RUN. SURVIVE. SURRENDER.
On alien worlds, the only way out is the Mate Hunt—where human women are chased, caught, and claimed.
We weren’t alone in the universe. And maybe it would’ve been better if we were.
When the star portals tore open the sky, alien factions carved Earth into zones of control—and left the rest to rot. The lucky hide beneath sponsor domes. The rest of us scrape by, waiting to be used up.
There’s only one way out.
Human women are universal breeders. Desired. Coveted. Hunted.
The Galactic Alliance offered Earth a deal—trade compatible mates to resource-rich worlds, get the medical technology and credits that keep our dying planet alive.
The Mate Hunt is the bargain: agree to be dropped on a savage alien world, run for your freedom, and if you’re caught… the choice is yours. Refuse and fight until the end. Or surrender—be claimed, marked, and bred by the hunter who takes you.
It isn’t kind. It isn’t safe.
But it’s a chance.
And sometimes the only choice left is whether to let the monster chasing you become the mate you can’t resist.
KERRIS
The portal spit me out onto bone.
I caught myself before I fell, one hand scraping against something that had once been alive and was now just calcium and silence. The surface was rough under my palm, porous in a way that spoke of age. Centuries, maybe. Millennia. Whatever had died here had been dead longer than humanity had been building anything worth remembering.
The orientation materials had warned about disorientation. They hadn't mentioned the heat.
Dry and relentless, baking up from the white ground and down from a sky the color of old paper. My skin prickled. Sweat broke out across my back, my chest, between my breasts. Within thirty seconds, my shirt clung to me in ways that made my nipples visible through the fabric.
My nipples, which were already hard.
The tonic. It had started in the medical bay when they'd made me drink that thick, sweet liquid, and it hadn't stopped. Wouldn't stop for thirty days, they'd said. Or until...
I knew what the "until" meant. I'd signed twenty-three waivers.
I straightened and looked at what I'd bought with my signature.
Bone. In every direction, bone. White and gray and ivory, curving up into formations my brain immediately started cataloging. Rib structures forty feet tall. Fifty. Taller. Vertebrae the size of cargo containers arranged in patterns that could have been arranged by natural death or might have been deliberate placement. In the distance, a skull formation rose against the horizon, big enough to be a building. Big enough to be a city block. The orbital cavities faced outward like empty eyes watching the territory.
The Ossuary. Sector 7. Thirty days.
Between my legs, something clenched.
Not a thought. Not a decision. Just my body responding to stimulus I couldn't identify, muscles deep in my core contracting around nothing. I instinctively pressed my thighs together, and the pressure made it worse. Made me aware of how swollen I already was down there, how the lips of my pussy felt puffy against the seam of my pants.
The intake coordinator had called it the Preparation Compound. Clinical name for chemical slavery.
I took a breath. Then another, forcing myself to think past the heat pooling low in my belly.
The rib formation to my left offered height. Vantage. Whoever or whatever lived here would have the advantage of knowing the landscape. I needed to see what I was working with before it saw me.
I walked to the base of the nearest rib and tested it with my weight. Fifteen years of structural work had taught me to read load-bearing capacity at a glance. This bone could hold a hab-block. It could hold me. The surface was rough enough for grip, the angle manageable.
I started climbing.
The tonic made it difficult. Every movement created friction. My pants dragged across flesh that was becoming oversensitive, the seam pressing against my clit in ways that sent little shocks through my nervous system. My nipples rubbed against my bra with every reach upward, and I was suddenly, acutely aware that they were harder than they should be. Swollen. Aching.
