Page 29 of Honey, I'm Home

He’s ready for me when I seal my mouth to his, reverently kissing me as he grips the back of my neck and tugs me onto his lap.

My legs automatically wind around his hips, his hands falling to my ass to keep me where he wants me.

He doesn’t push too far though, and soon he’s pulling away to press his forehead to mine so we can breathe as a newly mated pair. “This feels like an awfully fast change of heart. You’re not going to regret this later, are you?”

I sigh, trying to calm my mind. “I know I was fighting it because of our history and not being sure that we would work together at this stage in our lives, but nothing will ever change the fact that finding you guys endangered put everything into perspective for me. I won’t regret mating you so quickly, not when it got us out of a bind. I would have regretted not doing it though and having to jump through the hoops of your ex-court. So you guys are good now, right? They can’t touch you if you’re mated to me?”

Arbor crawls forward and drops a hand to my ankle. “No, they can’t touch us. We appreciate the bravery, but you didn’t have to do something you weren’t ready for to protect us. We could have figured out another way.”

I smile at him and scooch his way, wrapping him up next as I sit on his lap. “Every other way I could think of in the moment would have taken too long to enact. I acted a little impulsively, but it was effective, was it not?”

“You going to tell us what the hell is going on? It’s a little surreal to know we’re…what did you call it? Soul glued? That’s an…interesting way of putting it.”

I give him a cringey smile. “Yes, well, that’s what we call it.”

“We? Who is we?” Hawthorne asks as he finally gets himself out of the fetal position, wincing at his wet crotch. He’s totally going to end up naked soon, I just know it.

“I know you guys always suspected that my family had some sort of magical heritage, there aren’t many purely human families that live in Trash Haven. We all have some sort of connection to magic.”

All three of them look a little confused, but Arbor speaks up. “Why have I genuinely never thought of that before? I think I always just lumped your family in with the rest of the town without ever thinking too much about it.”

Well. That’s a bit of a red flag, innit? “You…never wondered why we lived here?”

Dev winces while he scratches his chin. “That sounds bad.”

“Because it is,” I argue. “Well, I guess it’s time to learn how to be curious about things. You guys thought you were going to marry me, and you didn’t even have any questions about why my family lives here? In a magical town that collects misfits? And you wereall set to procreate without even knowing what genes I’d be contributing? Reckless! All of you!”

Arbor keeps a firm hold on my hips, not letting me slide off of his lap because I’m realizing that maybe this thing between us isn’t what I imagined it was and I just went and did something incredibly reckless.

“Fuck. We just….and you guys don’t even care, do you? Fuuuck. Okay. Well, maybe we can undo—"

Arbor smashes his lips to mine, pushing through my resistance, not stopping until my shoulders have untensed and he’s chasing me, leaning forward until we’ve switched positions entirely and he’s now pinning me to the dirt floor.

“Do not confuse our lack of curiosity as apathy. No, don’t interrupt me. We always assumed your family belonged here because you do. We were raised to believe it was rude to outright ask people what their species is, and yes, we’ve been friends with your brother for years, and have spent countless hours talking about every damn thing under the sun, but he never brought his species up so we figured it was a sensitive subject and that if he wanted to talk about it, he would.

“With you, our dear Aster, our bees chose you, and that was all that mattered. Your family is good at hiding any traits that make them something other than human, though I think it’s fairly obvious to other supes that you guys aren’t completely human. So, instead of fighting about this, let us apologize, deeply, for not asking sooner, and could you please tell us what’s going on?”

His eyes are earnest and his whole face is radiating honesty, so I decide to let my irritation go for now and answer his question. We are in a bit of a time crunch. “So. For starters, my species is expressly forbidden, enforced by a magical geas, from discussingthis with anyone that we aren’t mated to or related to. That’s why Anderson never brought it up with you guys.

“Everyone knows that there’s someone responsible for sort of maintaining this town’s boundaries, watching over it, and watching the wards. My dad is…the invisible mayor. Literally. We…if we go by a name, we are called Unfinished.

“I imagine that many generations ago the magic was stronger, and we’re taught that our ancestors had far fewer limitations than we do today, but that’s mostly evolutionary because we’re safer now. Being in Trash Haven, we aren’t hunted, so our magic has becoming gentler with each generation, gaining greater limitations.

“When I was in the car with The Bee Court, I knew it was a dangerous situation, I could sense that. Maybe they couldn’t directly harm me, but I have a deep warning system ingrained into my soul, all Unfinished do, that tells us when we’re around people that have ill intent with us.

“When that occurs, it triggers our magical states. I can’t just go invisible at will—”

“Holy fuck, you can go invisible?” Hawthorne asks.

I nod. “When I feel like I am in an unsafe situation, or maybe my chosen mates are threatened for example, I can activate my magical core. I was able to do this in the car; I went invisible and waylaid the whole party. Don’t worry, no one was really hurt, I just needed their car to not be able to work well so I could buy us some time.

“So, I went invisible and was able to transport myself to where you guys were because I was already tethered to you. I have been for years. That’s why I’m so confused about how I didn’t notice you, Arbor, being a total creep and perving on me at my place with Landon. I can only think it’s because you were in your beeform; that was sort of a camouflage in itself, because I haven’t spent enough time around that form of you to recognize it.

“So that’s it in a nutshell. I came here and here we are.”

“And here is…” Arbor asks, looking around, while still pinning me to the ground and holding himself over me.

“This is our hideout. Dad has long been entrusted with sensing the danger at our borders, and he uses these screens to do it. He was sworn into the position so that his magical core could tune into it, and if he feels someone with ill intent approaching, he alerts the proper authorities.”