Sole Survivors: Crux Survivors, Book 2 (21 page)

“Holy crap, Aidan, what happened? You were shorter than me when I left!”

“We thought you were dead, Cad.” The redheaded boy stepped back to let his father hold Cadmar. “All the other raiders only stay gone a few months before coming back. It’s been over a year!”

“Well, I’m not dead. And look, I brought friends.”

Cadmar’s father turned as Ross walked up to them. Ross held out a hand, grimaced when he saw it had blood on it and pulled it back. Cadmar’s father reached out and grabbed his hand anyway, shook it hard. “There’s been more blood spilled here than that. You the one Mac told me rescued my boy?”

Ross, squinting in the sunlight, clasped the man’s hand with both of his. “Truth is he rescued me first. He was with a group that took me captive. He freed me so I could take a younger boy with me.”

“He would have taken me too, but it’s a long story, Dad. In fact, I have so much to tell you all.”

His mother stepped forward. “I’m Ellen and my husband is Ryan. What you’ve done here—” She broke off when MacKenzie came out of the front door and paused, her gaze on the girl at the edge of the field. Cadmar’s mother made a harsh sound of grief and jogged to the girl.

Keera slipped her hand into Chase’s. “The girl can’t be alive. That rifle…” She didn’t have to finish. “What’s Tripp doing?”

Tripp walked to stand beside MacKenzie, who had followed Ellen and knelt by the girl. He stood, staring down at her body. Chase flashed back to the bullet hitting her back, the blood…her long blonde hair. “Oh no,” he murmured, keeping Keera’s hand in his as he walked to the small group.

“Tammy’s dead. That motherfucker shot her. Shot her in the back.” Mackenzie reached out and tugged the girl’s shirt down over the mangled and obviously halfway healed D branded into her side. She didn’t make another sound, but tears tracked down her cheeks.

From the back, the teen did look a little like Maggie. Pain tightened his chest as he stared at her frail body, then he laid his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Tripp?”

Tripp looked at him. All the color had drained from his face and his eyes had that awful blank stare—one Chase had hoped was gone for good. Tripp shrugged Chase’s hand off his shoulder and walked back toward the barn. Chase watched him, worried that all the violence and seeing the girl would bring all his grief back to the surface.

“We’re going to have to keep an eye on him,” Keera said, her voice low. She squeezed his hand. “He said something to me the other day about hoping you and I would get together so you wouldn’t be alone.”

All the adrenaline from the fight just drained from Chase’s body. He closed his eyes. “You saw that look on his face before. Remember? I’d hoped so much that it wouldn’t come back.”

“That sort of thing takes time, Chase.”

“But with Cadmar and you…and everyone else, I’d hoped—” He pulled Keera just out of earshot of the others. “I really thought having all these people around him, having a friend, would help.”

“It does help. It will. But that’s not going to happen overnight. Remember when I said I was familiar with this? My husband had these episodes where he’d get so sad, he’d go off by himself. He couldn’t communicate, could barely function. I thought they’d go away when we fell in love, but they didn’t. Sometimes, he’d be gone for days—even longer. A few times I didn’t expect him back.” She wrapped her arms around Chase’s waist and squeezed until he looked at her. “My husband never told me what made him grieve so harshly but I knew he’d lost someone he’d loved before me. You know Tripp’s grief. You share it.”

“I do.”

“And it’s not going to be just you dealing with this all alone anymore. I’m going to be going to New Mexico too, remember? Maybe they have rooms close to each other. I can help keep an eye on Tripp.”

Chase stared into her dark eyes, then pulled her away from the body, from the people grieving over the girl. He didn’t stop for a few yards, then cupped her face in his palms, kissed her softly. “What do you mean by rooms near each other?”

The corner of her full, pretty lips turned up in a way he knew mimicked his own scarred smile. “You saying you want to share a room?”

“A room. A life. Keera, I know you’ll think I’m crazy because we’ve known each other less than a week, but I’m in love with you. I think I was from the minute I saw you fighting in that stupid creek. I knew I was while we were lying in that snake-infested field behind that barn. So yes, I want to share a room with you. I want to share everything with you.”

“I want that too.” She stretched up to kiss him in a way that left no doubt about how she felt.

When Chase finally pulled back to stare down at this wonderful woman who’d given him a chance for a new kind of life, he noticed they had a crowd—standing far enough away to give them some privacy—but still a crowd. Jenna, Ross and Dorian stood together, smiling at them.

Ross crossed his arms, lifted one eyebrow. “I know this is one of those great romantic moments that should be drawn out and end in all kinds of fun, wicked sex, but unfortunately, we need your help.”

Jenna dragged her gaze off the young girl lying so still across the yard, offered them a wobbly smile. “I hate that someone got hurt, but I am glad that you guys are coming to live with us. I know just the rooms you’d like and it’s going to be a little squished with Caddie’s family, but we already know the perfect spot to build them a house and—”

Dorian covered her mouth. Her shoulders slumped.

“I’m glad we’re coming too.” Keera walked over and pushed Dorian’s hand off her friend’s mouth. “Thank you for inviting us to your home.”

Jenna reached out and threaded their fingers together. “It’s going to be your home too now.”

“She’s right,” Ross said. He walked over and clasped his hand on Chase’s shoulder. “But right now, we need to hurry. We have to pack up these people, steal one of the raiders’ trucks and figure out how we’re going to keep a bunch of animals alive on a trip that’s not going to be easy because we can’t go directly home. We can’t risk anyone tracking us.”

Chase started to respond but caught his brother walking up onto the porch to stand next to Cadmar, whose mouth was moving a mile a minute as he talked to his parents. The teen’s body wasn’t on the ground anymore. He’d missed someone carrying her away. Looking around, he assumed they’d taken her into the house. Cadmar didn’t stop talking, but he reached beside him to clutch Tripp’s arm. Tripp stepped closer, his face still pale, but his expression less bleak. MacKenzie walked past him and Tripp watched her. So he was coherent.

That was a start.

Keera came back and his heart swelled at the way she looked at him. Possessive, her dark eyes shining with what looked like true excitement. He lifted his eyebrow.

She shrugged, then gave him a smile that sent all his blood south. He narrowed his eyes, thought about snatching her off the ground and carrying her into one of the barns, then remembered their audience.

Ross was still standing beside him, but now he was laughing. Shaking his head. “Things are sure going to be interesting on our mountain with someone else in the honeymoon phase too.”

Chase held out his hand and Keera took it. She looked okay. Really okay—like maybe she was looking forward to starting a new life with him in a whole new place. He wrapped his arm around her waist as they walked next to Ross, Dorian and Jenna toward the house where his brother and another whole new family waited.

His entire life had changed in the course of a few crazy days. He’d learned he and his brother weren’t alone in this world, he’d made new friends, was headed to a new home and he’d fallen for a woman he couldn’t have created in the best of dreams.

 
Best yet, he’d been reminded that there was so much more to life than mere survival. He was ready to dive into the rest of his.

About the Author

Dani Worth is a writer who loves to explore the boundaries of new worlds, love, desire or anything else that strikes her fancy. Good stories make life fun and she has such a blast writing her own. She’s currently writing sexy stories set in post-apocalyptic, science fiction and contemporary settings. She loves threads of paranormal and urban fantasy. Some of her stories will have pairs and some will have triads—Love is Love.

Dani has lived all over the United States, but currently resides in the Midwest with her family. She’s represented by Miriam Kriss of the Irene Goodman Agency.

Dani is the pen name for Rinda Elliott's erotic romances. Rinda also publishes urban fantasy and more! Look for the Beri O'Dell series coming from Samhain.

You can keep up with Dani at
daniworth.wordpress.com
or on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/DaniWorthWrites
.

Look for these titles by Dani Worth

Now Available:

Crux Survivors

After the Crux

The Kithran Regenesis

Kithra

Replicant

Catalyst

Coming Soon:

Origin

In a lonely, plague-devastated world, it is definitely not every man for himself.

After the Crux

© 2012 Dani Worth

Seventeen years after the Crux Virus wiped out most of the world’s population, Ross is doing what he can to keep his small community safe from raiders in a self-contained artist retreat in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. He’s made a habit of collecting survivors and they’ve all become family, but the most important members have always been Jenna and Dorian.

At fourteen, Ross stumbled into the basement where the nine-year-olds were hiding and the three have been together ever since. Years later, Jenna and Dorian became lovers. Now, at thirty, Ross hopes to find a love of his own on supply runs, but he suffers incredible guilt because his heart has long been snagged by his two best friends.

Alone with his tangled emotions, Ross is about to discover that his friends have their own ideas about their relationship…and how it is about to change.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
After the Crux:

The Devil was in the details.

Ross pulled off his gloves and shoved them into the pocket of his heavy, gray parka as he strode down the hallway to the rooms he shared with Dorian and Jenna. He’d forgotten Jenna’s list. Flexing fingers sore from hauling cans of biodiesel, he grimaced when he saw the muddy prints his boots left on the hardwood floors. He was pretty sure Georgia had cleaned them yesterday. Not that she’d complain.

Late autumn sunlight faded the deeper he moved into the house. The three bedroom wings of the earth-sheltered dwelling were built underground to take advantage of consistent ground temperatures. Whoever had designed the place had been a genius, because the halls grew wider and the underground rooms utilized wide-open spaces to make up for the lack of light. Ross loved the house. Hated leaving it every single time.

Secluded and partially built over a year-round trout stream, the large home had been designed as some kind of artist’s retreat. Best of all, it had been built green, using the stream for year-round power. Located in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, it was hard to reach, especially in winter because no one plowed streets anymore. Hell, most of the roads had been overtaken by tree roots and weeds anyway.

Now that their family had expanded to include a married couple, a single woman and two orphaned kids, Ross was glad he’d chosen this place. Because they were the first here, Dorian, Jenna and Ross had already set up house in the west wing, which had two bedrooms on either side of a big den with a fireplace.

The faint rumble of the truck sounded and Ross grinned. Jake was probably growing impatient. They could have left without Jenna’s list—he had the damned thing mostly memorized—but he wanted a chance to say goodbye again.

He had a weird feeling about this trip, an unsettling rumble in his gut that made him want to skip it. But they were closing in on the winter months, and he really wanted to have one more hydroelectric generator ready to go before the heavy frosts hit. Winter was a real bitch if they weren’t prepared. Years had passed and he could still vividly recall their first cold season here. Never again would they survive on scarce wild game and vitamins eons past their expiration dates.

The Devil, in this case, wasn’t about some overly detailed list of supplies he’d be lucky to find—but his need for another hug goodbye.

It wasn’t the house he had trouble leaving so much as it was the two people he loved more than anything in this world. He’d wanted to take one or the other with him, but Dorian’s talent for healing with herbs meant he needed to stay with the others. Jenna… Well, he doubted he could pry the woman from Dorian since they’d become lovers. But he’d never risk her out there anyway. Not these days.

The sad ratio of female-to-male Crux Virus survivors had turned some roving groups into gangs out for one thing. Their housemate Georgia was heartbreaking proof of how bad it had gotten out there, and the thought of Jenna in that kind of situation made him break out in a cold sweat.

He heard the low moan when he was halfway across the den. He stopped, surprised to hear the sounds coming from the large supply closet off the room. A lacy, blue bra clung to the arm of the couch. His stomach churned and he held his breath. Jenna let out another low moan. Ross closed his eyes. He knew that sound, had heard it before. Muffled, but still sexy and full of something that twisted his heart into knots.