Page 160 of My Undead Love Life

I sank down onto the mattress, pulling the blanket around me, and for the first time in what felt like forever, I didn’t feel like I was freezing from the inside out. Keith settled beside me first, careful of my bruised ribs. Luck eased down on my other side with his wrapped foot elevated on a folded blanket, exactly like Sofia ordered. Oxi crawled in behind him. Mad checked the room one more time before he finally came over and settled on the outer edge, closest to the open space. Keith’s arm wrapped around my waist. Luck’s fingers found mine under the blanket. Oxi’s hand rested lightly near my ankle. Mad’s palm brushed my shoulder once before he settled.

“You okay?” Luck asked softly.

I looked at all four of them. The cult was still out there. The leopard was somewhere in the snow tracking us, and my family was still too far away. But for tonight, we were underground, fed, warmed, mostly cleaned, and alive.

“Yeah,” I whispered. I snuggled deeper beneath the blanket, letting myself press into Keith and Luck while Oxi and Mad settled close around us. “Yeah. I mean it.”

Luck squeezed my fingers. “Good.”

Keith kissed my temple. Oxi’s thumb brushed gently over my ankle.

Mad’s voice came low through the dimming lights. “Sleep while we can.”

The bunker hummed around us. Somewhere beyond the sleeping area, Sofia moved through her lab, the faint sounds of cabinets and screens and science continuing even as the rest of us finally let our bodies sink toward rest.

This place and this woman were something else entirely. Maybe Sofia was strange and dangerous in the way brilliant, lonely people could be dangerous. But she had opened a door in the snow when we were dying. She had fed us, warmed us, and said she wanted to eradicate the virus.

Maybe she would cure the world. Even if that was far-fetched and nothing more than a beautiful thought, I let myself believe in her for a moment. We were safe for now. And for once, for now was enough.

27

MAD

Ididn’t trust easily.

The world ending hadn’t created that in me. It had only sharpened what was already there until suspicion became as natural as breathing. Before the outbreak, I had trusted maps, routes, locks, procedures, and people who proved they understood consequences.

Now, I trusted even less.

A bunker conveniently placed in our path right as we were about to freeze to death did not make me feel safe. It made every instinct I had tell me something was wrong. The fact that Sofia had actually taken pity on us, saved our lives, fed us, treated Luck’s frostbite, gave us a warm place to sleep, and sent us to bed on a sanitized air mattress in said bunker? That was more than generous. Generous and suspicious. But my suspicions had faded sometime around the third hour of sleeping without waking. That alone felt dangerous. I hadn’t slept through the night since the outbreak started. Not once. Even in the firehouse, back when we’d had barricades, routines, people on watch, and enough supplies to pretend we were building something stable.

I had woken at every noise. Every creak. Every shift in the wind. Every dream that ended with Ryan screaming through smoke. But in Sofia’s bunker, beneath the sealed doors and filtered air and the steady hum of power, I slept. It was the kind of sleep that stole hours without permission and returned them softened around the edges. When I woke, my body didn’t immediately brace for impact. My hand still reached for my axe, because I wasn’t an idiot, but my chest didn’t feel like it had been filled with broken glass.

For a few seconds, I just lay there and listened. There was only the quiet hum of vents, the soft breathing of the others, and Spencer tucked between Keith and Luck with Oxi curled close on the other side like none of them had any intention of ever letting her sleep cold again.

My gaze stayed on her longer than it should have. Her red hair had spilled across the pillow, the white streaks catching the bunker’s dimmed emergency lights. She was stunning.

Eventually, the rest of the bunker woke around us. Sofia was already up, because apparently the woman either never slept or had figured out how to outsource it to one of her machines. That wouldn’t have surprised me.

Spencer woke with a soft yawn and cute smile. The guys woke when she did.

We got up quickly, and by the time we reached the main lab, Sofia was hunched over a screen with a mug in one hand and a stylus in the other, hair messier than the night before and lab coat hanging half off one shoulder.

She looked up as if she’d been expecting us down to the minute. “You’re all alive,” she said. “Excellent. My bedding remains undefeated.”

Luck, limping less than yesterday but still favoring his other foot, lifted a hand. “Five-star review. Would nearly die outside again for air mattress access.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” Spencer glared at him.

“No, I would not.” He raised his hands in defeat.

Spencer moved toward Sofia with a determined glint in her pretty brown eyes.

I’d seen it with Luck at the mall. I’d seen it with Oxi after Olivia. I’d seen it when she looked at me after the firehouse and made me feel like the worst things I’d survived didn’t have to be carried alone. Spencer had decided Sofia needed saving, too.

“You have to come with us,” she told Sofia as we packed up to leave that morning. “I’m serious. You’d love the Oasis. There are people, and it’s safe. Well, not safer than this, probably, because honestly, this place is insane in the best way, but there are people.”

“People?” Sofia echoed, glancing back at her with a faint smile. “You think I need people?”