She had to learn how to survive on her own...but no one ever prepared her for a man like him. For April Reinhardt, every day is a gamble. Food. Shelter. Safety. Nothing is guaranteed, especially not for a young woman and the seven-year-old niece she's sworn to protect. So when she finds a dying man in the woods, the first living soul she's seen in months, she should keep walking. Instead, she does something that should have died with the old world. She helps him. And when he realizes he owes her his life, he won't let her go so easily. Rick Grimes is closed off, carved hollow by grief, and determined to keep everyone at arm's length. But if Rick truly wanted to stay that way, he shouldn't have brought April and her niece back to camp, because the cost of her presence might be more than he bargained for. Tension sparks. Distrust lingers. Survival demands proximity. What begins as sharp words and reluctant alliances turns into something far more dangerous. A slow, aching hunger that doesn't fade, no matter how hard they try to starve it. But the world they live in doesn't reward love. It punishes it. And when everything burns, even the strongest hearts don't always survive.

"Rosemary Blue Aldine, a force to be reckoned with. She was the youngest female Victor, and is adored by The Capitol." "She looks harmless." "That, Katniss, is why you need to be careful with little Rosie. She not only has every person in The Capitol wrapped around her finger, she also has Finnick who would cut his arm off to save her." "Didn't she have a breakdown?" "A big one, but now she's angry. She won't just throw one knife, she'll throw two before you even see them coming. Trust me, she threw a knife at me a few years back, it almost cut my ear in half, and that was a warning." "So how do we beat her?" "Oh, I have no clue." • Despite the urge to simply accept her death sentence, a promise to her family kept her going. Gone was innocent Rosie who loved collecting flowers, the second her fate was sealed and she walked up onto the podium, she became a pawn of The Capitol. No one ever wins The Games, it's all about how much you lose. And it felt like Rosemary lost everything she loved, stripped from her piece by piece. But she still had him, and she'd sooner die than let go.