

It was only supposed to be a three-month trial marriage, a formality between two powerful families. But the heiress stepping through the door is no pampered socialite: she's a master hacker, a sharp businesswoman, and the keeper of a rare ancestral healing art. Esme Burke endures every test Caden Howard's family throws at her and throws every one right back.Along the way, she quietly saves her "husband's" life, and he slowly realizes she's "Lolly", the girl who lit up his childhood.What began as a contractual arrangement dissolves into something achingly real, and the two grandfathers' little scheme turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to either of them.

To defuse the bomb strapped to the hostage, I had no choice—I cut off all her clothes. My clueless new wife, Dana Poole, blasted it online. She cried as she faced me. "Why not at least leave her underwear on? You were saving her, I get it—but did you have to take everything? Doesn't a girl's dignity matter? With cameras everywhere, how is she supposed to live after this? You couldn't even cover her up?" The backlash exploded. The unit benched me to calm things down. So I stopped caring. I followed procedure, no improvising, no extra effort. Then one day, at the busiest mall in the city, Dana's mom got strapped into a brand-new linked bomb. This time, the whole unit panicked.

When the apocalypse hits, the university campus turns into a zombie nightmare. Carson Langster, just an ordinary education major, gets betrayed by his ex-girlfriend Linda Larrow and his rich so-called friend George Tarren. Nearly dead, his roommates sacrifice themselves to save Carson—only to turn into a zombie.But Carson awakens the Dorm Manager System,giving him the power to control zombies and build bases. He turns the dorm building into his headquarters and brings his zombified roommates—Finn, John Nestle,Rowan, and the others—under his control. Carson builds a full apocalypse survival base with a cafeteria,livestock operation, and factories. His only goal:collect enough cores to upgrade the system and turn his buddies back into humans.