Prologue
Ivy
I have to leave without her. This is my only chance.
Jade’s haunting screams tear through the walls around me. Every step I take, feels like a betrayal.
But this was the plan.
She said she’d follow as soon as she could. That she’d meet me in the closest town.
I have to trust her. I have to believe we’ll both survive this.
My fingers tremble as I wedge them under the loosened boards at the back of the old wooden farmhouse. My heartbeat thunders as I pry it up, trying not to make it creak.
Cold air rushes in, stealing my breath as I squeeze through the gap and drop into the long weeds outside.
Crouching beside the house, I take a moment I can’t afford to carefully replace the boards, hiding the escape route so Jade has a chance to use it too.
Every sound feels too loud. My own breathing. Each step as I crush the dry weeds underfoot.
But the screaming and thudding from inside persist, convincing me I haven’t been heard.
I want to turn back.
But I can’t.
Ikeep low as I move through the back field, toward the forest, the overgrown weeds brushing against my bare legs with ghostly strokes. Ignoring the crawling sensation, I resist the urge to slap and scratch my legs.
Somewhere out there, his men are on patrol like always. He has them trained like dogs, ready to drag us back the second we stray too far.
He says he’s keeping us safe. That he’s just protecting his ‘wives’ from the other people that survived. That the ‘shadow government’ finally purged the population, and everyone left out here had turned to cannibalism. We’d just be “an easy meal”.
I used to believe him.
But sometime in the last few months, doubt crept in, and I couldn’t put it to rest.
This rural area is nothing like what I know, so who knows how the people out here survived. The city was my whole life, yet even there, no one understood what was happening.
The military lost control almost overnight. Things I saw that first year convinced me nothing was off the table. Fear and self-preservation turn average people into monsters.
It’s been six years now—give or take—since the world tore itself apart. Maybe war, maybe disease, maybe something worse. All I know is that society died screaming, and any military efforts to restore order were abandoned by the end of the first year.
I was lucky to survive those early days. So many people didn’t.
But my luck ran out about three years ago when I was captured, trafficked and then traded to Bennett a year later.
He keeps us ‘wives’ completely isolated from the outside world. When we’re not locked in the house or the barn, we stillcan’t venture far on the property.
We’re fed enough to obey, but our hunger is used against us—as well as other things. And God forbid we speak out of turn.
But we still whisper.
We still wonder if there are other groups out there with more humanity. If there’s anything left that might hold a little hope.
His men go out to scavenge what they can while we stay behind. ‘Safe’, and pretending to be grateful.
I haven’t stepped foot off this compound in two years. Now I’m stumbling through the grass like a ghost in the night.
