Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

Mrs. Rivers studied me the way people study things they intend to form a final conclusion about. Her eyes moved slowly, over my hands resting on my thighs, the set of my shoulders, the steady rise and fall of my chest. She took in every detail without hurry, the afternoon light catching on the smooth curve of her bare breasts as she leaned slightly forward.

"Tell me how it happened," she said.

Becky adjusted beside me, the leather creaking faintly under her weight. The room carried a specific pressure now, thick and heavy, and she could feel it too.

"He died a hero," I said. "We found two outsiders running from the infected. A mother and her daughter. The order was to maintain course and focus on the mission."

Mrs. Rivers uncrossed her legs, the motion smooth, and leaned forward further, elbows resting on her knees. Her dark eyes never left my face.

Drift, I told myself. Give her something to hold onto.

"We followed the order. Nobody stopped the car." I paused, letting the silence breathe for a moment. "Then the driver slowed and he was already at the door."

I looked down at my hands, fingers flexing once against my thighs. Not performance. Just giving myself the space.

"He was sitting right next to me. I looked at him. ’What are you doing?’ He looked straight at me." Another pause, the kind that carries weight. "He said, ’There are no orders when people are dying.’ And he was out."

I breathed in slowly, letting the memory of the forest bleed into the lie just enough to color it.

"We followed. All of us. But that’s where the infected reached him."

The room fell completely quiet. The only sound was the faint tick of a clock somewhere deeper in the mansion and the soft rustle of Becky’s breathing beside me.

Mrs. Rivers looked at me for a long time. Something shifted across her face — a flicker behind her eyes that had nothing to do with the walls, CGI, or politics. Just a mother hearing about her son.

"Did the two outsiders survive?" she asked.

"No," I said.

She exhaled, long and slow, shoulders dropping as the air left her. For a moment she looked smaller in the large chair, naked and human.

"He always was like that," she said, more to herself than to us. "Even as a boy."

I said nothing. Some silences were part of the lie and needed to be left untouched, allowed to settle.

Mrs. Rivers stared past us for a moment, eyes unfocused, one hand resting on her thigh. The afternoon light coming through the windows traced gentle shadows across her skin and the framed photographs of her on the walls, all of them naked, all of them watching.

"The redheads hired the ghost to protect their child," Mrs. Rivers said, more to herself than to us. Her voice was quiet, almost absent, fingers tracing a slow circle on her bare thigh.

The words landed in the room like a loose blade. Redheads. Harmione flashed in my mind — fiery hair, flames licking at her fingertips. The ghost. Code. The way he moved through the mission like a shadow that only appeared when blood needed to be spilled, untouched, unreadable. I turned the pieces over without letting anything show on my face and filed them away the way the plain had taught me: carefully, without conclusion.

Come back to it, I told myself. When you have more.

"So that’s how he died," Mrs. Rivers said, pulling herself back into the present. She sat up straighter, breasts shifting with the motion, eyes returning to mine. "Can you tell me how he lived? Was he happy?"

"Always," I said. "Genuinely happy. Everywhere he went."

She looked down at her hands, fingers interlacing slowly. The grief underneath the words was raw and real, a mother sitting naked in her own home, carrying the specific weight of a child she had tried to protect from one monster and lost to another.

I stood, crossed the room and stopped in front of her. She looked up once, then leaned forward and wrapped her arms around my waist, pressing her face against my stomach. I rested one hand on her back, rubbing slow circles between her shoulder blades, feeling the warmth of her skin and the faint tremor running through it. Becky joined us quietly, kneeling beside the chair and placing a gentle hand on Mrs. Rivers’ shoulder.

"It’s good knowing he was happy," Mrs. Rivers said finally. She straightened, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. "Tell Bala the house of Rivers holds its allegiance."

And there it was. The real reason we had come. Not comfort. Politics dressed as comfort. Bala needed that allegiance locked down, delivered by someone who had been outside with her son.

"I’ll tell him," I said.

This is how it works, I thought, stepping back. Fear. Grief. Hope. Allegiance. The walls running on all of it simultaneously.

And I’m learning to move through all of it.

Mrs. Rivers stood, composed once more, the grief tucked away behind the same elegant mask she wore in every photograph on the walls. She walked us to the door, her bare feet silent on the marble, and saw us out into the bright afternoon light.

Becky and I walked back to the car in silence, the gravel sharp under our bare feet, the sun warm on our skin.

Becky reached the car first. She opened the driver’s door, the metal handle cool against her palm, and slid inside. The leather seat creaked under her bare ass as she settled behind the wheel. Our clothes still lay scattered on the floor where we had left them, my shirt crumpled, her bra tangled with her pants, a silent reminder of how quickly the mission had stripped us.

She exhaled, long and complete, shoulders dropping as the air left her lungs. She passed a single finger along the bridge of her nose, wiping away nothing, just a small gesture to steady herself.

"That was intense," she said, voice still carrying a trace of disbelief.

She was more relaxed now, which said everything about how quickly the naked mansion had shifted her baseline for what counted as normal.

"I prefer action missions," she continued, starting the car. The engine purred to life, a low, steady rumble. "At least with action you know what you’re dealing with."

"This is a different kind of action," I said, settling into the passenger seat, the cool leather sticking slightly to my bare back.

She looked at me briefly, one eyebrow twitching, but said nothing. She put the car in drive and pulled forward.

We passed through the iron gates. The gatekeeper stood at his post, completely naked, watching us go with calm, professional detachment. Two naked CGI agents driving away in a black car — either the strangest thing that had happened to him today or completely routine, depending on how long he had worked here.

The gates closed behind us with a heavy metallic clang.

Becky kept her eyes on the road, hands tight on the wheel, blonde braid resting against her bare back as the capital city rose up around us once more.