Page 3 of His Mate

The wolf shook itself, blood dripping from its wounds. It circled me, slower this time, its movements stiff. I kept my knife up, one arm hanging uselessly at my side, and forced myself to breathe, to focus.

We stood there for a heartbeat, two battered, bleeding warriors, each waiting for the other to make a move. Then, with a sudden snarl, the wolf charged, and I stepped forward to meet it.

It leaped, jaws snapping, and as I twisted my body, I felt its teeth sink into my side, just below my ribs. A white-hot pain exploded through me, but I didn’t let go. I grabbed its fur with my free hand, pulling it closer, even as it tried to tear me apart. And with a final, desperate surge of strength, I drove the knife upward, slashing across its throat in a single, vicious arc.

The wolf’s eyes went wide, its body spasming as blood sprayed across us both. It staggered back, its grip on me loosening, and I watched as it struggled, gasping for air that would never come.It tried to snarl one last time, but all that came out was a wet, choking sound.

Finally, it collapsed, its legs giving out, and it crumpled to the ground, a dark pool of blood spreading beneath it. I stood there, swaying on my feet, every inch of me screaming in agony, watching as the life faded from those glowing eyes.

It was over.

My legs buckled, and I sank to my knees, the knife slipping from my fingers, hitting the ground with a dull thud. I pressed a hand to my side, feeling the warmth of my own blood seeping through my fingers, but I forced myself to stay conscious, to stay awake.

Trevor was dead. The wolf was dead. And somehow, against all odds, I was still here. But fuck, the wolf’s bite hurt like hell.

Little did I know that a single bite would change my life.

And alter the world as we knew it.

CHAPTER 1

206 A.C. (After Collapse)

Kendra Riley

I’d always known tomorrow would come, but the fact that it was almost here didn’t make it any easier.

It was my birthday. I turned nineteen in just a few more hours and that meant I was going to be taken.

The streets felt colder tonight, even though summer had long settled over the city, thick and humid. The air clung to my skin, heavy with the scent of rank mildew and rain-soaked concrete. Trees sprouted from the cracks in the asphalt, their roots curling over rusted cars and pushing through shattered sidewalks. Ivy snaked up the sides of once-mighty skyscrapers, their glass windows long since shattered, leaving dark, empty sockets that stared down at us like the eyes of forgotten giants.

“Do you think it hurts?” Mariah asked, her voice cutting through the silence. Her dark brown hair was pulled into a messy braidthat hung over one shoulder, and she was chewing her lip, gnawing at it the way she always did when she got nervous.

Beside her, Lia shrugged, kicking a rock down the cracked pavement. “Probably,” she muttered. “I mean, it’s not like they care if it does, right? They just take you and… that’s that.”

Her words hung in the air, and for a moment, all three of us were silent, the weight of them settling over us like the thick fog that had started to roll in from the river.

They still had another year of freedom left though. They were only eighteen.

Not like me. My freedom ended tomorrow.

I glanced at them both, my chest tightening with nervousness, but I pushed it away as best as I could, not wanting to think about what tomorrow might bring.

And the day after that…

“Don’t,” I said, the word harsher than I meant it to be. “I don’t want to think about it.”

They fell silent, but I could see the unease flickering in their eyes, that same fear that had been gnawing at me for weeks, the one I kept trying to bury. It didn’t work—not really. Tomorrow, they’d come for me, and I’d be dragged into the nightmare that waited for me beyond the familiar crumbling walls of my home.

The nightmare that meant that I would be held down, forced to spread my legs, and then I’d be bred.

We walked in silence, our footsteps echoing through the abandoned streets. Buildings towered over us, their upper floors swallowed by thick blankets of moss and vines. The skeletons ofbillboards loomed overhead, faded and rusted, their words long erased by the wind and rain, like they were ghosts of a world that had long ago forgotten how to speak.

“What if you run?” Mariah’s voice was barely a whisper, but in the silence, it was as loud as a scream.

“I can’t,” I said, shaking my head. “You know what happens if you run.”

Lia nodded, hugging herself. “They hunt you down. And then it’s worse.”

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