Imprisoned by the Zombie Boyfriend I Picked Up

Three years into the zombie outbreak, Ivy finally catches a zombie of her own. He lies unconscious after a horde sweeps the district, and he looks like a normal man: smooth, whole skin, no rot, no pulse. She ties him to a chair in her lab and names him Ash, for the gray of his eyes and the ash-covered street where she found him. If the virus worked differently in him, she might build a vaccine.

Her mentor, Dr. Mercer, warns her from the northern base that a newborn Zombie King was stolen from the horde, and that he will lock down the mate he chooses and breed her until she is pregnant. The signal dies before Ivy can report the specimen in her lab. Ash is tamer than any record, silent and watching her with dark eyes, until her examination wakes something in him that no zombie should have.

When he speaks a single human word, Ivy realizes he has understood everything she said and done. The pickup team is seven days away, the communicator is dead, and the space between them is shrinking.