THE SPRING FLOOD
Book 3 of Water Runs Red
Dina and Luke finally have a reason to come home. The river is taking every road that leads there.
They have learned how to share a life: a meal at the end of a long day, a hand on a shoulder, the familiar warmth of sleeping beside someone who knows when to stay close and when to give them room. For Dina, that ordinary happiness once seemed harder to imagine than getting a dead water station running. Now she has something she wants to keep.
Then spring arrives too fast.
The rivers rise. Bridges collapse. Water stations lose contact. Roads that were passable yesterday lead straight into the flood, and the map becomes less reliable with every report. The network that gave scattered settlements a chance to survive is coming apart while people are still trying to use it.
As the danger spreads, Wolf packs begin closing their borders. Each has families to shelter, supplies to defend, and good reasons to put its own people first. Together, those decisions could strand everyone. A settlement cannot hold out for long when its water, fuel, or only route to higher ground lies on someone else’s land.
Dina knows how the pieces connect. She can see where a failure will spread and what might still be saved. But she cannot be at every station, answer every call, or keep a whole region alive by working until she drops. The people she has taught must make decisions without her. The people who control the borders must accept risks for strangers. And some choices will carry a cost no amount of skill can undo.
Luke rides out to bring stranded people back. Dina stays to keep a way open. They have fought hard for the trust that allows them to work apart, and there are lives depending on it now. Each time he leaves, she knows why he has to go. Each time the water rises, there are fewer routes that could bring him back.
The next emergency will not wait for them to find each other. Neither will the people calling for help. With the road breaking into isolated pieces, Dina and Luke must decide how much they can ask of the world they helped rebuild—and how much of the life they wanted they can put at risk to save it.
She can keep sending him toward the people who need him. She cannot make the river leave him a way back.
The Spring Flood concludes Water Runs Red, the post-apocalyptic romance trilogy that began with The Broken Road and continued in The Grey Line. A love built on the freedom to leave faces the fight to come home.