his shirt sleeves back to reveal his ink. He turned his wrist Saint’s way and flexed his fingers so that the new squid tattoo wriggled a bit like it was taunting him and Saint’s jaw locked so hard, I wondered if it would ever unlock again. He held his tongue though, which was really a testament to how determined he was not to lose his shit in front of our victims because every time he’d locked eyes on that thing since Kyan had gotten it, he’d freaked out up until now.
I stifled a laugh and rolled my eyes at Kyan as he smirked in a taunting way which said he wanted Saint to punch him. He really was a dickhead. Good thing I loved him anyway.
Every time one of our victims winced at the prickle of a pine needle sticking them in the dick, I laughed my damn ass off and Kyan shouted at them to go faster, even when they were practically hopping across the floor as their bare feet got pricked with them too.
By the time Monroe showed up, their boxers were bulging and the two of them looked hella uncomfortable with all of those prickles in their dicks. Dickles, if you will.
"What the fuck are you up to now?" Monroe asked, his eyes lighting with amusement.
Turned out he was a savage bastard when it came to punishing these assholes too, headmaster or not. Seemed he took as much offence to them targeting our girl as the rest of us did and as he had gotten the three of us to swear blind he never had a thing to do with any of this shit, I guessed he'd decided to embrace his inner Night Keeper and punish the deserving instead of getting his panties in a twist about his job.
"Now what?" Saint drawled from his sun chair which he'd made one of the Unspeakables go and fetch him when it became clear this wasn’t losing its appeal any time soon. He was working on his cunning plan to bring down a secret society run by billionaires all for the sake of our girl and Kyan after all. No biggie apparently. We weren't even allowed to pitch in until he was 'ready for our input' whatever the fuck that meant. I swear I heard him cackling up in his bell tower in the dead of night sometimes as he worked on his plan.
"Now..." I said, casting my mind about for inspiration but Kyan beat me to it.
"It's time for the great pinecone race," Kyan supplied, picking up one of the heavy, brown cones from the forest floor and throwing it at Stalker as hard as he could.
It smacked him in the ass cheek, and he yelped as he leapt into the air and a big, red welt appeared on his flesh.
"Fuck yes," Monroe agreed, his teacher persona well and truly shed for the time being.
"You two need to run back and forth between this pine tree and the one down by the lake," Kyan instructed Bait and Stalker. "And try to avoid getting hit by the pinecones."
"Guys," Stalker pleaded, his eyes actually looking kinda wet. New goal for today - I wanted that big motherfucker to cry. "You have to hear me out, I swear I never did anything to Tatum. She was my friend, I'm not the one who-"
A pinecone hit him in the face with enough force to draw a bit of blood and Kyan roared with laughter as Monroe snatched another from the ground.
"He said run," Saint barked, not bothering to rise from his seat as he continued with his work. "Or do you want to explain to your parents why all of the trees here died?"
He was seriously running with this pine festival shit and I was all in. I stooped to grab myself a pinecone and Bait shrieked in alarm as he sprinted away.
"Nothing like the sound of panicked screams in the afternoon," Kyan sighed and Monroe laughed darkly as he threw a perfectly aimed pinecone at Bait's back.
"Sweet, sweet justice," I agreed, laughing with my friends and feeling this perfectly fucked up kind of happiness as we all bathed in our inner asshole together.
***
By the time we'd finished up our little pine festivities with Bait and Stalker, they'd gotten to know a whole lot about pine trees. Like, how the cones tasted, how it felt to be whipped with their branches, how much it hurt to rub their asses against the bark for