Jacob Daniels. Tall and lean, with sharp, handsome features, his rugged edge softened by the gold-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. His posture was perfectly correct, his expression unreadable—polite enough, yet undeniably cold, with a glint of clinical assessment lurking behind the lenses.
The name detonated in her skull like a depth charge. Her lips trembled. How was this possible? To encounter him here, at the very beginning of her rebirth?
In another timeline, in another world, Jacob Daniels was a legend—the Grim Reaper of the Haven stronghold, a top-tier evolved human whose very name made hardened survivors flinch. Untouchable. Worshiped from afar by those who scrabbled in the dirt.
But Chloe Gates loathed him with every fiber of her being.
Their paths had crossed three times, and each time it had cost her something more precious than gold. One pack of beef stew MRE. Two packs of chicken and rice MRE.
Three meals. Three lifelines, ripped away in a world where a single stale cracker could spark a murder.
Memories of her past life began to surface, gripping her throat.
She had gone eight days without food, her evolved body finally failing her, her vision graying at the edges. She crawled across the dusty, gravelly ground, each step excruciating, until her trembling fingers found an unopened bag of beef stew MRE. Overjoyed, she wept tears of relief, she had finally found something to eat.
She had just torn the package open. The smell of dehydrated beef and gravy hit her nostrils, the most beautiful thing she had ever smelled. She never got to taste it.
However, a large-scale battle suddenly broke out here. In the apocalypse, anyone caught up in such a battle will be injured or even killed. She saw this, turned and ran away, and her MRE accidentally fell in a desperate escape.
She hid in the distance, trembling, watching helplessly as the victors appeared—Jacob Daniels' team. His teammates easily snatched her food.
Later, she fainted from hunger and anger, and when she woke up, it felt like a cruel joke.
It happened three times. Three MREs. In the apocalypse, that was three death sentences. Jacob Daniels had never laid a hand on her, never stolen from her directly. But his presence, his battles, his chaos—it had ripped the food from her mouth three separate times. That was the debt he owed.
Chloe clenched her fists, staring at his undeniably handsome, undeniably infuriating face. She swallowed. The control she had built over four years of hell trembled.
Then her stomach seized. A brutal, burning cramp that sent a shudder through her entire body.
My MREs. After the third time, I never found another one. I never ate MRE again.
Jacob, you dog.
The tears came. Every injustice of that dead world, every time she had crouched in the dark with an empty belly and a hollow chest, every ounce of despair she had never been allowed to release—it all came crashing out in a torrent of grief and rage.
"Miss?" Jacob's brow furrowed slightly. His voice held a note of genuine surprise, but his eyes—those cold, analytical eyes—were already cataloging her. Assessing. What was this woman doing? Glaring at him with murderous intent one second, then dissolving into hysterics the next?
He never got the chance to finish the question.
Without warning, the sobbing woman in front of him exploded into motion. It was not a wild, flailing attack. It was a blur of precision violence, honed by years of life-or-death combat in a world without mercy. Straight punch. Hook. Elbow strike.
One second.
Jacob Daniels's gold-rimmed glasses flew from his face. The air was driven from his lungs in a choked grunt. His formidable frame folded, and he crashed onto his knees on the cold marble floor, curled like a shrimp, his analytical mind utterly blank for the first time in his life.
Chloe stood over him, her chest heaving, tears and snot still streaking her face. She looked down at him with the weight of four years of hell behind her eyes.
"This is for what you owe me," she ground out through clenched teeth.
