by Amira Rain
"Then we'll just stay down here with you for hours."
Blaine's gruff, gravelly voice, combined with what he'd said, just made me sob harder, no huge surprise, and I buried my face in his chest.
However, very soon, as he continued stroking my hair, and as Nick began slowly rubbing my back with a firm hand, something started to shift. I started to get the feeling that the living thing inside me had finally made its way out. My tears began to slow, becoming more periodic sniffling than outright crying.
About this time, I felt Nick seeming like he was trying to pull me from Blaine's arms to his own, and Blaine let me be pulled, pressing the briefest, lightest of kisses on the top of my forehead while he did so, making fresh tears fall down my cheeks for some reason. But only a couple of fresh tears. And once I was in Nick's arms, with the side of my face against his chest, Nick wiped one away with the pad of his thumb.
While he smoothed my hair, rocking me almost imperceptibly over the next minute or two, my sniffles decreased and then finally stopped. It was over. All the tears I'd bottled up over the course of two years had all finally, finally come out and had all finally, finally stopped. With help from the men of the magical tear-drying chests, I thought, actually almost laughing.
Nick seemed in no hurry to push me out of his arms, though, and I just continued to rest with the side of my face pressed against his hard pecs, reveling in the feeling of being wrapped in strength and safety. However, after a little while I began to feel incredibly warm and drowsy.
I lifted my face to look at Nick, afraid I might fall asleep and hold up the rest of the group, if they hadn't all already continued on by now.
"I think I'm ready to keep going on now. Thank you. And thank you, too, Blaine."
Nick responded by pressing a light kiss against my cheek, and as I'd expected, Blaine responded with a grunt, making me realize that I was almost beginning to find his grunts somehow charming.
Fighting a smile, I extricated myself from Nick's arms, so that I could look at Blaine. "I'm sorry I nicknamed you Mud Bucket. That wasn't very nice."
To my surprise, he now almost looked like he was fighting a smile himself. "I didn't mind. I was actually starting to get a little used to Mud Bucket. Wouldn't mind if you still wanted to call me that sometimes...maybe when it's just you, me, and Nick."
Unable to fight my smile any longer, I just let loose with it. "All right. I think I'd like that. Mud Bucket."
Cracking a smile himself, he looked away in an almost bashful sort of way, which just endeared him to me further. Although when he returned his gaze to my face, his expression was completely serious.
"I'm sorry I called you an ice queen. I didn't mean it. And even then, I didn't believe it."
Willing my suddenly-misty eyes to just dry the hell up for good, I said it was okay. "I can see how I might have come off that way."
Sitting side by side in the sunlit forest, the three of us briefly fell silent, but then Nick kind of loosely, casually took one of my hands in his own and spoke in a quiet voice.
"I think I speak for both Blaine and myself when I say that we're both so very sorry that you lost your sisters, and that you had to find out about it how you did, and so long after."
Staring at my shoes, I nodded. "Thanks."
Nick gave my hand a little squeeze before speaking again. "Do you feel like you might want to tell us some about your sisters right now?"
I took a deep breath, realizing that I did. "Well...I guess the first thing to say is that Jessica and Ebony weren't my biological sisters, but they may as well have been. We grew up skating together, we were all only children, and we always called ourselves sisters...and we were probably honestly closer than many biological sisters. We always called each other heart sisters. And when we were maybe six or seven, we even went around telling people that we weren't just sisters, but triplets.
“Not many people bought that, though, since Jessica was Korean-American, Ebony was African-American, and then there was me, a blue-eyed blonde of French and English descent."
Recalling our childhood ruse, I cracked a smile, glancing over at Blaine and Nick, and they both chuckled quietly.
Gazing back on my shoes again, I continued, recalling my two sweet sisters. "Jess and Eb were both just gorgeous, inside and out. Eb even won a few state-level beauty pageants in her late teen years. She wasn't just beautiful, though. She was just...so, so goofy and funny. The funniest, silliest person I've ever met. I couldn't not laugh when I was around her. She made everyone smile. She was so big-hearted and generous, too, making friends wherever she went.
“To boil it down, she was beautiful, inside and out. And same with Jess...she just had the most loving, radiant personality. She was always the first to help...with anything, no matter what it was, or who it was for. She'd just always say, 'How can I help?' and then got right to work doing whatever it was that was needed."
With a little ache in my chest, I paused, wondering if I'd ever be able to think about my sisters without hurting. "Jess and Eb were also very talented singers, and they'd already started on a very promising career as a country music singing duo in Nashville when the virus hit. They'd wanted me to come with them, but I just couldn't. We had big plans for the future, though.
100“After my final Olympics, and once their singing career was really up and off the ground, we were going to start taking lots of long vacations to all these tropical destinations together, hopefully with our husbands. We all wanted to get married around the same time and all have kids around the same time so that we could raise them as cousins and have them be really close.
“And even after the apocalypse happened, I guess I thought there was still a chance...that maybe someday...maybe some version of that dream could all work out...maybe just minus all the exotic vacations. And now...I guess it's probably going to take some time for me to fully realize that our dream of having families around the same time and having our families and kids be so close is never going to happen.
“I understand with my brain that Jess and Eb are gone, but it's going to take some time to get it through my heart probably."
Nick commented that Jess and Eb sounded like the most wonderful, loving sisters a woman could have asked for, and Blaine grunted in agreement.
Suddenly misty once again, I said thanks, sniffed a little, and then thanked them both for listening to my memories. "I guess we should probably rejoin the group now...before we all find out if I have a secondary reserve well of tears somewhere deep inside of me."
Nick and Blaine both got up first, then simultaneously extended hands to help me up.
Once on my feet, I didn't let go of their hands, deciding to say something that had just kind of bubbled up in my mind. "Before we all head back up the ravine, I just want to tell the two of you something."
Nick said to go right ahead. "You can tell us anything."
I hesitated for just a second or two, choosing my words. "I just want to tell you both that I don't know yet what I want to ultimately happen between the three of us. And that's it, I guess. Just that I might be...open to...well, certain future-type things in the future, I guess...things that I've heard are pretty common in Helena...and of course, providing that the two of you are also ultimately open to the idea of certain future-type things in the future.
“But as for me right at this moment...I really don't know for sure yet exactly what I'm thinking, because everything's still so new. And also because up until an hour ago, I had plans to try to escape Helena the first chance I got, to be completely honest. I was really trying not to think much about the two of you in regards to me, and in regards to different things about Helena."
Somewhat to my surprise, Blaine responded first. "I think we both want you to take all the time you need getting to know us. Nick and I are both patient men. We've both spent a lot of time waiting for a special, certain kind of woman to come along...one that we both think we might be able to spend the rest of our lives with. So, just know that
there's no problem taking things day-by-day.
“In the meantime, you can get to know us a little better, and us you. And then, at some point in the future, we can talk again."
I'd liked every single thing that he'd said, and I gave him a little smile, kind of melting beneath the feel of him tracing slow circles on the back of my hand with his thumb. "That all sounds good to me. And what about you, Nick?"
He smiled, giving my other hand a squeeze. "Sounds good to me."
I ended up getting out of the ravine by way of riding on his muscular back, clutching his thick mane, while he was in his lion form. When we emerged out on the road, I was a bit tickled to see Tracy enjoying a similar animal ride, though on the back of a shaggy gray wolf that I had a feeling was either Trent or Donovan.
Nearby, another gray wolf ambled around kind of aimlessly, almost as if waiting for his turn to give Tracy a ride, and I figured that this wolf was the one of Tracy's two suitors who was not currently giving her a ride.
She, Elisa, Kathy, and I all finished the trek to Helena on the backs of our respective shifters. And by the time we approached the high steel gates of the community, I was smiling.
CHAPTER TEN
Kind of out in the middle of nowhere, the walled village of Helena had actually been formerly known as Helena Estates, a planned housing community, as a wide carved stone pillar at least ten feet tall just inside the steel gates proclaimed.
As Elisa told Tracy and me, the development, which contained a hundred or so fairly modest yet still very nice homes, had been built a year or so before the virus, to accommodate a large influx of new workers who'd been hired at some kind of a manufacturing plant in a town called Cambridge, which was about four miles northeast.
Sadly, though most of the houses had been inhabited, it didn't seem like any of the residents of Helena Estates had survived the apocalypse. Either that, or the survivors had bolted the community early on, possibly in search of food.
When Nick, Blaine, and their group of wanderers and fellow shifters, mostly all men, had first come north from Georgia, they'd found Helena Estates completely overrun by Bloodsuckers, and unusually strong ones, thousands of them, as if they'd all been drawn into the development for some reason.
Most of them hadn't gotten inside the houses yet, though, or caused any real unrepairable damage to the community. So, with thoughts of wanting to establish a base where people could have some semblance of a normal life and raise families, Nick had decided it would be well worth it to drive all the Huskers from the development, killing as many as possible.
After that, so that the village could be a place of relative safety and peace, the gates and walls had gone up, no easy feat at all, since the gates were solid steel and the walls were wood-and-steel. All the materials for this Herculean project had to be scavenged and hauled in from all over the state, which in and of itself had taken months. Construction of a steel-framed guard tower just inside the gates had taken an additional month.
Since Nick, Blaine, and the other men had to go check in with all the other shifters who'd remained behind in the village, Elisa volunteered to give Tracy and me a tour and introduce us to some people. Saying that she had a headache and was just generally travel-weary, Kathy declined to join us on the tour.
First, Elisa led Tracy and me on a walk to see all the houses, which, as she'd said, were fairly modest yet still very nice homes of varying sizes and styles. I really liked that the homes were varied, because this gave the community a more unique look than many housing developments I'd seen, with cookie-cutter houses and postage-stamp lawns all the exact same size.
Along the way, Elisa introduced Tracy and me to several different women and they all greeted us warmly, welcoming us to the community. Fortunately, and somewhat to my relief, none of these women even came close to appearing to be glaring at me, like I was still pretty sure Kathy had done when Nick, Blaine, and I had first met up with the rest of the group.
I still hadn't figured that out, or why some of her comments to me had seemed to possibly hold just a hint of malice. Contrary to my experience, Elisa seemed to have already developed a great relationship with Kathy, calling her "honorary community traveling den mom," at one point in our journey to Helena, which had made Kathy beam, so pleased she actually appeared to be blushing a bit.
I still hadn't figured out the story of why it had appeared she'd been crying the night before, either. I hadn't asked Tracy if she knew, and I probably wouldn't, knowing it was none of my business why Kathy had been crying. I was just curious.
At any rate, I was relieved that she'd shown me compassion and kindness while I'd been having my weeping fit for the ages. I figured that maybe she'd just had to warm up to me a little, and maybe it had taken my crying to bring out her "honorary community traveling den mom" side of her. I could only hope it would continue.
Further along in the village, Elisa introduced Tracy and me to another woman and her two sons, ages five and six. After saying hello, smiling shyly, the boys ran into their house, ran back out, and presented Tracy, Elisa, and me with cookies wrapped in clear pink cellophane, melting my heart.
Not only did these two little boys seem to be exceptionally sweet kids, it had been ages since I'd seen kids, period. I'd really missed them. Tracy told me that there were a couple more in the village, both boys as well, and two women were currently pregnant, one of them with a coveted and much hoped-for girl, a girl who would one day help repopulate the world if she so desired when she became a woman.
As we strolled by more houses, I asked Elisa how the mother knew that she was carrying a girl. "I mean, I know some expectant moms get feelings one way or the other, but how was the baby's gender officially determined without a hospital or a doctor's office or something like that?"
"Oh, we have a doctor's office, complete with ultrasound machine that Nick and Blaine were able to scavenge from a hospital somewhere west of here, along with a ton of other medical equipment and supplies. Our biggest asset, though, is our village doctor. His name is Chris, and he's a regular human man, not a shifter, and-"
"Take me to Chris, please, Elisa. I have to see him right now. I have to see if he's the same-"
"Well, have a look right now. That's him on the porch of his doctor's office-slash-personal residence, right up ahead. Pale blue-gray house."
I was already speed-walking. "Chris!"
I could see him on the porch now, and I could see he was definitely Chris Chris. Chris of the artful stitching job on my hand. Chris of the four-leaf clover. For some reason, maybe because he was one of only a few kind, caring people I'd met during my entire two-year journey, he felt like a long-lost family member to me.
Rising to stand on his porch steps, he peered at me for a second or two before exclaiming my name just as loudly as I'd exclaimed his. Within seconds, we were embracing, simultaneously saying that it was so wonderful to see the other. Then, after several seconds hugging tightly, we both pulled away at the exact same time, asking the exact same thing, which was how the other had come to Helena.
Smiling, Tracy and Elisa said that they'd both leave us to catch up.
Elisa added that I'd pretty much seen everything on the village tour anyway. "There's really just the armory, which is really just a garage, and there's really not much to see since we ran out of ammo months ago. Now it's just a bunch of dusty old guns in there. There's also the community supply cabinet and food storage center to show you, but that can definitely wait for another day."
A short while later, Chris and I were sitting at his kitchen table with steaming mugs of tea, exchanging stories about how we'd each come to live in Helena. Chris told me in brief how his group had been attacked by another group who wanted to steal their supplies. Only he and one other man had managed to survive, and when that other man had continued on to Pennsylvania, Chris had found he just didn't have the heart to travel that far anymore.
"I was just ready to hang my hat somewhere reasonably safe and start to bu
ild some semblance of a normal life again, preferably within a community of like-minded, kind folks. I didn't really know exactly how or where I might meet these like-minded, kind folks, though. So, in a complete black hole of depression, if I'm being completely honest, I just set up camp in the midst of some very dense forestland way to the northeast of here. There was a half-ruined ancient stone cottage that I repaired as best I could with a tarp and other supplies I was lucky enough to have on hand.
“And it was in this little stone cottage, half-starving, that Kathy and her two husbands, Mike and Sam, stumbled across me one day while they were on a trip in search of female survivors to bring here to Helena. Looking out the front window and seeing a woman riding a lion, with a wolf at their side, I at first thought I was hallucinating from hunger. But then the three of them, all in human form now, shared some food with me, and we had a talk, and I begged them to let me come back to Helena with them.