How Does 'Literary Stray Dogs' End?

The solar flares fried the world A sudden wolf gene turned half the population into beasts. Now humans are either breeders, collaborators, or …dead. I was Rylan's breeder. Until he found his "mate" and told me to run. So I ran. Now I trade my body for shelter. My mouth for food. My cunt for a knife to sleep with. Sex isn't love out here. It's currency… It's the only language the people in this wasteland understand. Four of them want me now. A cursed Alpha who threw me away but can't stop hunting me. A scarred commander with something feral crawling under his skin. A man who remembers nothing of his past yet had never been touched gently in his life. And a wolf lord's son who sees something in me I don't even see in myself. There's also a bandana-faced scavenge, He pins me in the dark and tells me to run. He's not one of the four. He's just the reason I sleep with a knife. They all think I'm just a breeder… warm body…A hole to fill…. They don't know I'm the last one left who remembers what the world was like before the fire. And I'm done being used. Let them come. I'll take their cocks in my pussy, their lies to my ears , their desperate hands on every curve on my body and then?… I'll take their throats.

'God, I'm late again!' Jane thought as she hurried through the streets. 'Mr. Smith is going to be so mad!' She decided to take a shortcut through some back alleys that she would normally rather avoid. Suddenly, she heard a series of whimpers, thumps, and yelps coming from another alley nearby. It sounded like a dog in pain, being beaten by something heavy 'Maybe if I make a noise, whatever is attacking that dog will get scared and run.' She stopped. She had just peaked her head around the corner and saw not one but two . . . men? . . . standing at the other end of a dead-end alley and overlooking a very large, furry pile of animals that seemed to be twitching. Normally, Jane would have been filled with terror at that moment, but terror was normally reserved for those with something to lose. There was a part of Jane, however, that still clung to the charade that was her life. Her hands began to tremble and her lungs released a scarcely audible gasp. Then the two standing figures turned and faced the end of the alley where Jane was hiding. "I'm going to call the police!" she shouted, lacking anything better to say. One of the figures shook his head and smiled. All his teeth seemed to be far too pointy. "That would be a very . . . terrible . . . mistake," he hissed, his words escaping his mouth like dead air from a pharaoh's tomb. And then both of them headed towards her at an inhuman pace. "No," one of them rasped. "Finish it. I'll get the girl." The other one stopped and snarled some kind of response.

On a stormy night during the apocalypse, my own mother threw me out of the house while I was burning with fever, along with my husky, so my little brother would have a better chance of surviving. She shouted through the crack in the door, “Take that useless mutt and go die somewhere. Stop wasting your brother’s food!” I huddled in a pile of trash with my dog in my arms, convinced I was going to die. Then my husky suddenly spoke. “Host’s vital signs critically low. Infinite Supply Search System activated.” “Supermarket warehouse one hundred meters ahead. Three thousand freeze-dried meals detected.” “Pharmacy five hundred meters to the left. Five hundred boxes of antibiotics detected.” Three days later, I’d built a fortress with packs of dogs and mountains of supplies. I sat inside eating steak and watching the show. Outside the barbed wire, my mother and brother were on their knees, fighting each other over half a piece of moldy bread. I smiled. “Mom, even dogs wouldn’t eat that. Better savor it.”

When the Irwins were on the brink of bankruptcy, I proposed a marriage of convenience to Ryan and saved them from collapse. Ever the playboy, Ryan was so grateful that he swore eternal loyalty to me, even getting a vasectomy immediately to prove his devotion. He took me across mountains and rivers, saying he wanted to etch our love into every corner of the world. Three years later, he got me drunk, stole my phone, and used it to infiltrate the Knights’ estate. That night, he orchestrated the complete downfall of my family’s legacy. My parents overdosed on sleeping pills. My sister was dragged into an alley by his men, violated, filmed, and the footage was auctioned off to amuse wealthy heirs. I begged him to let my family go. However, he gripped my face and forced me to watch as my parents were cremated. “You think marrying me back then was some noble sacrifice? Sure, the whole city praised your family for helping mine in our darkest hour. But what did they say about me? “They call me your lapdog, Lily!” Ryan destroyed the Knights to prove he was better than us and not anyone’s dog. He tore up the divorce papers and shoved the shreds into my mouth. Ryan wanted me to watch as he rose to power and made the world kneel before him. To humiliate me, he brought home a different woman every night, turning our house into a hotel while I served them. “What’s the Knights’ worth now? With your status, cooking for them and massaging their feet like this is only fitting.” It didn’t matter. When I saved him from that avalanche, a shard of stone slashed my heart. Now, I only have three days left to live.

After dinner with my college roommates at a restaurant in the Old Harbor district, the rain came down hard without warning. We huddled under the awning, pulling our coats tight, calling our boyfriends one by one.My friend Maya nudged my shoulder with a grin. "Your guy chased you so hard the entire school knew about it. He'll definitely be the first one here." "Right? Four years of college. Hot coffee delivered to your door on rainy days, your bike path shoveled clean in the snow, and whenever you didn't feel like getting up for class, he'd organize the professor's lecture notes and send them straight to your inbox." "That year you had your senior exhibition and came down with a high fever, he stayed with you in the studio for three days. Made you soup, fixed your models, stayed up so late his eyes were bloodshot. Evelyn, I honestly thought you'd found yourself a fairy-tale prince." They chattered on about my love life. Before long, their boyfriends all showed up with umbrellas. When they glanced my way, their expressions faltered. "How come Noah isn't here yet? Isn't your apartment just across the river?" I smiled and held up my phone. "He said something came up at the office." Maya asked her boyfriend to drop me off first. I sat in the back seat, spotted a familiar figure standing outside the pet grooming salon on the corner. He was cradling a silver-gray longhaired cat in his arms. The cat was wrapped in a soft little wool blanket. He was shielding even its ear tips, terrified of letting a single drop of rain touch it. It was Noah. The cat in his arms belonged to his childhood neighbor, Selena. This wasn't the first time Noah had left me stranded in the rain for that cat.Another message from Noah. "Babe, the rain's too heavy. Wait until it lets up and then call a car home. Don't be stubborn. You won't get wet that way." What he didn't know was that from the day Selena moved to this city last year, I had already been soaked through.

In a luxurious suite, I get pinned against the floor-to-ceiling window by my rival, Elias Forrest. At the moment, we're making out with each other without a care in the world. Just as I'm about to immerse myself in lust, I suddenly notice rows of live comments appearing before me. "Why is the villainess being such a slut? Is she that big of a whore for men? If not for the fact that the male lead has mistaken her for someone else due to his drugged state, there's no way she could've gotten together with him in the first place!" "It's fine. The female lead will soon show up to save the male lead from the villainess. Once he has all sobered up, the villainess will definitely get what's coming for her. Heheh!" "The male lead is our darling female lead's devoted lover, you see! He hates the fact that the villainess has tainted his purity, so he's decided to toss her into the slums so that she gets violated by a group of beggars. In the end, the villainess dies a terrible death on the streets." With red-rimmed eyes, Maisie Sadler opens the door. "What the hell are you two doing?" But the steamy scene that Maisie imagines is nowhere to be seen. I'm not even hugging Elias right now. There's only a dog with fur as white as snow in my arms. Both of us turn to look at Maisie in confusion. "Hmm?" Even the dog barks in confusion as well.