"Come on, you fuck! Don't you fuck with me!" The familiar voice, shrill as it viciously swore, brought a smile to Rachel's face before she fully regained consciousness. Loud hammer strikes, metal on metal, echoed through the cabin and was quickly followed by muted grunting, "Yes. Come on... you bitch!"

"Evie, are you screwin' the thing or are you fixing it?!" Wolf shouted to the raging mechanic. "Rach is still asleep!"

Rachel opened her eyes to find herself beneath a thick blanket in the top starboard bunk in the cabin. She raised her head just in time to see Evie haul herself up from the deck hatchway with a helping hand from Wolf. Evie wiped her hands absentmindedly on her filthy jumpsuit as Wolf folded hers beneath breasts barely contained by an off-white tanktop.

"Sorry, Wolf. I'm just mad at myself. I don't know if Nathan's equations were off or I built something wrong but the mechanical work output is only about forty percent of what we figured it would be. Just using the turbines or the cannons or even the props wouldn't have drained it so quickly but we were using them all for an extended period," Evie's face dropped and she rubbed the side of her face covered by the artificial eye in a subconscious gesture. "We'll be here a week. That's the fastest I can get the Compression Sphere fully charged without blowing all the pipes. Sorry."

Wolf pulled Evie into a gentle hug and patted her on the back, "You're the reason we got Rach back, Evie. If we had to be here a month, you'd still have not a thing to apologize for. So stop being a dumbass. I made you dinner. So eat and try to sleep. Do you need something to help?"

"No. It makes it harder to work. I'll just deal with it. Thanks for the grub. I'll go join Lee on watch while I eat," Evie grabbed a tiny bowl of stew and looked up at Rachel's bunk as she passed. Rachel repressed a shudder as the mechanical eye actually winked at her before Evie was out of sight.

"Yeah, she'll eat and then they'll probably find someplace to do it," Wolf shook her head as a smile lit her beautiful face. "Come on down, Rach. I'm going to examine you and then we'll see about filling your stomach."

Rachel, to her internal disgust, shyly pushed the guardrail into its slot in the bottom of the bunk before dropping lightly to the floor. She sat in the bunk that she had thought Teng had occupied when she had gone to bed but there was no sign of the Healer. Wolf retrieved a small, rolling cart from a compartment in the kitchenette that was stocked full of medical equipment and supplies. The quadleader pushed the cart just to the left of the bunk and a metal folding chair was placed directly in front of Rachel. Wolf sat in it and immediately put on a stethoscope.

"Where's Teng?" Rachel asked as Wolf listened to her heartbeat.

"Once he went through that nutrient bag, he thanked us for our help and took his leave. His people must live in one of the neighboring valleys. Take a deep breath and hold it until I tell you," Wolf instructed as she placed the cold instrument beneath Rachel's ragged shirt.

"How long did it take you guys to build all this?" She asked as Wolf took down notes on a clipboard attached to the cart. It looked like all of the medical records she had for Rachel were there. The woman was still obsessive about preparation and, for some reason, that warmed Rachel.

"The Wanderer came up with the schematics, the man really is as smart as they say, but every self-proclaimed mechanist and engineer he took it to said that it was impossible to build. But when little Evie woke up, she took one look at it and said that she'd have it built in three months," Wolf smiled as she gestured for Rachel to remove her shirt. It took a few seconds before Rachel could follow the command, during which she blushed furiously, but Wolf paid it no heed. "She not only did that but she helped Nathan design and build her cybernetic eye while customizing a bunch of weapons for us. Apparently, our little Evie was holding out on us just how fucking smart she really is."

"How long was she unconscious?" Rachel asked, her heart sinking as Wolf's words finally sunk in.

Wolf's smile fell and she patted Rachel's arm before wrapping a tape measure around her ribcage, "Four weeks. We had to perform surgery to remove all the shrapnel from her eye socket and she didn't wake up from the anesthesia right away. She's fine though. She's fine."

Rachel wiped at the tears flowing down her face angrily, "I can't stop crying."

"I know," Wolf sniffed and Rachel realized that Wolf was started to tear up.

Get it together, bitch, Rachel scolded herself.

"What about Lee? I thought he was dead the last time I saw him."

Wolf closed her eyes and took a deep breath at whatever memories Rachel had dredged up, "He did die. Three times during those next two days. He had lost a lot of blood and his heart stopped beating. But that stubborn bastard," Wolf half-laughed, half-sobbed, "-just wouldn't die. He was different when he finally came through the worst of it. We were all so concerned with keeping him alive that we didn't notice until he was up and moving around."

"You mean how he's taller and bigger and smells so nice..."

I really just said that!

Wolf gave her a peculiar look before laughing, "Stand up, please. I don't know about his smell but he did grow. But it wasn't just the growing. He was almost feral in the way he interacted with people. Our Lee was always intense but now it was like he could barely restrain his impulses. When he wanted to eat something, he'd eat it, even if it was on someone else's plate. When he wanted to sleep, you couldn't stop him, he'd go right there. If someone angered him, he'd fight them, thankfully with only his fists if it was someone he thought of as a friend."

Rachel had to actively fight to keep her attention on Wolf's words as the woman took measurements on her inner thighs. Her libido, suppressed for so long, seemed to be coming back in full force. There was something wrong with her, she knew, because that should not have been happening so soon after her release from a place where rape and other forms of sexual torture were an ever present concern.

"He's stronger and faster and tougher. I've seen him drop over twenty feet straight down without even a hitch in his step after. There's no way to be sure without invasive diagnostics but we think his bone density has increased by as much as thirty-three percent," Wolf shook her head as she took down more notes. "I don't know why anyone was surprised when he went off to look for you on his own."

"He didn't ask for help?" Rachel asked in bewilderment but then, when thinking about Lee's past before the Rangers, she quickly came to understand why he would do that.

"No, he just took off one night. Nathan assigned me to Alpha temporarily and we went after him. We found him a week and a half later in some dive in southern Maryland," Wolf chuckled quietly as she began gently probing the rapidly fading bruises along Rachel's torso. "The bar looked like a warzone. Both bouncers had been put through the windows and the bartender had a knife pinning his hand to the bar. We found Lee out back just as he was finishing with the leader of the gang that took you. That man's last moments on Earth were not pleasant."

"Good."

"After that, some of Lee's old personality came back. He apologized for running off like that and agreed to accept our help the rest of the way," Wolf stood and began feeling her way up Rachel's body. "So, while Evie was building the boat to distract her from everything, we went looking for you. It was only after we blew up Paradise Falls that we realized how useful that boat would really be in coming to get you. Honestly, I don't think Nathan ever actually thought we would need it."

"Wait, you blew up The Falls?" Rachel's jaw dropped at the casual announcement.

"Yup. There's still some of the exterior walls left but it's mostly a crater. Chaining a bunch of mini-nukes together is loco, as Lee would say, but it got the job done."

"Eulogy?"

"A little pissant named Forty told us everything that he'd done to you. Lee paid him back in kind and planted him far enough away from the Falls so he could watch it go up. Bastard only lasted two days before he died in that cage," Wolf looked like she was ready to spit but resisted the urge. "The next few months were spent tweaking the McAdams so she could make the journey. Honestly, it didn't take that long to find you 'Hel'."

Rachel frowned, "Please don't call me that."

Wolf stood on her toes and gave Rachel a gentle kiss on the side of the mouth, "Sorry. You can sit back down now." Once Rachel was settled, Wolf began taking more notes. She didn't speak again until she had compared the old notes with the new ones.

They did all that for me and they didn't lose anyone doing it. They fucking blew up The Falls! The Regulators have been trying for thirty years and never came close and those five do it just because they took me from them. Oh... you've got to be kidding me!

Rachel casually closed her legs as the thought of Lee and Wolf, covered in blood as they cut down all the people that had hurt her, started a pleasant throb in a place that had been dead for nearly a year.

"So, are you going to tell me what happened to you?" Wolf asked, her eyes narrowed as she leaned back in her seat.

Rachel looked away and mumbled, "What do you mean?"

"You've Awakened. Just like Lee. Just like me. I went to visit Vance just to be sure and he verified it for me and Lee. So, what happened?"

"You don't seem any different," Rachel tried to redirect the subject and was stopped when Wolf produced a sharp scalpel from the cart.

Before Rachel could utter a sound, Wolf was dragging the blade down left forearm to split her vein wide open. The rescued Ranger's eyes widened in wonder as the wound bled far too little before and, starting at the beginning of the slice, the wound closed itself. In less than ten seconds, it was as though Wolf had never cut herself.

"I always had some of the Healing magic about me but now... well, you saw," Wolf shrugged nonchalantly, "So, what happened?"

Once Rachel began to speak, she found it hard to stop as she became enraptured by Wolf's reactions. Her smiles, laughs, frowns, glares, and even the occasional tears as Rachel spoke of her experiences. She was so involved in recounting the tale that she didn't notice when Evie and Lee had joined them. It was only the soft sounds of Evie's sobs that alerted her to their presence. She looked towards the stern hatchway and saw the two embracing. Watching Evie, who had lost an eye, crying because of what Rachel had gone through, broke yet another careful dam Rachel had erected. She stood, sobs escaping her once again, grabbed Wolf's hand, and soon all four were openly embracing.

Okay, this if the last time I'm going to cry like this for at least a day.

Rachel stood on the high-backed seat of the bow railway cannon, without a stitch of clothing on, and let the rays of the sun soothe and invigorate her as she pondered the last several days. Wolf had directed them to this small valley and only after they had been there for a day had she revealed that this was where her clan had lived before the slavers had burned them out. The small village was barely half a mile south of their current position and, after gentle prodding by all three of them, Wolf had led them to it. There had been more tears and consoling embraces as she had shown them around the charred ruins.

The pale Ranger ignored the tears that threatened as she recalled how Wolf had collapsed when they had come to an unremarkable little house on the outskirts of town. It had not taken much to infer that it was Wolf's former home. Rachel had carried Wolf back to their hideaway and put her in a bunk. Wolf's mood had been solemn since but it was improving the longer they were away from the site of her old life.

The McAdams was resting in a shallow lake surrounded on three sides by fairly high cliffs and the one bank it had was pretty steep itself. It was fed by a waterfall and drained by an underground river according to Wolf. There was no way anyone would suspect there being a boat here so they were fairly confident that any retaliation from surviving Mayoral families was minimal. That didn't mean that independent slavers and rival clans couldn't happen across them. Lee had set up a wide net of flare traps around there hideaway. In addition, the Rangers had taken to patrolling in pairs. Lee and Evie had the night watch while Rachel and Wolf had the day's. Rachel and Lee had discovered that they both operated better during opposing shifts for obvious reasons. She gained strength from the sun and he had become a nocturnal hunter.

That had been one of the most surprising things about the changes in Lee. The man, once rightfully wary of traveling at night in the Wastes, did so with amazing ease now. It was, if Rachel was honest with herself, intimidating how utterly fearless he seemed these days. He had always had that subtle air about him but now it was on display for the world.

Another thing that had surprised Rachel, though she had no idea why it would, was how easily Wolf and Evie shared Lee. Wolf had admitted that, after Rachel had slept that first night away in her bunk, she and Lee had worked off their nervous energy out in the open on the bow in full sight of Evelyn as she piloted. They had placed a tent out with a larger bedroll on the aft deck so that the pairs could sleep together. During their watches, Rachel had blushed at how vocal Lee and Evie were despite their best efforts to maintain sound discipline. Why hearing them caused such a reaction was another mystery. She and Wolf had done little more than share the occasional kiss and cuddle against each other in the chill night air despite the fact that Rachel felt as though she would explode from the amount of sexual energy inside her.

Why am I resisting it still? Did I not learn anything? She thought for the hundredth time but sighed because she knew the exact reasons.

The newly freed Ranger was ashamed at having such a reaction so soon after being released from her captivity. She was afraid of what they would think of her or what her strength could do to them. It always came back to fear with her and that was enough for her to let out a small scream of frustration.

"Is something wrong, Piernas?"

Rachel turned and her heart picked up speed as she caught sight of Lee. He was naked from the waist up and wore a pair of fairly clean gray-green camo pants. The tiny scars from the bullets he had taken that night so long ago were barely visible on his chestnut brown skin but something about the sight of them dried Rachel's mouth. She licked her lips slowly as her gaze rose to his eyes. The light hit them just so and they seemed to emit that eerie glow as he looked at her.

Then the wind shifted and a smell unlike any she had ever encountered hit her. Heat, almost overwhelming in its intensity, exploded outward from her center and a great deal of it concentrated in her pussy. A throb, the most intense yet, started and Rachel could feel moisture beginning to escape her.

What the fuck is happening to me?

The wind shifted again and Lee closed his eyes as he raised his nose. She could see his nostrils flare and a positively feral grin grew. It was at that moment that Rachel realized how sharp most of his teeth looked. A small trill of fear went through her and, to her shame, it made her even wetter.

What the fuck? She had time to think before her feet were carrying her over the side of the bow and into the shallow water.

The McAdams was anchored fifteen feet from shore and the water here was barely three feet deep. Rachel bunched her legs, muscles coiling beneath her pale flesh, and propelled herself out of the water and to shore with one leap. She dodged to the right around a sap-covered tree just as a blur smacked into it hard enough to shake the entire thing. Rachel looked back as she took off at a sprint up an animal trail that led up the steep embankment and met Lee's too wide eyes as he grinned at her.

There was no way in Hell that Rachel was going to beat Lee in a flat-out sprint, even before he had Awakened, and they both knew it. She was not the same though and she proved it when she led them to a high granite wall. It was probably fifteen feet high and stretched for a hundred. Rachel slowed almost to a stop before pushing off in a powerful leap that carried her in a high arc to the top of the wall. She looked back with a laugh as Lee stopped at the bottom of the wall with an actual roar of frustration. Then the feral man charged at a tree some distance away and actually managed to run up it for nearly ten feet before pushing off.

Oh, he's gonna make that, Rachel had time to think before her feet were carrying her away as fast as she could accelerate.

How she could hear the sounds of his pursuit over the beating of heart was beyond Rachel but it was so. In fact, the sounds of the pursuit only increased her arousal, much to her chagrin. She had no idea why she was running from him but she had to admit that it felt good to really let go. There was no need to hide who she was or what she could do as Lee chased her through the valley. For once in her life, Rachel could be herself.

The pale Ranger let loose a loud whoop as she jumped a twenty-foot wide ravine. Close behind her, Lee shouted his own joy as he followed her example. In a flat space like this, Lee could accomplish the leap through sheer speed in lieu of Rachel's strength. Actually, that fact probably helped him gain even more on her. He was almost on her when she reached the destination she had been subconsciously leading them to ever since they had begun the chase. With a scream of exhilaration, Rachel hurled herself off a fifteen-foot high bluff. She streamlined herself as best she could moments before hitting the pool of water at the bottom. It was barely ten feet deep and she hit the bottom feet first but not hard enough to do any damage. She broke the surface just as Lee hit the water. Rachel grinned in satisfaction at driving him to such a state.

Rachel was nearly to shore when a strong hand wrapped around her ankle and dragged her backwards through the water. She was wading at this point and was certainly strong enough to just keep going but she let Lee drag her back into his arms. Not a word was spoken as he kissed her with a hungry growl. Her legs were around his waist and his hands were on her ass soon after. She returned the kiss with equal fervor, her bites none too gentle, as he squeezed her rear hard enough to leave bruises. Lee carried her out of the water and to a place beneath a hollowed out part of the bank. He placed her, almost threw her really, onto the soft dirt and unbuttoned his pants. Rachel made her move when he was stepping out of them.

The triumphant Ranger hooked a hand around his right ankle and yanked forward. With another growl, this one of frustration probably, Lee hit the ground on his back. Before he could move, Rachel was mounting him and restraining his arms above his head. She bent down to bite him on the lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

"You're bleeding," She drawled and then, to her own bewilderment, she leaned forward to lick the droplets from his lip.

"So are you," Lee spoke, his voice deeper than normal as he nodded to her shoulder.

Rachel glanced at her shoulder out of the corner of her eye. It was true. An obvious bite mark on her left shoulder was even now slowly oozing blood. She looked down at Lee and the man had the nerve to grin unrepentantly at her.

"I'm much stronger than you," she told him, squeezing his wrists harder to emphasize her point.

"Yes, you are," she felt his manhood pulse beneath her at the admission as though it only aroused him further.

"I could break you."

"Yes, you could," Rachel was getting lost in his eyes and only the subtle upward thrust of his pelvis broke the spell he was subconsciously weaving.

"You're not afraid?"

Lee actually went very still as he thought before replying, "No. Why would I be? I love you. I'd die for you. I have died for you. I'll never be afraid of you. Ever."

Even as she reached between their bodies to guide him inside her, Rachel was ashamed to feel hot tears squeezing themselves from her eyes. All thoughts of shame or embarrassment fled once she was fully seated on his cock though; if there had been, she would have felt both at how slick she was. She could feel her wetness coating both his abdomen and her thighs. It was so hot and only growing hotter as she moved atop him savagely. Steam rose from them both as the water they were covered in evaporated to leave them coated in a thin layer of dried mud. There was no speaking as the two moved together. They both had regressed to primitive state where all that mattered was the act. Grunts, moans, and the occasional sharp cry of pleasure echoed throughout the isolated glade they found themselves in but no words were needed.

Rachel had always been highly orgasmic and had always enjoyed that fact but this was a new experience for her. Usually, after a minute or two, she would have had her first but she had been lewdly moving atop him for what seemed an eternity. It felt wonderful but there had been no stars yet; no explosion of creation. She could feel something building inside of her though; something that frightened her a little, to be honest.

Will it hurt him?

Lee pushed himself up so that he could wrap one arm around Rachel's waist while the other went across her back. Her legs somehow wrapped around his waist in a display of flexibility she would never have ascribed to herself and then she was bouncing in his lap.

"It's okay, Katya. I got you. Let go. For me."

There was a sensation of heat, as though a miniature sun had just ignited inside of her, and Katya Rachel McAdams screamed.

"What the fuck was that?" Evie poked her head out of the tent that she and Lee shared as Wolf emerged from the cabin with a wide smile on her face.

"Rachel, I'm guessing and in three, two, one..." A stentorian bellow, like some pagan war-god, seemed to come from everywhere. "That would be Lee."

"Are you sure? That didn't sound like either one of them." Evie asked skeptically, stepping out of the tent and stretching in the cool, dawn air.

"You haven't noticed how weird they act around each other?" Wolf chuckled as Evie shook her head. "They both start sniffing the air like someone just baked a cake whenever they're in the same room. I'm thinking it's some kind of pheromone. Whatever it is, I think it finally sent them both over the edge. They're out there fucking like animals."

Evie jumped as the banshee shriek split the calm day once again.

"Animals? She sounds like she's getting the Devil fucked out of her!"

Wolf laughed and hugged Evie around the neck, "Or into her."

Evie rolled her eyes as Wolf waggled her eyebrows, "I can't believe that we've only had her back for a few days and the shitty jokes have already started back up."

"Don't act like you don't love it," Wolf grinned and blew a raspberry on Evie's cheek.

"Gross!" Evie exclaimed and wiped her cheek. "I'm going back to sleep. Lord knows that somebody has to get some instead of getting some."

"Now who's making the shitty jokes!" Wolf shouted as she made her way back to the bridge.

Evie graced her quadleader with a middle finger before flopping belly-down on the makeshift bed.

Now nothing can tear us apart. Not a fucking thing.

The thought, as coarse as it was, gave Evie her first full night's sleep in half a year.