Homestead Harem 2, page 16
“Jonas!” Alexis shouted as I approached the house. “They got Blossom!”
I was ashamed to admit I felt a little relieved it wasn’t Charlotte or Ellen—not that I wasn’t still kicking myself to Hell and back for letting it happen.
“Is everyone else safe?” I demanded, looking toward the house.
“Yes,” Alexis replied. “But Sophia ran after Blossom. I didn’t know what to do, I’m sorry, Jonas, I—”
“It’s okay,” I told her, placing my hand on her shoulder firmly. Her amber eyes were filling up with panicky tears. “I’m just glad you’re okay, Lex. Tell everyone I’m going after them.”
“Your shoulder!” she cried, her eyes widening as she noticed my wound. “We need to wrap that, now!”
“No time,” I replied, trying to sprint off—but Alexis grabbed my wrist, wrenching me back.
“You can’t help anyone if you bleed out before you get there,” she insisted, ripping off her long-sleeved black shirt to reveal a small black bra. I focused only on her freckled chest as she tied the shirt tightly around my shoulder and upper arm, knotting it into place to stop the flow of blood.
“Okay,” she declared. “Go!”
Feeling admittedly woozy, I took off sprinting, hoping to God I’d get there before Sophia did something stupid and reckless to save her friend. You could smell self-sacrifice on that girl from a mile away.
The rain let up dramatically the second I crossed into the forest, the sudden quiet helping me think. Luckily, someone in the kidnapping party was injured—a sporadic trail of blood could be seen leading toward the river. I only hoped it wasn’t Blossom’s blood I was following.
The droplets led me down a ridge and cut off suddenly, but, luckily, my grandfather had taught me how to track my prey from a young age—and a bit of bright green poisonous moss upturned towards the West sent me down another trail until I could hear voices muffled through the rain. I sprinted until I saw the group up ahead—four of Maven’s girls and Blossom, paused momentarily while Sophia was gagged and restrained with rope.
So much for the squirrel-girl’s rescue mission.
Suddenly, a deafening boom of thunder echoed through the valley, making everyone jump. In that moment, I took off through the thicker trees on my right before anyone could spot me, hoping the heavy rain above would mask my footsteps while I approached. Quick as a whip, I pulled myself up a branch on a tree I hoped I was close enough to my target.
In my head, I counted the seconds between the thunder and lightning, just like when I was a kid.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…
I traversed the tree while I counted, feeling more like my childhood self than ever, climbing out onto a long, precarious branch.
Eleven, twelve, thirteen…
The crack of lightning provided the perfect distraction as I jumped down onto the scene, Maven’s lackeys shrieking as I seemingly appeared out of the sky. I grabbed the goat-girl holding Blossom and snapped her neck in an instant, capitalizing on her dumbfoundedness to take her out quickly. The girl holding Sophia pushed her toward me upon seeing this, immediately abandoning ship and retreating. The other two girls, who I hadn’t seen before, looked down at their friend, eyes open and dead on the forest floor. They backed up slightly, unsure how to proceed.
“Jonas, we need to get Blossom back to Alexis, now,” Sophia said from behind me, firmly but quietly.
I glanced back and saw the tall wolf-girl clutching a wound in her abdomen. Looked to be from a small knife—but Blossom was clearly hurting.
I pulled the shotgun and pointed it at the two girls, watching their eyes widen in shock and fear.
“Get the hell outta here, now, before I regret not killing you,” I growled.
They held their ground for a moment.
“You wouldn’t waste bullets on us,” one of them said—she looked like a groundhog-mutant with her wide eyes and buck teeth.
I cocked the gun, officially done fucking around and liable to make an irresponsible decision.
“You sure about that?” I threatened.
The two mutant girls met eyes and simultaneously agreed getting shot was not on their agenda tonight, turning around and joining their more cowardly friend. Within moments, they had all disappeared beyond the river bank.
“Let’s go,” I declared, scooping Blossom into my arms. For a second, her body tensed, but then she relaxed into me, too hurt and tired to insist on walking herself. She smelled of wet dirt and rain. My shoulder screamed in pain with every step, but I didn’t dare slow down.
“I’m sorry, Jonas,” Sophia said, wiping tears from her eyes while we walked. “I thought I could help. I just made it worse.”
“You followed your heart and you tried to save your friend,” I said, gritting my teeth against the burning sensation stemming from my shoulder and spreading through my body. “It’s alright. And you slowed ’em down for me.”
Sophia wiped her eyes again, staying silent as we finished what felt like the longest walk I’d ever attempted—and that was after pulling a damn Diesel barrel in a cart near twenty miles. My vision began to narrow as we finally breached the tree line and emerged back into the downpour, and it took everything in me to crest the hill leading up to the house, my head swimming and my shoulder throbbing. I was vaguely aware of Sophia saying something to me while we walked, but I couldn’t hear her—couldn’t hear anything really. All at once, a blur of bodies surrounded me, and Blossom was taken out of my arms, carried off toward what I hoped was the clinic.
People were speaking to me but I couldn’t understand them, their voices a steady thrum against my head. Suddenly, I just wanted to lie down and sleep, but no one seemed to understand.
Charlotte’s emerald eyes were the last thing I saw before it all went dark.
Chapter
Twenty-Four
I woke up to the sound of laughter. For a moment, all I could remember was Lara’s broken, bloody mouth smiling up at me, her cackling grin while I punched her again and again. In the end, she’d still beaten me.
Then I smelled pancakes.
Opening my eyes slowly against the sudden brightness, I found myself wondering if I was in a dream.
“Oh, he’s waking up!”
It was Alexis who said it, if I wasn’t mistaken. I blinked through the fog, finding myself wrenched back into consciousness by a kiss on my forehead from none other than Charlotte.
“Good morning, darling,” the cat-girl said softly in my ear. “How are you feeling?”
I was in the bedroom, buried under about ten layers of quilts with Charlotte’s warm body nestled into my side. At the end of the bed sat Alexis and Ellen, both dressed in skimpy robes, their hair wrapped in towels—and they were both eating plates-full of chocolate chip pancakes.
“Am I in heaven?” I asked, wiping my eyes and attempting to sit up.
Instantly, a stabbing pain shot down my arm, and it all came rushing back to me—Lara’s sharpened teeth latching onto my shoulder, the wasted bullet, the kidnapping raid I completely missed.
“Blossom,” I said in a sudden panic, looking around the room.
“I’m alright,” the tall wolf-girl assured through a mouthful of pancakes. She was leaning against the wall, wearing only a thin black lace bra and a small pair of shorts, her abdomen wrapped in a thick layer of white gauze. “Not my first—or my worst stabbing,” she added.
“Good to know,” Alexis said.
“It’s true,” Sophia confirmed.
The squirrel-girl was perched cross-legged on the dresser next to Blossom wearing only a towel, nursing a steaming mug of coffee. She winked at me, and I couldn’t help but feel a rush of gratitude that she was part of our little family now.
Looking past the bedroom door into the hallway, I realized this wasn’t just a meal—it was a party. The whole top floor was full of freshly showered mutant girls eating pancakes and eggs, pouring mugs of freshly brewed coffee from my grandma’s ancient percolator, laughing and trading battle stories from the night before. Kyle the dog-boy had even gotten out the old acoustic guitar from the basement, and I could hear the light, playful strumming wafting in from the hall. Sunlight streamed in from the windows, and, all around me, people were smiling.
“Am I missing something?” I asked, pushing myself painfully upwards into a full sitting position. “What are we celebrating?”
Charlotte chuckled, her gentle laugh like a wind chime.
“You, silly,” she declared, handing me a warm plate of pancakes drenched in syrup—a rare commodity around here. Someone must have decided the occasion was right.
“Me?” I asked incredulously. “The hell did I do? Pass out on the front porch?”
A bit of scrambled egg hit my face, thrown by Alexis.
“All you did was save our crops from being poisoned and spare us from starving to death this winter,” she chided.
“Plus rescue me from being dragged back to Maven,” Blossom said flatly.
“Plus rescue me from rescuing Blossom,” Sophia added, blushing.
“Yeah!” Jordan added, emerging from the hallway wearing a frilly white apron and dancing into the bedroom with fresh platters of scrambled eggs and pancakes. “That reminds me, Soph, next time you’re going on an impromptu mission of vengeance, invite me!”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Sophia replied, smiling down at the overzealous bat-girl. The most offensive thing you could do to Jordan was leave her out of a good fight.
“We’re celebrating because we successfully defended the farm,” Charlotte declared, her fingernails running up the back of my neck and instantly relaxing me. “The fields are safe and you got Blossom and Sophia back. If you don’t deserve pancakes for that, I don’t know when you will.”
“Amen to that,” Alexis said, raising her fork in the air before diving back into her eggs.
“But…” I started, trying to piece together why I felt like such a sad sack at my own party. “I failed you, darlin’…I didn’t kill Lara. And I wasted a damn bullet trying.”
Charlotte placed her palm on my cheek, turning my face so I could look directly into her piercing green eyes.
“You could never fail me, Jonas,” she said seriously. “Ever.”
I closed my eyes, pressing my forehead to hers and feeling her soothing hands on each side of my face.
“Besides, there’ll be plenty of other opportunities to shoot that crazy bitch,” she added, pulling our foreheads apart to kiss my cheek lightly.
“Double amen to that,” Alexis threw in.
“Wait.” The pieces of my night suddenly, finally, all clicked into place. “You were there when I passed out, weren’t you?”
Charlotte’s olive skin blushed dark pink. She looked down at her hands on the blanket.
“Maybe,” she admitted.
“Not only was she out of bed, she was Annie fuckin’ Oakley,” Ellen said flatly, clearly annoyed.
“You used the gun?” I asked, my eyes widening in shock.
“I…” Charlotte started, biting her lip as if the memory of whether or not she shot someone last night was escaping her.
“She got out of bed the second we heard them breach the front door,” Ellen explained. “I told her to sit back down, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“They—” I started, my mouth going dry as I took in this fresh development. “They got in the house?”
“We weren’t prepared for two attack teams,” Jordan explained, setting the picked-through platters of food down on the bed. “It was my fault, Jonas. I should have expected the second strike.”
“No,” I countered firmly. “It was my fault. I never should have underestimated Maven.”
I turned to Charlotte again.
“What happened?”
The cat-girl stretched her arms up casually, her long black tail shivering behind her. Pointedly refusing to respond.
I turned to Ellen. “I’m gonna whoop her ass soon.”
“Don’t even get me started,” the rabbit-girl agreed. “Long story short, two of Maven’s made it inside, but they were unorganized—they must have been waiting for Lara, who never showed. Crystal, Ayesha, and Marcy were in the living room, and we could hear Maven’s girls yelling at them, demanding Blossom back—but ours were scared and confused and just told the truth—Blossom isn’t in the house. Which Maven’s people believed.”
She said the last word pointedly to Charlotte.
“All I heard was two people breaking into our house and threatening my girls!” the cat-girl insisted, holding up her hands in innocence.
“She shot them,” Ellen stated.
“Both of them?!”
“Yes,” Ellen replied. “Bullets between their eyes.”
“My aim is still impeccable,” Charlotte threw in, staring down at her freshly painted nails.
“They were leaving!” Ellen insisted.
“To kidnap Blossom!” Charlotte shouted back. “Jonas said shoot first, ask questions later! What was I supposed to do?”
“Stay. In. Bed!” Ellen replied, emphasizing each word like Charlotte couldn’t understand a word of English.
By this point, Alexis, Sophia, and Blossom were openly laughing, clearly having already heard a thousand versions of it since last night.
“So that’s the story of why Charlotte was downstairs when you got home,” Ellen finished, her rabbit ears twitching in annoyance as she returned to her plate of pancakes.
“And also the story of how we tricked Benny into dragging two corpses out of the living room,” Alexis added, making Sophia snort into her coffee.
“It’s really not funny,” Ellen stated, standing up haughtily with her empty plate.
“Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft on us,” I chided, pulling the curvy rabbit-girl by the hips into my side of the bed and kissing her neck while she tried to stay mad. “It’s like my mama used to say, ‘If you don’t laugh about it, you’ll only end up cryin.’”
Ellen just rolled her eyes—but her arms wrapped around me, and I could see the little flicker of a smile at the corner of her mouth as I pulled her close.
“Next time I’m supposed to watch you, I’m bringing rope,” Ellen said to Charlotte, who only grinned back warmly. Ellen rolled her big blue eyes again, but she couldn’t hide her smile.
“Okay, okay, your petty squabbles are distracting from the man of honor,” Alexis declared.
“Don’t you mean maid of honor?” Jordan asked.
“I most definitely do not,” Alexis replied, making Sophia snort again. “And what are you laughing about, Soph—this whole thing was basically your idea!”
“I’m just laughing,” Sophia replied, shrugging, looking lighter than she had in days. Her cheeks were red with joy, her squirrel tail bushy and fluffed out behind her. “It’s nice to be around people who care about each other like y’all do. It just feels…natural.”
“Sophia suggested to us that maybe, after sleeping four hours a night, repairing the holes in the roof, fighting off Lara, rescuing Blossom, and passing out from blood loss, you could use a little pick-me-up,” Charlotte explained, her soft, sultry voice tickling my ear. She kissed me on the cheek, her hand snaking across my thigh under the blankets. “And we all couldn’t help but agree with her.”
I looked over at Sophia, who was blushing into her coffee.
“Come here.”
The squirrel-girl hesitated only a moment before hopping down off the dresser, sitting on the bed in front of me. I pulled her between my legs atop the blankets so her back was resting on my chest, wrapping my arms around her middle. Her hair still smelled like hazelnut and campfire.
Leaning against the wall, Blossom smiled at the scene.
“I know it’ll fall on deaf ears,” the wolf-girl said suddenly, her husky voice commanding attention, “but I want to thank you all for how you’ve welcomed Sophia into your home. I laid awake more than a few nights worrying about her out here. Turns out I had nothing to fear.”
“I’ve never been thanked for anything easier,” I said, kissing Sophia on the cheek.
“She’s a special girl,” Charlotte added, taking Sophia’s hand in hers.
Even through the blankets, I could feel Sophia’s temperature rising from all this attention.
“Do you remember the first day at the new compound?” Blossom asked Sophia.
The squirrel-girl scoffed. “Yeah, Maven made us fight for the beds.”
“Like, actually?” Alexis asked, her eyes widening.
“Mmhm,” Sophia said. “Naturally, I got knocked out immediately by Rhonda and ended up sleeping on the floor.”
“Until I invited you to share my queen size bed,” Blossom added, smiling at her friend. “I beat everyone but Lara,” she explained to the rest of us.
“That’s so cruel,” Charlotte remarked. “How can you possibly trust each other in that environment?”
“You can’t,” Blossom said matter-of-factly. “That’s the point.”
“Maven always has a point,” Sophia muttered. “Some lesson to hammer in how life isn’t fair, no one can be trusted, blah blah blah. As if we needed any more reminders we don’t live in a fairytale.”
“That must have been awful,” Jordan said.
“We manage,” Blossom said.
It was clear that the wolf-girl had been through more than any of us could imagine—what with Maven as a mother and Lara as a sister, how could family dinner be anything but all-out murderous chaos?
“Well, you don’t have to anymore,” Charlotte said. “You’re one of us now, Blossom. I know there’s not much room around here, but we’ll find a place for you.”
The wolf-girl blinked and averted her strange, violet eyes, clearly uncomfortable with all this kindness.
“I…” she said to the floor. “I appreciate that. I’ll do everything I can to earn my place.”
“You can start by following me around the kitchen and helping me reach the high up stuff,” Alexis said, always ready to lighten the tension with a joke. “Seriously—how tall are you?”
