Their Border Lands Destiny [Men of the Border Lands 11] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)
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Men of the Border Lands 11
Their Border Lands Destiny
Can a former cop learn to trust an ex-con to keep their Destiny safe? Can Destiny Fields trust two men with everything including her heart? Marty Oleander and Granger McCall must put aside their differences to keep Destiny safe, but will they be able to convince her to give them a chance with her heart as well? Destiny wants to trust the two men, but how can they share one woman without it tearing them all apart?
Three people alone in a world turned upside down must find their way to safety, building a home together and forging a bond between three hearts. Can jealousies and the fear of losing everything be overcome, or will they admit defeat before they’ve even begun?
Sometimes all it takes is the determination of a good woman and a love so strong it defies tradition to create a happy ending. Destiny is that woman and her men have that love.
Genre: Futuristic, Ménage a Trois/Quatre
Length: 61,260 words
Their Border Lands Destiny
Men of the Border Lands 11
Marla Monroe
MENAGE EVERLASTING
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting
Their Border Lands Destiny
Copyright © 2013 by Marla Monroe
First E-book Publication: November 2013
Cover design by Les Byerley
All art and logo copyright © 2013 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
About the Author
Their Border Lands Destiny
Men of the Border Lands 11
Marla Monroe
Copyright © 2013
Chapter One
Hunger gnawed at her stomach like an angry dog. Destiny Fields couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a decent meal. For most of the last six months, she’d managed on next to nothing as she slowly made her way west, hoping to locate her cousins, who she thought lived in the Montana area. She had nowhere to go and no one else to turn to.
“We’re stopping here for the night, guys. Let’s get camp set up before it gets dark.” Bill, the owner of the supply bus heading for Barter Town, set the parking brake and climbed out of the bus.
Destiny didn’t say a word as she and the other man riding with them began pulling out the cook stove and stacking boxes to make room for them to bed down for the night. It wasn’t safe to sleep out in the open. Not only were there all sorts of desperate outlaws waiting to get the drop on you, but the wolves and other wild animals in the area would tear them up given half a chance.
“You still branching off on your own?” Bill asked as he opened a can of beans and poured it into the boiler on the camp stove.
“Yep,” she said in a low voice.
It wasn’t safe for a woman to travel alone, so she was pretending to be a young teenage boy. There were very few women left in the US since the year of catastrophes had killed so many. The plagues and fevers that followed thinned out even more of the survivors. Some ten years earlier, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, and tsunamis had wiped out whole cities. As far as she knew, it had happened all over the world. Now people lived the best way they could, with many becoming scavengers just to survive.
She’d been living with her aunt and uncle in old Atlanta ever since she’d lost her parents. Then a fire killed them, destroying their home and leaving Destiny all alone in the world. While living with them, she’d remained in the house, never leaving for fear that someone would take her. She was a young woman, making her a priceless commodity in the new world.
“Gonna be awful hard to live out there all alone,” he said.
“Got family not far away from here. I’ll be fine.” She kept her head down, trying to will her stomach not to growl.
“I could use your help in Barter Town. You might find work there afterwards as well.” Bill seemed to be trying awfully hard to get her to stay. It made her uneasy.
“Thanks, but they’ll be watching for me. I need to head out first thing in the morning.”
Bill didn’t say anything more. He stirred the beans and turned to the other man to talk. Destiny ignored them and tried to figure out what she was going to do next. There was no way she was going into Barter Town. She’d heard too many horror stories about the place. Women were chai
ned in brothels and sold like cattle. Fighting was a sport there, and no one was safe. There was no way she would survive in a place like that.
Twenty minutes later, Bill ladled a spoonful of beans onto her plate along with a hunk of dried-out bread. She tried not to devour it in one bite, knowing it could be the last thing she had to eat for a while. When she’d finished eating, Destiny wiped out her plate and helped Bill clean up. They bedded down in the bus, the door bolted closed and the windows shut tight. It was stuffy and warm inside, but it was too dangerous to leave even a crack in the windows that someone could use to get inside.
At twenty-two, Destiny felt years older. It seemed as if she’d spent her entire life hiding, first with her aunt and uncle, never going outside for fear of being stolen, and now, as a teenage boy making his way to family out west. She prayed she found them before she either died of starvation or was found out and taken. The acidic taste of fear made her stomach heave, threatening to reject the meager meal from earlier. She fought back the nausea and tried to make her body relax, one muscle at a time.
She had no idea what was ahead of her, but she prayed she would find a safe place to stay soon. She was exhausted and so hungry. Her breasts ached from being wrapped so tightly to keep anyone from guessing she wasn’t a boy. Nothing had prepared her for living like this. She’d thought having to live her life inside her aunt and uncle’s house for the last few years was bad enough, but this was far worse.
Being alone with no one to trust kept her nerves on edge. She had to watch her voice, keeping it as low as possible, and she had to watch her temper as well. She couldn’t afford to piss someone off. Destiny had no doubts she’d get her ass beaten and run the risk of them discovering she was actually a woman. That would be very, very bad.
Because she was always on guard and didn’t trust anyone, she rarely slept well. It seemed like every creak of the bus or a howl of a wolf or coyote would jar her awake. Tonight was no different since she knew come morning she would be striking out on her own once again. Even though she didn’t trust Bill or the other man, she felt safer being with them than alone in a place she’d never been before.
Get some sleep, idiot. I’m not going to be able to walk far if I’m exhausted. Stop worrying about tomorrow. Nothing I can do about it tonight except try and rest up for it.
Destiny turned over and finally fell asleep.
* * * *
“Hell!” Marty Oleander pulled off the side of the road despite the fact that there were few vehicles on the road anymore. “How in the hell did I pick up something to give me a flat tire?”
Jumping out of the truck’s cab, he walked around to the passenger side of the truck and, sure enough, the back tire was flat as a pancake. One more thing to have to look for in the next town he found. He rummaged around in the back of the truck and located the jack and a wrench. After loosening the lug nuts, he pulled the spare tire from beneath the truck’s bed and then proceeded to change the tire.
Twenty minutes later, he returned everything, but didn’t bother wasting space in the back with the blow tire. It couldn’t be repaired anyway. He left it well off the side of the road and climbed back in the truck. Leaning his head back against the back of the seat, Marty rested a few precious minutes, sipping occasionally from a bottle of water. He felt as if he’d been on the road for months now.
When all hell broke loose almost seven years ago, he’d been a rookie police officer right out of the academy. Less than eight months on the job out of a house in south Chicago, and Marty learned what true anarchy looked like. For the next two years he had tried to continue working to keep innocents safe in the new chaotic state they lived in.
Wave after wave of disasters, including the aftermath of diseases that swept through the city, left people scared and desperate. You became a predator, or you were the prey. Many of his fellow cops had disappeared from one day to the next. Some had just stopped coming to work, choosing instead to protect and take care of their families, while others were never heard from again. Marty figured some had fled the city’s inner turmoil and hostility, but some had probably been killed. Wearing a uniform, now more than ever, made you a target.
As time passed, even his superiors became corrupt, taking bribes in the form of food and supplies to line their store rooms. He kept trying to do the right thing, but when the same man he’d protected with his life only months before tried to kill him one day, Marty gave up, losing his faith in humanity. In his eyes, there was no such thing as innately good anymore. Man was out for what he could get, and to hell with whoever was in his way.
Marty had no close relatives still living. His sister and her family lived in Arizona, if they were even still alive. He hadn’t heard from her since before the disasters had wiped out most forms of communication across the nation. His parents had died in an accident a year before everything went crazy. He’d been dating a nice woman at the time, but when he’d gone looking for her, he couldn’t find her. No one seemed to know what had happened to her. He had no idea if she was still alive somewhere or not.
He had drifted around doing odd jobs to keep food in his belly for a year until he couldn’t take the constant sounds of agony and despondence that never seemed to go away. Now he was heading in the general direction of Montana where he’d heard there were communes of families living off the land there. He hoped he would find peace out there. As it was, he had nothing to lose. Staying in Chicago wasn’t an option anymore. He was slowly going crazy. The screams of women being raped and children going hungry were too much to take.
Marty stretched and started the truck once again. He needed to find shelter for the night. It would be dark soon. He’d slept in his truck a few times, but he didn’t like doing it. Not only was it as uncomfortable as hell, it wasn’t safe. He liked to find an old house or store that had been abandoned so that he could barricade the entrances from the inside.
As he pulled back onto the road, it occurred to him that he’d turned twenty-nine a few days past and hadn’t even thought about it until then. He chuckled to himself. At twenty-nine, he’d thought he would be married with at least one kid by now. His older sister had three. At least she’d had three when he’d last spoken to her. Now he didn’t even know if she or any of her family was still alive.
“No use dwelling on something I can’t do anything about. Concentrate on staying on the road and finding shelter, Marty.” He gripped the steering wheel with both hands, reminding himself not to go above sixty. It was the best speed to conserve gas and still get somewhere before full dark.
Three hours later, he pulled up next to what had once been a country bar and grill, according to the sign out front. He didn’t see any signs of life, but he carried his weapon with him as he checked it out. He had about an hour until sunset and needed to secure the building if he was going to stay there. As much as he would rather have found an old house, the few he’d passed had looked occupied. This was the first building that looked in decent shape and empty since he’d had the flat tire.
He disturbed an armadillo and a nest of rats, but there was no sign of humans or wolves using the place. Marty quickly settled on the storage room as the best place to bed down for the night since there were no windows and the door actually had a deadbolt on the inside. He couldn’t imagine why that was, but he was thankful all the same.
After unloading everything of value into the small space, Marty quickly explored the kitchen and found a few cans of vegetables along with a sack of dried beans. He added them to his stash, laid out his bed, and locked himself inside. When he turned off the lantern, the room plunged into darkness. Every noise in the building seemed magnified with the dark enveloping him. Having lived in Chicago all of his life, Marty still couldn’t get used to the complete darkness of his new world. When the sun set back home now, there was no electricity to illuminate the night. Still, locked down inside a small room without windows was the ultimate in being in the dark. He didn’t like it. Not one damn bit.
&nbs
p; Chapter Two
Destiny was grateful for the new hiking boots she’d gotten back in Atlanta before starting on her trip to find her cousins. The first few weeks had been tough, but now they were well broken in and helped keep her from breaking her ankles negotiating the uneven terrain she had found herself on.
The paved roads would have been much easier to travel, but they also offered the most chance of being attacked. She used an expensive compass and maps to stay on track. While she’d been sequestered in her aunt and uncle’s home for all of those years, she’d spent her time reading and learning everything on survival that she could. Her uncle brought home books from the library every time he ventured out to work or find food, leaving her and her elderly aunt at home.
Even though she’d never actually been camping in her life, Destiny had tons of knowledge catalogued in her brain, finding that she could figure it all out as she went along. She avoided the larger towns and cities where crime ruled. Instead, she kept mostly to herself, only venturing to the smaller towns when she needed supplies she couldn’t scavenge or to work for a place to sleep. Today was one of those times she needed to find somewhere to hole up for a few days, so she could rest and regain some of her strength. The last week had been hard on her after leaving the supply bus to continue on her own.
She’d been heading roughly northwest and hadn’t located a single place that looked safe enough to use as shelter for more than a night. She could tell the weather was about to change, and she didn’t want to be caught out in a storm. More than likely it would cool off some with the rain, which sounded good in theory, but trying to walk through wet vegetation with cooler temperatures was just asking for pneumonia. That was a death sentence for sure.