All Chapters of Apocalypse Fortress: Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

Cold steel pressed against my spine, and the man who once swore to love me forever did not even blink as he gave the order."Finish it," Dominic whispered. "Leave her body for the wind.""Dominic, please!" My voice broke as I gasped for air, my blood turning to pink mist in the sub-zero blizzard. "After everything I gave you...""You gave me a name, Aurora." His eyes were the color of river ice, with nothing moving underneath. He stepped back beside Genevieve. "And now that name belongs to my pack. Your existence is just a liability.""Do it quickly," Genevieve murmured, pulling her fur coat tighter around her shoulders. "The smell of her blood will bring the void monsters."A sharp crack echoed through the white graveyard, and pain tore through my chest. I fell into the snow, my vision blurring as the world faded to black.Then I gasped.Air rushed into my lungs with a violent shock that burned my throat. I sat up, my hands flying to my chest. No hole. No blood. No freezing wind.I w

The bank in the district capital closed in forty minutes, which was exactly long enough.Box 214 held what it had always held: the leather journal, the iron key shaped like a wolf's claw, and my mother's sapphire set. I sold the earrings and the bracelet to a jeweler across the street for far less than they were worth, then bought a plain wool coat, a pair of work boots, and a roll of drafting paper. I kept the necklace. Its center stone alone could pay a hundred workers for a month, and I needed it for what came next.On the long drive north, I filled six sheets of paper with walls, tunnels, and turret mounts, all drawn from the one shelter I had seen standing in my first life.The industrial zone on the northern border smelled of coal dust, wet asphalt, and hot rust. Low grey clouds hung over the steel mills as I paid the driver and stepped out of the car.I pulled the wool coat tight over my stained wedding gown. The lace at the hem was ruined with mud, but I did not care. Clothes

The rumble of diesel engines rolled across the valley as sixty excavators crested the ridge, black exhaust rising into the crisp morning air. Three days ago, this ground had been silent. Now it shook.Tristan Hawthorne stood on a pile of crushed slate with a roll of blueprints under one arm and a satellite radio strapped to his chest. He looked wrecked, with dark circles under his eyes and coffee stains down his jacket, but his gaze was sharp and fixed."Move those dozers fifty yards east!" he shouted into the radio, pointing at a team clearing the base of the ridge. "Anchor the foundation pins into the granite. If those footings aren't six feet deep, the bedrock will shear when the frost hits!"I stepped out of my truck and pulled a leather jacket over my work clothes. The wind off the high peaks was sharper than it had been three days ago, with an edge that reached through the fabric.Tristan spotted me and scrambled down the gravel slope, wiping grease from his hands with a rag."T