Chapter 1: The Gate Closed on Me

The last thing I saw before I died was my mate’s hand resting on the safe-zone gate.

Ryan stood on the other side of the steel barrier, staring at me through the narrow opening as the guards struggled to force the massive doors shut. Behind him, hundreds of survivors were packed into the underground shelter, their faces pale beneath the emergency lights. Some were crying. Others were praying. A few were simply staring at me with the same helpless expression I had seen on everyone’s face during the final weeks of the collapse.

I was the only one left outside.

“Ryan!” My voice broke as I stumbled toward the gate. “Please. Don’t close it.”

My boots slipped on the frozen ground, but I forced myself forward. Blood was running down my arm from the wound across my shoulder, and every breath felt like ice cutting through my lungs. I could hear the creatures behind me, their claws scraping against the concrete as they moved through the darkness. I knew what would happen if that gate closed.

Ryan knew too.

Yet he didn’t move.

For a moment, our eyes met, and I searched his face for the man I had loved for years. I wanted him to remember every time I had stood beside him when the pack turned against him, every healing session that left me too weak to stand, every resource I had surrendered because I believed his people were my family too.

Instead, his gaze shifted past me.

Claire was standing behind him.

One hand rested protectively over her stomach.

I felt something inside me break.

“Ryan,” I whispered, barely able to hear myself over the storm. “I’m your mate.”

His expression tightened.

“I know.”

The gate continued closing.

I shook my head desperately and reached for him through the shrinking gap. “Then open it.”

He didn’t.

His silence was the answer.

The last piece of hope disappeared from his face before it disappeared from mine.

“I’m sorry, Mara.”

The gate slammed shut.

I stood there staring at the steel wall, unable to understand how the same man who had once promised that nothing would ever separate us could now choose to leave me outside without even looking back.

Then the first howl rose from the darkness.

I turned.

Several pairs of pale eyes appeared between the ruined buildings.

My wolf, Raya, stirred weakly inside me, and for the first time since the apocalypse began, she didn’t tell me to run.

She only whispered, He chose her.

I swallowed the pain in my throat.

“I know.”

The creatures moved closer.

My legs were already failing, but I forced myself forward anyway. I didn’t want to die there. Not after everything I had sacrificed. Not after spending years believing that being Ryan’s mate meant I would always have a place beside him.

I ran until something slammed into my back.

The impact sent me crashing onto the frozen pavement. Pain tore through my body as claws dug into my shoulder. I fought, kicked, and reached for my wolf, but my strength was disappearing faster than I could use it.

And while I lay there listening to the storm swallow the last sounds of the safe zone, one thought became painfully clear.

I hadn’t died because the apocalypse was too cruel.

I had died because I had trusted the wrong people.

Then everything went black.

I woke with a scream trapped in my throat.

For several seconds, I couldn’t move. My hands flew to my shoulder, expecting torn flesh and blood, but there was nothing. My skin was smooth. My body was whole. The room around me was warm, quiet, and painfully familiar.

I slowly pushed myself upright.

My old bedroom.

The curtains I had thrown away years ago.

The wooden dresser beside the window.

The photograph of Ryan and me sitting on the bedside table.

My breathing became uneven.

I reached for my phone.

The date on the screen made my fingers go cold.

Sixty days.

I stared at it until the numbers blurred.

This was the day I had once considered the beginning of the happiest period of my life.

Now I knew it was the beginning of the countdown to the end of the world.

A tremor moved through my body as the memories returned in pieces—the first strange storms, the flooded roads, the empty stores, the power failures, the desperate survivors, the safe zones, Ryan’s betrayal, and the steel gate closing between us.

I remembered everything.

But there was something else I remembered too.

Something I had discovered only hours before I died.

Something Ryan had made sure I never had the chance to tell anyone.

My mother’s name.

The bloodline she had spent my entire childhood hiding.

And the reason the creatures outside the safe zone had not been ordinary animals.

A soft knock sounded at my bedroom door.

I looked toward it.

Before I could answer, the door opened.

Ryan walked in.

He was alive.

Young.

Uninjured.

And completely unaware that the woman standing in front of him had already watched him choose another woman and leave her to die.

He smiled as he approached me.

“We need to talk about the mate ceremony.”

I stared at him.

In my first life, those words would have made my heart race.

This time, they made Raya growl.

Ryan noticed my silence and frowned. “Mara?”

I looked at the man who had once been my entire world and realized that I had been given something far more valuable than revenge.

I had been given time.

Sixty days to change everything.

Sixty days to make sure that when the apocalypse came, I would never again have to beg someone to open a door for me.

I met Ryan’s eyes.

“There’s not going to be a mate ceremony.”

His smile vanished.

“Why?”

I took a slow breath.

Because I remembered the future.

Because I remembered my death.

Because somewhere beneath the fear and confusion, Raya was telling me that our second life had already begun.

I stepped closer to him.

“I reject you, Ryan.”

His face went completely pale.

But before he could answer, a sharp pain suddenly pierced through my chest.

I staggered backward and grabbed the edge of the table.

Raya snarled inside my head.

Run.

I froze.

Why?

For the first time since waking up, my wolf sounded afraid.

Because something has changed.

And outside the window, although the sky was perfectly clear, the first snowflake of the apocalypse landed against the glass.