Chapter 117: Phonecall
"D-Do you really mean that...? You’ll actually love me?"
Jenny’s voice was barely a whisper, her amber eyes glistening with a raw vulnerability that stripped away all her usual cocky defenses. Her face was flushed a vibrant, feverish red, her plush lips parted in an anxious pout as she hung on his every word.
Fredrinn felt his own pulse skip an erratic beat. Seeing the fierce, independent blonde look at him with such unfiltered longing struck a chord deep inside him. He swallowed hard, his gaze darkening with sudden, unmasked desire as he leaned in close.
Beside him, Rose stiffened like a coiled spring. He could feel the sudden tension humming through her frame, but rather than pulling away, Fredrinn simply tightened his arm around the demon’s waist, anchoring her against him with a firm, steady pressure that silently pleaded for her patience.
Jenny watched him advance, her chest heaving beneath her top. Yielding completely to the moment, she closed the remaining gap between them, her eyelashes fluttering shut as she leaned forward, bracing for impact.
This time, there was no hesitation. No teasing pauses.
Fredrinn took her mouth in a deep, bruising kiss.
A sharp, breathless gasp slipped into his mouth as an intoxicating wave of relief and arousal detonated through Jenny’s veins.
Abandoning every shred of self-control, she wound her arms tightly around his neck, tangling her fingers into the short hair at the nape of his neck.
Her elbow brushed against the cold, unnervingly smooth skin of the demon sitting right beside him, but Jenny was far too gone to care.
She clung to him desperately, drinking in his taste until her lungs burned with an agonizing lack of oxygen.
The rest of the world faded into static. She forgot about the rattling diesel engine beneath their feet, forgot about the students huddled just a few rows ahead, and forgot that they were trapped in the middle of a brutal apocalypse.
Fredrinn matched her desperate rhythm stride for stride, his lips demanding and fierce. The subtle, passive aura of his Incubus physique bled directly into the exchange, amplifying the sensation until it felt utterly addictive.
When he finally broke the seal of their lips, Jenny slumped back against the vinyl seat cushion, panting hard as thin strands of saliva broke between them.
Her gaze was completely clouded over in a thick haze of intoxicating lust.
"I-I... like your method of... proposing..." she panted out unevenly, pressing a trembling hand over her pounding chest.
Her limbs felt like liquid. If she had been an ordinary, un-Awakened human woman, the sheer magnetic pull of that kiss would have had her tearing her own clothes off right in the middle of the bus aisle. Just keeping her hands to herself was an Olympic feat of willpower.
Fredrinn let out a low, satisfied chuckle at her dazed reaction. But before he could open his mouth to tease her further, an abrupt, sharp vibration buzzed against his thigh.
He frowned, digging into the pocket of his jeans and pulling out a heavy smartphone. It was Richard’s old device—something he hadn’t touched since setting out on this run.
The caller ID flashed with a single name: Naomi.
Fredrinn swiped to accept the call immediately. The second he brought it to his ear, Jenny snapped out of her romantic daze. Acting on pure instinct, she leaned over his chest, snagged the phone from his grip, and slapped the speakerphone button before he could stop her.
Rose, still curled against his other side, barely reacted. She only stared at the phone with detached, bored amusement.
Her newly boosted mind was currently burning all its processing power on self-control—forcing herself to accept that her husband’s mouth now belonged to another woman as well.
’It’s fine,’ she chanted internally. ’As long as he comes home to me. I just wish I could lock him back in the backseat of that Mustang forever...’
While Rose was lost in her possessive fantasies, the atmosphere between Fredrinn and Jenny turned ice-cold.
A ragged, trembling voice crackled through the phone’s tiny speaker.
"F-Fredrinn...? Where are you?"
It wasn’t Naomi. The owner of the frantic voice was Andrea. And she sounded completely unravelled.
Fredrinn’s brows knit together in a sharp scowl. "I’m already on the road, Andrea. We’re heading back in a bus right now. What happened? Talk to me."
A heavy, suffocating silence hung over the line for several long seconds, punctuated only by the sound of Andrea’s shallow, ragged breathing.
"...Is Max near you?" she asked in a hushed, trembling whisper.
Fredrinn glanced down the aisle toward the very back row, where the man was currently staring blankly out the window, completely oblivious to the world.
"He’s on the bus, but he isn’t near me," Fredrinn answered quietly, his eyes darting to Jenny. "Jenny is right here, though. She’s listening on speaker."
Jenny immediately stomped her foot on his shoes, shooting him a furious, wide-eyed glare that practically screamed: Why the hell did you tell her that?!
Surprisingly, Andrea didn’t react to the revelation in the slightest. Her voice remained chillingly flat, stripped bare of any petty jealousy.
"I see," Andrea muttered, letting out a trembling, broken sigh. "Then whatever you do, do not let Max hear this... but Christine is dead."
The air inside the rear of the bus froze instantly.
Fredrinn’s expression hardened into stone. Beside him, Jenny looked like she had just been struck by lightning.
Christine was dead?
Like a switch violently flipping in her brain, Jenny snatched the phone entirely out of Fredrinn’s hand, shoving the microphone right against her mouth as she shrieked in an urgent, horrified whisper, "What the fuck are you talking about, Andrea?! How is that even possible?!"
"Shut up and let me speak to Fredrinn!" Andrea’s voice snapped back through the speaker, cold as dry ice. "Fredrinn, take your damn phone back. Are you a child? How do you just let someone snatch your phone out of your hand like that?"
Back in the grocery storage room, Naomi was standing beside Andrea with a grim, tight-lipped expression.
She blinked in mild disbelief, staring at Andrea’s commanding tone. Was this woman seriously lecturing a man about phone etiquette when she had literally just wrestled the phone out of Naomi’s own hands two seconds ago?
Fredrinn reached out and smoothly reclaimed the device from Jenny’s trembling fingers, holding it back to his ear. "I’m here, Andrea. Explain. What happened?"
"What I’m telling you is... you need to get your ass back here right now," Andrea said breathlessly, her voice cracking under the strain of pure exhaustion. "Things have completely gone to hell over here. I, Rhea and Naomi are all safe... but nearly four people have already died."