The apocalypse didn’t break them. Loving her might.
Tessa Calder should have died when her bunker exploded. In a world that collapsed under its own fragility, being the one left standing feels less like luck and more like a verdict. Especially when it’s her fault everyone she knows is dead.
She’s exhausted, half-starved, and one bad decision away from joining the dead when five armed men find her first. They could leave her. They could kill her. Instead, they bring her behind their walls and watch her like she is either a liability or a test.
They have survived by living by one nothing comes before the group. Not fear. Not comfort. Not desire. They move like a single disciplined, lethal, bound by loyalty and the understanding that weakness gets people killed. They do not gamble with what keeps them alive, and they make it clear that no woman is worth disrupting the balance they’ve built in the ashes.
Tessa already knows what it means to be the weak link. She has watched everything she loved burn. She will earn her keep. She will not fracture another system. She will not become the crack that brings this one down.
But proximity is its own kind of danger. In a world reduced to ash, love is a risk none of them can afford. Choosing her could cost them everything.
It might also be the only thing left worth surviving for.
