Homestead Harem 2, page 19
Blossom didn’t reply. I could hear branches snapping, others circling the scene. I estimated at least three other bodies behind Lara. Her crew.
“The best thing I could do for her is to reform you,” Lara finished. “Bring you back to your senses. Remind you who you are—since you’ve clearly been manipulated by that backwards farm and their perverted leader. Next thing I know you’ll be pregnant by him, and you know what he’ll do after he’s done with you, Blossom? He’ll kill you.”
I clenched my fists, fighting every muscle in my body as it begged to run blindly onto the scene.
“Jonas isn’t like that,” Blossom said through gritted teeth. “He’s a good man.”
Lara and her cronies laughed—I listened to the differentiating voices, confirming there were three besides their leader.
“You know what mother has always taught us, since the day we were born,” Lara snarled. “You know the creed we live by. And you dare say those words to my face?”
“Lara, please, just—”
“There. Are. No. Good. Men,” Lara interrupted in a growl.
There was a pause, a muffled blow, and Blossom moaned in pain. I instinctively made to stand up, but Sophia grabbed my arm, stopping me. I held steady.
“Why the hell have you even kept me out here all night?” Blossom said, coughing a little. “You can see I’m not gonna change, no matter how much you bully me, no matter how much you’ve bullied me my entire life. I know you have this sick fantasy of mother finally liking you best, but—”
Another blow, but Blossom didn’t stop—
“---but she does not and will never, Lar, and do you want to know why?”
“Why?” Lara snarled.
“Because she knows I’m a better fighter than you and always will be,” Blossom spat.
A feral growl erupted from Lara, and before I knew it I’d army crawled closer to the scene, my face concealed by the thick brush. I had a clear view of the clearing now, ten feet ahead, the three mutant girls standing in a half circle behind Lara, Blossom chained to a tree, covered in bruises, her clothing ripped and her face bloody.
But Lara, crazy as she was, was undoing Blossom’s chains.
She’d taken the bait. They were going to fight.
“You want to prove that, sister?” Lara declared, throwing Blossom’s chains on the forest floor and stepping back into a fighting stance.
Blossom stood up a little shakily, steadying herself on the tree trunk behind her. Looking down at her torn and bloody shirt, she tugged a mangled sleeve off in one clean rip, dropping it on the ground. Her toes curled into the dirt as she regained her balance, and she took a long deep breath, masking the pain on her face. Slowly, she stepped forward and sunk herself down into a fighting stance, her fists raised.
My heart was pounding—I knew I had to step in, and I had to do it quickly. There was no way Blossom could win this, especially not in her condition—I’d fought Lara myself and knew how crazy she was. I poised to lunge forward, to jump in at the moment this doomed fight began—
“Wait,” Sophia whispered again, having crawled forward to my side. Her hand was on my wrist, squeezing it tightly. “She wouldn’t want you to interfere.”
“But—” I started.
At that moment, the fight began. And I was speechless.
Blossom had launched herself at her sister with unbelievable speed, feigning high and striking low, taking her sister out at the knees. The two girls immediately reset and attacked each other head on, hitting the ground with their arms locked and rolling across the forest floor, Lara’s cronies shrieking and cheering from their circle around the fight. Suddenly, the quiet, kind wolf-girl I’d come to know became unrecognizable, tapping into an animalistic rage I’d never witnessed before. She bit and clawed wildly at her sister, her neat braid coming undone as she fought, and the two moved so fast it was hard to see who was striking who—until they separated and I saw Lara bleeding from multiple locations.
Lara was pissed beyond recognition, one step from foaming at the damn mouth. She lunged at her sister with a shriek of primal rage.
Watching them fight, it was clearer than ever that the two girls were twins. They were evenly matched in so many ways—height, weight, strength, agility—but their fighting styles couldn’t have been more different. Lara attacked boldly and blindly, taking the obvious blows and using sheer aggression and force to attack her opponent, while Blossom feigned and juked, spinning and dancing around her sister like she had already memorized her every move.
I suppose, having fought her for her entire life, she probably had.
After a while it became clear that Blossom was messing with her sister’s head, landing no blows but instead spinning and lunging out of her sister’s every attack until Lara was noticeably seething from striking only air. Blossom was making her sister look like a fool, getting her riled up until she made a stupid mistake.
“Bitch!” Lara cried in shock and anger, stumbling backwards. I hadn’t even seen Blossom touch her opponent, but, somehow, she’d broken one of Lara’s fingers.
“Speed up, sis, you’ll break something,” Blossom replied, her eyes dark with anger, her chest heaving as she caught her breath.
They reset, lowering into their crouches.
All of a sudden, Blossom had come out swinging—and I realized in shock that she’d been holding back until this moment. Despite being tortured all night, the wolf-girl found a burst of energy, ending the feigning to instead capitalize on her sister’s fatigue. In moments, she had managed to get her fingers tangled in Lara’s hair, slamming her head down on the forest floor and incapacitating her. Blossom hopped on top of her sister, sitting on her stomach and planting her hands around Lara’s throat. Lara began to sputter and choke, begging for breath.
Lara is finally going to die, I realized with glee. She’d be eliminated—and I was so happy I didn’t even care I couldn’t be the one to do it.
But then, Blossom let up, suddenly pulling her hands away from her sister’s neck like they were on fire. One look at her face showed tears welling in her eyes.
She couldn’t do it.
In an instant, Lara’s cronies had converged on Blossom, pulling her off her twin sister and beating her down onto the forest floor. Blossom was officially spent, hardly even blocking any of the blows.
“Now?” I asked Sophia impatiently.
“Yes,” the squirrel-girl replied, her eyes wide with horror. “Now!”
I burst up from the brush, officially ready to break necks.
Chapter
Thirty
I sprinted onto the scene roaring my bear-like battle cry, tearing the first mutant girl off Blossom and throwing her ten feet where she rolled into a tree trunk and collapsed. Jordan, taking my cue, jumped down from a nearby branch and directly onto one of Lara’s girls’ backs, scratching and biting her rabidly while the girl screamed in pain.
Sophia had planted herself in front of Lara, watching as the psychotic wolf-girl recovered from her brush with death.
“Hey!” I shouted, redirecting Lara’s attention to me as she struggled to stand. “Did I hear you right? You don’t think I’m a good man?”
I said it with an air of surprise—like I really thought she might make an exception for me. I smiled a little at my own joke, quietly taking Lara’s attention off Sophia, allowing the squirrel-girl to go attend to Blossom.
At that moment, someone jumped on my back—the girl I’d thrown, come crawling back. I shook her off violently, turning around to stomp down on her stomach, eliciting a sound like a balloon suddenly rushing out air. Jordan rushed over and dragged the girl away kicking and screaming, having finished off her first victim—and I turned back to Lara.
But the wolf-girl was gone. My heart pounded as I peered around the forest, hoping beyond hope she hadn’t escaped. Behind me, Sophia was helping Blossom stand and Jordan was engaged with Lara’s two remaining cronies.
Had Lara really fled?
Suddenly, a blow came down on my head like a brick, knocking me temporarily blind until I hit the ground. When I regained my vision, Lara was on top of me, her deranged smile bloody and missing several teeth from our last fight. Of course that bitch had climbed a tree.
Lara’s thumbs shoved at the corners of my eye sockets, and I realized with horror she was trying to pop my eyeballs out. Wedging my arms between our bodies, I shoved her off of me before she turned me into Stevie Wonder, managing to stand up at the same moment she did. Repositioning across from one another, she panted desperately like a wounded animal determined not to die, her mouth hanging open in a low, salivating growl.
I thought only of Blossom.
Lara lunged, and I took her sister’s lead and dodged—making my opponent shriek with frustration. In a moment of pure instinct, I turned and ran at the forest, knowing she’d follow me blindly. Digging my feet into the dirt, I sprinted and then leapt—grabbing a high tree branch above me and counting on Lara slamming to a halt behind me.
My opponent landed just where I’d hoped, and I wrapped my legs tightly around her neck before she could move from underneath me.
Lara whimpered and spat as I lifted her off the ground with my legs, doing the most fucked-up ab work-out of all time. My muscles strained as Lara clawed at my legs with her nails, trying to escape the chokehold while her legs uselessly kicked at the air.
Then I dropped down, allowing my body weight to crush her. Before Lara could recover, I flipped her over and planted myself on top of her, grabbing a rock from the ground and holding it high over my head.
“It’s over, Lara,” I spat, reeling back.
With her last breath, Lara sneered up at me and choked out: “You’ll…never…defeat me.”
I brought the rock down on her head, feeling her skull crack like a China plate. With another blow, her eyes stayed open, frozen in stubborn indignation forever.
Lara was dead.
I stood up off the body, panting. I had done it. I had finally killed the psycho wolf.
Slowly, I moved towards Blossom and Sophia, huddled together at the edge of the clearing. Blossom looked like she might pass out. Whether from pain or grief, I couldn’t tell.
“I’m sorry, Blossom,” I said quietly.
I dropped the bloody rock in my hand, where it rolled sadly on the ground.
“Don’t be,” the wolf-girl replied, not taking her eyes off the rock. She swallowed. “It had to be done.”
“Good riddance,” Jordan said a little too cheerfully, wiping her hands on her shorts as she walked away from the pile of mutant girls she’d taken out. There was blood staining her hands and neck, but she didn’t seem to care.
I shot her a look of disapproval.
“Oh, right,” she said, finally reading the room. “Sorry, Bloss.” The bat-girl paused a moment, clearly contemplating whether she should keep talking. I silently begged she wouldn’t. “Can I just say though—” she continued, “that was some of the most insane fighting I’ve ever seen. I mean, you’re a beast, Blossom!”
Blossom wiped a single tear from the corner of her eye, smiling slightly at Jordan’s compliment.
“Thank you, Jordan,” she said. “Now, if you guys don’t mind, I’d really like to get back home.”
It took me a moment to realize what the wolf-girl meant by “home.” Not that hellscape of an encampment we’d come from—but the farm. Our farm—where Blossom finally was starting to realize she belonged.
I smiled. “You don’t have to ask me tw—”
All of a sudden, a shout carried across the wind, interrupting me. We all perked up, but it was Jordan who understood what we heard.
“It was Ellen,” she declared, staring at me in sudden fear. “She’s screaming your name.”
I was running before I knew where to run—pushing past thick foliage and tree branches and trusting the others would follow. Time slowed down, the green leaves blurred in my peripherals, and blood rushed through my ears as I ran towards the sound of the shouting—for, if Ellen were out here, screaming my name, it could only be one person in danger, could only be one thing—
I burst out of the trees into the sunlight, spotting Ellen on horseback a quarter mile up the riverbank on our side. She saw me too and we met in the middle, the river rushing between us.
“Jonas!” she shouted. “It’s Charlotte!”
“Tell me!” I shouted back over the water.
Ellen kicked her nervous horse, getting it to turn around to face me again.
“She’s having the baby!”
My heart nearly stopped. And, before I knew it, I had dove into the cold water, swimming like crazy to the other side.
Chapter
Thirty-One
I burst into the house dripping water onto the floor and scaring the hell out of everyone gathered in the living room. Ignoring everything but the birth of my child, I sprinted up the stairs two at a time, pushing past girls carrying towels and hot water in the hallway and tearing open the bedroom door, praying to God for the best—and expecting the worst.
What I found was Charlotte sitting on the bed with a big smile on her face, our newborn son cooing in her arms.
“He’s perfect,” she rasped out, tears of joy leaking down her face. “He’s absolutely perfect.”
I didn’t know it was possible to feel so much relief. I walked in a haze across the room, trying to remember to breathe as Charlotte placed our tiny, perfect son in my arms.
“John,” I said as I looked down at him, his little pink face cheerful—like he was just darn enamored with being alive. “Welcome home, John.”
A small, happy sob erupted from Charlotte as I said the baby’s name. We’d decided long before the birth that, if the child were a boy, we would name him for my father: John Ryder.
“He’s a miracle,” Alexis said behind me. It was the first time I’d even noticed her being in the room. She was standing behind me looking a little shell shocked, her orange fox ears soaked red with sweat.
“Ain’t that the truth,” I agreed.
“No, Jonas,” Alexis continued in a soft voice, “I mean it. Just before you arrived, I administered the Vitamin K and hep B injections.”
She paused, and I turned to her, not understanding. We had rode across old state lines to find those immunizations still frozen and intact months ago.
“What happened?” I demanded.
“Nothing, darling,” Charlotte reassured, smiling up at me.
“Look at his right thigh,” Alexis said, a small smile growing on her face.
I unwrapped the blanket John was wrapped in to inspect his thigh, finding nothing but soft pink baby leg.
“What am I looking for?” I asked, growing more and more nervous.
“The injection mark is gone,” Alexis explained, shaking her head in bewilderment. “I watched it heal within moments of my removing the needle. I think…I think that your immunity to the moss in the forest passed down to him but…in a much bigger way.”
“You’re saying he heals himself?” I asked, blinking at Alexis.
I mean, sure, we lived in a strange post-apocalyptic world and I’d had to come around to believing a lot of crazy stuff, but this seemed straight out of a comic book.
“I don’t know what I’m saying,” Alexis replied, staring at little John in wonder. She held out one finger and he wrapped his tiny pink hand around it, gripping it tightly. “I just know this little guy is special.”
Charlotte and I met eyes, but we didn’t have to have a silent conversation. The tears of happiness and relief streaming down both of our faces were enough.
“What’s happening, are they okay?!”
Ellen burst into the room with Jordan, Sophia, and Blossom right behind her. She’d given me her horse, letting me go ahead so she could accompany the rest of the girls back on foot.
“We’re fine, we’re both fine,” Charlotte assured, smiling widely through her tears. “Little John is perfectly healthy, thanks to Alexis.”
“I almost threw up multiple times,” Alexis said proudly, smiling and sitting down.
All at once, all the girls were swarming around me and John, their excited awwws and squeals and coos surrounding me. As everyone gazed upon the baby, I noticed Blossom sitting in the rocking chair in the corner, looking shaken from the fight. Her clothes were still tattered and bloody, her bruises forming purple and yellow nebulas across her skin.
I looked at Charlotte, and she understood at once.
“Blossom, I’m so glad you’re back safely,” Charlotte said, making the tall wolf-girl blink back to reality, surprised she was being spoken to. “Are you okay, dear?”
Blossom paused for a moment, clearly holding back tears.
“I’m fine now,” she said, smiling tightly at Charlotte. “Just so happy for you and Jonas.”
Charlotte, ever the den mother, continued staring at Blossom, clearly reading that the wolf-girl was not even a little bit okay.
“Would you like to hold him?” she asked.
Blossom blinked, looking from Charlotte to the rest of us as if to make sure we all heard that okay.
“I…” she started. “I—”
Before she could say another word, I was walking John over, placing him gently in her lap. She took care to cradle his tiny head, handling him so carefully I couldn’t believe this was the same girl who’d become a feral, animalistic killer in the woods earlier.
The second John closed his eyes and nuzzled into her, Blossom broke down, a steady stream of tears leaking down her face as she stared down at my son.
“He’s so beautiful,” she rasped.
We all watched as the wolf-girl rocked John in the chair while she silently cried. I knew that her tears were partly for the baby, but mostly for the monumental loss she’d suffered that day. For, despite everything Lara had done, she was still Blossom’s twin sister. And that was a bond you could never replace.
But holding a baby never hurts.
Blossom sniffled and kissed John’s forehead gently, handing him back to me carefully. I passed him back to Charlotte, where he immediately recognized his mother’s skin and fell promptly into a peaceful slumber.
