comforting thought, but not a real one. Troy glanced at her again. Robin caught his glance this time, glaring back at him and then rolling her eyes. He just grinned.
Robin was used to male attention. She was a looker, or so Troy said. So many men said. Blue eyes. Her hair a deep, dark chestnut color and vibrantly thick. Her body was athletic, toned with muscle from the hard-living in the wastes, but she had trouble finding clothes to fit over the impressively large bust she sported. Even now, sitting at the bar after a funeral, her button-up blouse only managed to close just above the line of her nipples, leaving a long line of enticing cleavage open for any prying eyes. Her neck, slender and fair, was like a handle for any of the strong men in the bar to pin and fuck her against the wall until she was begging to be bred for years and years, begging to be relieved of all thoughts of responsibility and worry.
And she knew it. A Family girl knew exactly what her place was, or else.
Titus had taken a soft spot for Robin. Protected her for all the years that Troy had wanted to fuck her brutally and invoke his right of clan on her body. But now Titus was dead.
The right of clan was taken from time to time to ensure that a family’s bloodline was protected. It would never result in marriage—that was strictly forbidden. Families, even stepsisters and stepbrothers, could not be allowed to intermingle. After the Long War had devastated so much of the population—Robin had heard estimates as high as ninety-five percent of everyone just being gone—the humans left had a population to rebuild. That couldn’t happen well by intermixing self-same bloodlines through marriage.
But. A bloodline could be continued, if it was small enough and its clan felt threatened, by invoking the right of clans, whereupon a stepfather could take a stepdaughter, or a stepbrother a stepsister, solely to get them pregnant.
Robin knew that Troy jerked off to just such a thought. She knew it because he told her almost every day, that sick grin on his face.
She had lived in fear. Now, with Titus dead, she lived in terror.
Case walked across the bar and spoke to his stepmother, Sandra, and then across the other way and spoke with Troy.
Sandra was a small woman with deeply tanned skin. Nearing forty, she was almost the oldest of any woman that Robin had seen in her life. Easily the oldest who looked as good as she did. Her hair, dark and full, still retained some shine, and her skin had not yet developed overmuch the telltale wrinkles from years of radiation exposure. She stayed inside as much as she could and lived easy, ensuring to only eat the crops nearby which had been crafted with safe conditions. It was an expensive way to live, to be sure, but the wife of the Family’s leader could afford it.
Titus had run the overall decisions of the Family. Who to attack. Who to trade with. Where to fortify and where to retreat. The Family’s region was nearly the size of the entire Texan panhandle, with several towns under their purview, and all of their strength relied on Titus’s clear decision making. But it had been Sandra who ensured that warriors were fed, that supplies were delivered, and yes, that women were passed out equally. Warriors had to be taken care of with plenty of fresh, willing pussy.
Any man in the Family could take any woman he wanted. But Sandra, as the Matron, held final say as to whether a woman would be able to be married in. A woman had to have the right mix, she would say, of eagerness and submission. Knowing how to anticipate her man’s needs. Knowing how to cook for him, to clean for him, to keep the home free of filth and distasteful activities.
A rider for the Family could spend weeks or sometimes even months away on business, protecting their home. How awful it would be for him, then, to return to his haven and find it ill-kept. A woman had to know her place, and Sandra kept all the girls in line. Looking pretty,