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.