Rejected Mate (Feral Shifters 1)

“My luck must be on vacation,” I grumble, tossing the cards onto the table. A sense of déjà vu washes over me, but I ignore it and pick up my beer, only to find it’s empty. Add that to the bout of bad luck—I was so irritated over my shit hand that I don’t even remember drinking it.

“Luck,” Ridge repeats.

I set my bottle down and reach for the cooler lid to grab another as I joke, “Yeah. Luck. You have it, I don’t.”

“Your luck’s at the end of the world,” Ridge says, his voice going… strange.

Startled by the sudden change in his tone, I abandon my reach for the cooler and glance up at him

His familiar, casual slouch is gone. He’s ramrod straight, his knuckles pale on the bottle, and his eyes are black. Not even a hint of white sclera, none of his amber irises.

A void.

The sky is darkening too. Heavy black smoke rolls overhead, blocking out the bright sun and the feathered white clouds. A cold breeze kicks up around us, whipping my long hair into my eyes. The cooler tips over and beer bottles scatter across the raised pavement, followed by ice cubes that begin to melt the moment they touch the ground.

Something shatters, and I return my gaze to Ridge.

Only he’s gone.

His beer bottle is in pieces on the ground beneath his chair, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

My heart pounds wildly. I shove my seat back and stand, looking around the yard. “Ridge?”

Suddenly, the scenery changes.

The cooler remains on its side, spilling brown bottles and puddles of melted ice, but the ground beneath it is hard and dry. The grass is gone, replaced by dead shrubs and tumbleweeds like the New Mexico desert.

I walk away from the table, from Ridge’s shattered beer bottle. The grass crackles and crumbles beneath my boots. The fence Ridge built with his own hands has vanished, though several boards remain, sticking up from the ground like broken, jagged teeth.

Whirling around, I find the cabins in total disrepair. Ridge’s roof has sunk into the living room, while my house down the road looks like an atomic blast wiped out the entire back wall.

“Sable,” I breathe.

I race to the back door of Ridge’s cabin and shove it open, barreling into the kitchen. The roof is intact here, but the place has clearly been abandoned for a long time. A highchair lies in pieces on the floor, and ivy has grown through the open window, taking over the cabinets, cracking them open like eggs. Dishes lie in pieces on the countertops and the floor, everything covered in inches of dust.

I stare at the highchair. Something deep in my mind, a lucid part, reminds me that I never met the baby. Sable was pregnant when I left home. But my fear drowns out that small common sense voice, and I sprint back outside.

I leave Ridge’s yard, moving fa

ster now. There’s no sign of my pack. The village is destroyed, overgrown by time and nature. Bones lay on the dead, cracked dirt, bleached white and picked clean by god knows what.

And still the black smoke hangs overhead, blocking out the sun.

I race into the plains where a forest used to be, screaming Ridge’s name. What about Sable? The baby? Trystan, Archer, Dare? Grady, the elders? The wind roars, empty of anything but its own voice.

I whirl around, gripped by relentless terror and heartache.

But I’m not in pack lands anymore.

Desert and ruin surrounds me. On the horizon, the dark, half-falling spires of skyscrapers touch the black sky, and flashes of light emit from downed power lines nearby. People run screaming, kicking up dust from the dying earth, clutching their belongings. Everybody crying, everybody terrified.

Including me.

I fight against the fleeing crowd, drawn back toward the broken city. Several people run into me in their haste, but I barrel forward, undeterred. Then the crowd parts and dead bodies stretch as far as I can see.

Roaming between the bodies are hundreds of black, smoky creatures. They’re monstrous, larger than any animal I’ve ever seen, with featureless, formless bodies. I stare, trying to make sense of them, but it’s like watching shadows drift across a dark horizon and trying to form shapes from them in my head.

They’re twisted.