Chapter 1: Chapter 1. Accidental Encounter
Addie
If I was a superhero, my power would be accidentally crushing balls.
How does one accidentally crush balls?
Talent, my friends. Pure, undiluted talent.
"Shit!" I cursed, scrambling towards a kneeling, groaning Asher. His hands were protectively cupping the front of his pants, eyes anguished. "I meant to aim for your head."
"How the fuck did your fist miss my head and hit my dick?"
Well, when he put it like that...
"I'm sorry, Ashy," I cajoled, taking a step towards him. His blond hair, now shoulder length, glinted in the waning sunlight and highlighted the fireworks of gold in his eyes.
At my gentle tone, his head snapped up, and his expression softened.
"I'm not mad, sweet girl. I'm just...in pain." He dramatically rolled onto his back, legs and arms sprawled. I moved to lay beside him and rested my head on his chest. His arm wrapped around me, holding me close.
The house we had found ourselves in was a small, bungalow-style building with decaying hanging plants and bug-riddled shrubs. While it wasn't aesthetically pleasing, it had two fences blocking it from the outside world. Protecting us from the monsters roaming the streets.
It had been three months since we had left Elena's house, and six months since the world had ended. Three months, one week, five days.
An eternity.
Three months, one week, and five days since I had last seen three of my men and Tommy.
Calax, with his broad shoulders and cropped black hair. The rough and surly exterior contradicting the gentle giant underneath.
Declan, my childhood best friend and one of the men I loved.
Fallon, the appointed leader of our group.
Tommy, the boy I had deemed as my younger brother. He and Nik held that role in my heart.
Gone. Missing.
Dead.
I didn't want to start thinking of that, of them, because I knew that if I did, I would start spiraling into a pit of depression, an abyss of despair.
Rolling over, I leveled Asher with my best glare.
"Again."
"Again?" He rolled onto his elbows, the movement causing his shirt to roll up. I had chosen not to be intimate with any of my loves until we were all reunited, and they respected that decision. However, Asher was making it quite difficult.
His muscles were more defined from our long and extensive workout sessions. With his light blond scruff and golden hair, he was almost too handsome for his own good.
"Sweetheart, we've been doing these drills for a few hours now. You're exhausted."
Even before he finished speaking, I was already fisting my hands and bouncing on the balls of my feet. Asher watched me warily. Cautiously.
"You can't keep working yourself this hard," he continued. "It's not good for you."
"What's not good is being a liability. Being weak." My stomach twisted at that word. It had been my weakness, my inability to fight, that had caused me to be kidnapped by Liz, Ryder's ex-girlfriend. It had been my weakness that had caused me to get shot, leaving behind scars that went far beyond the one on my stomach.
And because I had been shot, we had been trapped in Elena's house when the Ragers arrived.
Killing Calax.
Tears burned my eyes, the mere memory equivalent to a knife twisting in my heart.
The world had ended, ravaged by natural disasters and zombie-like monsters, but Calax's death had been the thing to endme.
Asher was saved from responding by the back door opening and closing.
"Kitten, it's time for dinner," a melodic voice said.
Ryder leaned against the porch railing, the epitome of calm.
The man was beautiful, sexy, with onyx black skin and cropped black hair. Tattoos lined his muscular forearms, currently bare with his red tank top.
"We'll be done in an hour, then we'll head in," I said, turning back towards Asher. I heard Ryder's heavy, resigned sigh.
"Addie, no." Asher's cadence, from his voice to his face, was stern. When he got like that, there was no talking him out of it.
Reining in my irritation, I snapped, "Fine."
I knew I was being a bitch, a brat, but I couldn't stop myself. Ever since that fatal night, when I had witnessed Calax getting swarmed by Ragers, my emotions were too raw. Too real. I was a semi-truck powering ahead at full speed, never stopping even with a brick wall fast approaching.
And Fallon and Declan...
The two of them had taken an improvised trip, but we had no way of getting in contact with them when we had to hastily leave. The one radio we had owned had been left behind...and destroyed.
We had waited for weeks in the town for them, but they had never arrived. Either we had missed their return, or something had happened to them. I prayed that it was the former.
Maybe they were fine. Maybe they had found another girl to love, to cherish, to protect. I would be fine with that, if it meant they were alive.
After the allotted time had passed, we had traveled to Nikolai's house to try and find them. Instead of my lovers and little brother, we found a massacre of dead bodies and blood-stained walls.
Did it make me a horrible person that I felt relief when I realized not one of those bodies belonged to the people I loved?
It was on our way back, retracing the trail to Elena's house and leaving cryptic messages for the guys to find, that we found the enclosed house with distressed wood and a dilapidated roof. Still, it protected us from Ragers and the elements.
Shouldering past Ryder, I entered the sparsely lit kitchen. There was no electricity, so we had to rely on candles.
Ronan's broad, bare back was illuminated in the flickering flame. He had lighter skin than his half-brother, Ryder, a light mocha. He, too, was covered in tattoos, the most prominent one being a white unicorn on his chest.
His back was to me as he sung beneath his breath, dancing to a tune only he could hear. He poured something into a bowl and spun in a circle before reaching for a spice on the rack.
I watched him silently for a moment, aware that both Asher and Ryder were struggling to hold in their laughter. After a moment, I said, "You're such a dork, Ro."
He spun wildly, eyes widening, before a teasing grin crossed his handsome face.
"Yes, but I'm your dork, Princess."
I hated when he called me that.
I may have been a princess in his eyes, but I wore a crown of prickly thorns and my kingdom was a graveyard.
Still, I flashed him the smile I knew he wanted to see before wrapping my arms around him. He hugged me back immediately, bending down to kiss my forehead with a loud, exaggerated smack.
"Gross."
The deadpan voice came from behind me. I knew, without even looking, that it would belong to a man in his mid-thirties with dark hair and eyes that seemed to be perpetually amused.
"Crawl out of your anthill, Doc?" I asked with feigned sweetness.
Ignoring me, he stepped further into the kitchen and peered at the bowl in front of Ronan. His nose crinkled in distaste, skin between his brows furrowing.
"Ew."
With that proclamation, he sat at the table like the condescending ass wipe he was.
Doc was, as the namesake suggested, a doctor who had saved me after I had been shot. Of course, he was halfway behind it. He'd been part of the rival group who had shot me before we had kidnapped him.
Yup. Kidnapped.
We were apparently doing that now.
Speaking of kidnapped victims...
Kai stepped into the kitchen, stretching his arms over his head.
Honestly, I didn't know what Ronan and Ryder were thinking when they brought him here. They claimed it was momentary insanity.
"Morning, ladies," he chirped. Yup. He was one of those people - you know the type. Always happy and smiling and stabbing people.
"It's seven at night, dumbass," Ronan snapped. My green-haired leprechaun was not a fan of Kai.
"Semantics."
He moved to the table and sat beside Doc, two outsiders staring through a glass window at the rest of us. Only, after three months, they weren't outsiders. Not anymore. They weren't a part of my "harem" as Doc so eloquently liked to point out, but I didn't hate them. Doc and Kai were the two older brothers I never had and never knew I wanted.
And, of course, I didn't miss the looks they sent each other when they thought no one was looking.
"Dinner is served, ma chérie," Ronan said, placing the bowl onto the table. It appeared to be some type of cold stew and a loaf of bread. In today's day and age, it was the equivalent of a five-star meal.
Smiling at his over-the-top antics, I surveyed the room once more.
"Where's Tamson?" I asked. His red hair was noticeably absent.
When no one replied, I felt panic unfurl in my gut.
"Guys, where is he?" My hands gripped the back of the dining room chair, painfully aware that not one of the guys was making eye-contact with me.
"He went on a supply run, Princess," Ronan cajoled soothingly. He took a step forward, but I automatically stepped away.
"By himself?" I hated how my voice came out as a screech. "No! He can't be by himself! What if something happened to him? What if he doesn't come back? Oh god…"
I collapsed onto the ground, my legs unable to keep me up, to keep me balanced. The world was spinning, rotating on its axis, and I couldn't hold on. The ground continually opened its gaping maws to swallow me whole, dragging me into the dark abyss I knew awaited a broken, rotten girl like myself.
"Addie, he'll be fine," Ryder tried to comfort, but I shoved his hand away. They always did that - comforted me - as if their entire world hadn't also been destroyed at the same time mine had.
They were brothers in the truest sense of the word. Kinship and fidelity was a choice, one they made, and they created ties that could not be severed by the sharpest of knives. While some may have looked at their team as a burdened obligation, a weight on their shoulders, my men saw it as an opportunity to make a family, a family they had lacked. Falling in love with me only fortified that bond instead of breaking it apart.
Losing Calax, Fallon, and Declan was just one of many tragedies. Our lives were a myriad of them.
I knew they could feel their lost brethren's absence as keenly as I could.
I hated how often I fell apart, how grief had shattered the last of my sensibilities. I needed my men with me, all of them, or else I would lose myself completely. I couldn't fathom a world without them in it, but unfortunately I had to.
Every. Single. Day.
I was sobbing, whispering inarticulate phrases, when strong arms wrapped around me. Without even opening my eyes, I knew the man holding me was Tamson.
"It's okay," he whispered into my hair, voice hoarse. "It's okay, my love. I'm sorry I'm late. I'm sorry."
And I continued to cry, arms wrapped around his waist, as indecipherable apologies escaped my lips. Apologies for being weak and desperate. Apologies for reverting back to the scared little girl they had met at the resort.
Apologies for forcing them to love a broken girl.
* * *
Tamson
After her heartbreaking sobs receded and she descended into unconsciousness, I remained holding her. In the months since Calax's death, her body was thinner, weaker, despite the many hours she spent fighting. She never ate, barely slept, and could only last a few hours, at most, without one of us with her.
We didn't mind, but we hated how this was slowly breaking her, chipping away the girl we loved more than anything else.
"She asleep?" Asher asked, voice tired.
"Yeah." I kept my voice low as to not wake the sleeping beauty. She needed sleep desperately if the bags beneath her eyes were any indication.
"She's getting worse," Ronan mused, running his fingers through his green-tipped hair. The bastard had found a can of hair dye during one of our supply runs and had insisted on maintaining the green streaks. For Addie, who had a strange fascination with his hair. He, of course, was willing to oblige. Anything to see that smile on her angelic, heart-shaped face.
Addie's behavior was troubling, to say the least. She was consistently cloaked in a shadow of pain and grief. Her haunted eyes were a pilgrimage to all she had endured.
"It's depression, dumbasses." Unsurprisingly, the cocky voice came from Doc. At his words, all of our heads snapped in his direction. He was languidly leaning back in his chair, sipping a mug of cold coffee. If he was perturbed by our undivided attention, he didn't show it.
Ryder's voice was scathing when he spoke next. "We know what the hell it is. What can we do to help her?"
"Euthanization might be beneficial," he drawled. And that did it. Before we could stop him, Ryder charged towards the doctor, hands extended as if he meant to strangle him. Kai stood up automatically, and both Ronan and Asher moved to restrain the prowling beast that had replaced our friend. Ryder's eyes were positively livid, a monster emerging from the dark depths.
"Say that again. I fucking dare you," he hissed darkly. He bucked, once, against the hands holding him back before reluctantly moving to kneel beside Addie. His hand gripped hers as if she was his life preserver while he was adrift at sea.
Doc sighed heavily, folding his hands over his stomach. "There's not much you can do, boys," he admitted seriously. "Before the world went to shit, I would've recommended a therapist and some medicine, but now? Just continue loving her."
Ronan released a humorless laugh. "That's what we've been doing, asshole. But she's still hurting, still grieving, and nothing we do can stop that."
"You're right," Doc agreed, surprisingly amicable. "That girl there is a volcano seconds from exploding. Right now, she's merely spitting out tiny bits of lava here and there. Nothing that can destroy a town or kill a community. But soon, that volcano is going to erupt and everyone will be a casualty. It's not going to be pretty."
Asher's nails dug into his palms as he faced down the devil himself, the bane of our existence. I didn't care that Doc had saved Addie's life once upon a time. He was an asshole through and through. No amount of pretty, poetic metaphors and comparisons would change that fact.
"Fine. Ignore my ramblings. I only had, like, ten plus years of medical training. But it's fine. Ignore the truth of what needs to be done with that girl of yours and watch what happens. It's not you she's going to hurt in that inevitable explosion, but herself."
I was seething, a red fog obscuring my vision. If I didn't have Addie in my arms, I would lunge towards the pompous asshole and tear his tongue out of his mouth. What he was implying…
I knew Addie was hurting, hurting deeply, but she wouldn't resort to physically harming herself, would she?
The mere thought had me tightening my arms around her tiny form, almost imperceptibly.
Without another word, I gracefully rose to my feet, still holding Addie. Her head was tucked beneath my chin, and I couldn't help but pepper a couple of kisses to her forehead.
Moving swiftly, not trusting myself to stay in the same room as Doc McStuffins without maiming him, I stepped into my bedroom and placed Addie on the bed.
She looked so peaceful when she slept. Regal, almost. A princess - a queen - in the flesh. She hated when Ronan used that endearment because she no longer saw herself as someone worthy of carrying a crown. She often compared herself to a prickly thorn, and a part of me wanted to agree with her.
But like with anything as beautiful as a rose, the pain inflicted was worth the inevitable end. I would hold a thousand thorny stems just to feast my eyes upon her beauty.
I removed her shoes and socks rhythmically, lost in my own thoughts.
I hated to see her hurting. She had always been an abnormally strong woman, but there was only so much she could take.
Had this finally been her breaking point?
No, I couldn't believe that. She was still walking and smiling. Laughing and teasing. Her episodes were getting less and less frequent with time.
And, her pain now didn't compare to the month directly following Calax's death and our other two members' disappearances. It didn't even scratch the surface.
My heart gave a painful throb when I visualized her sobbing into her pillow, terrible, desperate sounds that pierced me like thousands of knives.
My own grief clogged my airway, my lungs, but combined with hers, it was almost unimaginable.
Shaking my head to clear the memory, I pulled back the blankets and crawled in beside her. She made a happy sound, immediately curling her body around my own.
"We'll get through this," I promised resolutely. I pressed my lips to the crown of her head and allowed them to linger. "We'll all get through this."
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
EroMaster007
EroMaster007 In this prologue, I set the stage for a suspenseful and mysterious world in "Calax." Readers will dive into the emotions and secrets that haunt the protagonist, Callie, as she grapples with fear and the enigmatic voices in her life. It's a story of complex characters, deep connections, and the enduring power of love and resilience. As I write Chapter 1, I aim to create a strong foundation, leaving readers eager for more revelations and twists in the narrative.
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