[This post is from Thom’s point of view.]
He’d been dreaming of war a lot lately, though, seeing visions of war, past and possible future. He wasn’t exactly keen on trying to fathom the reasons why—Thom was half convinced that down that path would lie madness, and he’d left enough of his sanity in pieces scattered around in the last eleven months.
It had been almost a year. Idly, he wondered how they would mark the anniversary of that day, if they would mark it at all. There was a strong temptation to just let it pass. It had been the beginning, though.
For the first time in a long time, Thom found himself wondering how many others were out there, how many had managed to survive and scrape together resources to keep on going. They knew about the group in the mountains of Pennsylvania, knew about two or three others out east thanks to Cameron, then there was the community due south that Lara led—and another that Daniel’s people had discovered on the other side of Lake Michigan during the depths of the frozen winter, when everything had seemed like it was spiraling out of control.
At least those monsters that the shifter had warned of had never come.
Not yet, anyway.
His fingers brushed over his son’s hair and he stared at the ceiling, exhaling a quiet sigh. The infant stirred, but didn’t wake.
We’re doing this for him, not for ourselves. For him and the others. For the next generation, the one that’ll never know the world we grew up in, just this one. We’re fighting to give them a home, to give them peace and stability.
“Is it even possible?” he asked the rafters.
“Is what possible?”
He jerked, blinking rapidly. Marin stood by the door, watching him as she took her shoes off. “I didn’t hear you come in,” he said, his voice hoarse. How long had she been standing there?
Am I losing time somehow?
“I just came in,” she said softly. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear me.”
“I was just thinking,” he murmured, looking back at the ceiling again. She padded quietly across the floor to the edge of the bed and reached down to brush her fingers across his forehead.
“You’re still warm,” she whispered.
“I know.” Thom closed his eyes. “It’ll go away eventually.”
“I should get Jac or Jay to come have another look,” she said. “Or Seamus or Phelan.”
“Later,” Thom said, reaching up to take her hand. He squeezed her fingers, finding them cold in his grip. “I’ll keep until then.”
“What’s wrong?”
He took a deep breath, then let it sigh out of him. The silence stretched for a few moments. Then, finally:
“We might need to talk.”
