Homelands Pt. 06 Ch. 05

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Author's note

As ever, if you have questions feel free to email me or leave a comment. Either way, I'll try to respond in a timely manner.

This is primarily an incest story, but it is also sci-fi/fantasy, and supernatural elements are not incidental to the plot. Additionally, many chapters will feature elements of other categories, particularly group sex and anal.

All sexual acts are consensual and involve parties who are at least eighteen years of age.

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"It's gonna be a girl," Mike said, wrapping his arms around Patty from behind. His warm palms rested flat atop her swollen belly. "Can't you just feel it?"

Patty smiled. She'd dreamt of her little girl many times. But other nights, it was a boy. He'd grow up to be the Patriarch of Summer. Or she'd steal Mike away when she came of age. Or he'd be the greatest lover she'd ever had. One way or another, their child would be the most beautiful the Homelands had ever known. That, she knew for a certainty.

The only question was whether she'd get to raise her own child.

It had been more than a month since they'd learned the true price of the Eternal Garden's support. The weekly trips to the temple were bad enough. If she never had to see Kurt again, that would be just fine with Patty. He'd grown increasingly nasty of late. But of course it didn't stop there. One of them would have their child ripped from their breast. Taken away and raised by strangers, brainwashed, and returned to them as a zealot.

Most of the time, she simply tried not to think about it. Other times, Patty found herself hoping that it was Annie's child. Or Veronica's or her mother's. As long as it wasn't hers.

Those thoughts made her sick.

It wasn't a fate she'd want anyone to suffer. And if it ended up being someone else, she'd probably only blame herself for jinxing them, ridiculous as that was. She just couldn't help herself. There was no easy way to cope with the grim knowledge.

Veronica's strategy was to punish Nick. Ostensibly, her goal was to convince him that they couldn't let their father force them to accept the terms he'd negotiated with the Eternal Garden. To goad her brother into rebelling against the king, rather than risk having their child taken away from them. But Patty rather suspected that her sister understood as well as the rest of them did that it would be futile to oppose their father. She was just looking for someone to take her frustration out on, and Nick was gracious enough to let her do so.

The poor guy. Sometimes she envied the two of them. Other times, she wondered why Nick put up with her.

"You think a boy?" her brother asked.

"Hmm?" Patty murmured. "Oh, I don't know. Sometimes I do. You're probably right though. She doesn't kick hard enough to be a boy."

"Any thoughts about what to name her?"

Patty drew a deep breath.

"Everything okay?" Mike asked.

She patted his hand. "Yeah."

A cool breeze picked up, stirring the hem of her gauzy white dress. The smell of salt and sea filled her nostrils. Sometimes, it was easy to forget all the bullshit, to see Summer as the paradise that it should be. But those moments were far too few.

"It won't be us," Mike said. He planted a kiss on the top of her head. "I promise."

Patty looked out from the gazebo, down to the shore, and imagined two little children playing in the sand. Shrieking as the waves crashed and laughing as they ran away from them. A little boy and a little girl.

That was absurd, of course. Even if they didn't have to hand their child over to the Eternal Garden, they wouldn't raise them here in Summer. They'd take them back to the Playground, as their parents had done with them. As had always been their people's custom. The Homelands were no place for children.

Still, she could just see her little boy splashing salt water at his sister. Could imagine how she'd scold him, all the while thinking him the cutest thing alive.

"Don't do that," she said at last, voice small. "I'd prefer to think you're the type of guy who keeps his promises."

Her brother didn't respond.

"You should convince Troy to knock your mother up," she said.

Mike snorted.

"Improve our odds of dodging the bullet," Patty continued.

"He wouldn't need any convincing," her brother said. "But Mom's not in any hurry to get pregnant again." His voice grew softer. "You'd think we were some terrible burden."

"Maybe one of you was," she replied.

That earned her another kiss.

"I'm sorry I've been kinda distant lately," Patty said. "It's just...I don't know how you guys can take it so lightly. Every danged one of you." A flash of anger hit her, but she did her best to suppress it. She didn't want to become Veronica. It wasn't Mike's fault that he wasn't as emotional as she was. That his body wasn't pumped full of hormones. That he could barely sleep at night, between the aches and pains and cramps and bloating, the bleeding and the food cravings, the random bouts of sickness and, worse of all, the crippling fear. "Guess it's true what they say. A woman becomes a mother the moment she conceives, but a man doesn't become a father until he holds his child in his arms."

Silence reigned.

"Guess it is," Mike said, after a fashion. His tone was somewhere between apologetic and wounded. Closer to the latter, really.

"I'm sorry, sweetie," she said. "I know it's real to you too."

"Forget it," he said, smoothing her hair. "I understand."

Patty sighed. Maybe she wasn't all that different from her sister after all.

"You've been gr-"

Just then, she saw him.

Kurt was strolling across the beach, holding a pair of sandals in his hands. As ever, he had a white tunic on and wore his weight in gold. To judge by his relaxed posture, his ambling gait, you'd think he was just out for a walk. Not a care in the world. Nor any particular reason for being here, on this particular stretch of beach.

As if he hadn't all but denounced House Moody. As if the island that had been his father's every bit as much as it was her mother's still belonged to him.

"What's he doing here?" Mike asked.

For a moment, Patty remembered the dragon he'd been when she'd met him. His skin remained fair and smooth, covered lightly with dark hair rather than metallic scales.

But there was a trace of it in his voice. Fire in his breath.

"Oh, hey Pattycakes," Kurt called out. "Didn't realize anyone was here."

Right. Of course he hadn't.

Mike's arms left her. He stepped into the entrance to the gazebo, filling the empty space. "Illuminated One," he said with just a little bit of an edge to his otherwise reverent tone. "Pleasure to see you outside the temple."

"I'm sure it is," Kurt said with an amicable smile.

Patty curtsied to her cousin, trying to remember the kind, modest boy she'd once fallen in love with rather than simply seeing the cold-hearted, self-important man he'd become.

"Not interrupting anything, am I?" her cousin asked.

Neither she nor Mike replied.

Kurt laughed to himself as he stepped nearer the gazebo. His facial expression was relaxed, but Patty could see the tension in his body. Or feel it in his Libido.

She wasn't even sure which.

"Not at all," Mike said at last.

Patty laid a hand on her brother's shoulder. His skin was warm. Past warm. A fire burned within him. His skin felt like a stone that had been taken out of the fireplace and had only just begun to cool off. She hadn't felt that in a long time.

"So," Kurt said, eying Mike up and down. "This is really the guy you left me for?"

"Kurt," Patty said. "Don't."

"What?" he asked, looking innocent as you please. "Just a little surprised is all."

Mike cleared his throat but otherwise ignored the bait.

"You left Summer," Patty said. "I'd have been glad to see you return with me."

"Sure you would have," he said. "That explains why you waited a whole two days to let some other guy squirt a child into your belly."

Patty grabbed Mike's hand. "We should go."

"What's the hurry?" Kurt asked, propping a hand up on the rail of the gazebo.

Her cousin's glowing, golden eyes locked onto the silver orbs of her brother. Patty wished he'd direct that stare at her. Wished he'd leave Mike out of it. Whatever problems he had with her, there was no reason to take it out on her brother. He'd never even met Kurt until after Patty had told him that she wanted to have his children.

"Please," Patty said. "What do you want from me?"

Finally, he looked at her. It wasn't easy to meet his gaze, what with the light radiating from his sockets, but she forced herself to do so. "Nothing at all," he said. "If I expected anything more than that from you, I'd be sorely disappointed, wouldn't I?"

"I think you should go now," Mike said, inching closer to the sunlit creep.

"Don't even think about it," Kurt said softly, without so much as bothering to look at Mike. His eyes remained locked on Patty.

"You're upsetting her," Mike said.

"She can handle herself," Kurt said. "Doesn't need you to play knight in scaly armor."

"Mike," Patty said, squeezing his shoulder more tightly.

He was going to do something stupid. She could sense it. Was there any way to stop him, without hurting or embarrassing him? She didn't want to emasculate him in front of Kurt. But neither did she want to see him get hurt. Or start something they couldn't finish.

To her surprise, she felt his skin cool.

"See you in temple," Mike told Kurt. Then, with that, he gave Patty's hand a gentle squeeze and took them back to her family's villa.

"Thank you," she said, hugging him as tightly as she could now that her abdomen looked like a watermelon. "That could've got ugly."

Mike smoothed her hair back and kissed her forehead. "I'm sorry he's being such a jerk. And sorry we can't do anything about it because of his mother."

"Forget it," Patty said. "Doesn't matter."

She only wished she believed her own words.

#

"Yes, yes, YES!" Gabby screamed as Eric slammed into her faster and faster and faster. Her nails dug deep into his biceps and the legs wrapped around his waist squeezed so tight that he feared she might cut him in half. Her womb held him in a vice grip, almost as if her body refused to give him enough leeway to slide in and out of her, however much she claimed to want him to do so. "Fuck me! Fuck me hard, baby. Mommy needs that dick!"

Until his mother had begun to swell with their child, Eric had never found the idea of having sex with a pregnant woman to be remotely appealing. But each and every day, he found himself stunned at how irresistible he found his mother. If anything, he found her more attractive than ever. The thought that the purebred son grew within her, not far from where his fat cock was currently poking, drove him insane with lust.

His mother's eyes rolled back in her head and her eyelids began fluttering like the wings of a hummingbird. The words coming out of her mouth became a incoherent, replaced by a stream of moans and sighs. Her upper body went limp, her hands falling away from his shoulders. Whatever energy this freed up was redirected into the intense, violent spasms that were taking place below the waist.

Her floodgates opened, and energy rushed into him. Wave after wave crashed against his inner self, threatening to drag him under and carry him away. It was all he could do to stand there and absorb it. To drink in his mother's potent energy.

When Eric regained control of his senses, he saw his mother quickly drifting off to sleep, a goofy grin on her face.

"I love you, Mom," he said, planting a soft kiss on her forehead.

"Mmmmee doo," she mumbled in response.

Eric laughed, kissed her again, then covered her with the blanket. For a few moments, he studied his mother, lying there so peacefully. He felt warm and happy. Nothing could be more beautiful. With a contented sigh, he turned out the light and left their bedroom.

With Patty and Mike down by the beach, the villa was as good as empty. Of late, Eric found that stranger and stranger.

When he lay awake in bed at night, listening to his mother breath, he heard the sounds of their baby cooing, or little feet padding down the hallway. When he closed his eyes, he saw their son playing happily with his toys, spittle running down his cute little chin.

It was strange. He hadn't thought it would feel so real to him this soon. Their child had yet to be born, yet Eric felt as though little James had been a part of their lives forever.

He didn't care what he'd told Nick. If the Eternal Garden tried taking his son, there would be war. Against his father, against his aunt, against all the ancients and their heavenly hosts if need be. No one, not no one, was going to take James away from him and Gabby.

"Eric?" a soft voice whispered as he came down the stairs.

He almost jumped at that.

"Sorry," Olivia said, coming into view. "Didn't mean to scare you."

"You didn't," he said.

His cousin gave him a sad smile. "Can we talk?"

Why were her eyes watery? Was she shaking, or was that just his imagination turning the quivers in her Libido into something more physical?

"Of course," he said.

Liv nodded, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, and led him into the kitchen, where her half-empty mug of coffee and half-full ashtray awaiting her return. She poured some of the tepid stuff into another mug and handed it to him, but she didn't offer him a smoke as she lit one up for herself.

Eric wasn't interested in either anyway. "What is it?" he asked. "If that little shit has hurt you-"

"No, no, nothing like that," she said. Her blue eyes avoided his.

That was when he noticed what she was wearing. Loose-fitting pastel blue pajama pants and a tight pink tank top. The kind of thing she might have worn back in the Playground. Not the white and gold attire of the Illuminated. She looked more like a frightened little girl than a majestic, angelic being of pure beauty.

"Who then?" Eric asked, laying a hand on her shoulder.

"Oh, it's him alright," she said. "But it's not what he's done to me. It's what he's planning to do to you. Or one of you, anyway."

Eric's jaw clenched tight.

"I overheard him and Mom talking," Liv continued. "They didn't think I was there. At least, I assume they didn't. They'd never tell me that they were planning something like this. Think I'm too soft. Not committed to helping our family move up in the world."

He was tempted to point out that he was her family. That whatever had driven her to come here and warn him, it wasn't a lack of concern for her family. But he could reassure her that she'd done the right thing later. For now, he'd just let her say what she had to say. To judge by her trembling lower lip, nervous eyes, and all the coffee and cigarettes she'd apparently gone through while waiting for him, it wasn't going to be easy for her.

"They're not just going to take one of your children to be raised in the sunlit fashion," she said. "They're going to kidnap the child, fake its death, and give it over to grandpa."

"Why?" Eric asked. "Can't you have children of your own?"

"Yeah, they...we can," she said, sounding a little hurt at the implication that she belonged in the same category as her brother, mother, and grandfather. "But Grandpa couldn't, wouldn't, use any children my mother or I have the same way he will one of yours. He'd be too attached. Our children would be family."

A queasy feeling came over Eric. "What does he plan to do?"

Liv toked heavily on her cig then looked him in the eye, at last. Silence reigned for a moment, then his cousin said, "Produce a Guardian of the Gate."

"A what?"

The smoke billowed out her nostrils. "A castrated, mindless warrior to stand watch over the entrance to the innermost circles of Solopolis."

Eric covered his forehead. "What for?"

"Does it matter?" Olivia asked.

He hesitated a moment before shaking his head.

He got the picture. Their family's standing in the Eternal Garden would rise, for some reason or other, if they trained one of these Guardians. They wouldn't do that to their own, but a child of Summer? A lesser immortal? Totally different story.

"We can't let that happen," he said.

"Course not," Liv replied.

For just a moment, he wondered if he could trust her. If she was capable of feeding him a bullshit story to bait him into falling for some trap of her brother's. But he didn't think she was. Not because she cared more for him than for her brother. She wasn't choosing him over Kurt. Undoubtedly, she knew that he was in love with his mother, and that she couldn't get in the way of that. No, it was just that his cousin wasn't the type of person to assist in a plan to kidnap and castrate a child, to raise it like a guard dog, no matter what feelings she might previously have had for the person asking her to do so.

"Thank you," he said, kissing her on the cheek.

Liv gave him a nervous smile as she puffed away at her smoke. "So. Now what?"

"We demand that the king sever his alliance with the Eternal Garden and inform your mother that she is no longer welcome here," Eric said.

"And if he refuses?" his cousin asked.

If Olivia had noticed that he'd only singled out her mother, she didn't give any indication. "Then I guess it'll be time for a new king."

The others would back his play this time. They'd have to. Their unborn children were at risk too. But even if they didn't, it wouldn't change anything. He was tired of living in fear. Tired of seeing the effect it was having on his mother and his sister.

"I'll go back to the temple," his cousin said, her voice suddenly firm. "Be more use to you inside. Should it come to that."

Eric nodded. He ran his hands through her hair and stared into her golden orbs. The intensity he found there almost frightened him.

If the sunlit delegation refused to leave peacefully, his cousin would indeed be a great asset. Fierce, powerful, and perfectly positioned to take them from behind.

"You wouldn't have a problem with that?" he asked, knowing the answer.

Liv hesitated only a moment before saying, "No." A heavy sigh came before the rest of her answer. "Fuck. It hurts to say that." She fretted at her lower lip. "I love the kid, you know? I don't know how he got so screwed up. When he first started changing, I liked the new Kurt. Seemed like he'd finally grown some backbone. But now he scares me as often as not." She closed her eyes. "And Mom. Geez. I don't know how stable I'd be, after going through what she did. After being raised by her father."

"I miss him too," Eric said in response to her unspoken words.

Olivia looked at him flatly.

"Not as much as you do, though," he added.

A wan smile.

"He was a good man."

"Everything fell to shit after he left," she said.

After he left? Had her father's death hit her so hard that she couldn't even say aloud what had happened to him?

"I just wish it could all go back to the way it was," his cousin continued. "Kurt would be a lovable little goof again. Mom would be a little neurotic, but not batshit crazy. And I could lie in Daddy's arms, without a care in the world."

Eric didn't know what to say to that. So he simply kissed the top of his cousin's head.

"If they...if we have to...what's going to happen to me?"

"There'd be a place for you here," he said.

What more could he say? She didn't expect him to tell her that they'd be together, did she? He had real feelings for her, but nothing like the ones he had for his mother.

His cousin gave no reply. Just leaned her head against his chest.

#

Her father came up behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders.

Annie jerked forward, out of his hands. The magazine she'd been pretending to read fell to the floor as she twisted around to look back at him. "Is it true?"