Awakenings

“There’s a story there,” Cameron said.  “One I don’t think I’ve heard yet.”

“It doesn’t really bear repeating,” Thom said.  “I was an idiot, that’s all.  I thought that if I pretended I didn’t give a damn and got away from her, broke shit off with her, I could protect her from something I kept seeing.”

Cameron frowned, crossing his arms as they walked.  “You guys both have visions, right?”

Thom nodded slowly.  “Yeah.  I was in denial about it for a long time, though—I wanted to believe what I was seeing was just nightmares.”  His voice dropped.  “I still hope that some of what I’ve seen are just nightmares.”

“Like what?”  Cameron asked without thinking.  He saw Thom wince and regretted asking.

Probably hit a nerve and probably shouldn’t have asked that question.  Step lightly, remember?

“I thought I saw her die,” Thom said simply, shoving his hands deep into his pockets as they emerged from the shadows of the corridor and into the tents beyond.  “I’m still not sure if I did or I didn’t, but that’s what I thought I saw and that’s what triggered everything else.  I denied what I could see and that put a serious strain on our relationship, then I broke things off because I thought that maybe, just maybe, it’d protect her.  Took me months and the end of the world to realize that I was probably the biggest idiot to live through the apocalypse.”

“Was that when you married her?” Cameron asked.

“Something like that,” he said.

Cameron realized it was the graveyard watch when he saw Rory sitting next to the fire and staring off into the night.  The wind tugged hard on the tent’s walls, hard enough that Cameron could hear them snapping and straining against the wind.

Rory glanced toward the sound of their footsteps.  “What are you two doing up?”

“Storm woke Marin and Neve,” Thom said.  “Figured we’d come out and see if it’s as bad as it sounds.”

“Bad enough that Paul and Brandon went to go make sure the animals are secure,” Rory said.  “They haven’t come back yet and they left ten minutes ago.  Either there’s a ruckus that I can’t hear over the wind, or they got lost on the way there.”

“Could be they just decided to feed everyone as long as they were out there,” Cameron said, feeling an uncomfortable shudder in his stomach.  “You know, instead of waiting until morning.”

“Maybe,” Rory agreed.  “Pressure’s bad.  Giving me a headache.”

“Well, if we can’t get back to sleep in a little while, maybe we’ll come relieve you,” Thom said, scrubbing a hand over his face before he yanked on his gloves.  “That way, you can fall over into bed.”

Rory grunted.  “I’m more worried about what it means.  I’m not usually the one that gets a headache during a storm.  That’s Drew’s thing.”

Cameron frowned a little.  “But you’re sure it’s just the pressure change?”

“I don’t see how it could be anything else,” Rory said, then paused, looking at them for a long moment.  “You’re not suggesting that it’s something else, are you?”

Thom looked at Cameron, who shifted from one foot to the other, abruptly uncomfortable.

Why the hell did I even suggest it could be something else?  Of course it’s not anything else.  What else would it be?

Something that Phelan or Thordin or Neve would point to—a warning.  A sign.  Something.

“I don’t know,” Cameron said honestly.  “I really don’t know.”

Cameron took a swing at whatever was poking him in the darkness, fairly certain that it wasn’t Neve doing the poking.  “Go away,” he mumbled into his pillow, feeling lazy for the first time since he made it through basic training.  The bed was warm and the weather sounded nightmarish outside.

Then he realized that Neve wasn’t beside him and sat bolt upright.  He blinked blearily at Thom, who stood in the darkness well within arms’ reach in the shadows of the room, just barely visible in the light from the lamp that they always left burning dimly.

“What the hell are you doing in my room?”  Cameron asked.  “Where’s Neve?”

“With Marin, waiting for the both of us,” Thom said, crossing his arms.

With Marin?  When—why would she—?  Cameron frowned, shaking his head to clear the last vestiges of sleep.  “What’s going on?”

“We need to talk, that’s all.”  Thom’s gaze drifted toward the roof.  “After we have a look at what the hell it’s doing outside.  I think it sounds worse than it actually is.”

Cameron rubbed at his eyes as he groped his way out of bed and into pants and a shirt.  “So you’re going to drag me out of a warm bed to go out gallivanting in a raging winter storm?  What did I do to upset you?”

Thom sorted a laugh.  “Put your coat on.  The sooner we get to have a look, the sooner we’re back to the girls and they can stop conspiring against us.”  His mirth faded as his gaze grew distant.  “Something’s bothering the both of them.”

“They’re pregnant, Thom,” Cameron said, smothering a yawn as he yanked on his boots.  “They’re pregnant and they’re highly engaged in whatever…supernatural…shit goes on in the immediate vicinity, and I don’t know about  you, but I’d consider the werewolves a pretty supernatural occurrence.”

“They’re perfectly natural,” Thom said, keeping a straight face.  “They’re just from an era well beyond our ability to clearly remember.”

“You’ve been spending too much time with Phelan and Thordin,” Cameron decided, getting up and snagging his coat.  “You’re starting to sound like them.”

Thom laughed a little and shook his head.  “Yeah, maybe.  But it’s not bad when they’re right.”

Cameron shivered at how often they seemed to be right.  “Yeah, well.  Let’s get on with this.”  What the hell got Neve up and wandering tonight?  What’s going on?  Another shiver crept down his spine.  I’m not even sure I want to know.

He shouldered his way out the door and into the darkness of the corridor.  The wind rattled the planks and shingles above, though it didn’t seem to quite penetrate the tar paper that was sandwiched those shingles and the wooden underpinnings.

“We need more insulation,” Thom said as they walked toward the exit.

“We need a lot of things,” Cameron said.  “We can’t live in these sheds like this forever.”

“Come spring and summer, it’ll be different,” Thom said with heartfelt conviction.  “We’ll be able to get to work—get some real work done.  There’ll be a lot to do, but we’ll have more time to do it.  More time to prepare for another season like this one.”

“Must have been hard for you guys here,” Cameron said.

“Easier for us than for you, I think,” Thom said.  “I can only imagine how awful it must’ve been on the road.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” Cameron said.  “Vaguely horrifying here and there, but if I hadn’t crashed my plane and started hiking, I never would have found Neve.”  I wouldn’t have survived.

“Funny how things like that work,” Thom said.  “I was supposed to go to Chicago the weekend things went to hell.”

“Why didn’t you go?”

Thom smiled weakly.  “I would have missed saying good-bye to Marin if I had and I couldn’t bring myself to do that.”

I had always wondered what it might be like to have a sister.  I realized in that moment that I’d found one in spirit if not by blood.  The kinship Neve and I shared was different than the relationships I had with my friends—regardless of how close Kel or Jack or Care and I were, it would never be a bond quite like the one that Neve and I would share for the rest of our days.  Part of it would have to do with the destinies we shared, part with the children we carried—a legacy that Tala would enjoy, to some degree, though none of us would realize it until much later—but it went far beyond that.

“I’m scared,” she whispered after we sat in silence for a few long moments, each of us staring at the flickering lamp.  “I’m scared of what’s going to happen next, that I’ll lose Cameron, that something terrible will happen to everyone here.  That something will happen to Teague or Phelan or—or anyone I’ve ever dared to care about.”

“Cam will be fine,” I told her.  “I’ve seen it—seen enough to know that he will be.  You don’t have anything to worry about, just don’t let him do anything incredibly stupid and everything will be fine.”

“And you and Thom?” she asked quietly.  “And Phelan and my brother and your brother and all the rest?”

I exhaled, squeezing my eyes shut as they started to sting without my permission.  “I don’t know,” I said, my throat tight.  “I’ve seen…I’ve seen things, but I’m not always sure what they mean.”  How much do I tell her?  I chewed my lip, hoping Thom and Cameron didn’t suddenly show up at the wrong moment.  “I know that Thom and I will have to leave,” I told her.  “But I already told you that.”

She nodded.  “When I wanted you to learn how to sing the dead to their rest.  I still don’t…I don’t think it matters that much.  You’ll eventually come back.”  Neve straightened a little, studying me.  “And until then, you’ll be here and you’ll take care of our children when Cam and I can’t.”

I stared at her for a long moment before I squeezed my eyes shut and turned my face away.  She wrapped a hand around my arm and squeezed it with all her strength.

“I know you will,” she whispered.  “Don’t doubt it for a heartbeat.”

I sucked in a breath and nodded.  “Right,” I said in a bare whisper.  “You’re right.”

Remember, not even a Seer can see everything that will be in the future.  Never forget that, Marin.  Never, ever forget that.

Neve hugged me again and it was all I could do not to cry.

Thom rested his chin on my head, his arms wrapped tightly around my shoulders.  “What do you think it is?” he asked after a long moment.

Neve’s eyes shown brightly in the dim.  “Are we really going to talk about this now?” she asked in a whisper.

“I think we should.  We’re all awake, and if you two are that unsettled…”  There was a note of nervous hesitation in his voice, as if he was starting to be as unsettled as we were.  “Well.  We’re already here.”

I slowly started to disentangle myself from him and the blankets.  “I’d better go get Cameron, then.”

Neve laughed weakly.  “He’ll be upset when you wake him that I’m not there.”

“Well, that’s why I’m going now instead of waiting any longer.”

Thom caught my arm and squeezed gently.  “You stay here.  I’ll go get him.”  I started to protest but Thom shook his head.  “I want to have a look at what’s going on outside anyway.  It probably sounds a lot worse than it is.  Tends to be that way.”  He kissed me gently and squeezed me close for a brief moment before he was out of bed, lighting the lamp and groping around for pants and socks and his coat.  Neve sank down onto the bed with me to watch him fumble around.  I put my arm around her shoulders and she leaned against me with a slight shiver.

“I hope you’re right, Thom,” she said.  “About the storm out there. I hope you’re right and it sounds much worse than it actually is.”

“I’ll let you know when I get back,” he said, stooping to lace up his boots.  “You two just stay here and get comfortable.  This isn’t going to take that long.”

At least we hope it won’t.  I nodded as I freed a blanket from the tangle of bedding and wrapped it around Neve’s shoulders, then tugged a second free for myself.  “We’ll be here.”

He nodded, shrugged into his coat, and ducked out the door into the darkness.  I took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly.

“He doesn’t want to think about how bad it might be,” Neve said, her voice reed-thin and weak.

“No, he doesn’t,” I agreed, then sighed softly.  “But I don’t think I can blame him, either.  I don’t want to think about what it could mean if this is something other than a natural storm.”

She sat up a little straighter.  “You don’t think it’s natural either, then?”

“Something in my gut is screaming that it’s not.”  Would I have noticed that a few months ago?  I think I would have.  My hand absently drifted to my belly, where the beginnings of life were still too small for me to really feel.  If Cariocecus was to be believed, that didn’t matter.  My child’s power had already protected us once.

I shivered, and not from the cold.  Neve put her arm around me this time instead of the other way around.

“They’ll have destinies,” she whispered in my ear.  “But they’re intertwined.  They’ll take care of each other.  I know it.”

I stared at her in blinking confusion until she took my hand and pressed it against her belly, then put her own against mine.

“Oh,” I said lamely, blinking back tears that suddenly stung in my eyes.  “How can you be so sure?”  I’m the one that’s supposed to know these things.

                She rested her head against my shoulder and stared at the flickering flame of the lamp.  “I’ve spent most of my life searching for the man destined for Caliburn,” she said.  “After the first bearer, I despaired of ever finding the one who it was truly meant for, for the line destined to carry it.  Then I found Cameron and I started to…well.  I started to think that the burden I’d been shouldering for so long wasn’t one I had to carry anymore.”

“Then you realized you were in love with him,” I said softly.  She nodded.

“And I realized that my fate was always supposed to be intertwined with the sword—with him.  It always had been and it always would be.”  She squeezed me gently.  “I felt the same thing when I met you and Thom.  Not love, of course, but the sense of knowing.  Somehow, some way, we’ve always been destined to come together.”

“You know, six months ago Thom would have told you that you were crazy.”

She laughed weakly.  “Somehow I suspected as much.  He might still tell me I’m crazy.  Cam might say the same thing.  But you and I…we know the truth.”

I nodded slowly.  “You’re right,” I said in a bare whisper.  “We do.”

Cocooned in Thom’s arms, I eventually drifted back to sleep, though it wasn’t mercifully dreamless like most of my nights had been lately.  Someone was laughing, cackling almost madly, and it left my skin crawling even as I jerked awake again, only marginally conscious of what I’d been dreaming.  The fading fragments of nightmare and vision were jumbled together in a dark haze as I hunched over, breathing hard, skin puckering at the chill of our cot in the early hours before dawn.

Thom touched my arm, pushing himself up on an elbow.  “Mar?” he whispered over the sound of the raging storm.  “What’s the matter now?”

“Nightmares,” I whispered.  “Visions.  I…I don’t know, Thom.  I can’t remember them now, just someone laughing and fingers like…like claws…”  I swallowed hard against a knot in my throat, against bile that crept higher and higher.

Don’t be sick.  Keep it together.  For the love of everything holy and sacred, keep it together.

I shuddered as Thom sat up and put his arms around me, drawing me tight against his chest.  My eyes stung as I curled into a ball.

“It must have been bad,” he murmured.  “Especially if you don’t remember them now.”

“I know,” I whispered.  “God, I know.  Maybe it was nothing.”

“It was something,” a voice said from the darkness near our door.  I squinted in the dim and just barely made out Neve’s shape in the darkness.  She leaned against her crutches in the open doorway, her face as pale as the long nightgown that shrouded her.  I was shocked we hadn’t heard her coming.

“How do you know?”  I asked, almost breathless as my heart began to beat a little faster.  She was as powerful and as sensitive as her cousin, though both were loath to admit it.

“I just do,” she said, limping deeper into our space.  Thom and I moved over in the bed so she could sit on the edge and take weight off her bad leg, off her injured back.  She settled there, her face a mask of pain for a long moment, her eyes sparkling with tears she barely held inside.  “I can feel it deep down in here.”  She pressed a hand against her belly as she caught her lower lip in her teeth.  “Can you feel it, too?”

I swallowed again and nodded.  “Yeah.  Ever since the storm started.”

“It’s the beginning,” she whispered.

“Of what?”  Thom asked.  His arms tightened around me and I rested my head against his shoulder, my forehead against his neck.  Even as the storm howled outside and a ball of dread coiled in my belly, I felt safe in his arms.  He’d never let anything hurt me—not as long as he could do something about it.

“I don’t know,” Neve admitted softly, “but I know it’s not good.  Maybe Phelan…”

“Maybe,” I agreed.  “Maybe.”

Sometime deep in the night, the wind began to howl and claw at the rooftops, rattling the whole world with all the fury of the worst West Michigan winter storms that I could recall.  As I pressed closer to Thom and listened to the wind scream above us, I hoped against hope that we wouldn’t wake to collapsed tents or dead livestock—our trio of rescued cows, our horses, the chickens, and the herd of sheep.  The cats and dogs would be safely snuggled in with someone as usual—we even had a little black kitten curled between me and the wall near my knees, her purring nearly lost beneath the sound of the wind rattling the two layers of roof above us.

It must be all right, since whoever’s on the late watch hasn’t sounded any alarms.  It’s just a bad storm.  Everything’s solid.

Of course, even with everything solid, a nasty storm would make it hard for us to function for at least a few days, if not longer.  I didn’t relish the idea of everyone going stir crazy as we were trapped in the tents and our cots, unable to venture into the wide, cold world beyond if even for a little while.  Davon, Rory, and a few of the others had realized that they enjoyed sojourns down into the fields beyond the borders of campus and the ravines surrounding us to hunt deer and smaller game.  Kellin still headed out with small parties to scavenge what we could from empty houses and abandoned storefronts, but only when the weather held for it.

But everyone trapped in the tents…

I shuddered at the thought.  Thom groaned and rolled over, arms circling me and drawing me close to his chest.  I exhaled a sigh and pressed my cheek against the soft, worn cotton of his shirt, praying I hadn’t woken him.

“What’s the matter?” he murmured after a moment, dashing my hopes.

“Storm out there,” I whispered into his chest, squeezing my eyes closed in the darkness.  I could almost see the wind ripping branches from trees, nudging some of the still-standing walls of the campus buildings into their final collapse.  It couldn’t be that bad, though.  Everything where we were seemed to be okay.  The wind—the storm—couldn’t be doing that so near and leave us relatively intact.

Could it?

I shivered again.  “It sounds bad, that’s all.”

“It woke you?” he asked softly, glancing toward the rafters.  “It sounds strong, but I’m sure everything will be fine.  I’m not feeling any drafts, are you?”

“No,” I admitted.  “But we’ve already double-walled this cot and we’ve got four blankets around us.  I don’t know if I’d feel a draft if there was one or not.”

Thom nodded absently, kissing the top of my head.  “I’m sure everything will be fine,” he said, his voice quiet.  “The cat’s still against your knees, right?”

I nodded.  “Yeah.”

“Then we’re fine.  She’d be hiding if it were worse, right?”

“Maybe,” I whispered.  “Maybe.”  Another shiver rushed through me.  There was something about this that I didn’t like, something that left me unsettled.  Thom must have sensed it, because his arms tightened around me.

“Stop worrying so much,” he said as he buried his nose against my hair.  “It’s just a storm and we’re safe and sound under shelter.  It’ll be fine.”

“Right,” I said.  “You’re right.”

Even as I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to concentrate on the sound of his heartbeat over the sound of the storm, of the wind and snow and ice lashing against the world, I couldn’t shake the sinking feeling in my gut that something else had begun to go terribly wrong.

They say that time heals all wounds, and I suppose that it must be true.  It didn’t take long for me to recover from the skinwalker attack.  Despite my apparently dramatic collapse, I was up in the afternoon of the following day, gingerly testing my injured leg and earning disapproving but slightly relieved looks from my husband.  He came to bed that night pensive, stretching out next to me on the mattress and laying there on his back staring at the ceiling, watching the play of lamplight against the rafters.

I rolled onto my side and rested my hand gently on his breastbone.  “What’s the matter, Thom?”

“I’m worried,” he said.

“Uh-huh.”  I waited for him to continue, knowing there must be more than just those two words coming.  But he stayed silent next to me, just staring upward.  I frowned a little.  “What are you worried about this time?”

“Some of the others are talking about establishing something like trade routes,” he said slowly.  “I’m not sure how I feel about it.  I don’t think I like it.”

“That would be exactly why nobody told you,” I said, probably more tartly than I should have.  But it was the truth.  No one had mentioned it to him because everyone was afraid of his possibly vehement reaction to the whole idea.

If anyone among us was paranoid about our security, it was Thomas Ambrose.

Then again, if there was anyone who had a right to be, it was him.

He shot me a look that was as betrayed as it was hurt.  I winced.

“Thom—”

“You knew,” he said, his voice soft.

Definitely more hurt than angry.  “Of course I knew,” I said quietly.  “Thom, how could I not know?  I’m surprised this is the first you’ve heard of it.  We’ve been working on this for weeks—almost two months.  It’s not anything new or surprising.  At least, it shouldn’t  be.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

I winced.  “I just didn’t,” I said, not wanting to tell him that I was as afraid as the others of what his reaction would be and that I hadn’t wanted to deal with the brunt of it.

He winced, too, then rolled onto his side.  “Mar,” he whispered, “I don’t want you to hesitate telling me anything because you’re afraid of what I’m going to say or do.”

“There’s always going to be things I don’t want to tell you, Thom.”  I rested my forehead against his as his hands slid up underneath my nightshirt, skimming the flesh of my ribcage and sides.  “But I didn’t tell you this time because it wasn’t my place to tell you.  Kellin’s spearheading this effort—it’s her thing, her place to tell you.  Not mine.”

“You still could have—”

I pressed a finger against his lips, silencing him.  “I made a choice not to and I stand by that choice.  I know that my telling you that I don’t think it’s a bad idea is going to make you change your mind about how you feel about all of it, but I’ll throw it out there anyway.  I do think it’s a good and necessary idea, though we’ll have to make sure that we have some fail-safes and some safety measures built into all of it.”

“Oh yeah?” he said softly.  “Like what?”

“Like we establish a trading post that’s not here, but within a few hours’ ride of here,” I said.  “No one comes directly to the settlement to trade—not early on, anyway.  We’ll meet at our trading outpost and then things will be brought back and forth.  It’s not much, but it’ll give us a buffer, right?”

“Right,” he echoed.  He was still running his hand up and down my side.  I shivered.

I don’t know if he’s doing that absentmindedly or on purpose, but I sure as hell know what it’s doing to me.  “Thom,” I said.

“Mm?”

“If you’re going to keep doing that, blow out the lamp.  We can work through the rest of my precautions later.”

His brows lifted, his face a play of light and shadow as the lamp flickered.

I kissed him gently.  “If you won’t, I will.”

He grinned and blew out the light.

“Are you still walking on eggshells about all of that?”  Kellin asked. “Your visions and hers and all of that?  I mean, I don’t think you are, but it’s been a while since anyone’s talked about it, so I thought I’d ask.”

“We promised when we got married that we’d be honest with each other,” Thom said quietly, his heart giving a painful squeeze.  I wish that meant that we wouldn’t keep secrets from each other, but I’m a fool if I think she doesn’t keep a few from me and I know damned well that she knows I have a few secrets I’m keeping from her.  It made him feel guilty, though perhaps not as much as it should have.  “We’re talking about it when it happens.”  When it’s not too terrible to talk about, anyway.

Kellin took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, nodding.  “Good.  Good.  I’m glad to hear it.”

He managed to smile.  “Were you worried?”

She smiled back.  “Maybe a little.  She was worried about you for a long time.”

“Well, now it’s my turn to worry about her.”  Not that I ever really stopped.  I just get to continue worrying about her—just like I always have.

Just like I hope I always will.

“You okay, Thom?”

He nodded in response to J.T.  “Yeah, I’m okay.  Just thinking.  I never really stopped worrying about her.”

J.T.’s brows rose and Kellin cocked her head to one side.  Thom winced.

I said more than I meant to, I think.

“So you broke up because you loved her?”  Kellin asked curiously.  “That’s…kind of crazy and romantic at the same time.”

“You can’t say you didn’t do the same with Jamie,” Thom countered, regretting it almost immediately as Kellin winced and looked away.

“You’re right,” she said after a moment.  “I broke things off with Jamie because I loved her.  I knew she was leaving and it didn’t feel right to tie her to me like that when god only knows when we’d see each other again.”  She smiled weakly.  “That doesn’t mean I don’t regret it all the time, because I really do.  I miss her a lot.  I don’t even know if she’s alive.  I hope she is.  I hope she’s okay.”

Thom shivered.  That was almost Marin and I.  Hell.  We got lucky.  I didn’t go to the city and she hadn’t left for the East Coast.  We were damned lucky.  “I hope she is, too.”  His lips thinned.  “Is that part of why you’re so keen on this whole…trading thing?”

Kellin glanced sidelong at J.T.  “Thom thinks it’s a terrible idea.”

J.T.’s brows rose again and he looked at his friend.  “Why do you think it’s a terrible idea?”

“I just…”  Thom frowned, taking a sip of coffee to buy himself time to think.  “It worries me.  Sending some of us out into nowhere in search of things that may or may not be out there to find.  I’m worried that something bad will happen to anyone who goes and that we’ll never find out what happened to them it something does.”  His brows knit.  “There’s always the possibility of leading new trouble here, too.  People who want to take things that we have once they see what we have to trade.”

Kellin shook her head a little.  “We can’t live in fear, Thom.  If we live in fear, every nasty, dark thing out there in the world wins.  We’ve got to make the most of our situation—and live as part of this brave new world whether we want to or not.  I don’t think cocooning ourselves here is an option.”

“Of course it’s an option,” J.T. said with a wry smile.  “It’s just not a good option.  You have to admit, Thom, she’s right about one thing. We can’t spend the rest of our lives scared of what might happen or who might show up here to take our stuff.

“All we can do is move forward and hope that we’ll rise to whatever occasion arises.”

Kellin and J.T. sat by the fire when he came back under cover ten minutes later.  He’d lingered out by the edge of the tents long enough to watch the dark clouds starting to build in as the sun inched higher in the sky.  J.T. didn’t look like he’d slept at all as he cradled a mug of hot, strong coffee between his palms, peering blearily over the rim at Thom as he approached.

“Where were you?”  J.T. asked.

“Watching the sun come up,” Thom said, scrubbing his hand over his face.  “Was thinking to get some work done out there today, but there’s a storm rolling in.  It’s not going to happen.”

“Surprised you weren’t still in bed with Marin,” J.T. said, watching as Thom sat down next to the fire, stretching his booted feet out toward the flames.

“That surprises everyone every time I’m not there and she is,” Thom muttered, staring at the flames for a long moment.  Cold still nibbled at his toes inside his boots from standing so long in the snow outside.  “She was asleep and safe.  I decided to let her keep right on sleeping.”  He glanced down at the sketchbook in his lap.  How much of what we’re building today am I building for her?  For our son?  For no one else but them?  He swallowed hard.  As much as he liked to tell himself that it was for everyone, more of it was for them—for her, for the son that hadn’t been born yet.

“That’s because you’re more protective of her than a mother bear protecting her cubs,” J.T. said, shaking his head slightly.  “But I’m glad that you trusted what we told you enough to leave her alone.”

Thom nodded absently, still staring at the flames.  “It was easier when Matt found me asleep in the chair and told me to go to bed.”

“What time was that?”  Kellin asked as she handed Thom a cup of coffee.

“Just after the first watch,” Thom said.  “Matt had it and he came to check on Marin and I after he was relieved.”

“Just after we finally finished up with Phelan,” J.T. mumbled.

Thom looked at him sidelong.  “How is he?”

“He’ll make it,” J.T. said, trying to smother a yawn.  “Sorry.  I had the overnight.  Jac’s with him now, making sure he doesn’t try to flop out of bed.  She’ll probably sit on his legs if he does.  I’d like to see him try to lift her off of him with a hole in his side.”

Kellin winced.  “Was it that bad?”

“Pretty bad,” J.T. said.  “But it doesn’t look like it hit his spleen or any other organs, so it’ll heal and he’ll live.  We’ll need to get fluids into him when he wakes up, but I don’t think he’ll complain too much.  He’ll just be happy to still be breathing.”

Aren’t we all?  Thom shook his head and sipped his coffee.  “This shit needs to stop happening to him.”

“I’m pretty sure he knows, but do you want to remind him?”  J.T. smiled tiredly.  “I’m sure he’d love to hear it from you, too.”

“How many I told you so moments has he had already?”

“This time or all the other times?”  J.T. stretched and took a deep draught from his mug.  “This time I think it’s number three or four, if you count it by people.  Thordin alone told him he was an idiot and needed to be more careful half a dozen times, though.”

Thom smiled wryly.  “Then I’m thinking he doesn’t need to hear it from me, too.”  He shook his head.  “Everyone else seem to be okay?”

“Seems like,” J.T. said.  “Cameron’s sleeping it off and Rory’s sleeping the sleep of the freaking dead, but after what he tossed around yesterday, I can’t exactly blame him.”

Kellin shivered.  “I don’t think any of us quite suspected that he could do that.”

“Don’t count on that,” Thom said quietly.

Kellin arched a brow at him and he shrugged.

“Odds are, she knew.”

Kellin sighed and shook her head.  “Maybe, maybe not.  Do you really think it’s worth asking about?”

“Probably not,” Thom admitted, eyes returning to the fire.  “Probably not.”

Thom greeted the dawn alone, standing outside their shelters with his sketchbook tucked under his arm, watching the sun rise.  Even sore, even as worn out as he was from the events of the day before, he’d found himself unable to sleep past the first light of dawn.  Marin was still sleeping in their bed, tucked safely in their blankets, breathing deep and even.  He’d felt safe enough to leave her alone after testing her for fever and a quick glance at her stitched-up wounds.

They’ll be fine, he reminded himself again as he stood in the snow and watched the sky turn red with the dawn.  They’re fine—or they will be after she’s slept off yesterday.  It’s Phelan that should be worrying us.

He smiled humorlessly to himself.  Why should that surprise me at all?  The smile faded after a moment as he watched the red of the sky grow deeper as the sun continued its rise.  There wouldn’t be time this morning to repair any wards that had been broken or for Matt to work on anything up at the forge, or for work to continue on the rooftops and the walls.  A storm was coming and it would be there before most of the camp was awake.

His lips thinned.  So much for a quiet day of getting work done.  He glanced down at his sketchbook and sighed.  There was so much he wanted to do, so much he wanted them to be able to accomplish.  If trouble kept coming in waves, that was never going to happen.

It’s got to stop sometime.

“Thom?  What’re you doing out here?”

He turned toward the sound of Kellin’s voice and smiled weakly.  “Watching the sun come up.  I was going to walk the perimeter before anyone got up, but seeing that sky makes me think it’s a better idea not to.”

She followed his gaze and winced.  “Yeah,” she said softly.  “I agree.  It’ll be another day of taking stock of what we have and making things that we can trade when spring comes.”

Thom blinked, glancing at her.  “Trade?  With who?”

Kellin smiled faintly.  “We’re not the only ones who lived, Thom.  We knew that already.  While our last encounter with people from outside this community wasn’t exactly positive, there must be some other settlements out there that are more interested in trading than raiding.  Once the weather breaks in the spring, I think that some of us will need to venture out, hit the road, see what’s out there.”

“Who?”  Thom asked without thinking, still staring at her.  “Kel, who could we spare for that?”

She met his gaze with a weak, faint smile.  “We’d figure it out.  I could go, maybe with Greg and Brandon, one or two others.  We’d manage on the road and you’d manage here without us.”

Thom’s lips thinned.  “I’m not sure I like that idea,” he admitted quietly.

Kellin smiled and patted his arm.  “It’s a good thing that you don’t make all the decisions around here, then.  You can’t say that we won’t need some kind of allies and trade from areas north and south of here—that another settlement won’t be able to produce things that we can’t produce on our own.”

“We can produce a lot of things on our own,” Thom said stubbornly.

“But not everything,” Kellin said, her tone gentle.  She squeezed his arm.  “This is going to happen, Thom.  Whether you want it to or not, we need this.  We’ll find a way to make it all work.”

“Right,” he murmured softly, gaze returning to the sky.  An uncomfortable flutter went through his stomach—nerves, he supposed, or something else.

Intuition?  Maybe.  He frowned to himself.

Whether he liked it or not, Kellin was right.  They needed allies, if only so they knew where it would be safe to run to if things got bad, if they were overrun.

He winced.  Pray that day never comes.

Kellin squeezed his arm gently.  “I’m going to put some hot water on,” she said softly.  “Come to the fire when you’re ready.”

“I will,” he murmured.  “I will soon enough.”

She nodded and left him there alone.