Chapter 72 Steed.

Chapter 72: 72 Steed.

All three women—Juniper now back in her own body—almost trampled me in their rush to see the new bed. I followed down the hall, curious about what three million dollars of illegal memory foam looked like.

My bedroom had been transformed. The new mattress filled nearly the entire floor space, leaving barely enough room to walk around the edges, but I doubted we ever would. It was at least a foot deeper than a standard mattress with pristine white custom-fitted sheets.

Without hesitation, all three women leaped onto it simultaneously, landing with delighted squeals. I watched in amazement as the material perfectly absorbed their impact, cradling each of them in personalized comfort cradles.

"By the Silver-Bark Tree!" Elsa moaned, rolling around like a cat in catnip. "I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s even better than my mattress back in Elfhaven!"

Ayra had gone completely limp, her face buried in the material. "Master," came her muffled voice, "I think I’m in love with this bed. Please don’t be jealous. There is room in my heart for you both."

Even Juniper seemed adorably impressed. "Wow. I—I can’t even process this," she observed through eyes half-lidded with pleasure. "This is... an amazing discovery for a non-magical world."

I was about to join them when the doorbell rang.

"Probably one of the Russian dudes," I said, reluctantly turning away from the inviting mattress. "Probably left a tool or a phone or something. I’ll be right back."

I jogged downstairs, making a mental note to make good use of the mattress with the girls the second I got back. Given the enthusiasm I was seeing, it would certainly be worth the investment.

Opening the front door, I expected to see one of the mattressologists. Instead, I found myself staring down at a vaguely familiar figure in a Pizza Dude jacket, hood pulled up in a way that charmingly framed a very pretty face.

It took me a moment to realize this was the same pizza delivery girl I’d hooked up with a while back, before Elsa arrived, and who showed up once to berate me while delivering pizza in front of both the princess and Ayra. She looked somehow different. Even cuter, maybe? Definitely bustier than I remembered, as the Pizza Dude uniform strained slightly across her chest.

I frowned. Did she get implants? Was she here to show off her implants and try to get me to shack up with her or be her boyfriend or something? Adding to that impression the most was her expression. Her eyes had a manic, almost feverish gleam, and her nostrils flared a little with every breath. She looked... pissed.

Before I could speak, she shoved past me into the house, pushing me back against the wall.

"What the fuck did you do to me?" she demanded, her voice trembling with rage.

"Whoa, whoa!" I raised my hands defensively. "What are you talking about? What’s going on... you?"

She noticed that. After a second, she rolled her eyes and scoffed at me disdainfully. "Say my name, you fuck."

"Uhh."

"You don’t even remember my name, do you? We fuck like bunnies for a whole-ass weekend, and you can’t even remember my name? I let you, like, creampie me! Twice! God knows your fucking name is burned into my brain with how many times I ended up screaming it back then."

I winced, reluctantly shaking my head. "I... it’s been a while, and—"

"It’s Clementine, you asshole! Clementine Kim! It’s not even, like, a forgettable name! It’s a weird fucking name, and you still forgot like a fucking dick!"

She paced the entryway like an angry panther, and I was getting more and more freaked out by the second. Now that I was really looking at her, I could see she was indeed different from how I knew her, and not just a little.

Clementine had always been really pretty. She was a half-Asian with dark black hair and the kind of K-pop-adjacent beauty that turned heads wherever you went. She was taller than most women at about five-foot-nine, which I’d always appreciated, being also on the taller side—though I’d gotten used to shorter chicks lately.

But there had also been something slightly unhinged about her—the way her nostrils would flare when she got excited or annoyed, how her lips would twitch when she was thinking. She didn’t exactly have resting bitch face, but it did teeter dangerously close at times. Combining that with her perpetually greasy hair from working at a pizza restaurant and her high-strung personality, she was probably still seen as undateable to most guys she’d ever be attracted to. Too hot to be approachable, a bit too off to be girlfriend material.

Of course none of that stopped us from hooking up that one time.

"Look, I don’t know what you think I did—" I began.

"Oh, I’ll fucking show you what you did, fuckhead," she interrupted. She reached up and yanked down her hood.

Two tall, pointed white ears stood atop her head—not elven ears like Elsa’s, or dog ears like Ayra’s, but something unmistakably equine. Horse ears. They twitched as she glared at me.

My mouth fell open, speechless. "Oh, we aren’t done yet, dickface," she growled. As I stared, she turned to the side, revealing her profile. Her figure had definitely filled out in awesome ways, but what was clearly meant to catch my attention was the long, black horse tail extending from just above her ass. Looking down, I noticed with growing horror that where her feet should be, she instead had two glossy black hooves.

Now that I was looking for oddities, I spotted another one. Her skin had changed too—no longer her original tone, but something much paler, with a pearlescent quality that would make you call Snow White tan by comparison.

"So, fucker," Clementine said, her eyes boring into mine, "let me ask you again—why am I a weirdly sexualized fucking pony waifu, and why is coming to your house to find you the only thing I’ve wanted to do since the other night?"

I gulped, my mind racing as the implications hit me like a burlap sack of lead balls to my skin-sack of tender, fleshy balls. Welp, I internally accepted, it looks like my steed has found me.