I screamed at the accusation, flying out of bed and grabbing the nearest thing to me, my hand closing around a heavy book on Niall’s nightstand called Forget-Me-Not Bombshell. And it seemed like the perfect weapon in that moment, because they were not going to forget this. I hurled it with all my might and Mateo cursed as it struck his head.
Jack barged past him, striding towards me with a stern look on his face and I slapped at his hands as he tried to grab me.
“Rook,” he growled in warning, but I kept slapping, smacking all his big muscles and his stupid lovely face too.
“The fact that I’m on my period has nothing to do with anything!” I cried.
“Then why are ya upset?” Niall demanded as he and Mateo walked up beside Jack and gazed down at me in concern.
“Because, Niall, I was just innocently scrolling your phone on the Tok-Tik app and I found out something terrible. Something I can never, ever recover from.” I whimpered again as I remembered it, and tears ran down my cheeks.
“Come on, love, it can’t be that bad,” Niall reasoned and a snarl peeled back my lips at his dismissal.
“Maybe it is that bad,” Mateo said quickly, elbowing Niall hard in the ribs.
“Yeah, Niall,” I hissed, shoving him in the chest and he shoved me right back. Then we fell into a shoving war where I pushed his chest and he knocked me away, but I kept coming back, shoving and kicking his shins too. He cursed, grabbed hold of me and flipped me off my feet, throwing me onto the bed.
“Now I’m warning ya.” He pointed down at me as I did a ninja move to get onto my knees and bared my teeth at him. “You need to be a good, Spider, or you won’t get any Pops today. How about that?”
“Explain,” Jack cut in, stepping to his side and Niall shot a surprised look at him.
“Bringing out the two syllable words today, eh big fella?” he asked loudly and slowly. “Clever boy.” He patted his head and Jack gave him a cool look before turning his attention back to me.
I sniffed, looking at AJ then to Mateo as they all surrounded the bed, penning me in. I wiped my tears away on the back of my hand as I composed myself. “If a female ferret goes into heat and she doesn’t mate, she’ll die,” I choked out and they all shared a look before turning their gazes back to me.
“What’s that now, love?” Niall asked, a frown pinching his brow.
“Female ferrets!” I shrieked, leaping off the bed and grabbing hold of the curtains, tearing them down from the window. I balled them up in my fists, shoving the window open and throwing them out. Then I grabbed everything I could around me, hurling it out after the curtains into the rain which was beating steadily down outside. I ripped open Niall’s nightstand next, carrying the whole top drawer to the window just as he collided with me from behind, trying to wrestle it from my grasp.
“No,” I said through my teeth. “It’s mine. Let go!”
“That’s my stuff, you little hellion,” he growled and I looked down at all the things he had in there, from a fancy little knife called Stanley to a shiny broach that had King of the Cuckoos etched into it, a squid pen, a potato, and a small stuffed owl toy.
I released the drawer with one hand, throwing the heel of my palm into his nose and he reared back with swear words falling from his lips. Then I hurled everything out the window, tiny owl and all and Niall lurched forward to try and catch him, his inked hand closing on nothing.
“Owliver!” he yelled as the toy hit the muddy ground.
Mateo wrapped an arm around me, drawing me back against his chest. “This must be about more than some ferret, chica loca.”
“You don’t even care,” I lamented, biting his wrist until he let me go, then I sprang across the bed, ducked under Jack’s huge arm as he tried to grab me and ran out into the hall.
I sprinted downstairs with a sob tearing from my throat as I remembered the fluffy little ferret’s face in the video as the handler man at the zoo had explained about their terrible fate. For him to know that fact, there must have been a lady ferret out there who’d been all horny and needy, and no mate had come for her. Or maybe he’d been trapped somewhere, desperate to reach her, but he couldn’t get out and he knew, he knew in his little ferret soul that his mate would die if he didn’t make it to her. And then he’d probably died too from the heartbreak.
I threw the front door open, running out into the rain, only wearing a pair of big black granny panties and a glittery crop shirt which had a partying weasel on it. And weasels were really just less fancy ferrets. Noooo.
The rain beat down on me, soaking me through as I ran towards the lake, the mud squelching between my toes as I raced all the way to the bottom of the hill. I fell to my knees before the water and stared up at the grey sky, thinking of all the horny little ferret ladies that had succumbed to such an unjust fate.
“Why?!” I broke down, buckling forward and pressing my hands into the mud as my hair swung forward to cover my face. My tummy was ouchie and all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and eat chocolate and bed bread, but now my bed bread was ruined and I’d eaten all the chocolate in the house last night. It wasn’t fair.
“What do you need, Rook?” Jack knelt down at my side and lifted the curtain of hair covering my face so that he could peer in at me. I glanced over my shoulder with a sniff, finding Mateo and Niall arguing back at the house while Brutus barked at them.
I sniffed again, looking out at the lake as the rain made the surface dance with ripples. “I need a hug.”
Jack drew me into his arms and he was so big, he easily tucked me in against his chest, rising to his feet as he held me, just like the time Niall had kicked him out of the house. I nuzzled into his neck, his masculine scent floating over my senses and calming the erratic beating of my heart.
“Maybe you should take the ferret shirt off and put something else on, baby,” Jack suggested, using our special mind connection to communicate with me and I sniffed again.
“It’s a weasel,” I said.
“Oh…well, I can only tell the difference between them and stoats,” he said and I looked up at him with a frown.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“A weasel is weaselly recognised, but a stoat is stoatally different,” he said, his lips twitching with the joke and my eyes widened before I burst out laughing.
“Oh my God, that’s so funny.” I clutched my sides as I laughed and laughed and Jack carried me back to the house with a grin on his face.
Niall and Mateo fell quiet as they spotted me laughing and Mateo tugged the bottom of his jeans out of Brutus’s mouth as he played snappy snaps with him.
“Are you okay now, mi sol?” Mateo asked hopefully.
“Yes,” I said brightly. “Jack told me a joke. Tell them the joke, Jack.”
“He can’t string a sentence together,” Niall scoffed. “He didn’t tell ya nothin’， Spider.”
“He did! There was a weasel and a stoat. And he said that weasels are stoatally cool or something, didn’t you? Tell them, AJ!” I said excitedly, bouncing in his arms, but Jack just gave me a roguish look and I tapped his nose, realising he wanted to keep our secret mind language talk between us.