BARE YOUR BLADE AND RAISE IT HIGH

Nexalunne ~ "A longing to connect with another soul on a level that words can't touch."

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They move through the forest slowly for her benefit. It’s not long before she realizes he’s once again adjusting his stride to match hers. She sees it in the way his shoulders angle forward before he reins himself back, in the tension bracketing his jaw whenever her step falters behind him. He knows better than to offer his hand every five minutes. Though they’ve been orbiting each other for a limited time, he’s learned that much about her. Help, pushed too hard, feels too much like a trap.

So he does something she finds worse and far more endearing. He takes shorter paths around fallen trees, holds branches aside until she passes, steps on unstable patches of moss first, testing them with his own weight before she reaches them, chooses ground that won’t be as draining for her leg, and he often pretends the detours are natural. All these little things make her chest ache in a way she refuses to reward with softness.

The forest is colder beneath the clouds. Staying on the edge of the city was too dangerous for Jack, so he lead them back into the forest where trees offer enough coverage until the team reaches them. He had offered waiting, but she insisted she could walk.

That was a mistake.

Damp leaves cling to her boots as rotting branches lie black and slick across the ground. Every few yards, something rustles in the undergrowth, and her fingers twitch toward the scalpel she still has, though it feels laughably small now. The dead are not near, but the woods remember them. There are drag marks in the mud where something without coordination moved through, scratches on bark, a torn strip of fabric caught on thorns, stiff with old blood.

Jack walks ahead, dirt on his hoodie, dried blood at his sleeve, exhaustion pressed into every line of him. He’s more worn down than when she met him in the mall. That Jack had more control over his moves, and over his own emotions, equipped with sharp humor she undeniably connected to first. This Jack looks like a man who has spent days wrestling death away from his home and returned to find she had invited it to walk beside her.

Still, he stands tall and watches. When the trail narrows, he turns sideways and holds back a dripping branch so it doesn’t slap her in the face. Y/N ducks under it, close enough to catch the scent of sweat, smoke, and pine lingering beneath the blood on him. Her pulse answers the familiar longing she’s been wrestling with before she can silence it.

“Where were you?” she asks.

Jack releases the branch only after she clears it. It snaps back into place behind them with a wet whisper. He doesn’t look at her.

“You were gone for almost a week,” she adds, hating the accusation in her voice and hating more that it sounds like hurt.

His steps slow a fraction. “Had to lead a horde away,” he replies dryly. “It took longer than expected.”

A horde.

The word’s enough to turn her blood to ice. She pictures him beyond the walls, silver hair damp with rain, knife in hand, walkers spreading between trees in numbers large enough to bend the world around them. Jack was out there on his bad leg, drawing them away from the only place left that has children laughing in gardens.

Her throat tightens. “Are you hurt?”

Now he does glance back. A lopsided grin cuts across his face, tired but still devastatingly attractive. It starts at one corner of his mouth, pulling the line of his cheek upward, deepening the faint crease beside his eye. Dirt and exhaustion should dull it, and yet, somehow the grime makes him look even more infuriatingly alive, roughened at the edges, silver hair falling over his forehead only make him more difficult to look away from.

“Are you worried about me, sweetheart?”

Y/N abruptly steps to the far edge of the trail, pretending to watch the dense undergrowth. He lets out a quiet, amused breath through his nose, his lips stretching into a proud, knowing smile as he tracks her sudden modesty. Her eyes track the passing tree trunks, but the bright flash of his teeth breaks through her peripheral vision every time he turns his head to check her reaction.

“I’m worried,” she mutters finally, “that if you collapse, I’ll have to drag your oversized body back to civilization. And I don’t have that kind of generosity in me.”

His low chuckle ripples through the foggy air, dissolving her fragile composure. It enters her chest like a sudden splash of warmth against the damp chill of the woods, making it impossible to draw a full, steady breath. She keeps her eyes turned to the trees, wishing the autumn wind could cool the sudden, burning evidence of his effect on her.

She turns just enough to scowl at him, refusing to hide away and let him be smug about it.

Jack’s eyes brighten at the brave glance. “I find it cute.”

Her brows lift. “Excuse me?”

“You’re like a hedgehog.”

Sighing, she locks eyes with him. “I’m going to regret asking -”

“Prickly all around.” He leans slightly toward her as they walk, voice dipping lower. “Mushy on the inside.”

Her mouth falls open. “I’m sorry, did you hit your head dealing with the horde?”

“I won’t tell anyone,” he continues, all too happy with himself. “It’ll be our little secret.”

Rolling her eyes, she presses her lips in a thin line, refusing to let a smile loose. Before she can produce a decent insult, the sound of engines growls through the trees.

Y/N’s body reacts instantly as the sound rips through her like a bullet. Her hand snaps out, catches Jack’s, trying to yank him along as she rushes toward the nearest tree. Bark scrapes her shoulder and her heart bolts into her throat. Engines mean people, and people mean weapons and that always leads to violence.

He stops at the tree, but he doesn’t budge, remaining standing tall in the open like a stubborn broad shouldered wall of warmth.

She turns on him, whispering harshly, “You might be strong and trained, but you’re not winning against a group.”

The engines grows louder…more engines that she can count now.

Her grip tightens around his hand. “Jack, please.”

His expression softens before he can hide it, the amusement draining from his mouth, his eyes warming in a way that makes her hate how desperate she must sound. His fingers close around hers, firm and grounding. Then he lifts her hand.

Holding her breath as the back of her hand brushes his mouth for one brief kiss, just barely felt, but burning like embers sends heat flashing up her arm so suddenly she forgets the approaching group for half a second.

“Don’t worry,” he murmurs against her skin. “They’re my people.”

She stares at him through the gloom of the forest, trying desperately to anchor herself to his words, yet her heart continues to hammer a frantic warning against her ribs as if navigating a completely different reality.

Even with her fingers securely folded inside his steady, unmoving hands, an involuntary tremor ripples through her palms, rendering his physical reassurance entirely useless. She understands intellectually that he means her no harm, but that rational realization dissolves against the primitive, unyielding language of her own trauma, which recognizes only threat and refuses to translate his comfort.

“You could have warned me,” she bites out, yanking her hand back.

Jack’s mouth curves faintly as the first motorcycle breaks through the trees. “I would have,” he says, “but you were busy running away. Besides, you knew they were meeting up with us.”

Her eyes narrow.

Three motorcycles emerge from between the trunks, engines rumbling low, tires chewing through wet leaves. The riders wear layered jackets, weapons strapped close, faces alert behind dirt. They move with a synchronized precision that immediately sets them apart from the chaotic brutality of raiders, their tight formation fracturing the moment their headlights catch Jack standing in their way.

In an instant, the aggressive momentum of their advance stalls, their shoulders dropping into a profound deference that borders on reverence, tempered by a sharp, visible caution. Y/N watches the transition with a mounting sense of wonder, her instinct picking up on the invisible threads of Jack’s authority binding the group together well before she can rationalize the scene, understanding intuitively that these men do not merely respect the man holding her hand; they are utterly terrified of failing him.

“You didn’t think we’d walk all the way back with the state of your leg, did you?” Jack asks.

Her attention snaps back to him. His gaze flickers to her calf, then to her face, gauging the damage without making a show of it.

“You’ll have to ride with me,” he explains.

The blood drains from her face. “I’m not -”

“You’re free to choose one of them if that makes you more comfortable.”

He says it evenly, but his tired hazel eyes stay locked on hers, searching, waiting to see which fear wins: him, or strangers.

A sharp breath flares her nostrils as the full weight of her situation crashes down, forcing her gaze to dart frantically toward the overgrown city path stretching out behind them. It lies there like a fading lifeline to the world she knows, and she stares at it with a desperate, trapped longing, acutely aware of how quickly this has transformed into something she’s not entirely sure she’s ready for.

Reading the desperate intent written across her face, his voice lowers. “Don’t run.”

Her body stiffens with his warning. “Are you saying I have to go back with you?” she asks. “That I’m a prisoner?”

Jack closes his eyes for a brief, pained moment, releasing a sharp breath through his nostrils as he steps forward to offer comfort, a movement that only succeeds in sending her stumbling backward over the damp leaves.

The muscles in his jaw bunch tightly with an irritation aimed solely at his own lack of foresight, a quiet fury because he constantly underestimates the deepths of her fear, which reacts to his physical presence as an act of aggression rather than an offer of safety.

“You’re not a prisoner,” he counters, the words carrying a desperate gravity as he tries to dismantle the invisible wall shifting between them.

“Then why did you come for me? Why are you trying to make me come back? Why won’t you just let me go?”

“Because I don’t play about your life.” The words come too quickly, with too much honesty. He looks briefly away, throat moving as though he has swallowed the wrong truth and it cut going down.

“I don’t…” His eyes return to hers, speaking quieter so no one would hear. “I saw you in that mall, and I swear to God I felt alive for the first time in years.”

The forest stills, or maybe she does.

Y/N searches his face for mockery, exaggeration, seduction, strategy. There is none. Dirt streaks his cheek, exhaustion shadows his eyes, yet his stare is steady, stripped of all his usual dark charm, and the honesty in it steals every sharp remark from her tongue. Warmth spreads through her chest in frightening intensity, pushing at her ribs from the inside, asking to be let out.

Jack Abbot, for reasons she cannot understand, cares about her in a way that is not casual, or convenient. Not the way a doctor cares for a patient or a leader cares for a liability. It’s heavier than that, more personal and far more dangerous.

“Are you saying you like me?” she raises her brows. Her lips part, twitching as if a smile is trying to break through.

Jack doesn’t fight his. The smile comes slowly and then all at once, brightening him in a way that makes the forest seem less gray. His eyes crease at the corners, the hard line of his mouth softens into something almost boyishly reckless. He looks pleased with her for asking and pleased with himself for making her ask, but beneath that is relief, deep enough to make his smile tremble at the edges before he steadies it.

“I’ll tell you if you come back with me.”

“On a motorcycle?”

He snorts. “Yes.”

Y/N rolls her eyes, biting her lower lip before the threatened smile can fully betray her. “If I come with you, I get ten questions. Nothing’s off limits.”

Jack folds his arms across his chest. The movement stretches his hoodie over his shoulders, and even annoyed with him, she notices. His body is made to be noticed.

“Five,” he counters.

Her eyes narrow. “Eight.”

“Five,” he repeats, rougher.

She crosses her arms too, mirroring him without meaning to. “Six.”

He shakes his head, slow and warning. “Three.”

“Hey.” She points her index finger at him. “You said five.”

“And now it’s three. Keep arguing, it’ll be one.”

“You negotiate like a dictator.”

“Three questions! Going once…going twice!”

She locks her eyes onto his, her gaze sharpening into a fierce, beautiful challenge that refuses to give him an inch. He absorbs the impact of her look with absolute ease, his eyes crinkle at the corners as a smug, knowing smile bleeds across his features, transforming his teasing warning into something that feels intoxicatingly intimate.

“Fine,” she snaps.

Jack claps once, startling a bird from a nearby branch. “Great. We’ve got ourselves a deal.”

She mutters something unkind under her breath.

He turns toward the riders. “Owen, you ride with Seth. I need the bike.”

One of the men dismounts immediately. He is broad, bearded, and armed, but the second Jack addresses him, his shoulders tighten. He nods without question and backs away from the bike, eyes lowered for a fraction before meeting Jack’s again.

“Yes, sir.”

Y/N tracks the silent communication passing between them, acutely aware that the comfortable respect Jack commanded among the doctors and nurses has been replaced by something far more formidable. The riders fall into an alert, protective formation that positions Jack as the literal axis upon which their survival spins, their movements projecting a tight restraint that keeps the untamed forest at bay.

It’s a darker, far more serious brand of loyalty than she has ever witnessed, grounded in an instinctual recognition of a power that requires no loud threats or posturing to maintain its flawless, terrifying control over the men who serve it. Their immediate compliance exposes a deep-seated discipline that springs not from the fear of a tyrant's temper, but from the sobering knowledge of an ultimate accountability under a leader whose directives are absolute law.

She suspected Jack was near the top of the food chain for a while, but now she sees the truth: Jack is the top.

He looks back at Y/N, and the command in his face gentles so quickly it gives her emotional whiplash.

“Normally, I’d say don’t ride a bike without a helmet,” he tells her, leading her toward the motorcycle. “But we’re deficient in those, so we’ll have to skip the safety lesson today.”

“How comforting.”

“You wanted honesty.”

“I wanted answers.”

“You negotiated poorly. I’ll have to teach you to do that too.”

She whips her head around to look at him, her eyes flashing with a beautifully manufactured hostility designed to melt the smug grin right off his face. She locks her jaw to keep her lips from turning up at the corners, throwing every ounce of her energy into a mock scowl so he won't catch the exact moment her defenses crumble under his charm.

A lopsided, knowing smirk settles onto his face, marking the exact moment he claims his victory over both their argument and her stubborn pride. He tracks the sharp lines of her little scowl with pure delight, completely immune to the venom in her eyes because he can already feel the invisible threads of his charm pulling her closer, regardless of how much she fights it.

When he turns to his men, the warmth and charm vanish instantly.

“Sweep the trail,” he orders. “Make sure we weren’t followed by the dead, especially by the living. If you stumble onto anything hostile, make sure it never takes another step. Clear?”

The response comes in unison. “Yes, sir!”

Y/N stands beside the bike, watching him, further confirming her initial theories about him were entirely wrong. Maybe she will keep being wrong until there is nothing left of her old assumptions but ash.

The riders start their engines and tear away toward the city’s edge, leaving churned leaves and exhaust behind. Jack remains with the bike, one hand resting on the handlebar, the other extended toward her.

“Shall we?” One cocky brow lifts.

Y/N looks at his hand, then at him and this time, she doesn’t hesitate. She takes it. The contact lasts only a second, just long enough for him to help her onto the back of the motorcycle. His palm is warm, callused, steady. It sets her nerves alight, heat skittering beneath her skin and climbing into her cheeks before she can look away.

“I’ve never been on a bike before,” she confesses.

Jack swings one leg over and settles in front of her, broad back filling her view. The engine rumbles beneath them, vibration traveling through the frame into her thighs, her stomach, her ribs.

He glances over his shoulder. “It’s pretty straightforward. Hold on tight, keep your head down, and don’t fall.”

“How poetic.”

“I save my best material for women not bleeding all over me.”

She smiles despite herself as her arms snake around his middle carefully, at first, testing. His body goes still for half a breath.

“Like this?” she asks.

His fingertips brush over her forearm, adjusting her hold a little lower, firmer around his waist. She cannot see his face, but she hears the grin in his voice.

“Perfect.”

The word sends warmth through her that has nothing to do with the motorcycle or the fever she hopes is gone.

Y/N rests her left temple between his shoulder blades. His body is solid beneath her, strong, warm through the hoodie and alive in a way that feels almost overwhelming after so many months of avoiding human closeness like a loaded gun.

She tightens her arms when the bike lurches forward, and Jack covers one of her hands briefly with his, pressing it against his stomach like a silent instruction, a reassurance and a claim he’s careful not to make too obvious.

Then they are moving.

The forest begins to blur. Wind lashes her face, pulling at her hair, carrying the smell of wet leaves, exhaust, dirt, and Jack’s pine and smoke scent. She keeps her head low as he told her, cheek pressed to his back, eyes closing after a while because the motion is too much and not enough. Fear lives there, yes, coiled tight around her spine, but beneath it is something wilder: freedom and his quick, powerful heartbeat under her palms.

For the first time in longer than she can measure, closeness is something she chooses, revels in and while this choice scares her half to death, it feels good…more than good. It feels right.

The thought makes her hold him tighter.

Jack’s hand drops once to cover hers again, only for a second, like he understands.

They ride until time loses edges. Trees streak past, the trail narrows, dips, rises. Jack handles the motorcycle with terrifying competence, leaning into turns, adjusting for mud, avoiding roots and debris with tiny shifts of muscle she feels through her entire body. At some point, exhaustion catches her from behind and her eyes close. Her grip stays locked around him, but her mind slips into darkness.

A violent jolt snaps her awake and her body jerks. Jack’s hand clamps over her wrist, keeping her pressed tight against his back.

“Hold on,” he barks.

She lifts her head as the bike swerves hard. Her stomach flips. “What’s going on?”

Then she sees them. Behind them, between the trees, the dead are pouring through the forest. There’s dozens…more than dozens of loose, staggering tides of bodies moving in their direction Some still wear scraps of old jackets, work uniforms, hospital gowns, hiking gear shredded by weather and teeth. Their faces are a horrifying: cheeks torn open, eyes filmed white, scalps peeled back, teeth snapping at empty air. One walker stumbles with both arms missing below the elbow, useless stumps lifted as it lurches forward. Another drags its intestines through the leaves, black ropes catching on roots until it tears itself free without noticing.

They groan as a mass, like a rotten choir clawing at Y/N’s sanity. Panic floods her chest so quickly her hands lock around Jack’s hoodie.

“The fucking horde is making its way back,” he grits out, taking a sharp left between two trees, “and I’m going to steer them away.”

Away from the city, from Dana, Perlah, Mel, away from children and laundry lines and hospital rooms with clean sheets, away from the only last breath of civilization Y/N has seen in two years.

She presses her face back against Jack and holds on.

Hours stretch into a fever dream of speed and terror. Jack rides just close enough for the dead to follow the engine, far enough not to be surrounded. Whenever the horde begins drifting toward the direction of the city, he angles away, drawing their attention back with bursts of noise, revving hard, circling once, then cutting through trees where the motorcycles can pass and walkers cannot move quickly enough to swarm. The dead follow because the dead don’t understand strategy, they understand sound.

Y/N keeps her arms around Jack tight, his back against her chest, his body leaning, her body following as one.

The sky darkens and the forest grows unfamiliar.  She knows they won’t make it back tonight without him saying it.

His shoulders shift beneath her arms, tension gathering.

“Hold on tight,” he orders.

She obeys without arguing, without sarcastic remarks. He needs her to stay in line, to keep herself safe, because if she falls off, or even loses her bearings for a moment, he’ll lose focus and they’re both lost.

So, her hands knot into his hoodie, fingers pressing against the hard muscle beneath. The bike surges forward so suddenly she swears her soul lags behind, still sitting somewhere in the last patch of mud while her body tears through the trees with Jack.

The ground drops ahead, leading toward a chasm they won’t survive.

Using the last of her breath to utter his name, she closes her eyes as he speeds up impossibly.

“Jack -”

They hit the rise and for a moment they are airborne. For a heartbeat, there is no world, only cold air, roaring engine, Jack’s body under her arms, and the impossible sight of a chasm opening beneath them. The horde behind them reaches the edge in a shuddering wave, some walkers already tumbling forward, bodies dropping without fear or understanding.

The bike lands hard, and her breath comes back in a gasp.

The impact slams through her body and pain erupts in her leg. The wind is knocked out of her, lungs clamping down as if she has forgotten how to breathe. Jack fights the bike into control, tires skidding over loose ground before finally stopping several yards from the edge.

He’s off the bike instantly.

“Y/N.”

Only a thin wheeze comes out as an answer.

Jack’s hands are on her cheeks before she can decide whether to flinch. Warm palms and steady fingers steady tilt her face up so he can see her eyes.

“Look at me.”

She drags in air. It hurts, but she shakes it off.

“I’m fine,” she breathes.

His eyes move over her face, down her shoulders, her arms, her leg, back to her pupils. Hazel is sharpened by guilt, fear, focus. His thumbs hover near her cheekbones, barely touching, as if he wants to hold her harder and knows he has no right.

“I’m fine,” she repeats, stronger this time.

Jack releases a heavy breath. His hands remain there another second, before reluctantly letting go. Guilt stays etched across his face, deepening the lines around his eyes. He looks back toward the jump, toward the chasm, toward the distant groans of walkers trapped on the other side or tumbling uselessly into the dark below.

He hates himself. She sees it clearly. He hates that he put her in danger after promising safety, that he risked her body to save the community, that he had to make the kind of decision leaders make and lovers resent.

The realization hits her with strange tenderness. She doesn’t feel anger and no resentment rises. If anything, awe moves through her. Jack made the choice in seconds: calculated speed, distance, terrain, risk, the horde’s movement, her grip, the bike’s weight, his own exhaustion. He did something reckless only because competence made it possible.

Her respect for him deepens until it becomes almost indistinguishable from the feeling she keeps trying to deny.

“What you did there,” she starts.

Jack looks away, already bracing for words of judgment. “Was reckless. I know.”

Y/N reaches for him with a sudden, beautiful recklessness that closes the remaining distance between them with a breathy boldness that catches both of them entirely off guard. Her hands cup his face, her fingers tracing the hard lines of his jaw. His beard scratches lightly against her palms. His skin is warm, covered in sweat and dirt and she doesn’t care. The position brings him closer, forces his eyes back to hers, where she most desires they’d stay. She can feel the tension in his jaw and the way it loosens by a fraction under her touch.

“No,” she says. Her thumbs rest near his cheekbones. One moves before she can stop it, brushing gently across the dirt there, over the hard line of bone. “It was incredibly brave.”

A profound shadow falls over Jack’s gaze as his eyes darken, losing every trace of the formidable leader, softening into something beautifully unarmored, because his heart recognizes exactly what this gesture means: she’s giving him the touch and the unforced trust he has desperately craved from her. He remains frozen under her hands, his breath catching in his throat in sheer incredulity as he drinks in the realization that she’s no longer retreating, but actively choosing to anchor herself to him.

She licks her lips, and his gaze drops for the briefest second before snapping back up, like he is fighting himself with every breath.

The forest around them grows heavy with distant, dead sounds from beyond the dark chasm, while the rapidly gathering night tangles itself hopelessly in the branches above. A sharp, rhythmic throb pulses through her injured leg, her entire body aching and still half-vibrating with the residual adrenaline of the jump they barely survived. It’s an entirely terrible, unglamorous moment to be vulnerable, but perhaps that is precisely why her carefully guarded defenses finally crumble, leaving her with no strength left to hide the truth of how she feels about him.

“I like you too, Jack Abbot.”

Holding his breath, he tilts his head as she continues with a softer tone, but her voice doesn’t lose strength. She means what she’s saying and she’s not shying away from it.

“More than I should. More than I deem safe.” A faint tremor moves through her fingers against his face. “I like you.”

The smile that rises on him is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen. It doesn’t arrive like his charming smirks do. It begins slowly, almost disbelieving, as if her words have reached a locked room inside him and opened it without asking. His eyes change first; the guarded sharpness in the hazel warms, light gathering there in layers, relief and wonder and a flicker of dangerous joy he cannot quite contain. Then his mouth softens, parts slightly, curves upward with a tenderness so naked it makes her chest hurt.

The smile reshapes him. For a moment, the commander, the doctor, the man everyone fears, all of it falls away. He looks younger, like a man who has been handed something fragile in the ruins and doesn’t know whether to protect it, worship it, or beg it not to disappear.

Y/N forgets every argument she has ever made against wanting him.

Jack lifts one hand slowly, giving her time to pull away. When she doesn’t, his fingers wrap lightly around her wrist. His thumb presses over her pulse, feeling how wildly her heart is beating beneath her skin.

“Y/N,” he murmurs.

There is too much in the way he says her name; too much hunger, too much restraint, too much aching relief.

As she leans an inch closer, a dead groan drifts from somewhere behind them, separated by distance but still present. Jack closes his eyes briefly, his smile turning smaller, almost pained as reality comes knocking. When he opens them, the softness remains, but discipline folds itself around it.

“Come on,” he says, voice rough. “We have to find a place to rest for the night.”

She lets her hands fall from his face slowly. His fingers trail from her wrist as if reluctant to stop touching. For once, she understands the reluctance because it’s in her too.

“Do I still get my three questions?” she asks.

The corner of his mouth quirks. “If we survive long enough, I may consider it.”

“I’m serious.”

“You held a blade to my neck…twice! Ran away from my hospital, stole medication and food, forced me to chase you through the woods, and then confessed you have feelings after we both nearly died.”

She gives him a tired look. “And?”

“And yes,” he says, that smile flickering back, softer now. “You get three questions.”

“Nothing off limits.”

His expression grows more cautious, but he nods. “Nothing off limits.”

Above them, the first stars begin showing through the torn clouds. Y/N studies him in the darkening forest. She should ask about the community, about the rule, about his past in the army, his residency, his relationships or family.

Instead, she asks, “Are you going to kiss me if I ask you to?”

The playful words leave her lips and Jack becomes completely rooted to the spot, the casual arrogance of his smirk vanishing instantly as the air between them turns electric. All the playful banter of their game dissolves in an instant, his eyes locking onto hers with an unguarded desperation that proves he’s entirely at the mercy of her words. In the heavy silence, his eyes drop helplessly to her mouth, lingering on the curve of her lips just long enough to send a wave of heat crawling up her neck, before he forces his focus back up to meet her stare with a visible, breathless effort, trying to keep himself leashed.

“That’s one question,” he says.

Her pulse rages beneath her skin. “You said nothing’s off limits.”

“I did.”

“And?”

Jack takes a single step closer, slowly, in the way he does when he wants to make sure she doesn’t frighten, or run from him. The last thing he wants is to ruin the moment with his own impatience.

The space between them narrows until she can feel the warmth of him again, smell him, see the tiny cut on his cheek, the dirt along his jaw, the way his chest rises beneath the fabric.

“If you ask me to kiss you,” he says, voice low enough to make the words feel secret, “I will.” His eyes soften, but his jaw remains tight with restraint. “But I need you to be very sure it’s what you want. Don’t ask because you’re scared, or because we almost died, or because I found you.”

A sudden ache constricts Y/N’s throat as she watches him fight his own instincts, recognizing that familiar, heartbreaking hesitation where he prioritizes her comfort over his own desperate longing even when she’s handing him exactly what he’s been aching for. There he is again, choosing to be infinitely careful with her even in the absolute peak of his desire, a profound gentleness that disarms her far more completely than any calculated seduction ever could. It’s the sheer beauty of his restraint that finally shatters her remaining defenses, making her realize that his willingness to wait for her is the most intoxicating thing he could ever offer.

“And if I am sure?” she tilts her chin up.

His thumb brushes once over her wrist before he lets go. “Then I’ll kiss you like I’ve been thinking about since the first time you threatened to stab me.”

A small, breathless ripple of laughter breaks from her lips. Seeing her defenses melt into genuine amusement, Jack’s lopsided smile returns in an instant in a sudden, beautiful flash of white teeth and radiating warmth.

“But,” he steps back before she can decide whether to close the distance or save herself from it, “not while your leg is bleeding through the bandages and there are walkers behind us.”

She glares at him. “You’re impossible.”

“I’m responsible.”

“You jumped a motorcycle over a chasm,” she deadpans.

“And we’re still breathing.”

She shakes her head, but the smile stays. It feels strange on her face, almost sore from disuse.

Jack notices and looks at her as if he wants to memorize it before the world takes it away. Then he turns to the bike and checks the fuel, the engine, the tires. His movements are efficient again, but something has shifted. Even when he steps away, he feels close. Even when she looks at the trees, she’s aware of the warmth his hands left at her wrists, the place her palms touched his cheeks, the promise sitting unsaid between their mouths.

He glances back at her. “Can you walk a little?”

She looks down at her leg. Blood has seeped through the edge of the bandage, not pouring, but enough to make Jack’s eyes darken when he sees it.

“I can.”

“Y/N -”

“I can walk a little,” she repeats. “You can lecture me when we’re somewhere safe.”

“I can multitask.”

“Of course you can.”

He comes to her side, but doesn’t touch her. She reaches for him this time; only his sleeve at first, then his forearm.

His body stills under her hand, a subtle pause that tells her the touch matters to him as much as it terrifies her. The muscles beneath his hoodie are firm, his arm warm, steady and waiting to be held. She uses him for balance, and he adjusts instantly, taking some of her weight without making her feel carried.

They begin walking.

The motorcycle is too loud now, so Jack leaves it hidden beneath branches and marks the spot with a small strip of fabric tied high where only someone looking would see. They move deeper into the trees, away from the chasm, away from the horde’s direction, toward whatever shelter his mind has already chosen from some invisible map.

Night closes around them. The forest after sunset is a living thing with too many eyes and whispering leaves. Far behind them, the horde continues its restless chorus, quieter now but still present, hundreds of torn throats groaning without thought or end. The sound fades, returns, shifts with the wind.

Y/N leans more heavily against Jack than she intends, and he doesn’t protest, reveling in their closeness. Only his hand comes to hover near her back whenever the ground dips, catching her before she stumbles, releasing when she steadies. Each almost-touch raises sparks beneath her skin. Her body no longer reads him only as threat. That may be the most frightening development of all.

After several minutes, she speaks. “That was my first question.”

“Yes.”

“I have two left.”

“Yes.”

She glances at him. “You’re not going to try to convince me that asking how many questions I have counted as one?”

“Sweetheart, if I tried, you’d stab me. I’ve learned my lesson.”

“What I’m hearing is the scalpel was effective.”

“It was certainly memorable.”

Her mouth curves for a moment before the humor thins out. “Did you really mean it?” she asks.

Jack slows. “Which part?”

“That you felt alive when you saw me.”

He doesn’t answer right away. They step over a fallen branch together. His hand closes briefly around her elbow, steadying her. He lets go as soon as she is balanced.

“Yes,” he says.

The simplicity of it makes her stomach flutter. “Why?”

“That’s your second question.”

“I know.”

Jack breathes out through his nose, gaze fixed ahead. For a while, she thinks he may not answer after all.

Then he speaks, “Because you were cornered, exhausted and terrified, and you still had both knives up.”

Her throat tightens. “Jack -”

“You were shaking. You were hurt badly enough that standing looked impossible, but you were still fighting.” His mouth shifts, not quite a smile, not quite in sadness. “I’ve seen a lot of people give up. I’ve wanted to give up myself more times than I’m proud of. Then there you were, in the bakery aisle of a grocery store, glaring at the end of the world like it was a mere inconvenience.”

A weak laugh escapes her.

He looks down at her, and the softness in his eyes makes the laugh fade into something quieter. “I wanted to know you,” he admits. “Before I knew your name. Before I knew anything else. Now, that I had time to absorb it…all I want is you.”

The forest seems to hush. Y/N looks at the ground because looking at him hurts in the best way, which is terrible for her survival goals. It makes her want to crawl closer and press herself against him so tightly he’d struggle for breath, yet a part of her wants to run in the opposite direction just as badly.

“That’s a dangerous thing to say to someone like me.”

“I know.”

“You don’t know what someone like me means.”

“No,” he concedes. “Not yet.”

The yet settles between them without pressure this time, with no ultimatums.

She walks beside him in silence, hand still wrapped around his forearm, her steps uneven but steadier than they should be. Somewhere above, a night bird calls. The sound is soft, almost mournful.

Eventually, Jack nods toward a dark shape ahead. “There.”

At first she sees only trees. Then the shape resolves into a small ranger station half hidden by vines and shadow. It’s a one story with a slanted roof and windows boarded from inside. Old sign hangs crooked near the door, letters faded by rain and years. The porch sags, but the frame looks intact.

Y/N stiffens. Jack feels it through her hand.

“I’ll clear it first,” he says.

She grips his sleeve tighter before she can stop herself. He looks down and her fingers loosen instantly.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I’m not scared.”

His brow lifts, inviting a glare in return.

“Fine. I’m scared. But not because I think you’ll leave.”

A warm smile flickers across his face, curving gently before he looks away to give her fear privacy.

“I won’t be long.” He eases her toward a tree near the porch. “Stay here. Back against the trunk, keep the scalpel ready. If anything comes out that isn’t me, aim for the eye.”

“Comforting instructions.”

“I’m known for my outstanding bedside manner.”

“You’re known for being bossy.”

“Two things can be true at the same time.”

He draws his knife and approaches the ranger station.

Y/N watches him become someone else again. The warmth doesn’t vanish entirely, but it hides away beneath skill. He checks the porch boards before putting weight on them, tests the door, pauses to listen. His shoulders settle, his breathing evens, his head tilts just slightly toward every sound before he enters.

The dark swallows him.

Y/N stands alone beneath the tree, scalpel in hand, heart beating too hard. The forest presses close and a groan drifts somewhere far off; one or two dead wandering through the night.

Her injured leg trembles with fatigue and sweat cools at her temples. Her free hand hovers near the bark, ready to grab for balance. She stares at the black rectangle of the doorway and counts.

One. Two. Three.

By fifteen, her chest tightens. By thirty, she considers moving. By forty, Jack appears again.

“Clear.”

A breathless, visible rush of relief sweeps over her, and though her pride begs her to mask it, she fails so completely that the truth is written across every line of her face. The torturous time he spent inside had stretched her nerves to a breaking point, making her realize that her playful irritation with him is nothing more than a shield against the terrifying thought of losing him.

Jack stops in his tracks, completely disarmed by the endearing honesty of her emotions, and a soft smile settles over his features with a private, knowing look locked entirely within his eyes that treats her worry as the sweetest gift he could ever receive.

Y/N looks away. “Don’t look smug.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I was thinking -”

“Don’t.”

He helps her up the porch steps after asking with a glance rather than words. She nods, and his hand settles at her waist, firm and careful. The touch lasts exactly three steps. Her body is aware of every second.

Inside, the ranger station smells of dust, old wood, and animal nests. Jack blocks the door behind them with a shelf while Y/N leans against the wall, breathing through the pain. There’s one main room with a desk, a map cabinet, a cracked leather chair, and a narrow back office with an old cot and a small bathroom. It reminds her of the cabin from that first night, the first time she felt her curiosity growing.

There’s no electricity, no clean sheets, nothing to make it comfortable, yet with Jack beside her, it feels strangely easy to breathe.

He lights a small oil lamp on the desk, keeping the glow low. Then he kneels in front of her.

“Bandage.”

She exhales. “Always so bossy.”

“And you’re always bleeding.”

She stares down at him. The lamplight catches in his hair, turning the silver warm. His face is tilted up toward hers, patient but firm. A smudge of dirt cuts across his cheek where her thumb had been earlier. Her thumb remembers…So does the rest of her.

“Fine,” she whispers.

Jack’s hands move carefully. He doesn’t touch her leg until she nods. When he peels the bandage back, his expression tightens, but he keeps his voice calm.

“Some bleeding. Stitches held…mostly.”

“See? Perfect.”

His eyes lift. The look he gives her is dry enough to start a fire. “Your definition of perfect explains a lot.”

She smiles. This one comes easier.

Jack stills for half a heartbeat at the sight of her, bandage in hand. The look on his face is not triumph, rather of pure wonder, like he knows better than to reach for a wild thing just because it stepped closer.

He returns to the wound, cleaning it with practiced hands, softer than the situation deserves, talking her through each step. She still tenses, her fingers still dig into the edge of the desk, but this time she watches him instead of covering her eyes.

When it hurts, his voice lowers. When she flinches, his hands pause. When she breathes too fast, he breathes slowly enough for her to follow without making it obvious.

By the time he wraps the fresh bandage, her throat is tight for reasons pain cannot explain.

“All done,” he says.

She looks down at him. “Thank you.”

Jack’s fingers linger at the edge of the bandage, then pull away. “You’re welcome.”

He is still kneeling before her and she’s still on the chair when she reaches for his face again, slower this time.

Jack’s eyes lift to hers, not daring to move. Her fingers brush the dirt on his cheek, the same place as before. She wipes it gently with the pad of her thumb, though it only smears.

“You’re filthy,” she murmurs.

His mouth curves. “You ran before I could shower.”

“You followed before you could shower.”

“I have my priorities straight.”

Her hand remains on his cheek as his gaze drops to her mouth briefly, only to drag itself back to her eyes.

The restraint in him is visible, felt in a held breath like a starving hand closed around food too afraid to eat. He wants to kiss her; she knows it with a certainty that sends heat rushing through her. She also knows he won’t unless she asks. That knowledge feels like power and terror at once.

She has one question left. She could use it now. Instead, a dead hand slams against the outside wall and Y/N jerks.

Jack is on his feet instantly, knife in hand, body between her and the sound.

The groan that follows is close. The night has found them after all.

Jack’s head turns toward the wall. One moment, he’s close enough for her thumb to be on his cheek, close enough for the air between them to feel like it might go up in flames. The next, his expression sharpens into something deadly. His hand closes around the knife at his belt, his shoulders square and every warm piece of him disappears.

Another thud hits the outside wall, then a scrape of fingernails, maybe, or bone, dragging along the wood with blind persistence.

“Stay put,” he murmurs.

She gives him a look. “You have met me, right?”

His gaze flickers to her, unimpressed. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“Then you know how well I do with orders.”

“You can practice.”

Another groan crawls through the boards. The sound is low and wet, the voice of a throat that has no business still making noise. Y/N’s scalp prickles. Her fingers tighten around the scalpel, pathetic little blade that it is. The ranger station suddenly feels too small, too old, too full of cracks. Every wall becomes something a dead hand might find its way through.

Jack moves toward the barricade. “I’ll handle it.”

“Jack -”

He raises one hand, not looking back. “Stay inside.”

Before she can argue, he shifts the shelf away from the door just enough to slip through. The door opens slowly, no more than a narrow slice, careful not to let the hinge complain. He slides into the night and pulls it almost shut behind him, but a thin gap remains.

Y/N stands there for two seconds, maybe three, then she limps toward the door.

Pain sparks up her calf with each step, but adrenaline is already spilling through her blood, wild and unforgiving. She presses herself near the gap, scalpel in hand, and peers out into the darkness.

Jack moves across the porch like a shadow. The moonlight catches in his silver hair, turns the edge of his jaw pale, lights the blade in his hand. He’s frighteningly beautiful like this, silent and composed with death in front of him. He must be tired from leading the horde away twice now, but the exhaustion doesn’t make him clumsy. If anything, it makes him more capable.

The first walker lurches from the side of the cabin, arms lifted, fingers curled into claws. It might have been a park ranger once. The remains of a uniform cling to its gray torso, torn open at the chest where ribs show through a nest of blackened rot. Its lower jaw hangs too loose, swinging with every step, teeth clicking against air.

Jack waits until it reaches for him, then he steps aside and drives the knife through its temple. The walker drops.

Another comes behind it, smaller, almost skeletal beneath a shredded raincoat. Its cloudy eyes roll without focus, mouth working around a long, hungry moan. Jack catches it by the shoulder, pivots, and shoves it down onto the porch rail hard enough that old wood cracks. His blade enters beneath the base of its skull.

Y/N’s breath catches. He’s capable in a way that should frighten her, and it does. But it also ignites a fire low in her stomach, startling her.

There is something obscene about wanting a man while he kills the dead. Something broken inside her must be watching him and thinking he’s safe. Something older than shame is looking at his precision, his strength, the deadly moves he performs, and translating all of it into attraction.

She can’t look away, admiring him in all his glory.

Then she sees the fourth walker and her heart drops. It comes from the left side of the ranger station, hidden until now by the sagging porch and the thick vines crawling over the wall. It’s a large one, broad, bloated, its flannel shirt dark with old blood. Its scalp is half-gone, skull gleaming through stringy strips of hair, one side of its face has collapsed, but the mouth is intact and filled with too many teeth.

Jack doesn’t seem to notice it.

He’s turning toward the third walker, which is dragging one useless leg and reaching for his shoulder with both hands. He’s focused on the immediate threat, not the one coming behind him through the dark.

He sees it, right? He has to.

Jack is always aware. Always reading the room, the trees, the path, her breathing, the smallest shift in danger. He cannot be taken by surprise.

But then he takes down the third walker, and the fourth is almost on him.

The air vanishes from her lungs. Her mouth opens, but no sound comes; no warning, no scream, nothing. Fear locks the words behind her teeth and breaks the key.

Y/N bursts through the door, half-running, half-falling down the porch steps. Her injured leg screams beneath her, but the sound barely reaches her brain. The world narrows to the walker’s mouth and Jack’s back. Her heartbeat slams through her skull so violently that the night seems to pulse with it.

Jack begins to turn too late.

Y/N throws herself at the fourth walker from behind. The impact drives pain through her shoulder, but she hits it with everything she has. The walker stumbles forward, then down, taking her with it. Rot bursts into her nose, mixing with the smell of wet clothes, dead flesh, soil and old blood. Its body is heavier than she expects, soft and rigid in wrong places, bones shifting beneath decomposing skin.

She raises the scalpel and drives it down. The blade strikes bone and stops

“No,” she gasps.

The walker snarls beneath her, head twisting, mouth snapping. Its dead hands claw at the earth. The scalpel is stuck against the skull, useless, too shallow, too delicate for this. She pushes harder, both hands on the handle, teeth clenched, arms shaking.

The walker’s head jerks. It drags them both forward, toward Jack.

Y/N realizes her mistake in the same second horror completes itself: she has not saved him; if anything, she shoved the walker closer.

The dead mouth closes around Jack’s right calf and everything inside her shatters. The scream that tears out of her doesn’t sound human. It’s raw, ripped from the deepest place in her body, an animalistic sound full of terror and grief before either has time to become thought. It breaks halfway through, catches in her throat, then bursts again as the scalpel finally punches through bone and sinks deep into the walker’s brain.

The corpse goes limp, hut Y/N doesn’t feel triumph. She only sees teeth marks on Jack’s pants.

“No,” she sobs. “No, no, no, no -”

Her hands fumble for him, slick with rotted flesh. She crawls over the corpse, toward his calf, breath coming in frantic little bursts that do nothing to fill her lungs. Tears flood her face before she can stop them, blinding, cutting through the grime on her cheeks.

“No, Jack, no -”

He’s saying something, but she cannot hear him. All she can focus on is the bite, the idea of the infection, wondering if amputation might prevent his death, wondering if she’ll have to see Jack’s beautiful hazel eyes going cloudy, his mouth slack with hunger instead of smirks, his hands reaching for her without knowing her. Her Jack will be gone, replaced by the curse that walks in borrowed skin.

Her mind cannot hold it, splintering.

She barely knows him, but her body doesn’t care. Her heart has already made some terrible, silent decision without consulting logic or survival. It beats against her ribs as if it has one purpose now and that purpose is him. If Jack dies, something in her won’t go on as it was. It may continue pumping blood, continue moving, continue finding water and shelter and food, but it’ll be another kind of dead.

“No, no, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry -”

Jack catches her by the shoulders.

“Y/N -”

She’s shaking too hard to focus. “I’m sorry,” she chokes. “I made it worse, I’m sorry, I tried -”

“Y/N.” His hands move to her arms, firm, grounding. Kneeling in front of her, he tries speaking, but her gaze keeps snapping to his leg, to the place he got bitten.

He doesn’t ask permission this time, nor wait for her fear to clear a path for him.

He pulls her into his arms. Y/N collapses against his chest with a broken sound. His embrace closes around her tightly, one arm across her back, the other cradling the back of her head. His hand moves over her hair, then down her spine, steady strokes meant to soothe a body too far gone to obey reason.

“I’m here,” he murmurs. “I’m right here.”

She cannot absorb it. Her apologies keep spilling out, messy and breathless.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Jack, I’m sorry -”

He holds her harder. The dead are still in the yard and the ranger station door hangs open. The forest shifts around them with unseen movement and he knows it’s unwise to stay outside with her like this.

Jack curses under his breath, then scoops her into his arms.

She makes a small, startled sound, but doesn’t fight him. That alone tells him how badly she is unraveling.

He carries her back inside, one arm beneath her knees, the other around her back, careful of her leg even now. Her hands clutch at his hoodie as if letting go might make the world finish breaking. He kicks the door shut behind them, sets her on the old couch near the wall, then drags the shelf back into place with one harsh pull.

Jack turns back to her. She’s folded inward, hands covering her face, shoulders shaking.

He crouches first to check her leg. The bandage has shifted, but it hasn’t bled through. Relief moves through him in an audible exhale. His hand hovers near her calf, then withdraws.

Her voice cracks behind her hands. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Each apology lands like a stone thrown against glass. Jack’s eyes close briefly. He can take a lot, but he cannot take another minute of this. He reaches up and roughly pulls her hands away from her face, rougher than he has touched her since the day she tried to stab him in the woods.

“Y/N, listen to me.”

Her eyes snap to his, wide and wet and terrified.

His hands cup her cheeks, not gentle now, but steady enough to hold her attention in place. “Sweetheart, I’m fine. I’m not bitten.”

“I saw,” she croaks. Her voice sounds torn. “I saw it bite you.”

Jack lets out a dark chuckle, more breath than humor, disbelief and relief twisting through it as he sits back and grabs the fabric at his right pant leg.

“Look.”

She shakes her head violently. “No -”

“Look, Y/N.”

His voice cuts through her panic and she looks. At first, she doesn’t quite understand what she’s seeing. Her brain expects blood, torn flesh, teeth marks, instead, there’s no flesh at all.

The walker’s teeth left marks in synthetic material and scuffed casing, nothing more. Jack’s right calf is not skin and muscle and blood. It’s a prosthetic. The dead cannot bite what is not there.

Y/N stares. The tears keep falling, but her face blanks.

“What,” she whispers. “How is…”

“Before the world ended,” Jack says.

His voice lowers to a soft whisper. The hardness in him eases, his features softening. He pulls the pant leg higher for another second, letting her see enough to believe him, then drops the fabric back down.

“I lost my leg when I was deployed.”

Her gaze rises slowly to his face. His eyes are steady, but the pain beneath that steadiness is old enough to have roots.

“My leg,” he adds, “and my wife.”

Y/N’s lips part.

Leg. Wife!

The man in front of her becomes bigger somehow, not physically, though he’s already broad and solid. He’s bigger in story, in loss.

“It’s been fifteen years,” he says. “I’m fine.”

She blinks hard, trying to understand through the leftover panic. “About the leg or about being a widower?”

Jack’s mouth shifts as a small smile appears, tired and sad at the edges. It doesn’t erase the grief in him, but it helps find reason to keep reaching for the light over the alluring beckoning of darkness.

“Both.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He gives a faint shrug, almost awkward, and rubs his right thigh lightly. “It was a long time ago.”

“Not about that.”

His eyes find hers. She frowns, wiping at her face with the heel of her hand, angry tears still slipping free despite her efforts.

“Though I am sorry about that too.” Her breath catches. “I’m sorry I almost got you killed.”

The sharp lines of his face instantly harden, “You didn’t.”

“I did.” Her voice rises, then cracks. “I’m a fucking liability you should leave behind. Jack, I’m not made for that place.”

Jack stares down at her through the shadows, a sudden, heavy resolve overtaking his features as he reaches out in a motion that is slower and softer than before. His fingers find the delicate curve of her jaw, his thumb anchoring beneath her chin to coax her face back to his when she tries to hide from the intensity of his stare.

There’s a profound tenderness to his touch; firm enough to hold her still, yet entirely careful, holding her only because her body chooses to lean into the weight of his palm. His eyes drop to linger on her parted lips for a stolen second that’s just long enough to cause her heart to skip a beat.

“I want you there.”

The simplicity of it hits harder than any argument. Her breath falters with the truth, finding it impossible to look away. Jack’s thumb shifts against her chin, barely moving, but she feels it everywhere.

“There’s no scientific reason,” he continues. “No explanation I can offer for the way I feel, and believe me, I’ve looked for one.”

Something almost amused flickers through his eyes, but it disappears quickly.

“I fear who I’d become if I lost you.”

He swallows thickly. “I was fine before you walked into my life. Perfectly content with whatever fate waited for me in this fucked up world.” His voice roughens. “That changed. I’m not content with the world clawing pieces of you away. I’m not content not seeing you every day. I’m not happy just living anymore if it means I have to let you go.”

The words settle into her like warmth poured slowly over ice. She wants to reject them, her mind tries as it scrambles for reasons, warnings, explanations. Maybe he wants to fix what cannot be fixed. Maybe she’s a symbol, not a person. A thousand maybes cross her mind, but he is looking at her like a man who has already tried every argument against caring and lost. And truth be told? She’s fucking tired of denying herself the simple pleasure of his company.

Y/N’s throat burns.

Jack releases her chin and sits back slightly. “I mentioned rules of entry before.”

“Yeah.” Her laugh’s small and bitter. “I failed the first one, remember?”

He huffs out air through his nose, amused despite everything. “You did.”

“I was never good taking tests.”

“Don’t worry about it, because the second one is what really matters anyway.”

Her eyes narrow. “Yeah?”

Jack nods, then he reaches for her hand. He does it slowly, giving her time to pull away. His palm slides beneath hers, fingers curling gently around her cold, trembling hand.

Y/N doesn’t flinch. She realizes it at the same time he does.

His gaze drops to their joined hands. A smirk touches his mouth, but it’s not smug this time. It’s filled with kindness and yearning he tries to hide beneath his usual arrogance. His thumb brushes the side of her hand once, almost absentmindedly, and her pulse jumps.

“You noticed it too,” she murmurs.

“I notice everything about you.”

It scares her, but it also makes her hand relax more fully into his. Jack’s smirk grows faintly, then fades as he draws in a breath.

“There’s a marriage rule.”

Y/N stares at him. “A what?”

He bites his lower lip nervously. Jack Abbot, who faces hordes and armed men and commands an entire city actually looks nervous. The sight is so strange it almost distracts her from the words.

Almost.

His shoulders shift beneath the hoodie. He doesn’t look away, but the confidence around him falters at the edges.

“Newcomers get to stay for a month,” he explains. “During that time, we do a background check, assess risk, let them recover if they need to. If they pass, they choose someone in the community to marry.”

Y/N blinks once, then again, trying to understand. “You’re talking about forced, arranged marriage.”

“I’m talking about a choice everyone gets.”

“A choice between death outside the walls or marriage inside them?” Her hand stiffens inside his. “What makes you believe marriage promises loyalty? People cheat in peacetime. You think apocalypse forces morality?”

“There is no paperwork.”

“That makes it worse.”

“It isn’t forced,” Jack says, voice careful but firmer now. “Both parties have to agree. Both parties have to choose it. Some treat it as companionship, some as protection, some as friends with benefits. And some…Some make it a real marriage.”

Y/N gives him a look. “Very progressive for a post-apocalyptic cult.”

His mouth curves despite the tension. “We’re not a cult.”

“That sounds exactly like what a cult leader would say.”

“I don’t lead a cult.”

“You have a marriage rule, Jack.”

“We have a pairing system,” he corrects, then grimaces because even he hears it. “That sounded worse.”

“It really did.”

He drags a hand over his face. She can see his frustration, but beneath it, something more complicated. Shame, perhaps, or fear of losing ground with her. He wanted this conversation controlled, but it feels like a wound that’s already bleeding out around the edges.

“Everyone is paired,” he says. “No one survives alone inside those walls. Not long-term. Partners are accountable for each other: resources, housing, safety, medical proxy, decision-making if someone gets hurt. It gives people responsibility; it reduces isolation and creates ties that are harder to break than convenience.”

“Convenience breaks easily. So do marriages.”

“Yes.”

“Then why?”

His eyes hold hers. “Because when people have someone to come home to, they fight harder to come home.”

That silences her for a second…Only a second.

“And I’m supposed to choose someone to marry,” she says, voice tight, “within the next three weeks?”

Jack nods.

She pulls her hand from his.

He lets her.

“I was hoping you’d choose me,” he admits.

The world goes very quiet. The dead outside, the creaking wood, the wind pushing through cracks in the station, all of it seems to fall back.

Y/N looks at him.

Jack sits in front of her with his hands loose between his knees now, no longer touching her, no longer smirking. The lamplight cuts across his face, catching the silver in his hair, the scar at his neck, the exhaustion around his eyes. He looks older and younger at once. Fifty years of grief, command, discipline, and damage held together by a man suddenly asking for something like hope.

“I know I’m old,” he says.

Her brows twitch. “Jack -”

“I know I’m far from marriage material.”

That shuts her up.

His mouth curves, but no humor reaches his eyes. “I have too much baggage, too many responsibilities, too much history. I’m controlling, I make decisions people hate, and I’m not going to pretend I’m easy to live with.”

“That’s quite the proposal.”

“I’m not done making it terrible.”

Despite herself, something warm flickers through her.

Jack’s gaze drops to her hand, then returns to her face. “But I will protect you. I will keep you safe. And I will accept whatever arrangement you want. If you never want more than friendship, I’ll comply.” This vow hurts him.  “I’ll be whatever you need,” he says, quieter now. “Just don’t leave.”

Y/N cannot move.

The proposal is insane.

That’s the first clear thought.

Completely insane. Marriage, of all things.

In the old world, marriage had felt like a distant, decorative institution other people wanted and she observed with curiosity. She had never pictured herself in white, never dreamed about rings, never made secret Pinterest boards or imagined walking down aisles while people cried. She had been too busy trying to become something, trying to survive the shape her own life had taken. Then prison happened, and marriage became as irrelevant as vacations, apartments, book launches, and every other future she lost.

But then the world ended, and suddenly marriage has become an entry requirement. It’s ridiculous, almost barbaric, but practical in a way that makes her hate it more, because she understands the logic.

That’s the worst part.

Pairing people builds accountability, reduces abandonment, gives everyone someone who notices when they don’t return, creates intimacy because loneliness is a liability. It sounds less like romance and more like a community.

Still, the idea of choosing a stranger makes her skin crawl. The idea of being chosen by one curdles her stomach. A man with rights to her name, her room, her body if he decides the arrangement means something she didn’t agree to?

Jack says both parties have to consent. Jack says there are choices…but Jack says a lot of things.

Her old fears don’t care. They begin screaming anyway.

Marriage is a cage. Marriage is a door closing. Marriage is a man with legal ownership.

But Jack’s looking at her like he’s terrified she will vanish before his eyes, not like he owns her.

His eyes are darker in the lamplight, hazel turned almost black at the center, brown at the edges. His mouth is held still, but tension flickers along his jaw. His fingers flex once against his knees, then settle. He wants to reach for her, but resists the urge. He wants to reassure, persuade, maybe beg, and refuses to turn any of it into pressure.

That restraint tugs at her heart harder than the offer itself.

She’s attracted to him. There’s no point lying inside her own mind anymore. She likes the silver in his hair, the broadness of his shoulders, the strength in his arms, the veins along his forearms, the hard line of his nose, the dangerous intelligence in his eyes. She likes his terrible humor, his dry little comments, the way his smiles shift from cocky to tender to devastatingly bright. She likes the way he says sweetheart as though the word belongs only in his mouth when aimed at her.

She likes his hands. God help her, she likes his hands, even after everything hands have done to her.

Jack makes her want to stay, not because the city is safe, not because Dana is kind and Perlah gentle and Mel competent, not because antibiotics and hot showers exist behind those walls…Because Jack is there. Because some foolish, bruised part of her wants to learn how his arms feel when there’s no panic between them, wants to know whether he sleeps better if someone stays beside him, wants his lips, his touch, his voice in the dark, wants the home she has trained herself not to need.

The uncertainty gnaws at her.

What if he changes his mind once he knows all of it? What if the conviction becomes real to him in a way it hasn’t yet? What if the friend she helped die becomes a murder victim in his eyes? What if he looks at her differently after she says the words out loud?

What if he does not? What if he stays kind? What if she lets herself build something and the dead take him anyway?

Her chest tightens. She looks down at her own fingers, curled into the fabric of the couch.

“Can I think about it?”

Jack inhales sharply. The sound is small but unmistakably pained as his eyes flicker, and the softness there grows cautious, bruised at the edges.

“Of course.”

He gives one nod, then another, firmer, as if he’s instructing himself as much as reassuring her.

“It’s a big decision. I won’t push you on this.”

His hands fold together loosely between his knees.

“I won’t bring it up again. When you decide, tell me.” He manages a faint smile, the kind that tries to be easy and fails beautifully. “I won’t be mad no matter what happens.”

She believes he means it. She also sees the hurt he is trying to tuck away before it touches her.

That makes her fingers twitch. She wants his hand back. The longing is sudden and physical, an ache in her palm. She wants to reach across the space he created and feel his warmth again, wants to ask him to sit beside her, to wrap his arms around her and keep them there until morning, until the dead quiet outside, until the old voices in her head grow tired and leave.

But she has not said yes and she has not said no. She doesn’t know what she wants except that wanting him is becoming easier than breathing and twice as dangerous.

“Rest,” he says. His smile is worn thin and still beautiful in a way that hurts her to look at. It curves gently, touches the corners of his eyes, then fades before it can ask anything of her.

“I’ll keep watch.”

Y/N leans back against the couch, exhaustion pressing down now that panic has burned itself low. Her leg throbs beneath the fresh bandage. Her body shakes faintly from the fight outside, the near bite, the confession, the proposal. The ranger station feels colder than before, though the lamp glows steadily on the desk.

Jack rises and checks the barricade, then the windows, then his knife. He moves through the room with purpose, every step careful on the old floorboards. When he passes near her, his warmth brushes the air. She smells smoke, sweat, blood, pine, and the clean trace of him beneath all the mud.

Her eyes follow him and he’s achingly aware. She can tell by the way his shoulders ease slightly, by the faint angle of his head, by the almost-smile he hides when he turns toward the window.

He settles into the cracked leather chair near the door, knife on one thigh, posture alert despite the exhaustion. He doesn’t look comfortable. He probably doesn’t intend to be.

Jack glances at her.

“Sleep, sweetheart,” he instructs gingerly. “I’ve got you.”

She believes him before she can stop herself.

Turning onto her side, she faces him without admitting that’s what she’s doing. The couch is narrow, the fabric dusty beneath her cheek, but she watches him through half-lidded eyes as he keeps vigil in the dim gold light.

Y/N closes her hand around the edge of the couch as her fingers remember his warmth.