Chapter 3: Mate.

I pulled the trigger. 

The first shot cracked through the warehouse while the strange madman moved aside with a speed that made no sense from the distance between us. The bullet struck the metal shelving behind him and sent a resounding metallic crash through the open space.

I fired again before my mind caught up with what my eyes had seen, but he had already moved from where he had been standing. The second bullet struck the shelving too, throwing sparks across the concrete while I lifted the gun for another shot.

Only one bullet remained.

I never fired it.

He was in front of me before I completed the movement, gripping my wrist and forcing the barrel upward while his other hand stripped the weapon from my fingers. He threw it across the floor, where it slid beneath an empty rack, then forced me back against the shelving before I decided whether to run or fight.

One forearm braced beside my head while his other hand held my waist, positioned to stop me if I tried slipping past him.

“Get the fuck off me.” I shoved him against his chest, but the effort barely moved him.

He angled his head toward my throat and inhaled near my skin with the same strange concentration he had shown earlier. His eyes shut briefly before opening on me again, and the hunger there made my heart sink to my stomach.

It was not the same filthy hunger I had seen in the crimson-eyed men outside. I did not know whether that made him better.

“Mine,” he groaned like an animal. “Injured and alone.” He sniffed down to my collarbone. “You will return with me.”

“I don’t take orders from you.”

I twisted and tried to drive my knee between us, but he shifted his hips, blocking the strike before I connected. The movement brought his body closer, trapping me more firmly against the shelving while his hand moved along my side.

His knuckles passed over my ribs and stopped just beneath my breast, but he didn’t invade.

The restraint was confusing because everything else about him suggested a man accustomed to taking whatever space he wanted. His hand remained near my body while he stared at me like leaving that small distance between us was draining the life out of him.

I turned my face aside when he leaned closer to my mouth and he halted midway.

He stayed that way for a while, breathing in the scent of my skin while my palms stayed planted against his chest.

“You need somewhere protected,” he said near my cheek. “You’re staying with me.”

“Fuck you and get the fuck away from me.”

He pulled back until our eyes met, though he still showed no intention of releasing me.

“Fight me, curse at me, point another useless toy at me, and try that little knee again, but I am not letting you walk into that city alone.”

Gush… How do I get away from this?

I pushed against his chest again even though I already knew I could not move him, and I hated that part of my body felt his warmth as the first stable thing I had encountered since the sky had turned red.

Screaming hard, I dug my teeth into his lower arm, and right there, the warehouse door scraped open before he could let go.

Four men entered.

Their clothes were dirty and torn, while their crimson eyes held the same feverish look I had seen in the men near the strip mall. They noticed me before anything else, staring at the damaged section of my shirt and the dried blood near my collarbone before one of them noticed my gun beneath the racks.

The man in front dragged his tongue over his bottom lip. “Well, shit. Look what we found.”

Another man laughed behind him. “Told you I smelled a woman. She’s alive too.”

They spread through the warehouse without discussing what they were doing. Two stuck around at the entrance while the others moved closer, their attention fixed on me in a lustful, predatory way.

The first man grabbed his cock through his jeans. “Every other woman we found was dead.”

The man beside him stared at me with a grin that made my skin crawl. “This one isn’t.”

Their meaning was unmistakable. They were not looking at me like another survivor, but like something they intended to use.

The strange madman growled, shifting his body until most of me was behind him. His arrogant calm remained, but all of his attention was now fixed on the four men.

One of them tried looking around him to see me. “We just want a taste of her dripping cunt,” he said, and my stomach turned.

“What the fuck is wrong with them?” I murmured to myself. “Why are they acting like predators?”

The strange madman kept his eyes on the men while leaning close to me.

“It’s the Crimson Veil,” he said; however, I never expected a response from him. “Every human male still alive has been driven into heat, and their bodies are pushing them to hunt any surviving female.”

I stared at the side of his face.

The Crimson Veil. Human male? He said it like those words should mean anything to me.

The sky had turned red, women had dropped dead across the city, and now this man expected me to believe some invisible force had transformed surviving men into predators obsessed with finding women.

He was indeed insane. 

I made to tell him exactly that when the four men started walking toward us.

His attention drifted to them, giving me the opportunity to escape.

I shoved both hands against his chest and curled away.

My boots struck the concrete as I ran through the warehouse, but I hardly made it ten steps before a hand seized my arm and jerked me backward. Another man grabbed my other side, and I hit the floor hard.

The four men surrounded me before I could recover.

One pinned my shoulders while another seized the front of my shirt and ripped the fabric. A third grabbed my legs while the fourth went for the button of my jeans.

Panic tore through me.

I kicked, clawed, and fought anything my hands could find. My nails ripped across one man’s face and left bloody lines down his cheek, but he struck me across the mouth and filled it with blood again.

Their voices overlapped around me, talking about how they intended to have their different turns.

I fought harder.

A sudden snarl resounded, and in seconds, the strange madman got to them.

I did not understand how he moved from the racks to the men surrounding me so quickly.

His hands seized the man who had torn my shirt, and a sick crack echoed through the warehouse before the body dropped beside me.

The second narrowly reacted before the stranger killed him too.

The third pulled a knife, but the stranger caught his wrist, forced the blade away, and broke his neck in one brutal movement.

The fourth ran.

He made it only a few steps before the stranger caught him from behind and broke his neck.

Four bodies were sprawled around me while I pushed myself onto my elbows and clutched the torn sides of my shirt over my chest.

My breathing refused to calm.

The stranger stood among the dead men without showing any sign that killing four people had physically taxed him.

My mind immediately searched for an explanation that could define him. Anything I could live with.

He was from the elite military training, perhaps. Special forces. Some classified government unit that trained men beyond anything ordinary people ever saw.

Anything made more sense than accepting that I had just witnessed something impossible.

He had killed four men with his bare hands before I could properly process most of what he had done.

If he could do that to them, getting away from him might be impossible too.

I still needed to find my mother, and staying with a stranger capable of killing four men in seconds was not part of any survival plan I trusted.

He sent his attention to me, his eyes moving over the blood on my mouth before shifting to the ruined shirt I was holding together.

I pushed myself farther away across the concrete. “Get away from me.”

“Your time is up.” He stormed toward me. “I hate stubborn humans.”

“Stay back.”

He kept moving, and when he got near, I kicked toward his knee. He caught my ankle, pulled me toward him, and hauled me over his shoulder.

The room tipped around me as my stomach hit the hard muscle of his back.

“Put me down! Get the fuck off me!”

I hit him with both fists and twisted until pain tore through my ribs, but his arm remained locked across the backs of my thighs while he took me toward the warehouse door.

“You cannot kidnap me because you think you know what’s best for me!”

“You ran directly toward four men who wanted to rape you,” he groaned.

“I was trying to get away from you!” I struck his back again. “You are fucking unbearable.”

He snubbed me. 

He took me through the industrial lots while broken glass covered sections of asphalt and smoke drifted from deeper inside the city.

Then I started noticing the bodies again.

Women lay beside cars, across sidewalks, and near buildings where they had apparently collapsed while trying to flee. Some still had bags or phones, and others were naked, looking like they had fought off monsters before their death.

Since the red sky, I had not seen another living woman. The fear I had been denying became harder to ignore.

Why were women dying while I was still alive?

I twisted again and drove my elbow into the stranger’s side, but his pace did not change.

“I said put me down!”

He continued while the industrial buildings gave way to more trees. Bodies still appeared beside the road, and almost every one was female.

Eventually I stopped shouting and stared at the ground moving beneath us while my thoughts returned to my mother.

If whatever had happened was killing women, what had happened to her?

The possibility that I might already be too late hurt more than my ribs.

The stranger kept going until the city noises became faint behind the trees.

Finally, he stopped.

The building he chose was partly hidden beneath overgrown branches, with old concrete walls, boarded windows, and a heavy metal door. He forced it open, took me inside, and put me back on my feet in a dusty room that smelled of rust and old wood.

“This is where you stay.”

My legs shook from exhaustion, but I forced them to support me while holding the ruined shirt over my chest.

“You cannot tell me what to do. You cannot decide where I stay, and I don’t give a fuck how strong you are.”

I ran toward the open doorway.

He caught me before I made it far, locking one arm around my waist and pulling me backward.

I fought immediately.

He took me to the floor with controlled force and pinned my wrists above my head while positioning himself so I could not drive my knee into him again.

“What do you want from me?” I shouted. “Why the fuck won’t you leave me alone?”

He leaned in, his face almost brushing my throat, and pressed his nose against my skin while breathing in my scent.

I stopped fighting, trying to understand why he kept sniffing me.

A low growl vibrated in his chest. It grew until the room jiggled with a powerful roar that was too animal and too impossible to have come from an ordinary man.

My body went rigid beneath him.

When the sound ended, he licked the crook of my neck, moving his mouth to my cleavage. 

Then once again, he growled, “Mate!”