The Alpha's Stellar Mate

“Stella, do I really need to insist that this is the worst idea you’ve ever had in your entire life?”

“Even if you say that, Mom, I’m not going back.”

Through the car dashboard, I heard my mother sigh deeply. I wouldn’t be surprised if she regretted the day she didn’t use a condom with the father I never met—the one who left a cheap necklace for my mother to give me someday—because maybe she wasn’t prepared to hear the last words of her only daughter.

Last words, because everyone knew that crossing the border of the fields and returning to the abandoned cities was a precise death sentence. Everyone knew our world was doomed and that the right thing to do was to hide in nature, as the cities no longer belonged to ordinary humans. I knew it too, but I had already gone too far to give up out of fear of some silly old legends.

“There are monsters out there,” said Mom, her voice trembling and cracking. She must have been crying. “I can’t let you continue with this unfounded search. There is no cure, Stella. You’re clinging to the nonsense you hear in the surveys. The stars don’t speak.”

“They spoke this time,” I insisted, nearly missing the road sign ahead. “The stars know everything, Mom. I saw the coordinates, studied the binary codes, and I’m sure I’ll find what I’m looking for. I’m going to save humanity—it’s my destiny.”

“Stella, please, just—”

The call dropped. I had already expected this. The towers didn’t work in the city. There was another kind of technology here—something old and very unfamiliar to those born after the 3000s, like me.

There was an anomaly somewhere in the heavens. A constant signal of life and light, even in a place that shouldn’t have sustained life for years. At least, not human life.

It was a desert of stone—abandoned streets and crumbling buildings. Yet somehow, as my car approached the deserted intersection, I noticed a stark contrast. Behind me was a world collapsing into ruins since the first global collapse. Hunger and despair had become humanity’s daily struggles. Yet my eyes glimpsed structures and businesses still intact, defying the apocalypse.

I parked my car next to a cosmetics store, glancing at my reflection in the window as I stepped onto the cracked sidewalk. When I looked at my neck, I panicked for a moment, thinking I had lost my necklace with the full moon pendant. Then I remembered I’d tucked it away next to the flashlight, unwilling to risk losing the only keepsake from the man who used to be my father.

I slung a backpack filled with groceries over my shoulder and ventured on foot, camera in hand. I wasn’t a photographer.

I never knew how to take good pictures, and I was never photogenic enough to bother with social networks. But this was part of my research. I needed to document everything I found, just in case some freshman at the university stumbled across my notes about astronomical anomalies and decided to follow me into the forgotten city.

Though I doubted anyone would ever come looking for me, it was oddly comforting to leave behind a record of this world in something more reliable than my memory.

I graduated in astronomy. Although ironically, the profession no longer held the same meaning it once did. We didn’t look at the stars anymore. We didn’t calculate the distance to the nearest black hole or search for life on other planets. Our studies were now focused on finding ways to mitigate the catastrophic effects of sandstorms and acidic rain that plagued our dying world.

As a species once proud of its adaptability, you’d think humanity would have found a way to deal with global warming. But we didn’t. Humanity didn’t evolve. Animals did. They adapted, thrived, and outgrew us, forcing us to retreat to open fields and farms.

Dangerous beings had been living among us for years, hiding in plain sight. By the time we understood the threat, it was already too late.

Legends spoke of the first of these creatures, focusing on dangerous and cruel werewolves. Some claimed the first, King Lupin, was born to a family of six women. Others said he was bitten, and in his hatred, he spread the curse to others, creating a society of monstrous hybrids. These creatures weren’t always a simple mix of human and wolf. Sometimes they became something far more terrifying—beasts too deadly to comprehend.

Having spent years in fields ravaged by pests and breathing polluted air, every human now suffered from respiratory problems. Myself included. My asthma had driven me to study endlessly, searching for a cure and a way to make Earth prosperous again.

Eventually, I realized the answer might lie not on the ground but in the heavens, where no one else dared to look. The stars were still shining, calling out to those curious enough to explore them. So I gazed at them, begging for help.

By this point in my life, after witnessing so many children succumb to the toxic air, we no longer remembered the names of the gods to pray to. But I prayed in silence to the universe, and it answered with constellations that connected and glimmered in code.

The universe responded to someone looking at it once more, after decades of neglect.

That code now marked the map I pulled from my backpack, pointing me to an old military barracks—the first of twelve locations across the city. There were countless other coordinates I couldn’t decipher before deciding I had to act. Humanity could not afford to succumb to fear any longer.

Yet, no matter how much courage I mustered, I couldn’t ignore the prickling at the back of my neck. I stood in front of the deserted guardhouse, but some primal instinct urged me to run.

Still, I didn’t move. I kept my eyes fixed on the entrance to the army’s deserted barracks, ignoring the hot wind that tousled my loose, curly hair.

Something much more worrying demanded my attention.

Or rather, someone.