by V. K. Ludwig
“Look at me,” he said and slowed down his thrusts, turning them into an intense rubbing against my clit. “You’re my wife, and nobody will ever take you from me.”
His voice shook, and his face turned into a grimace of pain and relief as my body vibrated in response.
I slung my arm around him, pulling myself against his chest, my orgasm ripping through the clouds of our past. All the while, he emptied himself inside of me, leaving nothing behind — nothing but love, protection and an unbroken bond between us.
Chapter 27
Rowan
The morning sun touched Darya at the right angle, painting her face with peace and contentment. A knotted strand of hair rested on her shoulder.
If her snowmobile hadn’t broken down only a few miles outside the village, she probably would have gotten away, leaving me behind with the heartbreak I would have deserved. And her daughter — a sacrifice I would have never accepted, but one that deserved my gratefulness, nonetheless.
“I know you’re staring at me,” she whispered without opening her eyes. “I can literally feel your eyes on me.”
I placed the softest kiss onto her forehead. “Of course. I gotta keep an eye on you from now on. Rumor has it you suffer from wanderlust.”
“Very funny.”
She stretched her arms above her head, the wool blanket covering less than half of her beautiful breasts.
I rolled myself on top of her and caressed her nipple with my tongue, my cock waking up for good and growing hard between the hollow of her covered legs.
“Mmh,” she moaned. “What are you doing?”
“Loving my wife.”
“Can’t you do that after breakfast?”
She tossed onto her side. Something she clearly didn’t think through.
I spooned myself behind her and wrapped my arm around her, my hand cupping her breast and gently kneading it.
“That depends,” I whispered in her ear. “You gonna burn the bacon again?”
She gave a tired smirk. “Maybe.”
“You did it on purpose, right? To piss me off?”
Her ass moved away from me faster than I could grab for it. She turned around and put a quick peck onto my lips, then sat on top of me and ground herself against me. “Maybe.”
She rubbed herself on my boner, her beautiful body arched back, giving me a stunning view at my gorgeous wife. Over a year ago we could have resolved the issue if I would have been man enough. Instead, we wasted a year apart from each other. That’s how long it took me to grow into the man she deserved; then some.
Coos and babbles made us turn our heads at the same time. Rose banged her caterpillar rattle against the rail of her crib. Nothing but a fair warning, because soon she’d cry for her breakfast.
“I’ll get her,” Darya said, climbed off me and hurried over to the crib. She pointed at my erection. “How about you collect yourself, while I fix her a bottle and see if I can find some eggs.”
My white bathrobe hung lazily across her shoulders, and she rolled up the sleeves what must’ve been seven times. No matter how much she tightened the belt, the thing seemed to swallow her whole. Not to mention the way she dragged two feet of excess fabric across the floor and out of the bedroom, Rose clinging to her hip.
“Scrambled or over easy?” came from the kitchen.
“Neither.” I got up and stretched my body, my muscles lighter than they had been in a long time. “Make it sunny side up for me, please.”
I grabbed the nearest sweater I could find and pulled it over my head when a knock on the door made me look around, combined with a familiar voice.
“You dressed, chieftain?” River asked, his shadow looming at an appropriate distance behind the half-open door. “Can I come in?”
I looked down at the tent in my briefs, not entirely broken down yet. “Not unless you want to be impressed. Give me a second. I’ll be right out.”
I pulled fresh sweatpants from the closet and got dressed, joining River and my two girls in the kitchen. The room filled with what a lazy Sunday should smell like, plenty of butter and a hot iron skillet. River didn’t seem to notice, however, and his eyes remained focused on the blue flame of the range.
“It’s a bit early to rule a Clan, don’t you think?” I gave him a manly pat on the back, grabbed a plate, and offered it to him. “Had breakfast yet?”
“Nah, I’m good,” he said, his eyes still locked on the fire glistening underneath the skillet for a few more seconds before he turned to look at me. “Adair came back half an hour ago. Said he needed a shower first and asked me to give a heads-up before he gives you a detailed report.”
“So? Did he find anything that might give us a clue as to what the hell is going on out there? Any trace of the pastor?”
“No sign of him. But… they found bones.” He said it quickly as if the words alone drove fear into him.
“What do you mean with they found bones?” I placed the plate on the counter. “People from the Districts aren’t exactly skilled hunters. Where would they get the meat from?”
His eyes turned flat, and he jerked away from the stove. “They were human bones, Rowan. Burnt black, like the surrounding area. Around seventeen feet. Perhaps a bit more.”
“I’ll change her diaper,” Darya said, turned the flame off and hurried out of the room, puffed cheeks hiding behind her palm.
A chill licked over my bare neck, the draft coming from underneath the front door more noticeable than ever. It drove the cold right into my marrow. A lot of gasoline is needed to burn a corpse down to the bone.
“Max’s dad?”
“They don’t know,” he said, his voice sounding more and more distant. “Adair said it was a femur, and appeared to belong to a woman. But he can’t say for sure. Said he needed to come back with shovels and other equipment, to see what exactly happened.”
“I won’t let him go down there a second time. And to be clear, neither will you.” I wiped my sweaty palms on the kitchen rag and leaned my backside against the counter. I always knew being a chieftain was a shitty job but… damn… it turned worse by the day. “Over there, people are being burned a few miles away from the District’s gate. Over here, guys can’t wait to stab a knife in my back. Fucking shit.”
“Yeah, things went to hell the moment Ayanna set foot into our village.” His shoulders dropped, and his gaze went from flat to lifeless. “Sometimes, I feel responsible for all this mess. If I wouldn’t have fallen in love with —
“Bullshit,” I said. “You can’t choose whom you fall in love with. And even then, it wouldn’t have changed my sister bringing Max. We knew the high roll with the council wouldn’t last forever. Guess we didn’t expect it to be this bad.”
The floor creaked. Darya was listening around the corner.
“What are you planning to do?” River asked.
“Talk to Adair, I guess. Maybe he’s got more details. I might drive down there myself. As long as we don’t know who that person was or what happened, there’s no reason for me to do anything.” I couldn’t hide the big breath I took, the volume of it wearing down on my shoulders. “I know Max wants answers, but right now, I need to concentrate on keeping myself and my family alive. How’s Ayanna doing?”
“You know, the usual. Morning sickness now and then. We keep a stack of cookies on the stool beside the bed. It helps if she takes a nibble before she gets up.”
“And you?” I asked, boring my eyes into him. “How are you doing?”
The corners of his mouth lifted into a smile. “I feel like I’ve finally come home.”
“Good.”
“I’ll leave you to it,” he said and stepped outside into the cold, sunny morning. “Let me know if you need anything.”
The door hadn’t fallen back into its lock yet when Darya showed up from behind the corner, her eyes red and her cheeks blotchy.
“Things are bad again, Rowan,” she whimpered, pressing herself and Rose against me.
“
Not bad. Just not as good as we want them to be.” I cupped her face and dried the few remaining tears from the corners of her eyes, then I stroked my hand through Rose’s light-brown hair. “As long as I have you two, everything will be alright.”
This concludes Clan of the Woodlands - The Chieftain (#3). If you liked this book, do this indie-author a favor and leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. It matters more than you’ll ever know! I have included the first pages of book #4 The Jerk for you, so go ahead and flip the digital page!
Coming soon…
The Jerk
Chapter 1
Adair
Trails of old heat drifted from the black soil around us, fine particles of ash swirling around at each step we took. Wherever the pastor was, it wasn’t here.
The dead, white embers clung to West’s dark skin and left his face speckled-looking in the cold light of my headlamp. “I still don’t get why you made us walk down here,” he said, pushed two fingers into the collar of his jacket and rubbed the area along his neckline. “You said Rowan wants us scouts to observe from the tree-line. If someone spots us out here, there’s no cover left to hide.”
A few trees had remained, their trunks covered in a black crust at the bottom, which turned from gray to white the farther up my eyes went.
Their needles had either gone up in flames or hung curled from blackened twigs. Branches loomed over us, naked and weak, threatening to fall and deal concussions at any moment now. The wind hung still, yet the trees creaked and moaned.
I walked to the center of the smoldered area and placed my hand on the small boulder. Still warm. “Because all we can see from the forest is a big, burned area. The satellite photos showed us that much already. I’m not leaving here until we found pastor William or at least a clue.”
“Well, there’s no pastor here I can tell you that. What exactly are we looking for, then?”
I shoved the ash around with the flat of my boots. The little flakes roiled into the night, soon chaffing the skin along my collar and arms. “Pots and pans. Parts of a tent, silverware, or water containers. Anything made of metal, so go tell Glenn to get the detector out, or it’ll take us forever. We need to be out of here before the sun comes up.”
“I’m on it,” he said and walked over to the other scout.
They began hovering the metal detector from left to right across the ground, the static rustle sending shivers down my sweaty spine. A dark feeling brooded over this area, sustained by the sulfurous odor which clung to the damp, caked ash.
“Check close to the trees as well,” I said. “If someone had a camp here, it should’ve been over there.”
I walked the area in a spiral starting from the center, leaving behind walls of soil and ash as I shoved my feet through the layers.
A hollow thump crept into my ears, and the tip of my boot excavated a long branch. It rose and stood there in all its length for a fraction of a second, dusted gray and frail-looking, then fell back into the ash.
A flicker of my headlamp stroked its surface, sending the pit of my stomach into a twitch. The more I stared at it the more it turned from powder-gray to off-white, with rounded parts at the edges. It almost appeared as if it belonged to something, like a key which joined into a lock we hadn’t found yet. No branch ever did that.
I kneeled down beside it but didn’t dare picking it up. With a rag from my backpack, I cleaned the surface off the ash, and tiny pores came into view. The more I cleaned it, the more bile pushed onto the back of my tongue, turning my mouth bitter and my mood black.
A loud beep ripped my eyes off it and let them dart to Glenn and West, who had stopped in their tracks and let their fingers rake through the ground.
“We got something,” Glenn shouted. “Looks silver like a coin or, no…”
“What is it?” I asked.
His moonlit outline held something in the palm of his hand, my headlamp doing little to offer more clues. Glenn leaned over his shoulder, cocking his head from one side to the other, both their eyes examining their find.
“A small cross,” West said.
“For a necklace or bracelet,” Glenn added. “Look! It had that little loop down there for a chain or thin rope.”
“Bring it over here.” I pushed myself up, my knees weaker than I liked. “I found something as well.”
They stood and walked over to me, their eyes still glued to the tiny, silver object. West stretched out his palm and I took the cross between my fingers, fully intact but with streaks of deep copper and emerald blotching the surface.
“You think it belonged to the pastor?” West asked. “This is a Christian cross, isn’t it? Didn’t you say pastors are Christians?”
“Yeah. But that doesn’t mean it belonged to him.” I said. “Max should be able to confirm if this was his or not. Put it in a bag and make sure you won’t lose it.”
“Maybe a fire broke out and he had to leave in a hurry and dropped it? Why else would he leave it behind?” Glenn asked.
“I’m not so sure he left it behind.” I pointed at the dug-up object next to me on the ground. “And there’s a chance it belonged to someone else.”
West’s headlamp touched the porous surface, now all the more revealing what it truly was. He shuffled back a step, his eyes bulging from their sockets. “Is that a bone?”
I grabbed in front of my chest and pulled the gun from my holster, then kneeled down once more and turned the bone around with its barrel. “Uh-huh. A femur, to be precise.”
“The pastors?”
“I doubt it, but it’s definitely from an adult. The joint circumference is rather small compared to the length. And the joint angle tells me this belonged to a woman.”
“Are you sure?” Glenn asked.
“No.” I flipped my backpack onto my chest, rested it on my thigh, and pulled out one of my shirts I brought with me, just in case. I picked up the bone with it and wrapped it tight before I carefully placed it in the big compartment. “It’s what I remember from my human anatomy class, but it’s been a while. Hazel should be able to tell us if it belonged to a female, or if it might be pastor William’s.”
Glenn flung a hand onto his mouth and turned away, but there was no hiding how he suppressed that one swallow which would send him barfing all over the place. In the end, it pushed over the rims, and he ran away toward the trees, pieces of undigested dinner dripping from his fingers.
West lowered his face, the way he sucked in his cheeks the only visible thing remaining. “An accident, perhaps?”
“In an open area like this?” I asked, my shaky voice lending itself as the prequel of a sad truth. “This was a big fire, but not big enough to burn a corpse down to bone. No, considering how much fuel it takes to keep that much heat up, I can tell you this wasn’t an accident. Someone helped.”
“The council?”
“Anything could have happened here. Get Glenn some water so he can clean himself up. We can’t go back until we have more clues.”
I continued on my spiral path, each step turning the air inside my lungs dry, and depleted by whatever fire had raged here only a few days ago.
This place made the hairs along my arms stand up straight like any fresh battlefield would, but it looked nothing like it and lacked the smell of iron and the blood nourishing the ground.
There were no signs of struggle. No bullets in the trees or dull blades frozen into the ground.
Just silence.
And a darkness looming over the area which spread even farther than the burnt borders, the little bit of wind we had whistling through the few branches, with no shrubbery left to tame it.
“Did we bring shovels?” I shouted over to the scouts and tracked the ground for hints.
Disturbed soil.
Traces of digging.
Anything.
“Nope,” Glenn responded, still holding one hand close to his mouth as if the nausea hadn’t receded yet. A clear indicator he might stay on as a scout for life. Reality qui
ckly caught up with everyone who ventured beyond the territory of our Clan — not everyone could stomach it.
“I should have thought of that,” I said. “Why would there be a single bone in the center? Where is the rest of whoever this person was?”
Glenn looked up from the display of the metal detector and gave a loaded cough. “You don’t think someone ate this person, do you?”
“Nah, I never heard of anything like that happening. We have a lack of women, man, not a lack of food.”
He nodded repeatedly as if the movement reassured and calmed him at the same time. “Right. Good. It’s good you never heard of anything like that before.”
“How’s it looking over there by the trees? Nothing else other than the cross?”
“Nothing,” West said, lazily pushing his boots across the surface as if he had no intention of finding anything else. I couldn’t blame him. “Chieftain Rowan should send some of the fighters down here and —”
“Shut up,” I said and pointed at the ground. “Down. Down. Everyone down. Flat on the ground. Lights out!”
The rapid movement sent a swirl of ash into my eyes, turning the scheme of a vehicle into nothing but a moving shadow.
“Who’s got the Pathfinder?” I asked.
“I got it,” came back from West.
“Vehicle ahead one-o’clock. Tell me what you see.”
“Ehh…” He fumbled through his gear. “A truck.”
“I know that, shithead. What kind? Got a grill guard or anything on top? What’s the model?”
“It’s got a flatbed, but no grill in the front and nothing on top. Looks like a Sierra to me but I could be wrong. They’re slowing down.”
With each mile the truck slowed, my pulse picked up twice the speed and pumped adrenaline through my veins. Nobody wanted to see a vehicle out here, but especially not one that was slowing down.