Domain Defenders

Some families are given. Others are made in the wreckage of everything you thought you knew. Ten years ago, six-year-old Shawn Edwards watched his mother and sister die in a random act of violence he was too young to understand, let alone stop. Now sixteen, he wakes before dawn every morning to train—martial arts, weapons, and discipline drilled into him by a father who won't explain why he knows so much about war. Shawn tells himself it's about being prepared, but it's really about never feeling that helpless again. He's not the only one carrying something heavy. His best friend Joshua survived that same night and never speaks about it. Ryan Meyes picks fights he always loses, hiding bruises so no one asks too many questions. Lance Kim is brilliant, arrogant, and desperately lonely. Alexander and Richard are inseparable—one reckless, one steady, but more scared than they let on. And Blake Hughes is quiet, yet impossibly strong for reasons even he doesn't understand. Seven boys who barely know each other and who are about to rely on each other as their lives depend on it. When a routine school field trip turns into catastrophe, the seven of them make a choice that will define the rest of their lives: they run toward the dangers, not away from them. Inside the dome, the world has gone silent, empty, and wrong. Soldiers made of living rock patrol the streets. Monstrous hounds hunt in packs. And somewhere at the center of it all waits a being who calls himself Evicarian—ancient and merciless.