This is where it ends.The cruel certainty shattered Rhys’s heart harder than the rusty metal crate crushing his chest.His breath left him in thin shaking ribbons, each one smaller than the last.“Vance? Crowley?” Rhys called out to his comrades, but silence answered instead.From his peripheral vision, he could see the horror— Vance, crushed by an armored truck, blood spilling on the snow, and Crowley’s bones twisted in places that didn’t look ordinary.Rhys grunted in pain. He had survived ten years of the apocalypse. He had carried two thousand people on his shoulders in the search for survival. And now he was going to die under a wrecked crawler in the snow.The wind came across the northern ice like a blade drawn slowly, finding every tear in his gear. Rhys’s legs were crushed beneath the steel. He couldn’t feel them anymore.Ten years ago, the sun crumbled and the sky broke open. Cities were entombed. Oceans turned to stone. And the things that crawled out of the dark— beasts

“Cheap, cheap, cheap!” She pointed a manicured finger at the ring on the floor. “Four years, and the best gift you can do is a piece of junk your grandmother wore to the market?”In his last life, Rhys had pressed that ring into her palm on their anniversary. His family’s heirloom. He had thought she deserved something sacred.She had thrown it back in his face. The same way she did again.Thank God for your greed. he thought. He bent down, picked up the ring, and closed his fist around it. Next second, It went into his pocket.Lexi’s lip trembled on cue. Her eyes glistened. She pressed a hand to her chest like a woman bravely enduring a tragedy.“I gave you my youth. My beauty. And you’re still too pathetic to give me a life I can show off. Do you know how embarrassed I am to be your wife? My friends have husbands. You’re worthless!.”Once, a speech like that would have ripped him open. Rhys would have apologized. He would have gone to his knees on this very floor and begged her.N

Lexi stared at the dead phone and clicked her tongue.A Divorce? Please.Marrying Rhys had never been love. It had been a coat she threw over a stain. A pregnant woman with no ring was a scandal, and a scandal would have dragged Curry’s name through the mud. So she had picked the most obedient fool she could find, and he had thanked her for it.And what a fool. He cooked. He cleaned. He raised the boy. He handed over every paycheck like a dog dropping a bone at its master’s feet.Now her son was eight, the stain had dried, and the coat had outlived its use.It was a shame, really. Free labor was so hard to replace.“He will beg me to take him back. The cretin has no guys to divorce me.” She thought to herself and smiled.***The next morning, Rhys was already waiting on the courthouse steps when Lexi swept up in sunglasses and a cold smile. She glared at him, waiting for the usual crack that always follows whenever she throws her tantrum.“Don’t think this is as easy as signing a pag

“He divorced you?”Michael Stowe stared at the certificate in his hand as though the words might rearrange themselves if he glared hard enough.They didn’t.For years, Rhys had been the best-trained dog in this house. He cooked. He drove. He fixed whatever broke. He turned over his paycheck every month like a puppy dropping a bone at his master’s feet.“And now that mutt had bitten the hand that fed him and bolted?” Henry thought bitterly.“Where is that son of a bitch?” Henry bellowed from the couch. “I’m gonna break his jaw!”“Where’s Daddy? I wanna hit Daddy too!” Chris chirped, bouncing on the carpet. “That worthless prick is as good as dead,” Britt snapped.Chris clapped his hands, delighted. “Daddy’s dead! Daddy’s dead!”He had grown up watching the Stowes treat Rhys like trash. Of course he had learned to wipe his feet on him too.Lexi stood in the living room, watching and listening to her family’s turmoil. She was as still as ice.“Seriously, Lexi, what were you thinking?” H

“It’s true. Chris isn’t Rhys’s son.”Lexi said. There was no point lying anymore.Michael, Britt, and Henry had stormed back into the house looking ready to rip someone’s throat out, and Lexi had run out of places to hide. The moment the words left her mouth, resentment swelled in her chest.She had told them not to go near Rhys. Had they listened? Of course not.If they had to confront him, they could have done it quietly. Instead, they had screamed it across a gate in front of half of Maple Grove.Now the whole street knows Lexi Stowe cheated on her husband for years. How was she supposed to walk to the mailbox now?“You foolish girl! How could you be so careless? You let that bastard figure it out?” Michael growled.He wasn’t angry about the affair. He was angry she had been sloppy.“Exactly!” Britt jumped in, looking even more offended. “Why couldn’t you keep both? One man to sleep with, one man to pay the bills! They never had to cross paths!”“Honestly, who cares? You broke t