Chapter 1

I picked up a mutant zombie.

He was extremely hot, tame, and he could even talk.

The only strange thing was how interested he was in human courtship.

He even found a ring and put it on my finger.

I contacted my mentor, wanting to take him back to the research base.

My mentor went pale.

"That is a Zombie King," he said. "He will take the mate he has chosen, lock her down, and breed her day and night until she is pregnant."

"Ivy, run!"

I wanted to run at once.

It was already too late.

.....

Three years into the zombie outbreak, I finally caught a zombie of my own.

He sat tied to the chair in the middle of my lab.

Ropes crossed his chest, and a steel muzzle locked over his jaw.

His head hung low, black hair falling over his forehead.

Even slumped like that, the clean lines of his face were hard to ignore.

Setting aside the fact that he was a zombie, this man was unfairly hot.

I found him three days ago, after a horde swept through the district.

He was lying unconscious at the corner of the street.

He looked just like a normal person.

If not for the lack of a pulse or any warmth in his body, I would have thought he was a survivor.

Normal zombies rotted as they walked.

This one's skin was smooth and whole.

If the virus worked differently in him, I might finally build a vaccine.

The communicator on my desk crackled to life.

It was my mentor, Dr. Mercer, calling from the northern base.

"Listen carefully, Ivy, because the pickup team reaches you in seven days."

He said the signal towers were down, so communications would die for the next few days.

He also said last week's horde riot was not random.

The zombies were hunting for something that had been taken from them.

"A newborn Zombie King," he said.

"Someone stole him from them, and we have confirmed his basic traits."

The line drowned in static before he could finish.

I shook the device hard, wanting to report the specimen tied up in my lab.

The signal was already dead.

I put down the communicator.

I did not dwell on it, because the zombie I had picked up was tamer than anything in the records.

He just sat there in silence, watching me with dark eyes.

I even gave him a name, because "the specimen" was getting tiring to say.

Ash, for the gray in his eyes and the ash-covered street where I found him.

"Good boy, Ash.Time for today's examination."

I stripped off my gloves, because I needed to know if his skin still had living elasticity.

I pressed my fingertips to his neck and moved downward, inch by inch.

The skin was cold, but smooth, and it sprang back under my touch like a living man's.

A low growl rolled out of his throat.

His shoulders tightened against the ropes, and his jaw shifted behind the steel.

"Easy, this is data collection."You don't get a vote."

I tried to stay calm, but my heartbeat began to quicken.

My hands slid down over his chest, then across the hard planes of his stomach.

The muscle under my palms was firm and perfect.

Heat crept up my neck before I could stop it.

Something warm stirred low in my belly, and I crushed the feeling on reflex.

This man was research material, no different from the petri dishes and flasks on my shelf.

I told myself that, and then I let my hands stay on him a few seconds longer than necessary.

His growl deepened, his breathing turned rough, and the rope over his chest creaked.

Then he lunged upward without warning, roaring behind the muzzle.

I was startled. I jerked back, my heel caught the leg of the instrument tray, and my balance disappeared.

I threw out a hand to steady myself, and my palm accidentally pressed down between his legs.

Then the thing under my hand twitched.

It swelled against my palm, growing thicker, longer, and harder with every beat of my heart.

In my panic, I finally realized what it was.

Wait—zombies could get hard?!