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Brock just looks like he’s planning to take out a bakery with a sniper rifle for the Pop Tart joke alone.

“But,” I continue, thoughtfully, “We could use a construction worker. Someone to build a second outhouse. A stone one. Maybe with a mural.”

“Or a butcher,” Wade adds. “Brock eats bacon three times a day. I’m gonna have to marry a pig at this rate.”

“I don’t eat that much,” Brock mutters.

“You eat enough,” Evan says.

Dean flops down on the couch beside me, hand on my bare thigh, grin wide enough to power the backup solar grid. “Can we keep her, boys? I vote yes.”

“Unanimous,” Holden says from the doorway, arms folded, eyes unreadable but protective.

Wade just smiles that slow, warm, devastating smile of his and drops a kiss on my shoulder. “Reckon we’re already hers.”

I stretch my legs across all of them, a queen on her throne, half-naked and full of plans.

The world might be healing. The danger might be passing. But we’re not going back. Not ever. Because I didn’t just survive the apocalypse. I thrived. I built a bunker. I built a family.

And if the world dares try to take them?

Let it burn again.

We’ll be ready.