Chapter 1: Thrown Out Of The Cabin

POV: Avery

"Avery, get up and go outside." Damien said without even looking at me. I was sitting on the floor by the fire, because Chloe had taken the couch.

Chloe was wrapped in a thick blanket, eating biscuits. My mother and father sat beside her, and none of them looked at me. Outside, the wind and snow was fighting.

I laughed small, thinking I heard him wrong. "Say that again." My voice was shaking.

"The generator can't carry all of us," he said. "One person must leave, and I have decided it will be you." He still wasn't looking at me.

"Me?" I stood up slowly. "I'm your wife, Damien. Why me?" My heart was beating so fast I could hear it.

"Because it can't be Chloe." He walked to the couch and put his hand on her shoulder. She didn't even look at me.

"Why can't it be Chloe?" I asked. But nobody answered. “ Why can't it be Chloe?” I asked again but this time with a little scream.

"Because she's pregnant," Damien yelled back. "And it's my child." He breathed in, and finally looked at me.

I tried to breathe but couldn't. Then I understood everything, the late nights, the way he protected his phone every time. "You've been cheating on me… with my sister?" I asked, with tears rolled down my cheeks.

"We've been married for two years and you couldn't give me a child," he said. "Chloe could. So don't make this ugly."

"Avery, stop being selfish," my mother said from the corner. "Think about the baby." My father looked at his shoes and kept quiet.

Chloe finally looked up and gave me an evil smile. It hurt more than anything he said. I wanted to scream, yell and break things.

I thought of every dinner I cooked for him. I thought of every night I waited up for him. And this whole time he was sleeping with my sister.

"Damien, please, you have money," I said, trying to push everything aside. "You can get another cabin, another generator, anything. Please, don't send me out there."

"Another cabin?" Damien pointed at the window. "Everywhere is full, and people are fighting for a roof. As it stands now, money can't buy everything."

"You found this one in one day," I said. "You can pay anyone to find another. You just don't want to."

"I said get out!" Damien shouted, and his face turned red. He grabbed my arm with both hands and dragged me to the door and threw me into the snow.

Behind him, my mother and Chloe were laughing. My face hit the snow and it burned like fire. I tried to stand but my legs were already numb.

The wind was so strong I could barely stay up. I was only wearing a thin sweater, and the snow was already up to my ankles.

I ran back and banged on the door but he slammed it shut. "Mom, Dad, please open the door! I'm your daughter!"

"She's always been dramatic," my mother said from inside the cabin. My father said nothing. I kept hitting the door but to no response.

After so few minutes, I was already getting tired and my knuckles bled.

Through the door I heard Chloe say, "Let her cry, darling. She wants attention." Damien laughed, and that sound broke something inside me.

I called my father's name over and over. "Dad, please, you raised me, don't let me die." I heard him cough, but he did not move.

"Damien, I'll sleep on the floor and eat nothing," I begged. "Please, I'm your wife." But nobody answered me.

The window above me slid open and I quickly rushed toward it. Chloe leaned out with a bucket in her hands, smiling. "You look thirsty, big sister."

Then she poured the whole bucket on my head. The water was ice cold. In seconds my hair and clothes started to harden.

"Look at her!" Chloe laughed so hard she held the window frame to support herself. "She's going to freeze like a statue!" My mother laughed with her.

I fell on my knees. My hands wouldn't open and my teeth wouldn't stop shaking. I crawled back to the cabin door and leaned on it.

Chloe slammed the window shut. The warm light went away, and the cold bit my skin like knives. 

Suddenly I couldn't feel my fingers anymore, then slowly, my body started freezing. All my body went numb.

If I could live again, I thought as I started drifting away, I would make every one of them pay. Then I closed my eyes and the apocalypse that started just three days ago froze my whole body.

   I somehow opened my eyes again, but I was staring at a ceiling fan. I was so shocked I jumped up in bed, gasping. 

My skin was hot, I wasn't cold, I wasn't frozen. I touched my face and my arms again to be sure. I was warm, and I was breathing. 

Tears slowly fell down my face. I was alive, was I reborned? I sat there breathing for a long moment. 

Then it hit me. If I was reborned, it meant I knew the future. And an apocalypse will be striking us, so I needed to buy food and build a shelter before anyone else. But first, I had to cut ties with this family.

The Hales adopted me when I was three. For one year, things were okay. Then my mother got pregnant with Chloe, and I became the leftover child.

A knock came on my door. "Avery, come out here," my mother said. Her voice made my stomach drop.

I followed her to the living room. Chloe was sitting on the couch with her arm around Damien, her hand on her stomach. Damien was my husband, or he had been until five seconds ago.

I remembered the hands that threw me into the snow. Now those same hands were holding my sister.

"Chloe and Damien have been seeing each other for a while," my mother said. "She's carrying his child." She gave me that fake sympathetic look she uses before she screws me over.

"You don't mind, right?" she asked. "You two are sisters, and family comes first." Damien wouldn't look at me, and Chloe was smiling.

"Avery, don't be difficult," my father said quietly. "Just accept it."

In my last life, this revelation happened three days after the apocalypse, so why was it happening faster than before?

I remembered how I begged and cried while they all laughed. This time, I wasn't going to beg. I was going to stun them.

"That's fine," I said calmly. "I don't mind at all. I want to terminate my adoption and also file for a divorce, and I want us to do it today."

The room went silent. My mother's mouth fell open, and my father looked like someone punched him. Even Chloe looked stunned.

Damien finally looked up at me. He couldn't believe I was the same quiet wife.

"What did you just say?" my mother asked. Her voice was shaking.

I smiled, and for the first time in two lives I felt free. "I said I'm done being a part of the Hales, and I am done being your wife Damien. Let's make it official."