Chapter 79 Whatever.

Chapter 79: 79 Whatever.

"Sir Grey," came the voice from upstairs, tragically performative. "There is no hot water left, my champion! I require your body heat to survive this!"

I was elbow-deep in pancake batter at the time, which was probably for the best.

A minute passed. Then footsteps on the stairs — small, deliberate, the footsteps of someone who had decided that if the mountain would not come to the princess, the princess would descend upon the mountain.

Elsa appeared in the kitchen doorway in her nightgown, damp at the edges, arms crossed, ears quivering. The problem, I quickly deduced, was that Ayra had beaten her to the shower by a full forty-five seconds and drained the tank entirely.

Elsa had gotten in after, lasted approximately thirty seconds in ice-cold water, and bailed. In her mind, this constituted an epic betrayal, no doubt.

"She has depleted the hot water," Elsa announced, pointing back toward the stairs. "I am the First Maiden. My pores have priority."

I kept my eyes on the batter. "Don’t talk about your pores. It’s weird."

"Royal pores take precedence over canine pores. This is an established tradition, to say nothing of my ranking superiority over here." She drifted closer, and the outrage shifted gears into something softer. The lower lip came out. "Grey, my love. You look tired. Have you been sleeping well? You need to be sleeping. Come, sit, let me rub your shoulders for once. I am very cold and it would help us both."

"Later, I’ll definitely take you up on that," I chuckled. "Right now, I’m making breakfast." I turned back to the stove.

"I’ll supervise then. I’m quite good at supervising." She reached for my arm and clung to it possessively, of course.

Clementine appeared in the kitchen doorway a minute later, still half-asleep, wearing my basketball shorts and an old hoodie.

Her black tail poked through a hole she’d scissored in the back, without asking mind you. Her horse ears went flat against her head for a brief second when she looked at Elsa hanging on me.

"Is this going to be what I wake up to every day?" she asked.

"More or less." I nudged a mug toward her. "Breakfast in ten. Hope you’re hungry."

She looked at Elsa. Elsa looked at her. Neither of them said anything, which I think I was glad for? Maybe.

"Cool. I’m going back to bed, then."

"No you’re not. You’ll fall asleep and breakfast will get cold."

She flipped me off and clip-clopped back into her room.

"Okay," I sighed. "So maybe you are."

I got everyone fed, which took three separate batches of eggs, a mountain of pancakes, a meat-only plate for Juniper, and more patience than any reasonable man should have to possess before 9 AM. The dining table looked like a war room by the time we were all seated.

Elsa had claimed the chair closest to me, as she always did, and was drowning her pancakes in syrup while shooting hostile glances at Clementine across the table. At one point she reached over without looking and straightened my coffee mug a quarter inch, then patted my hand twice like I was a good boy for allowing her to do so. I didn’t really know how to take that.

Ayra ate like she’d trained her whole life for competitive eating, and the whole while her tail kept time against her chair leg like a metronome. Then there was Juniper. She consumed strips of bacon and whole hardboiled eggs between sips of black coffee, looking completely at ease, which honestly felt like a miracle given the chaos around her.

As for my little pony, Clementine picked at her food, dark eyes scanning each woman in turn like she was still trying to make up her mind about them all. I sighed to see it. Every few seconds her gaze would land on something that made her expression tighten — Ayra’s ears, Juniper’s tail spilling out from under the table and trailing across half the kitchen floor, the faint glow of Elsa’s womb tattoo through her nightgown.

Yeesh. That was another thing that we’d have to explain to her eventually. Would she need to get one too? Ffffuuuck.

"Alright," I said, pushing my plate back. "We need to talk about how this is going to work."

Four sets of sexy eyes turned to me.

"This house was built for a small family. We are five adults who don’t always seem to get along. The house isn’t getting any bigger, either, so we need ground rules."

Clementine set her fork down slowly. "You mean like a dorm? Are you my RA all of a sudden?"

"Well it is my fucking house," I countered.

She picked the fork back up and stabbed a piece of egg. "Cocky fuckface."

Elsa set down her fork. "I find it highly presumptuous that the horse-creature should have any input on rules for a household she joined yesterday, uninvited."

"Technically I invited her with my Bind Greater Steed move," I corrected her.

Clementine turned to look at her, expression flat, like someone who had decided not to be surprised by anything today. "I didn’t join anything, bitch. I was basically kidnapped."

"You are the one who is the bitch!" Elsa’s hand slapped the table.

"No argument there, but it takes one to know one." Clementine didn’t even look up from her plate as she went back in for more bacon.

"You are rude!" Elsa drew herself up in her full dignity, a woman who had once lorded over a kingdom as a prized princess, currently with syrup on a Made-in-China nightgown. "Furthermore," she said, pivoting to me with a look of profound injury, "she keeps calling you fuckface. That is a deeply rude name for a champion of your standing, and I won’t have it."

"Yeah, it kind of does sting when you keep calling me that," I sighed.

Clementine cocked her head as though in confusion. "Why? I just call you that because I wanna fuck your face," she explained. "Like, sit on it. I never got to do that when we hooked up that one time, so I guess I’m like, manifesting or whatever."