Chapter 95 Certainly.

Chapter 95: 95 Certainly.

The next several days did what days do when you’re busy and drowning in women—they went faster than my self control did every morning.

The portals kept coming, and we kept killing whatever crawled out of them. I’d like to say our tactics sharpened, but it was more like we stopped tripping over each other quite as much, which certainly counts for something.

Clementine and I drilled mounted combat every afternoon until our coordination tightened to the point where I barely needed to think a command before she was already executing it. Then I drilled her, more often than not.

Her bond had crept from WARY into solid yellow territory, and the System was calling it AMICABLE, which honestly felt a bit cheap to me given the fact that she confessed her love to me just a few nights ago.

In any case, her physical stats had climbed accordingly. She was faster, stronger, and the Transform came so naturally she could shift mid-stride without breaking her gallop.

The house was leveling up too, in its own little way.

I’d upgraded the fridge into one that makes those cool shredded ice cubes and pisses out filtered water, installed a second showerhead in the upstairs bathroom, which was an inspired move, and gotten the silo renovation started for Juniper’s workshop. Things were going well.

Clementine had quietly taken over dinner duties most nights, producing Korean dishes from memory that even Elsa couldn’t find fault with, though she sure as hell tried her dangdest.

The princess finally mastered microwaving Chef Boyardee and was branching out into fruit salad territory, so that was progress.

Ayra and her had developed their friendship based almost entirely around Super Plumber Kart grudge matches and talking smack that mostly related to who was better at being submissive to me, which I guess is how an elf princess and a dog-girl bond. Who am I to judge?

Through it all, Juniper kept reminding me about the full moon.

Well, it was time for her to cool her jets on that front tonight at last. The fateful evening finally arrived, hanging over the field like a dim spotlight God forgot to switch off.

Juniper had been setting up the ritual circle since late afternoon, arranging crystals and other magic stuff from her personal collection in patterns that felt very purposeful, but I tried not to overthink it.

She worked in silence as she prepared, insisting that it was something only she could be trusted to do, so I left her to it and just watched. Her tail carved careful paths through the grass and her face had a locked-in focus that was a step or two above what I usually saw from her.

The rest of us had let the day pass somewhat lazily. Elsa had changed outfits four times before settling on a white bathrobe of mine, comically oversized, that she claimed was close enough to traditional elven ceremonial garb.

Ayra had done sixteen laps of the property on all fours, about ten more than she normally ran in the morning, and her tail hadn’t really dropped far below maximum speed since breakfast.

I’d spent most of the afternoon trying to act normal. I did some running, played some video games, cleaned the kitchen twice, reorganized the bathroom cabinet, and finally stood in front of the mirror for a solid minute and asked my reflection if this was really happening.

My reflection didn’t have much to say, oddly enough, but the handsome bastard did offer me a winsome smile and two meaty thumbs up.

Clementine was on the back porch when the moon started appearing in the sky.

She’d been out there since lunch, with a bag of chips and her phone for company, scrolling through something she wasn’t actually reading.

I’d checked on her twice. The first time she told me to fuck off. The second time she told me to fuck off but also mentioned that I should grow out my mustache because she thought it might be fun to ride. I said I’d consider it.

Earlier that week, Juniper had sat Clementine down and explained, in her careful, diplomatic way, why the ritual had to be just the three Antherian maidens and me.

The short version was that Clementine’s bond with me ran through a completely different magical channel than theirs.

It was a case of the System Cavalier link versus the Hero’s Party covenant—basically she was hijacking my connection to the magical WiFi the rest of us were tapped into.

If she was inside the ritual circle when the bonding happened, the signals could cross and screw everything up. At best, the ritual fizzles. At worst, it damages her connection to me permanently.

Clementine had taken it about as well as you’d expect.

"So I just sit on the porch and watch my boyfriend fuck three other chicks," she’d said, arms crossed, horse ears flicking. "Yay magic."

Juniper sighed and patted her on the shoulder gently. "There, there. It is a precaution, not a punishment."

Clementine snorted. "Did you just ’there, there’ me, bitch?"

"N-No."

"Whatever," she’d said. "I’ll make popcorn."

As the sun went down and the moon climbed, Juniper called us to the field. The crystal circle was maybe twenty feet across, and the moonlight pooling inside it had a liquid quality, brighter and more concentrated than the light outside the ring.

The girls’ womb tattoos were already going hard with the luminosity. Elsa’s pulsed so bright through her white robe that she looked like she was smuggling a ruby.

Ayra’s glowed right through my borrowed t-shirt. Even Juniper’s was visible against her darker skin, a steady warm pulse just above where her human body met the serpentine half.

My tattoo throbbed too, which was new. Not painful, but insistent, like a second heartbeat thumping away atop my skin.

I glanced back at the house. Clementine sat on the porch with her arms crossed, backlit by the lights, too far away to read her expression.

She didn’t wave and she didn’t leave. She just stood there, and the rigid set of her shoulders made me feel a bit guilty, even though there really was no room for that at this point.

"Champion." Juniper’s voice pulled me back. She’d positioned herself at the edge of the circle, coiled into a low spiral. "The ritual requires individual connection before the group bond can form, so there will be three stages, one per Maiden." Her crimson eyes moved to Elsa. "First Maiden. You won the right by virtue of your position."

"I most certainly did," Elsa said, but her voice came out smaller than I would have expected.