by Amira Rain
Undaunted, I tried again to take him down, throwing an orb from my left hand this time, hoping that it would be stronger. Very unfortunately, it wasn’t, not that this even mattered. Not used to hurling orbs from my left hand, I’d completely missed my target, sending the orb sailing right past his head. Now, it seemed that my only choice was to run, because the Creeper was now once again running at me, flesh-tearing teeth bared.
CHAPTER 14
Ryan must have heard the scream I’d let out upon first seeing the Creeper, because suddenly, he was charging over in wolf form, snarling, before I even had the chance to run. Hastily backing up against the tree to get out of his way, I screamed again when he leaped directly over my head in order to tackle the Creeper on my other side. At first, just for a fraction of a second, it had seemed that he was intending to tackle me.
While I hid behind the tree, glancing over and seeing that the fight was definitely winding down by the wall, he made quick work of the Creeper, tearing into his flesh in a way that made blood spurt several feet in the air. Once I caught a glimpse of this stomach-churning scene, I didn’t look again until I heard the Creeper stop making a strangled gurgling noise, probably dead.
After shifting back into his human form within a blink, Ryan began running over to me, asking if I was okay.
I nodded. “Yes. Just a little shaken up is all. I ran out of orbs and thought I might be in serious trouble for a second, there.”
He wrapped his strong arms around me, pulling me to his chest. “I’m so glad you’re okay. When I heard you scream, I raced over here as fast as I could.”
“I’m glad you did. You probably saved my life. I’ll never be able to thank you enough, Ryan.”
After pressing a kiss to the top of my head, he said that me being okay was thanks enough. “I don’t think I’d make it if anything ever happened to you. You’ve become the most important thing in my life, and I can’t imagine ever having to live without you. I just want you to be all mine forever.”
Touched by his words, although at the same time just slightly troubled by what he’d said last, I slowly lifted my face from his chest. “You know I’m not all yours, though, right? I’m yours and Eric’s. You both have my heart.”
Frowning a bit, Ryan looked into my eyes for a long moment before speaking. “We have more chemistry, Ellie. You know we do. So, if you ever feel like you want to choose between-”
“No.” Now far beyond troubled, I disentangled myself from his arms, pushing him away. “No, don’t do this. The arrangement was that you and Eric would share me…and I love you both equally.”
I truly did.
Raking a hand through his hair, Ryan scoffed. “You may think that’s true, but-”
“You’re telling me how I feel now?”
He scoffed again, although this time, the action was closer to a sigh. “No. I’m not telling you what you think, but I am telling you what you might not realize yet. You were made for me, and me for you. You can’t tell me that you don’t feel something very special when we’re together. You can’t tell me that there’s not some sort of magic between us that you and Eric just don’t have.”
Now sighing myself, I folded my arms across my chest. “Look. We do have something very special together…and there is a certain magic between us. But I also feel these things with Eric, too. I really do love both of you equally, and I’d never want to have to choose between the two of you. In fact, I’d refuse. I just know that I could never do it.”
Frowning hard, Ryan raked a hand through his hair again. “Then, I’ve probably said far too much. I’ve probably said things that you’ll never be able to forget now.”
With my frustration disappearing, I took his hands in mine. “Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean that I have to exactly keep what you said in the front of my mind either. Now that you know how I feel, we can just move forward, with nothing changing between you, me, and Eric. Things will just go on how they have been…as long as you’re good with that, anyway.”
Still frowning, Ryan brought his hands to the sides of my face, looking deeply into my eyes. “Believe me when I say that there’s nothing that could pull me away from you or make me walk away. Nothing. How could I, when I’ve finally found the woman I’ve been looking for my entire life? How could I, when I love you as much as I do?”
Smiling a little, I moved one of his hands from my cheek to kiss it. “I love you too…so incredibly much. And there’s nothing that could make me walk away from you either. I don’t want to jinx us, but I’ve really been starting to think that you, me, and Eric are going to enjoy a happily-ever-after story, even in this messed-up, post-Chaos world.”
Ryan’s eyes had seemed to darken when I’d mentioned Eric, but only for a second.
Now managing a smile, he pressed a brief, tender kiss against my lips. “I think you’re right. I think a happily-ever-after story is definitely in our future.”
We kissed a few more times, and presently, I asked him if I’d been at the center of his and Eric’s argument.
Dropping his head with a sigh, he said yes before looking up at me again. “I guess I just let my love for you turn me into a bit of a jerk that day. I’d overheard Eric telling one of his good buddies something about how you make him so happy or something like that, and it just rubbed me the wrong way or something, even though it shouldn’t have.
Then, later, I just felt like I wanted to pick a fight with him about some dumb thing, so I did. Then, the conversation turned to you, and…well, I’m not proud to say it, but I just kind of flew off the handle, telling him that before any marriage proposals happen, maybe we should just let you choose which one man you’d like to marry or something like that. Eric reminded me that this was not the agreement, and then words escalated a little right before we got in the house and found you home.”
“Well, I guess we can leave all that in the past now…just as long as you’re willing and able to move forward, and just as long as you think everything with you and Eric will be good from now on.”
“It will be. I’ll tell him that you and I had a talk, and that you’ve made it clear that you love us both equally, and that you’d never be willing to choose between us, and that’s that. I’ll tell Eric that now that I’ve heard how you feel, I’m sorry that I ever brought the whole thing up. I’ll tell him I’m sorry that I’ve had some temporary insanity or whatever’s been happening to me.”
I gave Ryan a little smile. “I don’t think you’ve been ‘temporarily insane.’ I think maybe you’ve just been having some ‘adjustment pains’ as far as our relationship. After all, a trio relationship isn’t exactly a ‘normal’ thing, or at least it wasn’t until the Chaos. Alicia has even told me how a lot of other couples are really struggling with the whole thing. I heard that Darcy’s two boyfriends have had such a hard time with jealousy issues that they’ve nearly killed each other over it.”
Ryan said that unfortunately, that was true. “I’ve given them one final chance to get things under control before I step in and start making some decisions about the whole thing, because if they keep going at each other how they have been, one of them really is going to end up killing the other. Which, as far as that…just know that it will never come to that point with me and Eric, Ellie. We’ll all work through this together, because I’m committed to making you happy, and I never want to let you go.”
He pulled me into his arms again, and I set my head on his chest. “You’ll never have to.”
Soon, while his men pulled all the Creeper carcasses into one gruesome pile, Eric arrived on the scene, racing toward me and Ryan at top speed in wolf form. Once he neared us, he came to a stop, shifted into his human form, and jogged the rest of the way. “Ellie. Are you okay?”
I said that I was, and he gently but firmly pulled me from Ryan’s arms and into his own.
“I was running a security patrol about a mile from the south side of the wall when I got word about the breach. Terry told me that you were in the thi
ck of things, throwing orbs.”
I said that I had been. “I stunned a lot of Creepers, too…even killed one. I didn’t really run into any major trouble until the end of the fight, when I ran out of ‘battery power,’ so to speak. One of the Creepers almost got me, but Ryan jumped in at the last second and killed him. He honestly saved my life.”
Eric held me even tighter, saying that he was so glad. Then, after planting quick kisses on the top of my head and my mouth, he turned to Ryan. “I’m glad you were here.”
With his expression unreadable, Ryan said thanks. “Me too, man.”
After giving me a few more kisses, holding me close, Eric released me and asked Ryan for a more detailed rundown of how everything had happened.
Ryan answered his questions, then said that the tractor wasn’t going to hold the piece of sheeting over the breach forever. “If they were strong enough to pull the steel support cables from that piling and then knock the piling down, they’re probably strong enough to tip the tractor over just by pushing on the steel eventually.”
With his gaze on the tractor in the distance, Eric said he had no doubt. “Which is why at some point, I think we’re going to need to reinforce the walls, but in an indirect sort of way.”
Ryan asked him what he meant, and he explained.
“I think at some point, we should build a secondary wall around the existing wall…maybe one or two hundred feet from it. The space in between will serve as a buffer zone, where we’ll have guards patrolling at all times. This way, if and when the Creepers breach the outer wall, they’ll have a lot to deal with before they’re actually able to enter our community and get anywhere near our women and children.”
Ryan said that sounded like a good idea. “Building a secondary wall would be one hell of an undertaking, though, not to mention how much timber and steel it would even take to accomplish it…and we’re already low on the building supplies needed to even continually patch the wall we already have.”
Eric said that was true, but that they’d just have to send some of their men on more intensive scavenging trips. “There are still a few construction sites that haven’t been picked clean yet…two about twenty miles east, just to start with.”
Ryan said they could send a team out with a fleet of trucks for hauling supplies back to Silverfield first thing the next morning. “Even if we’re down a few men on guard patrol for the next few months or however long it takes to gather all the materials we need and ferry them back here, it’ll be worth it. Anything to keep Ellie and everyone else here in this community safe.”
Eric agreed, and soon, he said that he and Ryan should probably start helping with all the Creeper corpses, and then see about reinforcing the breach from the other side. “We should also send a few dozen men to do a security sweep of the entire village right now, in a grid formation, just to make sure that there are no stray Creepers who were able to make their way to the houses unseen.”
Ryan said that was a good idea, and after each giving me a kiss, he and Eric went off to do what needed to be done. Relieved that the danger was over for the time being and that the situation with Ryan’s “temporary insanity” had been resolved as well, I made my way back to the house. However, even while I was experiencing all this relief, I was also experiencing a little disappointment as well, because I knew that with everything that needed to be done as a result of the breach, I probably wouldn’t be seeing much of Eric and Ryan for the next several days.
I wasn’t wrong. For the next three days, I saw each of them pretty much just in passing, usually asleep by the time they arrived home at night. In the mornings, they both usually only had time to scarf down some breakfast before heading out again. The three of us didn’t even have much time for bedroom activities, only managing to snag about twenty minutes one afternoon when Eric and Ryan came home to grab a very quick lunch.
Trying to distract myself from missing them both so much, I spent these days working long hours with Jessie, Alicia, and another woman named Trisha, canning the very last of the autumn harvest to stock the community food storage rooms for the coming winter. At the end of all the canning, we agreed that everyone would probably be absolutely sick to death of pureed pumpkin and butternut squash by the following spring. As it was, most people were already a little sick of these items, especially the squash. Trisha said that her two little boys, who normally ate anything and everything, had gone “on strike” when it came to this particular food item.
The fourth day after the breach in the wall and the ensuing battle with the Creepers, I was at home late in the afternoon, indulging in a little watercolor painting after having spent a few hours helping the community’s doctor reorganize boxes of handwritten patient files in her office. Deep in contemplation while working on a painting of the greenspace in the center of town, I jumped about half a mile when I heard the front door being opened. Paintbrush in hand, I whirled around from my spot next to one of the living room windows and saw Eric coming through the front door.
With my surprise quickly turning to joy, I gave him a smile and asked him to what I owed this honor. “It’s not every day that I get to see you before midnight, you know, or even see you at all.”
Closing the door behind him, he smiled in return; however, it was a smile that didn’t reach all the way up to his eyes. “I just snuck away from patrol for a bit because I need to talk to you…alone, without Ryan present.”
Immediately uneasy, I set my paintbrush down and went over to him, asking what was going on. Wearing a weary, resigned expression, he said that maybe we should sit down and began leading me over to the couch.
Once we were both seated, with him facing me at an angle, he took my hands in his own, taking a deep breath. “We need to talk about Ryan, Ellie. I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s possibly dangerous somehow and doesn’t have this community’s best interests at heart. He doesn’t have your best interests at heart.”
Becoming increasingly upset, I asked Eric what he meant, and he took another deep breath.
“I’ve had some talks with Ryan lately, and he says that he’s sorry for ‘temporarily losing his mind’ about you, as he puts it. He says he’s sorry for ever suggesting that we ask you to choose between us, and he says that now that he knows how you feel about that, he’s resolved to never again entertain the idea of that. Basically, he’s vowed to be on his best big boy behavior when it comes to sharing from now on.”
“But you don’t believe him?”
“No.” With a pale shaft of sunlight illuminating his tired gray eyes, Eric sighed. “I don’t.”
“And what makes you think that you can’t trust him?”
He lifted his broad shoulders in the hint of a shrug. “Just a gut feeling, but it’s a pretty profound one. I just flat-out don’t trust him on any level anymore, and I’ve come to deeply regret inviting him to be co-alpha alongside me as quickly as I did. I now know that that was a hasty mistake, although at the time, I was truly doing what I thought was best for the people of this community. And his people have been assets, no doubt about that. It’s just that Ryan himself…well, like I said. I just don’t trust him anymore. It’s almost like he gave up on the idea of having you choose between us a bit too soon, like he’s just giving us lip service or something.”
“Well, even if that’s the case…let’s just say that it is, even though I don’t think it is. He still can’t force me to choose between the two of you, Eric, and if he ever brings up the subject again, I’m just going to tell him what I told him last time, which is that I’ll never choose. I love you both equally, and at this point, I know for sure that I could never push one of you out of my life in favor of the other.”
Eric shrugged. “I’m just leery of him not being able to get the idea out of his head, and this leading to trouble down the road, no matter what you tell him.”
“Well, none of us should be borrowing trouble down the road, especially when it seems like we have more than plenty when it comes to troubl
e on a daily basis with the Creepers.”
Eric cracked a small, wry smile. “That’s true.”
I gave him a little smile in return. “Please just give this whole situation some time to just settle. Like I told Ryan, I think ‘adjustment pains’ in any trio relationship are bound to happen, and that’s all I think was going on with him. Just temporary ‘adjustment pains.’ Nothing more. I think he’s gotten over things now, and he’s resolved to just continuing on, keeping in mind what I told him. I don’t think he’ll ever suggest that I choose between the two of you again. And like I said, if he ever does, I’ll just firmly remind him of what I told him last time.”
Seeming more than a bit reluctant, Eric finally said okay after a long pause. “I guess maybe I just need to give him a chance to earn back my trust when it comes to sticking to our arrangement. Maybe he can earn it back after a while; I don’t know.”
Pleased that Eric was at least going to give Ryan another chance, I gave his hands a little squeeze. “This is all I want from you…just for you to give Ryan another chance, and just some time to let this all settle. After all, this whole thing is brand-new for all of us. We’re bound to experience a few bumps along the road, and maybe even always will from time to time…but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t keep trying to make this trio relationship the best relationship that it can possibly be.”
Eric conceded that I was right. “I know we should at least give this all some more time.” Looking down at our clasped hands, he fell silent briefly before returning his gaze to my face. “Do you know that there’s a little part of me that actually wanted you to accept Ryan’s suggestion that you decide between the two of us? There’s a little selfish part of me that wanted what he wanted and probably still wants. I almost wanted you to agree to choose one of us only, and I wanted that man to be me.”