I feel like this chapter could have been stronger, but I didn't want to keep you waiting while I edited it forever. Hope you enjoy. :)

"Beth," Daryl hissed, his voice rough and strained. "Hide."

Her wide blue eyes met his, and she quickly pulled his lips to hers in a firm kiss before pulling away and giving him a meaningful look upon her retreat toward the back of the cabin. Daryl watched her slip into the bathroom and heard her hiding herself behind the shower curtain. The bed in the cabin was too low to the ground to fit under, and closets were likely to be searched for supplies if the men approaching were so inclined to look for such. The shower really was the best place for her to hide, but Daryl wished there could be something more substantial than a shower curtain between Beth and the potential intruders. He took a quick glance about the cabin for any clues that would lead to her discovery, and he found himself quite thankful that she was so tidy. As long as no one went rummaging in the dresser in the bedroom or in the bedside table where their condoms were kept, there was no obvious sign that a woman lived here with him.

Daryl turned his attention back to the approaching men. All three had their guns drawn in front of them, and he quickly took note of the other weapons he could see. One man had a hunting rifle slung across his back, and he could see another man had a handgun clipped to his belt. All three also appeared to have knives. Daryl swallowed dryly as he realized just how much better armed the men were than him. Still, he had to defend his and Beth's home, and most importantly, he had to protect Beth. The woman who loved him.

He grabbed his crossbow and quickly loaded it before taking a deep breath and pulling the door of the cabin open. The three men turned their guns toward him, and he kept his crossbow aimed at them.

"What's your business here?" he called out gruffly.

None of the men answered him, but they glanced at each other briefly before one of them spoke.

"This your place?"

Daryl nodded once.

"Anyone else live here with you?"

"Just me," Daryl grunted.

One of the men began taking slow steps toward the cabin, and the other two began to follow his movements.

"That's close enough," Daryl growled.

One of the men smirked. "You're outnumbered," he said. "If you fire on us, we'd be able to put you down before you could even get your hands on another arrow to reload. So I'd advise you to be smart about this."

"What do you want?"

"A place to bed down for the night would be nice," the man said. "Sun's going down soon, and your setup looks pretty damn good. How 'bout you invite us in and let us crash for the night?"

"And if I don't?"

"I don't think you have much of a choice. Being outnumbered as you are."

"We ain't gonna harm you, unless you give us reason to," another man chimed in. "Just lookin' for a safe place to sleep is all."

"How do I know you won't kill me and take this house for yourselves as soon as I let you in?" Daryl asked with narrowed eyes.

"You don't," one of the men said with a shrug. "But that ain't our intent. We got our own secure camp, 'bout ten miles north of here. Ain't got no use for your place except for tonight."

Daryl continued to hold his crossbow high, eying the men with distrust.

"And like we said, you really don't have much of a choice."

As much as Daryl hated to admit it, the men were right. He really didn't have much of a choice. He could refuse to let them in and then get killed as a result, thus leaving Beth unprotected, or he could let them in and hope that he would get a chance to kill them once their guard was down. If they really were looking for a place to crash for the night, maybe he could kill them in their sleep. He just prayed that none of them were interested in the possibility of a shower so that Beth could remain undetected until he had the opportunity to act.

"A'right then," Daryl muttered, slowly lowering his crossbow. The three other men lowered their weapons as well and made their way through both fences and up to the porch.

"Appreciate you bein' so accommodating," one of the men said slightly sarcastically as he climbed the porch steps. Daryl glared in return, and the man chuckled. "Relax, man. Like we said, unless you give us a reason, we ain't gonna hurt you. I'm Jack, and that's Ethan and Kelly."

"Daryl."

"Good to meet you, Daryl," the man called Ethan said.

The three men entered the cabin and Daryl closed the door behind them. Jack whistled as he looked around.

"You got a great little place here," he said. "How long you been here?"

"Couple months."

"And you've been on your own all this time?"

Daryl nodded. "Had a group a while back, but got separated from 'em and found this place."

"Looks like you're doin' pretty good on your own," the man named Kelly observed. "Say, you got any food here? We was out on a hunt but came up dry. Would really appreciate a meal."

The tone of his voice was far from polite, and the request sounded more like an order. Daryl's eyes scanned over the three men who were looking around the cabin. His pulse quickened when he saw Ethan head toward the back of the cabin, but the man simply peeked in the bedroom and made his way back out to the living room area.

"Kitchen's there," Daryl grunted with a nod toward the area. "Help yourself."

Kelly strode over to the small kitchen and began going through the cabinets. He let out an appreciative whistle at the sight of the decent supply of canned food.

"You got quite the stash of food here," he stated. "Fellas, we're gonna eat a good meal tonight."

Daryl's grip tightened on his crossbow at the thought of these men making a dent in his and Beth's supply of food. Food they had worked hard to find. He kept his mouth shut, however, watching the men with narrowed eyes. He noticed that Jack was studying him and had obviously taken note of Daryl's tension. The man's gaze drifted down to Daryl's white-knuckled grip on the crossbow. He smirked and slowly sauntered closer to Daryl.

"I know you ain't happy 'bout us droppin' in like this," Jack stated. "But like we said. Long as you don't do nothin' stupid, we ain't gonna hurt you. I can see by the way you're holdin' your bow that you'd try to hurt us in a heartbeat if you got the chance. But think again, friend. The camp we live at is big, real big, and they know we came down this way for a hunt. If we ain't back by tomorrow night, they'll send out a search party. And the search party wouldn't exactly be friendly."

Daryl said nothing in reply, just stared at Jack with icy eyes.

"Just let us do as we please for a night and then you'll never see us again," Jack shrugged. "And just know that if you try anything stupid, even if you succeed, you'll have a world of trouble comin' down on you."

With that, Jack flashed Daryl a menacing smile and went to join Kelly in the kitchen to decide what they would be eating that night. Daryl leaned against the wall and watched the men moving about the cabin, dread settling in his stomach. Even if he managed to kill these men in their sleep, it would only bring on more people from their camp. He wondered if just letting them do as they pleased, as Jack had suggested, would be best, but he worried that the longer the men spent in the cabin, the higher the chances were that Beth would be discovered. The thought made his chest tight with anxiety. He tried to take slow breaths to keep himself calm. The last thing he needed was to snap and end up getting himself killed as a result.

Jack and Kelly had brought some food in a pot over to the fire to heat, and Ethan was examining the bookshelf next to the fireplace. He picked up one of Beth's Jane Austen novels, which made Daryl's heart pound a little harder in his chest. Ethan arched a suspicious eyebrow at Daryl.

"This yours? You queer or somethin'?"

Daryl shook his head. "Was here when I found the place."

"That's a book for chicks right there," Ethan said. "Gotta admit, I was hopin' a chick would be livin' here. Been a while since I've gotten any."

The other two men hummed in agreement, and Daryl couldn't stop himself from sneering.

"Doubt you could ever find a woman willin' to have anything to do with you," he muttered, and Ethan laughed humorlessly.

"Never said she had to be willing. Sometimes it's even better when they ain't willing."

The menacing look in Ethan's eyes made Daryl's blood boil, and his fingers twitched on his crossbow, aching to put a bolt through the man's throat. Keeping himself from acting out was going to be harder than he thought.

Beth was incredibly stiff from standing perfectly still for so long behind the shower curtain. It felt like it had been hours, and judging from the darkness that had long since fallen outside, it probably had been. But despite the aches in her muscles, she wouldn't allow herself to relax. She could hear almost everything that was said out in the living area of the cabin, and she had to remain on her guard. The men were getting ready to bed down for the night, and Beth knew that if she and Daryl were ever going to get an opportunity to attack first, while the men were sleeping would be it. Unfortunately she heard the men discussing taking shifts keeping watch (apparently to keep an eye on Daryl rather than to watch for walkers), but with two out of the three men sleeping, maybe she and Daryl would still stand a chance.

She had heard one of the men telling Daryl that the rest of their camp would come looking for them if they did not return, but Beth didn't care. She didn't trust their reassurances that they would not harm Daryl if he cooperated. From the way the men had praised the cabin and its stash of supplies, Beth suspected that they would at the very least take everything she and Daryl had. Knowing Daryl's temper, he was likely to get himself killed if they tried. Or maybe they were just waiting for the right time to kill him—hoping he would fall asleep and leave himself vulnerable, perhaps—and Beth wasn't keen on finding out if that was the case. If an opportunity arose, Beth was going to take it, the rest of the men's camp be damned. Besides, they had said that their camp was ten miles away. With the cabin being a few miles off the main road, it was possible that the supposed "search party" one of the men had talked about would never even find them. It was a risk Beth was willing to take.

The cabin had grown silent, which meant that the men had finally laid down to rest. Beth allowed her muscles to relax slightly, but she kept her ears on alert for any sign of movement. For a long while, all she could hear was the crackling of the low fire in the living room. Suddenly she heard footsteps, and one of the men spoke up.

"Where do you think you're goin'?"

"Takin' a piss," Daryl's voice growled back impatiently.

Beth heard his footsteps growing closer, and she heard the click of the bathroom door closing behind him. The shower curtain was peeled back slightly, revealing Daryl's worried face illuminated in the soft moonlight that filtered in through the window. His eyes silently asked her if she was okay, and Beth nodded. She jerked her head toward the living room and mouthed out silently, Are they sleeping?

Daryl nodded. The look in his eyes told Beth that he was planning to do something about their situation as soon as he could. Beth reached out to him and cupped his cheek in her palm, reassuring him with her eyes. He nodded again and pulled away, making sure the shower curtain was back in place before flushing the toilet and making his way back out into the living room.

Time seemed to drag by as Beth waited, hoping for a sign of some sort that she could act. It felt like hours had passed by, and despite Beth's tense anxiety, she was exhausted. Her eyelids began to droop, and she had to fight to keep them open. The last thing she needed was to pass out standing up and cause a commotion by falling. She blinked hard and shook her head to try to wake herself up.

The sound of movement in the cabin suddenly perked her up. She heard a man's voice mutter something about the bathroom, and she tensed, knowing she would very soon be within feet of one of the intruders. Her hand went to the knife in her pocket, and she quickly drew the blade and flipped it open, holding it tightly in her hand.

She heard a man enter the small bathroom, the door clicking shut behind him. Though she could not see him through the curtain, she knew he was standing right in front of her as he stood over the toilet. He let out a groan as he relieved himself, and Beth slowly and silently peeled back the curtain. The man's back was to her and he stood only about two feet away. She placed her foot on the edge of the tub and slowly stepped up onto its edge, giving her a good six inches of height over the man in front of her. She waited until he flushed the toilet and used the sound of the toilet flushing as cover for her attack. Beth quickly reached her arm out and swiftly sliced her knife across the front of the man's neck.

The blade had cut through his skin like butter, and the man uttered a desperate gurgle as he fell onto his knees. Blood poured out of the gash in his neck, pooling in a large black puddle on the floor. The man flailed around and crashed loudly into the bathroom cabinet. His eyes landed on Beth standing over him with her blade in hand, and she watched the life leave them. She heard movement out in the living room and she quickly leaned over the dead men and plunged her knife into his skull, eliminating the possibility of him rising again.

"Kelly? What're you doin' in there, man? You fall or somethin'?" a man's voice came through the door.

Beth stepped over the body of the man apparently named Kelly and held her knife ready. She steadied herself and made sure not to slip in the large puddle of blood beneath her feet. The man outside the door knocked heavily.

"Kelly? You okay in there?"

When no reply came from Kelly, the man outside went to open the door. Beth watched the knob turning as if in slow motion. As the door swung open, she lunged at him.

"What the—"

Beth slammed her knife into the man's neck before he could react further. His mouth dropped open, gaping in shock, and his hands went to the hole in his neck that was now spurting blood. He reached for Beth, and she darted around him and tried to retreat out the open bathroom door. The man slipped and fell on his comrade's blood covering the floor. As Beth tried to back out of the small room, his hands seized her ankle, sending her tumbling to the floor, and tried to tug her back toward him. He was unable to speak, but the look in his eyes was enough to send a bolt of fear through her as she struggled to free herself from his grasp. She could hear the sounds of a struggle in the living room as the third man woke to discover what was happening, and Beth tried desperately to get away from the man clawing at her leg. One of his hands reached for the gun attached to his belt, and Beth took advantage of the looser grip on her legs to deliver a swift kick to his face. The man's grasp on her broke, and Beth scrambled to her feet. She hurriedly drove her blade down into the man's forehead before he could reach his weapon.

Beth rushed out into the living room and saw Daryl on top of the third intruder. Before she could make it over to the struggle, Daryl wrapped his arms around the man's neck and snapped it with a sickening crack. His gaze quickly darted to Beth, the panic in his eyes turning to relief as he saw she was unharmed. He stood and rushed toward her, Beth meeting him halfway and throwing her arms around him. His arms circled around her as well and held her so tightly that she could barely breathe.

"You okay?" he grunted, his voice sounding thick with emotion.

"Yeah," Beth breathed, relief seeping into her. "Slit the first one's throat and stabbed the second one in the neck. They're both dead."

Daryl nodded and pulled away slightly to look down at her. His eyes held a mixture of pride and concern, and Beth seemed to understand his worry.

"I had to do it, Daryl," she said firmly. "I know they said they weren't going to hurt you, but I didn't believe them. I couldn't risk them hurting you. I had to do it."

Daryl exhaled slowly, some of the tension leaving his body.

"You're an incredible woman, Beth Greene," he said, his voice low. "Here I was thinkin' I'd have to save you, but you went and saved both of us."

"I'm stronger than I look," Beth said, her lips curving into a small smile that felt somewhat foreign after the events that had just transpired.

"I know. Strongest girl I know," Daryl agreed. "And anyone who don't know that is a fool."