After the End Ch. 21 by RobinZephyr
Immerse yourself in ‘After the End Ch. 21’ by RobinZephyr, a captivating gay sex story that explores desire, passion, and love in a post-apocalyptic world. Join the characters as they navigate their deepest emotions and connections—this chapter promises to be both steamy and unforgettable!
Author’s note:
This is the ninth chapter of After the End – Part 3, the final novel in my dystopian erotic romance trilogy. If you enjoy intensely provocative sex with a power play twist, handsome male heroes in emotionally satisfying relationships, and unconventional happily-ever-afters — you are in the right place! These books are full-length, publication-quality, and currently being offered free of charge. 🙂
Descriptions of each book can be found in my bio by clicking my user name. Feel free to drop in on specific chapters or sections based on your mood or interest, but the dramatic tension is strongest if you start from the beginning of Part 1. As always, I appreciate hearing your reactions and feedback. It truly does help me create the best stories that I can for readers to enjoy.
Content warning: This chapter depicts graphic experiences and intense, distressing emotions related to the following: violent armed conflict (war); gun violence, homicide, and traumatic grief; imminently life-threatening injury, emergency medical treatment, and hospitalization; and death of a committed romantic partner. Please proceed with caution and be gentle with yourself if this content could be upsetting. Helpful resource: https://everytownsupportfund.org/everytown-survivor-network/resources-for-victims-and-survivors-of-gun-violence/traumatic-grief.
Tags for this chapter include: #bisexual male, #future, #dystopia, #novel, #romantic, #gay romance, #married, #male submissive, #polyamory, #triad
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Julian:
When I was in school, I happened upon the memoir of a young artist whose life ended tragically before his eighteenth birthday. Battling the illness that eventually claimed his life, he wrote poetically and presciently about accepting mortality, leaving a legacy, and the nature of human existence. Maybe it was the clarity of his insights that fascinated me; maybe it was the idea of being forced at such a tender age, even younger than I was at the time, to come to terms with the fragility of the tether between body and soul.
One phrase I’ve never forgotten: You just know when death is coming. It struck me because despite the credible source, it seemed untrue. Many people die without being aware of what’s about to happen, and many who fear imminent death end up surviving. Yet as my own years — and witnessed deaths — accumulated, the words continued to echo in my psyche. Because sometimes the sentiment proves all too accurate.
A good commander embraces the inherently chaotic nature of conflict and reserves space for the unforeseeable. No matter how much intelligence is gathered or how carefully operating manuals are written, the dynamics of war are co-created by countless individual human decisions and random turns of fortune, all woven into the unknowable pattern that makes up the tapestry of our universe. While it’s advisable to calculate the odds and plan accordingly, it’s never completely possible to predict what decisions an enemy will make, or which picture the myriad of discrete threads will form at any given moment. The most insignificant choices or vagaries of fortune can alter the entire course of events.
But enough experience on the battlefield, enough patrols through the same few hundred square miles of wooded terrain, enough sifting through rumors and reports, and once in a while the scattered, apparently unrelated bits of information coalesce into an ominous significance beyond logical calculation. It can be sensed the way sub-audible sound can be felt by humans even when it can’t be heard, or the way vibrational ground waves travel from undersea earthquakes ahead of massively destructive tsunamis. The danger crackles invisibly, like static right before a lightning strike.
You just know when death is coming.
Something had seemed off, those first few weeks after the summer solstice, even as the locust heralded the most fertile season and our well-watered crops formed abundant fruit. I couldn’t identify any single source of unease, nor could I find grounds to take any particular actions, so I tried to dismiss it as paranoia. Yet the feeling persisted — a subtle warning I couldn’t quite decipher in the ostensibly innocuous events of that July: Sporadic attacks from the northeast that we never fully contained. A shortage of certain supplies at the trading posts. The military’s decision to extend control further into the continent’s interior. Unusual quiet in the lands across Red River, which we should have noticed, but didn’t.
Security threats are most often measured by the presence, not the absence, of activity. No news registered as good news, or not at all. In the bustle of activity that followed vernal planting and birthing, and with our attention drawn to aggression on our opposite border, the information vacuum in the southwest didn’t emerge as a pattern until it was too late.
I was north of Fort Laurel one muggy afternoon, debriefing the patrol that had just returned, when I heard faint shouts from the direction of the settlement. Not voices raised in joy or in anger, but tones of alarm. The guards and I exchanged a fraction of a glance before immediately taking off at a sprint toward the stockade wall. We were only halfway there when a messenger intercepted us.
“Attack from the south, Delta!” she shouted as we closed positions. “Lone Star Defense Force — we don’t know how many, but enough to overwhelm the Goldonna outpost. Most of the guards were killed, and the rest are fleeing for their lives. Lansing and Larsen are mobilizing their forces to hold the ridges above Ragan Creek.”
My blood turned to ice while my brain shifted into overdrive. That outpost was only five miles from the fort.
“How the hell did they get to Goldonna without us knowing?” I demanded of the messenger, who reversed directions to run alongside us. Our location was separated from the Texas border by a solid fifty miles of wild terrain crossed only by ruined, overgrown roads. If our enemies had penetrated this deep into our territory without detection, I was responsible for a catastrophic lapse of vigilance.
“We think they must have left Texas below the reservoir and come north in secret. Crossed Red River at Natchitoches and advanced between the lakes. The Coushatta garrison knew nothing when we got them on the radio. They’re headed here, but it’s four times the distance. We don’t know if LSDF split their forces at Goldonna, or which route they took.”
Eerie dread tingled down my spine while my boots pounded toward the fort, every second a costly delay. The Texan militia must have been planning this attack for months, if not all year, while we sat in ignorance. The depth of strategic investment required to pull off a stealth invasion of this magnitude meant we’d dangerously underestimated their capabilities after the easy dismissal last spring.