Draven's POV
"That's not prey." Caspian's voice cuts through my concentration. "That smell is wrong."
I pause mid-step, claws digging into the forest floor. He's right. The scent on the wind is strange—sweet like ripe fruit, but also sharp like fear. It doesn't match any animal I've ever hunted. Beside me, Theron shifts his massive tiger form, orange fur bristling.
"Could be injured," Theron rumbles, always the soft-hearted fool. "Something wounded."
"Or dangerous," Silas hisses from his position wrapped around a low branch. His black scales catch the fading light. "Unknown scents mean unknown threats."
But I'm the leader of this pathetic group of exiles. The decision is mine. And that scent—it pulls at something in my chest I don't understand. "We investigate. Stay alert."
We move through the twisted trees as a unit. Caspian takes to the air with a sharp cry, his golden wings spreading wide to scout ahead. I track the scent, my wolf nose picking up more details with each step. Fear-scent, yes. But also something else. Something that makes my fur stand on end.
Blood. Fresh and flowing.
"There!" Caspian calls from above. "By the clearing. It's... I don't know what it is!"
We break through the tree line and stop.
A female lies crumpled in the dirt like a broken doll. But she's wrong. All wrong. Her skin is bare—no fur, no scales, no feathers. Just smooth tan skin covered in cuts and bruises. She wears strange coverings that are torn and bloody. Her hair is long and dark, spread around her head like a pool of shadow.
"What is she?" Theron whispers, and I hear the awe in his voice.
"Dying," I answer flatly, moving closer. My wolf instincts scream at me to back away—she's not natural, not right. But she's also clearly no threat. Her chest barely rises and falls. Her bones jut out at wrong angles. This female won't last the night.
Caspian lands beside me, shifting to his half-form so he can speak clearly. "Leave her. We have enough problems without adding a strange dying female to the list."
"She's suffering." Theron is already moving toward her, his healer's heart overriding his sense. "We can't just—"
"We can," Caspian snaps. "We're exiles, not rescue workers. She's not our pack. Not our problem."
Silas slithers closer, his golden eyes studying the female with intense curiosity. "Look at her hands. No claws at all. How does she hunt? How does she defend herself?"
"She doesn't," I say, crouching beside her. Up close, the wrongness is even clearer. Her face is too flat, nose too small, ears round and weak. But her scent—it hits me like a punch to the gut. Sweet and warm and alive despite her injuries. "She's not from the Beastworld."
All three of them stare at me.
"That's impossible," Caspian says. "Nothing exists outside the Beastworld. The elders say—"
"The elders say many things." I cut him off. "But this female isn't like any species I've ever seen. No fangs, no claws, no natural weapons. She's built all wrong for survival here."
Theron kneels on her other side, his large paw hovering over her chest. "Her ribs are broken. Maybe her spine too. Internal bleeding, definitely. She needs help now, or she dies."
"Then she dies." Caspian crosses his arms. "Draven, we can barely feed ourselves. We're camping in a cave that floods every rain. We're exiles because YOU made enemies of the wrong pack. We don't have resources for charity cases."
His words sting because they're true. I lost my entire pack last winter—starved to death because I couldn't protect them, couldn't provide enough. The guilt still eats at me every day. Taking in a dying stranger is stupid. Reckless. The kind of soft-hearted decision that gets everyone killed.
But when I look at her broken body, I see my sister. Small and fragile, dying in the snow while I was too weak to save her.
"We take her," I hear myself say. The words come out hard, final. Alpha voice. "Theron, can you stabilize her?"
"Maybe. If we move fast." Relief floods Theron's face. He's always hated leaving injured things to die.
Caspian throws his hands up. "You're making a mistake. She's going to die anyway, and we'll have wasted time and energy—"
"Then we wasted it." I shift to my half-form, keeping my wolf strength but gaining hands that can carry her carefully. "Silas, what do you think?"
The snake beastman has been silent, studying the female like she's a puzzle. Finally, he speaks. "She's unusual. That makes her either very dangerous or very valuable. I vote we keep her alive long enough to find out which."
"Of course you do," Caspian mutters. "Always calculating angles."
I ignore their bickering and carefully lift the strange female into my arms. She's impossibly light—lighter than any beastworld female should be. Her skin is warm against my fur, and her heartbeat flutters against my chest like a trapped bird. Weak. Fading.
"Move fast," Theron orders, shifting to his half-form too. "She doesn't have much time."
We run through the darkening forest, Caspian scouting ahead despite his complaints. The female doesn't wake. Her breathing gets shallower with each step. I find myself running faster, as if I can outrun her death.
Why do I care? I should have listened to Caspian. She's nothing to me. A stranger. An alien thing that doesn't belong in our world.
But her scent wraps around me like smoke, and something in my chest that died with my pack last winter starts to crack open.
We reach the cave just as the twin moons rise. Theron immediately starts barking orders, demanding water and the healing herbs he's been hoarding. Silas and Caspian help me lay her on the cleanest pile of furs we have.
She looks even more wrong in the firelight. So small. So breakable. What kind of world creates females with no way to protect themselves?
"Draven." Theron's voice is tight. "Come here. Now."
I move to his side. He's pulled back the torn cloth covering her chest, examining her injuries. His face is grim.
"What is it?"
"These wounds..." He touches a deep bruise on her ribs, and she whimpers even in unconsciousness. "They're not from predators. Look—no claw marks, no bite patterns. This is crushing damage. Like something heavy fell on her."
"So?"
"So she didn't get hurt here in the forest. These injuries are hours old, maybe more. Which means—"
The female's eyes snap open.
She stares directly at me with eyes the color of warm honey, and I freeze. I've never seen eyes like that—not predator-gold or prey-brown, but something in between. Human eyes, though I don't have a word for what human means yet.
Her mouth opens. She makes sounds—not growls or roars, but something else entirely. Structured. Patterned. Words in a language I've never heard.
Then she sees Theron's tiger face looming over her.
And she screams.
The sound is pure terror, high and sharp enough to hurt my ears. She tries to scramble away, but her broken body won't cooperate. She collapses back onto the furs, eyes rolling with panic, making those strange word-sounds over and over.
"Calm down," Theron says gently, but she screams louder.
Caspian moves toward her, and she nearly faints from fear. Silas tries to back away, to give her space, but his serpent body hisses across the stone and she sobs.
She's terrified of us.
And suddenly I understand—she doesn't know what we are. In her world, wherever she came from, creatures like us don't exist. We're her monsters.
"Everyone back," I order. "You're scaring her."
They retreat, but the damage is done. The female stares at me with those impossible honey eyes, her whole body shaking. Her lips move, forming words I can't understand. She's asking something. Begging, maybe.
I slowly shift to my full wolf form, thinking it might be less frightening than my half-form. Wrong choice. Her eyes go even wider. She presses herself against the cave wall like she's trying to disappear into the stone.
Then she does something I don't expect.
She points at herself and makes a sound: "Is-la."
A name. She's telling me her name.
I shift back to half-form and repeat it carefully. "Is-la?"
Her eyes widen. She nods frantically, then points at me with a shaking hand. Waiting.
She wants to know my name.
"Draven," I say slowly.
"Dra...ven," she repeats, her pronunciation strange but close enough.
Behind me, Theron makes a surprised noise. Silas hisses thoughtfully. Even Caspian looks intrigued.
The female—Isla—points at each of them in turn. We give our names. She repeats them, one by one, her voice getting steadier with each word. Like naming us makes us less terrifying.
When she finishes, she looks back at me. Those honey eyes search my face, looking for something. Threat? Safety? Understanding?
Then her gaze drops to my claws. My fangs. My fur.
Her face goes white.
"No," she whispers in her strange language. "No, no, no."
And I realize—she's not just scared of us.
She's figured out that whatever world she came from, she's not there anymore.
She's trapped here. With us. With creatures she thinks are monsters.
Isla opens her mouth, and I brace for another scream.
Instead, she asks one word in a voice that breaks my heart: "Home?"
I don't know that word. But I understand the question in her eyes.
How do I tell her that wherever home is, she can't go back?