For the next two weeks, each new autumn day dawned sunny and bright, matching the mood in the house. Living with my two new shifter mates, making love to them both nearly every night, I was happy, and Eric and Ryan seemed happy too. Sometimes, I even wondered if I was the happiest I’d ever been in my entire life, despite currently living in a post-apocalyptic world filled with Creepers that continually threatened to break down the walls of my community.
Adding to my newfound happiness, one day, I received a handwritten letter from Norm.
Dear Ellie,
All is well here. In fact, it’s better than “well,” to tell you the truth. We’ve all gorged ourselves on grilled steak for dinner here tonight, if you can believe that, with fried potatoes, mashed squash, and sautéed zucchini for side dishes. We even had some delicious pumpkin spice cake for dessert, made with pumpkins from our own harvest. We’ve actually had steak for dinner three times now since you’ve been gone, if you can believe that. Remember the days when you and I used to get stuck having to split a single can of green beans for dinner after feeding everyone else and the kids? Well, I can safely say that things are much better now. The Silverbacks brought us a deep-freeze and filled it with beef from one of the cows. We’ve also made ice in the deep-freeze. After a year or so without it, let me say that it’s been a real treat. Some of the kids had even forgotten what it was.
Sadie had the idea to put on a carnival for all the kids today, complete with vegetable dye face-painting and games. For prizes, she offered chilled pudding cups from the deep freeze and apple juice with ice cubes. The kids thought they’d died and gone to heaven. Bless her sweet heart, Sadie cried at the end of the day, saying that she never dreamed she’d ever see people so happy again.
Marlon has developed a deep chest cough, but he seems to be fighting it off. He turned eighty yesterday. The Silverbacks brought some antibiotics in their cache of medical supplies, and Marlon is on a course of them now. Did you know that one of the Silverbacks’ wives, a woman named Claire, was an emergency room nurse/certified midwife before the Chaos? She’s been taking good care of those of us with aches and pains and various ailments. She’s going to deliver Amy’s baby in a couple of weeks too. (Amy is another Silverback wife- she and her husband, Marshall, already have two little boys and are hoping for a girl this time…and Lord only knows that this strange new world could use more girls.)
We have three new additions here to the community- a man named Tyler, his wife Jennie (who is an orb-thrower like you), and their two-year-old son, Jack. The family is originally from Indiana, and they made their way up here to Michigan some months ago with a larger group, searching for some place to live not infested with Creepers.
Sadly, the other members of Tyler and Jennie’s group died during the journey north. Tyler, Jennie, and Jack were themselves surrounded by a large group of Creepers just a mile from here the other day, when our Silverbacks came upon the scene and fought the Creepers off. Tyler and Jennie were schoolteachers before the Chaos (Tyler- high school English, and Jennie- second grade), and they have thoughts about establishing a school here at Towering Pines.
(By the way, have you heard that our community is now called Towering Pines? I picked the name recently, after showing the Silverbacks all those beautiful towering pines just south of the gymnasium. Couldn’t believe that picking a name for our community hadn’t occurred to me sooner, but I guess when a person is so focused on day-to-day survival, they don’t have much time to think about those kinds of things.)
We all hope that you’re doing very well in your new community. I think I speak for us all when I say that we all love and miss you very much. Please write soon.
Love,
Norm
Just three days later, when two of the Silverbacks “on loan” returned to Silverfield for more supplies, I received another letter from Norm.
Dear Ellie,
Our community here at Towering Pines has now grown to ninety members (including ten Silverbacks and four wives). (Have I mentioned that two of the Silverbacks share a wife? They say it’s necessary in these times, and I suppose they’re right.)
One of the new additions to our group is a young woman named Carmen, who is twenty-two years old. Two of the single Silverbacks “fancy” her, I think, and something just tells me that before long, we might have another “two husbands and one wife” arrangement going on here. Well, it’s “kind of” biblical, isn’t it? After all, God allowed some of his prophets to have multiple wives, so why shouldn’t a woman be allowed to have multiple husbands in this day and age, after all that has happened? I’m not quite sure what my dear late wife, Alice, would think about all this; she was always so resistant to new ways of doing things. As for me, I think it’s all fine. I’m just glad that back in my day, I never had to “share” my beloved. Not sure I could have done it.
The youngest addition to our group was born just today, when Amy had her baby, a girl she and her husband, Marshall, named Rose. Mama and baby Rose are happy and healthy, praise the Lord, even though Rose arrived a few weeks early, according to Amy’s calculations. Can you believe this, baby Rose already knows how to suck her little thumb? Sadie and I have christened her “the most precious princess of Towering Pines.” God is so good.
Marlon is quickly improving on the antibiotics. He was at least well enough a half-hour ago to complain that the cup of tea I brought him wasn’t hot enough. The old crank! Well, I reheated his tea anyway. He may be an old crank, but he’s eight years older than me, and my parents always taught me to respect my elders.
Please write soon, Ellie. We all love you, miss you, and are wondering how you’re doing.
Love,
Norm
PS- I now have my own apartment here. It’s just four walls made of sturdy drywall and a particle board ceiling, but I love it. I love once again having a place to call my own. The Silverbacks say that in the spring, when they construct some homes on the property, they’ll build a small one-
bedroom house, just for me. They have been very good to us, and they are all easy to get along with. Know, Ellie, that your sacrifice that made this all possible is so very appreciated.
Reading this part of the letter, I felt slightly embarrassed, because I really hadn’t made any kind of a real “sacrifice” at all. In fact, my “sacrifice” had led to me being the happiest I’d ever been in my life, having fallen deeply in love with my two alpha wolf lovers. They’d now both fallen deeply in love with me too, to the point that they’d both brought up the idea of marriage at different times, seeming to just want to feel me out about it.
Of course, this wouldn’t be any kind of state-sanctioned marriage, because “the state” didn’t even exist anymore. However, in Silverfield, when a couple or a trio wanted to make things “official,” a formal ceremony was held, followed by a party, just like in times before the Chaos. Beginning to really like the idea of making things “official,” I’d hinted to Ryan and Eric that I maybe wouldn’t be opposed to the idea of some sort of a “surprise” proposal within the next month or two.
I’d been living in Silverfield for exactly four weeks when my happiness bubble more or less burst one evening. It at least slowly deflated when Ryan and Eric got home from patrol one evening.
I was sitting up to the island, writing a letter to Norm, the third one I’d written to him since arriving in Silverfield, when the sound of the front door being slammed shut startled me. This was followed by the sound of raised voices, and I flew off my barstool, alarmed, realizing that Eric and Ryan were arguing.
Wondering what the problem was, since I’d never heard them argue before, I dashed out to the foyer and asked what was wrong. They both looked surprised to see me, and Ryan said he thought that I’d still be over at Jessie’s, helping her make apple butter for the community supply pantry.
I said that we’d finished up early. “So, I decided to come back here to get dinner started and write Norm a letter. Which is what I was just doing when I heard the two of you arguing.”
Moving a hand to massage the back of his neck, Eric said that they hadn’t been arguing. “We’re both just a little stressed about the Creeper problems lately, and I guess our discussion about the possible solutions just got a little heated.”
Ryan agreed. “That’s all it was. Just an intense discussion after a very long day.”
Dubious, I looked from his face to Eric’s, not exactly seeing the clear honesty in their eyes that I hoped for. In my gut, I just felt like something was wrong, and that something was beyond mere Creeper trouble, not that that was a small issue by any means. As of late, they’d been damaging small sections of wall almost daily, and I knew Ryan and Eric had both become extremely concerned about a total breach of the wall at some point, with Creepers streaming into the community by the hundreds or even thousands.
The fact of the matter was that although they’d been positioning guards around the outside of the walls at all times, the Creeper swarms were getting larger for some reason, maybe because they were communicating with each other somehow, formulating plans to increase their strength by way of numbers. No one really knew if this was actually the case, because no one really knew how Creepers communicated with each other. At any rate, their attacks were clearly escalating, and I knew that even in the midst of our happy weeks together, this had been causing Ryan and Eric some pretty extreme stress.
Because of this, while still looking at them both, I eventually decided to just accept their explanation as to why they’d been arguing. I still didn’t one hundred percent buy it for some reason, but at the same time, I didn’t one hundred percent not buy it. Besides, I knew they were both probably tired, starving, and eager to eat, and not eager to be questioned about a subject that they both clearly wanted to just drop.
In response to their explanations, I said okay. “Maybe the two of you will be able to resume your discussion in a less heated way after a good dinner. I’ve got a chicken-parmesan-spaghetti-squash casserole-type thing in the oven right now, and it’ll be done in about a half-hour. I’ve made homemade rolls and salad to go with it too.”
Eric said that sounded great. “I’m just going to go up and grab a shower first.”
With his face and clothes streaked with mud, probably from repairing sections of the fence in the rain, which had basically turned the entire village into a mud pit that day, Ryan said the same. “I’ll take the hallway bathroom shower.”
Fortunately, we were lucky enough to have two full bathrooms on the upper floor, one in the master bathroom of my room, which was really our room now, shared by all three of us, and then a second full bathroom down the hallway. This made things much more convenient when all three of us were trying to shower in the morning at the same time, although sometimes all three of us just piled into one shower anyway. Those showers weren’t so much for really getting clean, though, but instead, for getting a little dirty.
After each giving me a kiss, Ryan and Eric soon headed upstairs. I watched them go, unable to shake the feeling that some kind of trouble was brewing that had nothing to do with Creepers.
*
Ryan ended up being the first of my alpha lovers to come downstairs from showering, entering the kitchen bare-chested, wearing jeans that hung low on his slim hips. Around his neck, he’d hung a plain white t-shirt, and when I first looked up and saw him, he was reaching up to grab it, presumably to put it on.
However, not wanting him to put it on quite so fast, I set down a stack of napkins I’d been about to put on the table, dashed over to him, and grabbed the t-shirt right out of his hand. “No, please don’t put it on. Not quite yet. Just let me look at your chest for a second first. I haven’t seen it in almost twenty hours or something, which means that I’ve been a little deprived.”
Still sleeping when he and Eric had left the house that morning, I hadn’t gotten to study their nearly-nude forms in the first light of dawn how I often liked to.
“Just let me take a good look at you and touch your chest for a second.”
With his green eyes glinting and his mouth curving just slightly, Ryan moved a little closer to me. “All right…but only if I get to do the same to you.”
Feasting my eyes on his chiseled pecs and washboard abs, I agreed and soon began to run my hands over his bare skin, reveling in the feel of so much warmth and hardness beneath my fingertips.
However, Ryan didn’t give me too awfully long to explore the magnificence of his chest before he peeled off my sweatshirt, flung it to the side, and then undid my bra clasp with his breathing accelerating. With a low growl rumbling deep within his chest, he actually removed my bra with his teeth, one strap after the other, and then flung it to the side using his teeth as well.
These actions, if done by another man, might have been clumsy or come off as rehearsed; however, this wasn’t the case at all with Ryan. Having some definite animalistic, wolf-like tendencies even while in his human form, he always acted as if removing a bra with one’s teeth was the normal way to remove a bra, like other ways were for more refined men who didn’t daily battle Creepers while in the form of an enormous silver wolf.
After raking his gaze over my chest like I’d done to him, he cupped my full breasts in his hands and began gently, slowly, circling my nipples with his thumbs, quickly making them stiffen. This was what always surprised me about Ryan. Not his definite animalistic, wolf-like tendencies, and his tendency to be a bit rough during times when I clearly liked it. It was how gentle and tender his touch could be sometimes that always surprised me.
Soon, he was kissing me with his mouth firm and warm, and with his thumbs still slowly circling my nipples with just the right balance of gentleness and firmness. After just a little while, though, his strong, long-fingered hands began wandering lower, with one going to grip my rear, pulling me closer to him, and the other going down the front of my yoga pants, fingers roaming. When one of them connected with my clit, I moaned into Ryan’s mouth without breaking our kiss.
However, just a short while later, when he slid two curved fingers into my pussy and began pulling them in and out with exquisite deliberation and slowness, I pulled my lips from his with an even louder moan, then told him not to stop. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. Please.”
With his fingers slightly curved how they were, he was hitting some indefinable spot inside of me, some spot that, when stroked, made me feel such intense pleasure that I could hardly keep my eyes from rolling back in my head. Ryan’s fresh-from-the-shower scent, which was woodsy, clean, and masculine, was intensifying my pleasure, as was the sight of his impossibly handsome face, which I was taking a few peeks at. He had a way of studying my face during moments of passion, a way of looking at me intently, that always turned me on even more than I already was.
He’d been working his fingers in and out of my extremely wet pussy for a short time when Eric entered the kitchen. His eyes widened a bit when he saw Ryan and me, both shirtless, and with Ryan’s hand down the front of my pants. Clearly wanting to make our twosome a threesome, Eric came around behind me, put his hands on my shoulders, and began kissing the side of my neck, an act that never failed to make me curl my toes, and this time was no exception.
It wasn’t long before I felt his hard cock pressing against my hip, near the small of my back, and this gave me an idea. I wanted him to make love to me from behind, while we were standing, if possible, while Ryan continued giving attention to my front, stroking my clit. However, I just didn't know if this was possible. With me being only five-foot-four, and with Eric and Ryan both being a bit over six feet, I just wasn’t sure if what I was thinking of could actually work. Determined not to let any feelings of bashfulness get in the way of our shared pleasure, though, I spoke right up and told my two incredibly handsome alphas what I wanted, and they acted like my request was completely doable.
Over my shoulder, glassy-eyed, Ryan looked at Eric and spoke in a husky voice. “We can use her little stepstool.”
The stepstool he was speaking of was a black-and-gray tempered plastic one maybe six inches tall that I kept in the kitchen. Being that I was on the shorter side, it served as a perfect handy little booster for when I needed to reach something on a high shelf just beyond my fingertips. Now, it seemed that Ryan thought the stepstool could give me the little height boost I needed to make something else possible too.
Within seconds, Eric had grabbed the stepstool, helped me step up onto it, and had lost his jeans and underwear. Then, tipping me forward just a bit, into Ryan’s arms, he positioned the head of his already-rock-hard cock at my slick entrance from behind, making me whimper with desire. Right as he began sliding into my pussy, Ryan, around my front, began stroking my now-throbbing clit, turning my whimper into something much more like an outright cry.
The sensation of being stroked and filled at the same time was almost more than I could take, although in the best possible sort of way. I only lasted a minute or two before reaching a climax, burying my face in Ryan’s shoulder, moaning, while he continued stroking my clit, and while Eric began growling out his own release behind me.
Having grown accustomed to at least two climaxes per lovemaking session, I soon told Ryan that I was ready for more, and he and Eric switched positions, with Ryan thrusting into me from behind, gripping my hips, and Eric giving me some very focused, intimate attention around my front.
A while later, once again displaying his animalistic side, Ryan wrapped my long hair around his fist, tugging it a little, before groaning with a powerful release, filling me with his hot seed. This sensation was all I needed to tumble right over the edge of ecstasy along with him, moaning with my face buried in Eric’s muscular shoulder.
Afterward, the two of them just held me in a kind of post-passion sandwich, with one of them in front of me and one in back, while our breathing returned to normal. With their strong arms feeling so incredibly good around me, I might have been content to let them hold me for several minutes. However, before long, the smell of something burning made me lift my face from Ryan’s chest.
“Oh, no. The little herb rolls I made. I just meant to reheat them but forgot to set a timer. They’ve probably been in the oven twenty minutes too long by now.”
Underscoring this unfortunate fact, the acrid scent floating through the kitchen quickly intensified. And by the time I’d thrown my clothes on and had pulled the tray of rolls from the smoky oven, the tops of them were burned so badly they were nearly black.
Feeling more than a bit guilty about ruining good food when it was so hard to come by in the new post-Chaos world, I set the tray on the range with a sigh. “Well, live and learn. I guess we’ll just have to make do with salad for a side with our casserole.”
Getting dressed, Eric said that was just fine with him, and Ryan grunted in agreement.
Once we’d all washed our hands, we brought the chicken parmesan casserole and the salad to the table, which I’d set with tall red taper candles and an autumn centerpiece I’d made with vibrant orange leaves and miniature pumpkins.
Upon having a seat at the circular table, Ryan pulled me into his arms. “Come here, you beautiful thing. You’re eating on my lap tonight.”
What ensued was a happy, raucous sort of dinner, with Ryan and Eric teasing me about different things, including burning food, me laughing, and the two of them taking turns pulling me onto their laps.
It was only when the three of us had finished eating that the table briefly fell quiet, with the sound of the rain still pouring down outside being the only noise, and I suddenly recalled that they’d been arguing when they’d come home. Unbelievably, or maybe not, their making love to me and then our shared merriment and laughter had driven all thoughts of their argument right out of my mind.
However, now that I’d remembered it, I just had to know right then what exactly had caused it, because I still had the feeling that it hadn’t just been a disagreement about how to deal with the Creepers. Part of me even wondered if it had been about me.
*
Now that Eric and Ryan were both well-fed and also well-satisfied sexually, not to mention that they’d both enjoyed a little whiskey with dinner, I thought this was may be a good time to make a further inquiry as to what their pre-dinner argument had been about. If nothing else, I thought, maybe they would adequately convince me that it really had just been about Creepers, so I could finally stop thinking about it.
“So….” I began, while sitting on Eric’s lap with my arms around his shoulders.
However, this was as far as I got, unfortunately. This was because just then, loud pounding sounded from the front door. Thoroughly used to this kind of interruption by now, I had to work hard not to roll my eyes in irritation, because I knew who the knocker would be. It would be one of Eric and Ryan’s men, telling them that they were needed urgently because of some Creeper problem or new breach in the walls.
It wasn’t that I didn’t understand. I did. In fact, I’d come to accept that being mated to two alphas meant that I was just going to have to deal with these kinds of urgent interruptions indefinitely. It was just that the interruptions always seemed to come at the worst possible times. Once, Ryan and Eric had been called away while we’d all been in bed together, naked, engaged in some pretty involved sorts of activities. To be precise, Eric’s face had been between my legs at the time, and Ryan’s mouth had been covering one of my nipples while he lightly flicked his tongue across the stiffened point. That interruption had been a little hard for me to take.
In the present, I didn’t even protest, knowing that a discussion about Eric and Ryan’s argument could definitely wait until later. After each of them had given me a hasty kiss, they both quickly flew out the door.
I’d just finished cleaning up from dinner when there was another knock on the front door, although this one was much quieter, indicating that it was one of my friends. They didn’t tend to pound on the door like wolf shifters needing to urgently summon their alphas did.
When I answered the door, I found Alicia in a raincoat, holding a smallish cardboard box.
She held it up to me with a little smile. “Care for a slice of vanilla cake with buttercream frosting?”
I said I’d love one and ushered her inside to the kitchen, where we were soon sitting up to the island with slices of cake and mugs of hot apple cider.
While warming her hands on her mug, Alicia explained that she always made a cake on her mom’s birthday, and had been doing so for years. “Maybe it’s weird to make a cake for someone who’s deceased and can’t enjoy it, but…I don’t know. I always just think it’s a nice way to remember my mom and celebrate her life.”
I said I didn’t think it was weird at all, and that I thought it was a wonderful way to remember someone and celebrate their life. “In fact, I should start making cakes on my parents’ birthdays too.”
Nearly everyone in the community had lost one or both parents during the Chaos, and it was usually both; however, Alicia and I were unique in that we’d lost our parents long before the Chaos, with Alicia’s dad having died in a construction accident when she was just a baby, and her mom dying from breast cancer when she was twenty. As for my parents, they’d both died in a car accident just days after my twenty-first birthday. Once while trying to lighten the mood after we’d had an in-depth discussion about our pasts, Alicia had called us “members of the experienced orphans’ club,” which we truly were, unfortunately. Neither of us had even had grandparents before the Chaos, having already lost them to various illnesses during our childhoods.
While we ate our cake, Alicia said she’d come over reasonably sure that I’d be alone and up for a visit, since Mark had just been called away to help with whatever Creeper problem was currently going on, so she figured Eric and Ryan had been too.
I said yes, they’d been called away right after dinner. “Right at the moment that I was about to ask them something of semi-importance too. I was just going to ask them about a little disagreement they were having when they came home today…except, honestly, it was a little more heated than a ‘disagreement.’ It was maybe even a borderline verbal fight, with raised voices almost to the level of shouting at each other.”
“Well, what were they shouting about?”
I said I didn’t know. “I was out here in the kitchen and couldn’t hear what they were saying very clearly. They didn’t know that I was home yet, and when I flew out to the door to see what was going on, they both shut up right away, both saying that they’d just been having a disagreement about how to best deal with the Creepers or something.”
Alicia frowned. “Well, it doesn’t seem like there should be much disagreement about that. I mean, at least as far as what I know from what Mark has told me, I think the plan is just to keep defending our community like usual. Keep reinforcing the walls and keep killing Creepers that gather around them until someday, with their slow rate of reproduction, their population will be reduced enough to not give us any significant problems. After all, with all of them just wandering around all the time and not really having any kind of a home base, it’s not like we can go on the offensive and launch an attack on them or something.”
I agreed with all Alicia had said, adding that I didn’t think that Eric and Ryan’s argument had really been about how to deal with the Creepers. “I just have a gut feeling that it was about something else.”
“Well, now that I’m thinking about it, Mark did make kind of a funny comment about Eric and Ryan the other day.”
“What was it?”
“Well, I don’t remember exactly, but it was just something about how he was hoping that he’d be sent off on a scouting patrol that day, well beyond the walls, because he just didn’t want to have to spend much time around Ryan and Eric. I asked why, and he said something like, ‘Oh, they’re just stressful to be around lately, always snipping and snapping at each other about the stupidest things.’ I thought, ‘Well, yeah, they’re probably just stressed about the Creepers and
having to be in charge of everything as alphas.’ It all sounded pretty normal to me. I didn’t even think to mention anything to you about it.”
Thinking, I asked Alicia if Mark had told her anything about how well the two packs were merging or weren’t, and she said yes.
“According to Mark, everything is completely fine on that front. There’s been a few ‘personality clashes,’ as he says, but nothing major; on the whole, the two packs seem to be merging together just fine. Eric’s men don’t seem to be having any trouble taking orders from Ryan and vice versa. So, if there’s some weird tension between Eric and Ryan these days, and it’s starting to seem like there is, I don’t think it has anything to do with their two packs not merging well or anything like that.”
“Well, what about how the two of them are adjusting to having a co-alpha? Do you think that could be the source of the tension?”
Setting down her cider mug, Alicia shrugged, with her expression indicating that she had no idea. “Your guess is as good as mine. On one hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was causing some friction, but then again, think about it this way. Eric is the one who willingly invited Ryan to be a co-alpha. I don’t think he would have done that if he thought that he’d have some big, huge problem with sharing power.
And as far as Ryan, he accepted the invitation to become co-alpha, which I don’t think he would have done if he thought he’d have a big, huge problem with the arrangement. So, unless the two of them all of a sudden have some kind of weird, unforeseen regret about the whole situation….” Alicia shrugged again. “I guess I just don’t know what else it could be. Unless….”
“‘Unless’ what?”
“Well…unless there could be some tension about the whole arrangement with you. Although, if this were the case, I’m sure you probably would have noticed it by now.”
This was my biggest fear - that whatever was going on between Ryan and Eric was somehow related to me. However, like Alicia had said, it only stood to reason that I would have picked up on a few tell-tale clues of that by this point, and I really hadn’t. I told Alicia this, adding that other than the argument earlier that day, Eric and Ryan had been acting pretty normally.
“So, neither of them has been getting weirdly possessive or anything?”
I thought about the question for a few moments before responding. “Well…I guess there have been a few things lately…maybe.”
“Things like what?”
“Well…the other day, in bed, Ryan was holding me, and he said, ‘You’re mine,’ or maybe it was even, ‘You’re all mine.’ I really don’t remember. At any rate, Eric, who I thought was sleeping, suddenly perked up and said something like, ‘Hey, don’t delude yourself over there, buddy. She’s mine too.’ I think Ryan was just like, ‘Oh, I’m well aware. Don’t get your panties in a wad, Eric,’ or something like that. Then, I think we all just soon went to sleep, and I didn’t think any more about it. The conversation just seemed like nothing more than a little joking-type banter at the time or something. Maybe just a little teasing.”
Frowning, Alicia set her fork down with a bite of cake still on it. “Well, what were their expressions at the time? Did they look like they were just teasing?”
I said I didn’t know. “The lights were off at the time.”
“Hm.”
Picking up her mug of cider, Alicia didn’t say anything else, and I asked her what “Hm” meant. “Do you think that there could really be something going on between Eric and Ryan because of me?”
Alicia sighed. “Well, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that jealousy has come into play in a two-men-one-woman post-Chaos relationship, trust me. There are two guys from Ryan’s group…Kevin and Malcolm…and over the course of the past few weeks, they’ve had no fewer than three physical fights about their shared girlfriend, Marcy, with the third one being in wolf form.
Mark said they probably would have killed each other had he and Tom not broken it up. Later, he told me that Ryan is thinking about forcing Darcy to make a choice between the two men, and then that choice will be enforced by Ryan himself, on penalty of being permanently kicked out of the community if the man not chosen can’t come to terms with things.”
“Geez.” With a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I took a sip of my cider before setting the mug down. “Well, as poorly as Marcy’s trio relationship is working out, there are still a lot of them that are working out well, right? I mean, just look at Jessie, Terry, and Alex. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a married couple so happy. Or…well, a married trio, as the case may be.”
Alicia conceded that that was true. “I don’t think there are many problems in that relationship, if any. And, to be fair, there are a lot of trio relationships in our community that seem to be working out extremely well. With so few of us women left on planet earth now, most of the men just seem thrilled to be in any kind of a relationship with a woman at all, even if they have to ‘share’ her with another man or even two other men, like in the case of Kayla, Dominic, Pat, and Jim.
I think the lack of us women helps to keep a lot of the men ‘in line’ too. They know that if they blow things, like Kevin and Malcolm seem about ready to do, they may not get the chance to be in a relationship with another woman again, or at least not for a very long while. For one thing, when it comes to single, available women, there’s simply next-to-none of them around, and for another thing, once someone screws up a trio relationship, then everyone knows that the screwer- upper has jealousy problems or whatever; so, then no one ever wants to get involved with them again.
The whole subject just makes me glad that I’m with Mark and Mark only, no matter how appealing the idea of a threesome sort of thing might seem to me sometimes. See, I long ago realized that fantasies are one thing, and real life is another, and since I’m not usually one to take risky chances, I think it’s just going to be me and Mark forever.”
It had become crystal clear to Jessie and me that Alicia was highly interested in the possibility of a trio relationship, at least on a sexual level. However, she obviously couldn’t let herself explore the possibility of being in one herself, and maybe she was right to do so, I figured. After all, she and Mark had been married before the Chaos, so things were a little different for them than a lot of other couples.
It seemed like one thing to enter a relationship with two men at the same time, but another thing entirely to add another man to an already-established marriage. I didn’t think I’d be able to do it either. One part of me did feel kind of bad, though, that Alicia would never get to experience the joys of having two men in her bed at the same time.
By the time she left that evening, I’d become nearly convinced that the tension between Eric and Ryan was related to me, and I resolved to just come right out and ask them if this was the case, and if so, if this had been what their argument had been about. However, I was already asleep when they both arrived home that evening. The following morning, they both left around dawn, long before I was fully awake and alert enough to have a serious discussion.
That afternoon, it snowed for the first time that autumn, coating the ground with a very light dusting of powder even though it was only the first week of November. Having always enjoyed the first snow of the season, even if it was only a light dusting, I bundled up and headed outside for a walk through the community, wishing only that snow had any kind of an effect on Creepers.
If it had, everyone could at least look forward to having several months free from their constant attacks. Instead, though, snow and cold temperatures just seemed to have the effect of making Creepers even a bit faster and stronger than they normally were, as if maybe wherever they’d come from had been extremely cold and they were used to it, or maybe even specifically built for it. At any rate, luckily for our community, cold and snow had no effect on our wolf shifters, who, with their thick, silvery coats, could fight off Creepers just as well as they did during any other season.
Waving to a few neighbors, I’d only been walking for a minute or so when I heard a calamitous boom come from somewhere to the north. Sounding fairly distant yet still extremely loud, the noise reminded me of a bomb going off or something. Immediately startled, I whipped my face in that direction but didn’t see any smoke or flying debris or anything. Not to mention that a bomb going off seemed highly unlikely, unless one of the marauder groups that sometimes troubled our community had the know-how and materials to make one.
A woman named Claire, who was one of my neighbors, had been standing in her yard, watching her five-year-old daughter, Mandy, run all around, trying to catch snow flurries on her tongue. With a look of clear anxiety and surprise on her face, Claire now looked from the direction of the loud boom to me. “What was that?”
I said I had no idea. “Better get Mandy inside the house, though, because who knows.”
Claire grabbed Mandy’s hand and began dashing up to the house with her, and I began dashing off to the north, intent on finding out what had caused the boom. Part of me, maybe the part that possessed my common sense, felt like maybe I should just head inside, like Claire and other neighbors that were scurrying inside their houses. However, another part of me felt that because I was an orb-thrower, unlike my neighbors, it wasn’t quite so critical for me to get to safety if a situation with Creepers or marauders was happening. After all, I was able to defend myself and could maybe help my community and the men I loved. I almost felt like I even had a duty to run toward any danger if some dangerous element was threatening the community.
After jogging a few hundred yards through rows of houses, I immediately saw that the community was indeed under attack. The Creepers had somehow managed to knock down a massive steel piling that connected two sections of wall, and this had apparently been the source of the boom. The piling, which had to at least weigh a ton, maybe even a few, was now on the snow-dusted ground, with Creepers clambering over it as they streamed in through the newly-made breach in the wall.
The only good thing about this disastrous situation was that because the breach wasn’t very wide, maybe just two feet, if that, they were having to come through it single-file, which meant that there was a good chance they could be contained before causing any more damage to the wall and before too many of them got inside. The breach would have to be closed quickly, though, because the Creepers were moving extremely fast, making strange groaning and hissing noises that they sometimes did. As it was, at least a few dozen of them had already gotten inside.
Giving me a little hope that they could be contained quickly, at least a half-dozen shifters were already on the scene, maybe having known what the Creepers were trying to do after having been alerted by guards beyond the walls. These Silverbacks already on the scene would probably be needing help, though, until other ones could arrive, so I was glad I’d come running. I figured that if I could cut down Creepers coming through the breach in the wall, maybe I could give the Silverbacks more of a fighting chance.
Not wasting any time, I ran into the fray, already throwing glowing silver orbs even as I ran. Both to my right and left, wolves were already fighting with Creepers, snarling as they charged at them and pulled them down to the snowy ground.
Quickly beginning to perspire with exertion, even though the temperature was in the low thirties, I took down seven or eight Creepers within the first few minutes of arriving on the scene, temporarily stunning them and making them fall to the ground. This allowed the wolves to pounce on them, growling, without sustaining any injuries themselves.
It wasn’t long before they’d killed at least a dozen Creepers, and I even killed one myself, first immobilizing it with an orb and then getting a little closer to hurl several more directly at its face at close range. Eventually, when the Creeper had only a smoldering baseball-sized hole where its eyes had formerly been, I moved onto another, stunning him just as he was about to slash at a wolf with his razor-sharp claws while that particular wolf had his back turned. A short while later, this very same wolf saved me right back, tackling a Creeper who was charging my way, arms and claws extended.
Soon, additional wolves arrived and joined the fight, and I continued to help, hurling so many orbs that my shoulder began to ache. With Creepers still coming through the breach, though, I couldn’t stop, especially since the Creepers seemed to be coming in even a bit faster now. With so many Creepers already having come in, I hadn’t been able to focus exclusively on the breach, unfortunately; in fact, at this point, there were maybe more Creepers inside than there’d been when I’d first come running toward the boom.
Beginning to sweat profusely, I continued throwing orbs in the midst of the melee, overjoyed when a dozen or so additional wolves arrived, charging at the Creepers with loud snarls and growls. The “battlefield,” which was composed of half grassy area and half road, became a bit congested at this point, and I began to find it increasingly difficult to hit targets without being afraid that I would accidentally hit a wolf with “friendly fire.”
So, after maybe just another minute or so of fighting, I slowly began retreating from the fight. At the same time, I saw three wolves suddenly shift into their human forms and make a beeline for a pile of construction materials just twenty feet or so from the breach. One of these shifters was Ryan, and he reached the pile of materials first and hoisted up a large square of solid steel sheeting from the top of the pile, groaning with the effort.
This was certainly a display of the increased strength that wolf shifters possessed even while in their human forms, because I knew that normally, it would have taken probably four or five men to lift the heavy piece of steel that Ryan was currently dragging away singlehandedly, not even needing the help of the two wolves who had followed him.
While I moved further away from the fight, I saw him slam the piece of steel sheeting against the breach, probably knocking out a Creeper who’d been trying to come through at the time. Ryan then immediately pressed his back against the sheeting, appearing to be calling for others to do the same along the length of it.
This was where the tide really seemed to turn, with all wolves seeming to redouble the intensity of their efforts upon seeing what Ryan had done. Also, with no additional Creepers coming through the breach, they were finally able to really make a dent in the ones that had already gotten through.
A few minutes later, I was standing against a tree some distance away from the fight, still trying to fully catch my breath from the extreme exertion, when Tom came riding past me on a tractor, probably having had to run all the way to the farmland in the west while in wolf form to have gotten it so quickly. Driving it at top speed, even though that wasn’t very fast, he drove it up to the steel sheeting, which Ryan and others were still holding in place with their backs against it.
After letting the tractor idle for a few moments while he appeared to have a brief, shouted exchange of words with Ryan, Tom then drove the tractor forward while Ryan and the others dove out of the way just in time to avoid being hit. Obviously aware that the last thing he wanted to do was bring down a section of wall, Tom had slammed on the brakes just a few feet from the sheeting, making the tractor finally coast to a stop right against the sheeting, holding it in place like Ryan and the others had been doing.
By this point, only a dozen or so Creepers remained alive inside the wall, with some of them clearly badly injured, with blood pouring from wounds in their green, scaly skin. Knowing that the shifters present could easily deal with them all, I turned from the tree, thinking that I’d head back to the houses just to make sure everyone was okay, and also to make sure that no Creepers had managed to escape the fight or anything.
However, one had, as I found out the very moment that I turned around. Leering at me with his razor-sharp, pointy teeth bared, he was charging toward me, maybe only ten or fifteen feet away. Startled and horrified, I screamed, instinctively pulling my arm back to throw an orb. Strengthened by a fresh wave of adrenaline coursing through my veins, I hurled it with all my might, although this didn’t matter much. The orb I’d thrown was what I called a “dead” one, meaning barely visible, indicating that I was running out of power. It not only didn’t have the effect of knocking out the Creeper, but it barely had any effect on him, making him only slow to a stop, making a faint growl at what was probably only slight pain.
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.