Choosing Love

Chapter One

"You didn't expect to be bringing along a Cerberus, your highness," Hadie said softly and Uma could see the teenaged king give her cousin a kind smile from the rearview window.

"Hadie, you don't have to call me that," Ben said gently. "None of you do. Unless you want to that is but it's not required."

"But...you're the king," Gil said, looking as if the statement confused him. Though, Uma realized, it probably did. Most things that weren't related to hunting or eggs usually did confuse the youngest LeGume. Oh and crafting. Uma didn't know how but Gil had been able to repair her mother's necklace when they were younger. It was one of the reasons why he was still under the crew's protection.

"Yeah," Ben nodded. "I'm the king. Doesn't mean I want to force the use of my title on you."

"You are one odd duck, Benny," Uma stated and Ben chuckled.

"So Mal tells me," he said, a smile growing on his face at the thought of Mal. "She should be meeting us at the school, which should be in a few more minutes. She wanted to come along but she had a meeting she couldn't get out of."

At the mention of Mal's name, Estelle perked up and began pacing around the confines of the limo. Uma shook her head as she noticed Harry's smirk every time Estelle accidentally trod on Gil's foot.

"It's okay Estelle, you'll see Mal in a few minutes," Hadie promised and Estelle whined in response.

Ben shook his head. "Should have brought Carlos," he muttered in amusement. After all, the younger boy could talk to dogs—something Ben, Mal, and Jay had discovered after Mal had turned them all into dogs accidentally when she'd gone out for the spirit squad with Evie for spirit day. After the...fiasco that'd been the coronation, Mal had tried her best to make sure Evie always had a friendly face with her—even if that meant stepping outside her comfort zone.

In Mal's defense re: spirit day, none of them were expecting the spirit cheer to sound just like a spell Maleficent used to say during the years Mal lived with her. Nor did they expect Mal to remember the words to the spell. As Mal had explained to Ben afterwards, Maleficent had only done the spell during Mal's toddler years, to try to quell the very rare tantrums Mal used to throw. Maleficent, however, was unsuccessful in her spell casting because of the barrier.

"B. I. T. E. What's that spell? Bite, bite, bite. Speak no words, you'll cause a fright, what's a bark without a bite?"

A flash of green light appeared and when it faded, Ben could only speak in barks. True he found it amusing that Jay was down on his hands and knees but honestly Ben needed whatever caused it to be reversed. He had a council meeting in about twenty minutes after all.

"Woof, woof!"

Ben could hear Mal bark and his heart froze. If Mal was barking too, that would mean that she couldn't reverse whatever caused Jay and him to act like dogs.

"Of course I can speak dog! I'm Cruella DeVil's son," Carlos said and Ben smiled. They had a way to reverse it! The smile faded however when he heard Carlos tell Mal that instances like this needed to be recorded and the smaller boy ran up to take a photo of Jay. While Ben was happy that Carlos was coming out of his shell, he'd have liked it if Carlos would translate the spell for Mal!

Apparently Mal felt the same as she came up to Carlos and began barking at him.

"Down girl," Carlos said and Mal just growled sightly. Carlos sighed but took the spell book from Mal. Ben couldn't help but be grateful that Mal hadn't donated Maleficent's spell book to the museum yet. She had meant to after their date to the Enchanted Lake but she'd been understandably distracted what with their impromptu trip to the Isle and then Family Day and his coronation.