Keep The Fires Lit

Haven Ridge has given Caleb and Naomi something they thought the outbreak had taken forever: a place worth coming home to. But as winter closes around their settlement, the roads become as important as the walls. Food, medicine, and fuel must keep moving, and someone else has the trucks to move them.

Russ Calder offers help.

He clears roads, repairs equipment, and brings desperate people in from the cold. His followers remember every life he saved. They laugh at his jokes, repeat his words, and stand beside him when someone questions the price of his protection.

Then a guest asks to go home.

What begins as an uneasy partnership becomes a struggle over who gets to leave, who controls the roads, and whether accepting help means surrendering the right to refuse. Calebs radio can carry a warning, but it cannot bring a trapped person through a guarded door. Naomi has found someone she feared was dead, only to discover that bringing him home may put everyone she loves in danger.

As the dead gather beyond the fences, Haven must turn to neighboring communities with fears and shortages of their own. Trust will take more than a shared enemy, and Russ knows how much pressure frightened people can bear.

With winter deepening and every safe road slipping from their reach, Caleb and Naomi must decide how far they will go to protect the people who have chosen them.

Keep the Fires Lit is the third novel in The Living Signal Series, a story of survival, loyalty, and the cost of standing together when protection becomes possession.