Choosing Home

Chapter Twenty Seven

Mal sighed as she looked over the paperwork in front of her. She had been determined to help Ben out in terms of all the work he had to do in terms of being King. After all, she was going to be Queen upon their wedding. It would make sense that she would take over some of the workload.

Ben hadn't wanted to just throw her into the deep end though, so he had slowly started giving Mal the non pressing paperwork. Well, it was more like Ben had to have his arm twisted to give Mal his paperwork.

"Everything okay?" Ben asked as he looked over at her, slipping into the room.

"Yeah," Mal nodded. "I'm just...concerned over Claudine. Harriet said she hasn't come out of her dorm and it's been a couple of weeks since we brought her from the Isle."

Despite being older than an average student, and Phillip Sr. and Aurora providing a room, Claudine had been spending more time in her provided dorm. That didn't mean that she had been avoiding Honeymoon Castle.

Claudine had taken a shine to Arabella and had quickly become the main reason why she'd leave her dorm with the exception of meals.

"And everyone else has tried to talk to her?" Ben asked.

Mal nodded. "At first it was understandable. She was a former Angel turned Rat, that alone would have been enough to turn her world on its head. But now we bring her to Auradon? And according to Harry and Jay, she and Henry had been seeing each other."

Ben smiled as he heard that. "That's great! That...that is great isn't it?"

"Of course," Mal nodded.

"It's just you seemed rather shocked about it so I thought..."

Mal shook her head. "We're fine with Henry having a girlfriend, actually we're more than thrilled about it. But he's always been single since I've known Henry so the very fact that he's got someone...it's a little disconcerting."

In fact Mal had almost fallen out of her chair when Harry came in the day after coming back from the Isle, announcing said fact.

"Okay so we can go ahead and cancel that intervention!" Harry shouted as he walked into Ben's office. While Ben did have an office in his castle, he also had one in Auradon Prep—and since there would be new students constantly coming in from the Isle, Ben thought it'd be better for him to do his work there in case the new VKs needed something.

He could always meet dignitaries at his castle if a meeting was really necessary. Plus he had a sinking suspicion that Emir, Akiho, Mal, and Chip liked the fact that he could leave work some place and not have easy access to it.

"What do you mean?" Mal asked once she'd settled down from jumping halfway to the ceiling from the way Harry had barged in.

"The intervention? For Henry?" Harry clarified.

"Harry's right," Jay nodded. "We can go ahead and cancel that."

Uma shook her head. "Guys I know you're happy to have seen the crew again but we can't just cancel the intervention. Henry's been single for too long."

"Unless you two know something we don't?" Mal asked, raising an eyebrow as she looked at her two best guy friends. Gil and Carlos had been appointed the VKs de jour since they were probably the least threatening VK boys in Auradon other than the Smee twins.

"Henry has a girlfriend."

"...I'm sorry but what?!"

Ben paused as he walked in, blinking slightly as he saw the four of them already in his office. "I thought I'd get used to things like this but I'm not," he said as he shook his head, making his way to his desk.