Chapter 1

That night, my biological parents finally found me.

Isabelle’s fiancé, Caleb Blackwood, had gone out to battle. He returned with his legs shredded by zombies, leaving him paralyzed. Doctors had delivered a grim verdict: he’d never stand again.

My parents, utterly devoted to Isabelle, forced me into a proxy marriage, tying me up and dragging me to the altar.

But Isabelle wasn’t one to give up easily. She caused a dramatic scene on our wedding night, crying to Caleb that I had usurped her place as his fiancée.

Caleb, swayed by her poisonous whispers, gripped my chin. “A useless nobody with no abilities? You think you’re fit to be my wife?”

After injecting me with a potent zombie virus strain, he ordered me to be thrown out to the zombie dogs.

From then on, torturing me became his twisted pleasure.

He claimed his legs were useless, yet his thirst for thrill drove him to force me to leap into deep ravines to dig for zombie cores with my bare hands, or throw me into clusters of mutated flora to retrieve antidotes.

He’d only crack a faint smile when he saw me, battered and bruised, collapsing to my knees.

Isabelle would feign concern, “Sister, don’t blame Caleb. His legs hurt, that’s why he’s so irritable.”

But still, I stayed by his side, unafraid of death.

All because I’d signed a secret pact.

Until one day, ignoring my desperate pleas, he tied me to an armored vehicle and careened through a raging zombie horde. After a barrage of reckless, bone-jarring maneuvers, I collapsed, unconscious, my body already betraying the life within.

I found Eleanor Blackwood, Caleb’s grandmother, my voice flat, empty.

“The term is up. Please, let me live.”