eyed, blonde haired child. Asking him, "Where's your parents?"

The child keeps his eyes on mine and doesn't even pay attention to Asher. "You pushed me." He says.

"You ran into me-"

"Roman, apologise and help him find his mother." Luca slaps my arm.

I sigh, crouching to the kid. "Where's your mom?"

He gets us, wiping his hands on his little baby pink shorts, before running around me. I turn around and Luca follows after him, so i follow after Luca and Asher follows after me.

"Why are you following it?" I ask.

"Because he needs to get to his mom safe."

I sigh, Luca became more of a softie as well. The killings stopped, he doesn't even help us find stuff. He built a farm on the land we own, hired people to help him look after horses, sheep, pigs, chicken and alpacas. In the lake there's fish, freshwater fish, ducks, geese, swans. He even has a little section cut out for rabbits.

It's surprisingly refreshing and extremely calming after a long day. I'll go out in the farm and feed some of the animals, i usually have bad reactions to the horses and sheep so i stay with the chickens or pigs.

He also lets us rid of our bodies with the pigs.

But he's become even more soft.

He thinks Arabella ran because she doesn't like this life, probably true, so he changed for her. Only, she isn't here to see the change.