emeralddodge:

Ember did a lot of good, hard thinking during Reid’s convalescence. She rarely left his side, usually sitting in the corner chair and just looking at him. Most people, Jill included, assumed that Ember was thinking loving thoughts and standing watch over her beloved.

In reality, Ember was considering her options for if, and then when, Reid woke up. She loved him, and she wanted to be with him, but she was just as concerned for her safety in the hospital as she was at any other time. And like you said, her feeling of safety was a pillar part of their relationship. Could Reid offer her any protection anymore?

Things changed when Reid began to be able to talk to her again. She was able to visit him in his mind, and there she finally admitted what she’d been considering. Reid and her discussed how they’d construct their life, steps they’d take to make sure they were both safe, etc. 

Even though Reid was comatose, he had his own two cents to put into the discussion: how Ember had treated people during Mercury. I said in another post that she didn’t get the dressing-down she deserved, but I meant that she didn’t get it in the book, which is probably what readers wanted. But she did get it from both Reid (kindly) and Marco (not so kindly). Reid told her that if they were going to be married, she needed to take responsibility for all the crap she’d pulled in the lab–and he didn’t even know what she’d done to Benjamin. 

That was extremely difficult for her. In fact, when he told her to do it, she pulled out of his head and walked out of the room for several hours. She finally came back and admitted she’d been horrible. 

In the end, the animal sanctuary was purchased in a roundabout way, so neither of their names are attached to it. It would be hard to track them via paperwork. Ember has virtually no social media presence, and Reid doesn’t publicly talk about her. All staff on the farm are hired and vetted through a third party company that doesn’t disclose the names of the owners until after the person has been hired, and everyone signs non-disclosure agreements. Even then, Reid deals with them almost exclusively.