Until he crashlands on the Wynne Farm near St Anne, Alderney, Edmund Bolton will have insisted the most prudent thing about himself is his medical degree and his willingness to fight fascists. But of course it’s that island, and that farm – and that family.

Aidan Wynne is tortured by the shame of others and tormented by a freedom he feels he can never possess. Until the handsome military doctor with far too much understanding and far too little self-preservation comes to turn his life on its head.

The war makes fighters of all affected, but none so much as the lovers and those who must love quietly. Often, the fray has less to do with weaponry and bloodshed, and everything to do with keeping tame a passion that seeks to send the world up in flames without burning oneself up in the process.

”Once more into the fray,
into the last good fight I’ll ever know.
Live and die on this day,
live and die on this day.”

Fray is created by Li Walt, an eGlobal Creative Publishing signed author.

FRay

Fretting, restless hands going through his hair again and again, Aidan cannot sit still. Not after the day he’s had.


“So, clearly not a figment of your grieving imagination, then,” Aures hits home.


She sighs. “But where on earth has he been? It’s been six years. How did he even know to find us here?”


“Your guess is as good as mine…” Aidan returns her sigh in kind.


“…And you didn’t think to ask?” She pins him with a look.


The blush burns the back of his neck at the memory of their tryst. He knows he can’t explain this to Aures without breaking her cardinal rule of ignorance to physically intimate relations, so he only shakes his head, decidedly not meeting her eyes.


The front door in the next room bursts open, ricocheting off the wall behind it. They both freeze in their seats, gazes locking worriedly.


Lilliana’s voice, the utterly manic cadence of it, sends them sprinting inside to a scene neither of them could have predicted.


Chapter 39: Those who do not complain are never pitied.