Cassandra's POV
Cold.
That's the first thing I feel. Cold so intense it burns my skin like fire.
My eyes snap open and I'm staring at a sky I don't recognize. Purple. The sky is purple with two moons—TWO MOONS—hanging above me like cosmic eyes watching me die.
I try to scream but my throat is raw, like I've already been screaming for hours.
Where am I? What happened? The last thing I remember is Marcus's arms around me, the champagne burning down my throat, Vera's smile—
I sit up fast and immediately regret it.
I'm completely naked.
Not a single piece of clothing. Not even my underwear. Just bare skin covered in dirt and scratches, sitting on frozen ground in a forest that looks like it belongs in a fantasy movie.
"No no no no." My voice comes out as a whimper. I wrap my arms around myself, trying to cover up, trying to stay warm, trying not to completely lose my mind.
The trees around me are massive—bigger than any trees I've ever seen. Their bark is black and twisted, their leaves shimmer silver in the moonlight. Everything smells wrong. The air tastes different. Even the dirt under me feels alien.
This isn't Earth.
That thought should be impossible. Ridiculous. Insane.
But I'm a scientist. I know what Earth looks like. I know what Earth's moon looks like—singular, not plural. I know trees don't grow this big and bark doesn't look like dragon scales.
"Help!" I try to yell, but my voice cracks. "Someone help me!"
The forest answers with silence. Then, slowly, that silence fills with sounds that make my blood freeze.
Howls.
Not dog howls. Not wolf howls from nature documentaries. These are deeper, louder, closer. These sound like they're coming from creatures big enough to swallow me whole.
I scramble to my feet, ignoring the pain of rocks cutting into my bare soles. I need to find shelter. Clothes. Help. Anything.
A branch snaps behind me.
I spin around and see glowing eyes in the darkness. Yellow eyes. Watching me.
"Stay back!" I grab a stick from the ground—it's pathetic, basically a twig, but it's all I have. "I'm warning you!"
The eyes move closer. More eyes appear beside them. Five pairs now. Ten. Fifteen.
Oh God. There's a pack of them.
Low growls rumble through the forest like thunder. I see shapes now—massive bodies prowling between the trees, each one bigger than a car. Their fur is dark, their teeth catch the moonlight when they snarl.
Wolves. Giant wolves. And I'm naked, unarmed, and completely defenseless.
"Please," I whisper, backing up until my spine hits a tree. "Please don't—"
The largest wolf lunges forward with a snarl that shakes my bones.
I close my eyes, waiting for teeth to rip me apart.
Instead, I hear the most terrifying sound I've ever experienced: a roar that makes the earth shake, followed by a yelp of pain from the attacking wolf.
My eyes fly open.
A new wolf has appeared—and this one makes the others look like puppies.
It's enormous. Its fur is pure silver that seems to glow in the moonlight. Its eyes are ice-blue and intelligent in a way that makes my skin crawl because wolves aren't supposed to look intelligent like that. This wolf looks at me the way a person would look at me.
The silver wolf places itself between me and the pack. It doesn't growl. It doesn't need to. Its presence alone makes the other wolves back away, tails between their legs, until they disappear into the forest.
I should run. This is my chance.
But my legs won't work. I'm frozen against the tree, watching this massive predator turn its attention to me.
Those blue eyes study me from head to toe. I feel like an insect under a microscope.
Then the wolf does something impossible.
Its body starts... changing.
The fur recedes. The snout shortens. Bones crack and reform with sounds that make me want to vomit. In less than ten seconds, the giant wolf is gone.
Standing in its place is a man.
A naked man, but I barely notice because I'm too busy trying not to faint.
He's tall—maybe six-foot-four—with silver hair that falls to his shoulders and those same ice-blue eyes that look even more intense in a human face. His body is covered in scars and muscle, built like he could break me in half without trying.
"You..." My voice fails. "You were... you just..."
"Shifted," he says, his voice deep and rough. "I'm a wolf-shifter. And you're a human in a world where humans are prey."
I can't process this. Shape-shifters aren't real. They can't be real.
But I just watched it happen.
"Where am I?" I manage to ask. "What is this place?"
"The Beastworld." He crosses his arms, looking annoyed. "And you're the most pathetic thing I've ever seen. No claws. No fangs. No fur to keep you warm. You won't last a day."
His bluntness snaps me out of my shock. "Excuse me? I don't remember asking for your opinion on my survival chances!"
One silver eyebrow raises. "You just tried to fight off a blood-wolf pack with a stick. Your survival chances are my professional assessment."
"Blood-wolf?"
"The ones that were about to eat you." He looks me up and down with zero shame, making me suddenly very aware of my nakedness. "Why are you here? Humans don't come to Beastworld. We're separated by the barrier."
"I don't know! I was drugged by my psycho fiancé and I woke up here!" My voice rises with hysteria. "I'm supposed to be in New York, not some fantasy nightmare with werewolves and purple skies!"
He studies me for a long moment. Then, surprisingly, he shrugs off the fur cloak he's wearing—wait, when did he get clothes?—and tosses it to me.
"Cover yourself. You're distracting."
I catch the cloak gratefully and wrap it around my body. It's warm and smells like pine and something wild. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. I saved you from the blood-wolves, but there are worse things in this forest. Things that would love to find a helpless human." He turns to leave. "Good luck."
"Wait!" Panic shoots through me. "You're leaving? You can't just leave me here!"
"Why not? You're not my problem."
"I'll die!"
"Probably." He says it so casually, like my death means nothing.
Rage burns through my fear. After everything Marcus and Vera did to me, after being drugged and transported to this nightmare world, I am NOT dying in a forest because some wolf-man doesn't want to be bothered.
"Listen here, you arrogant—"
A sound cuts me off. A beeping sound. Coming from... inside my head?
The wolf-man spins around, alert. "What is that?"
"I don't know!" I press my hands to my temples as the beeping gets louder. "It's in my head!"
Then, like a hologram from a sci-fi movie, glowing words appear in the air in front of me:
[MEDICAL SALVATION SYSTEM ACTIVATED]
[HOST: CASSANDRA VALE - HUMAN FEMALE - AGE 25]
[CURRENT STATUS: EXTREME DANGER]
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 0.003%]
[INITIATING TUTORIAL...]
"What the hell?" I reach out to touch the words but my hand passes through them. "Can you see this?"
The wolf-man stares at the empty space where I'm pointing. "See what?"
"The floating words! The... the system thing!" I sound crazy. I know I sound crazy.
His eyes narrow dangerously. "There's nothing there."
[TUTORIAL BEGINNING]
[CONGRATULATIONS, HOST! YOU'VE BEEN SELECTED FOR THE MEDICAL SALVATION SYSTEM!]
[YOUR MISSION: SURVIVE 30 DAYS IN BEASTWORLD OR FACE TERMINATION]
[TERMINATION = DEATH. JUST SO WE'RE CLEAR.]
"It says I have to survive thirty days or I die," I whisper, reading the words. "This is some kind of game? A test?"
[STARTER PACKAGE UNLOCKED:]
[- BASIC MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE IMPLANT]
[- HERBAL IDENTIFICATION SKILL]
[- ONE (1) EMERGENCY ANTIBIOTIC DOSE]
[- UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION]
[GOOD LUCK, HOST! TRY NOT TO DIE IN THE FIRST FIVE MINUTES!]
Then the words disappear and suddenly my brain feels like it's on fire.
Information floods into my mind—plants, medicines, treatments, surgical procedures I never studied. It's like someone downloaded Wikipedia's entire medical section directly into my skull.
I scream and collapse to my knees, clutching my head.
The wolf-man is beside me instantly. "What's happening to you?"
"Information," I gasp. "So much information. It hurts—"
"You're a magic user." His voice changes, becomes almost reverent. "That's why you're here. The Beastworld called you."
"I'm not magic! I'm a medical researcher!" But even as I say it, I know something fundamental has changed inside me.
When the pain finally fades, I look up at him with new understanding in my eyes. Thanks to the "universal language comprehension," I can now understand his language perfectly, even though he's not speaking English.
"Please," I say quietly. "Don't leave me here to die. I didn't ask for any of this. I just want to survive long enough to figure out how to get home."
Something shifts in his ice-blue eyes. Not quite sympathy, but maybe recognition of shared pain.
"Fine," he growls. "I'll take you to my pack. But if you slow me down or cause trouble, I'm leaving you for the blood-wolves. Understood?"
"Understood."
He starts walking. I struggle to follow on bare, cut-up feet, the fur cloak dragging in the dirt.
"What's your name?" I ask his back.
"Kieran Frost. Alpha of the Frost Pack." He doesn't turn around. "And you better be worth the trouble, human. Because where we're going, they eat weak things like you for breakfast."
A new howl echoes through the forest—closer this time, and hungrier.
Kieran's hand drops to a knife at his belt I hadn't noticed before.
"Run," he says quietly.
"What?"
"RUN!"
Something crashes through the trees behind us—something that makes even Kieran look worried.
I run, my feet screaming in pain, the cloak tangling around my legs, my heart pounding so hard I think it might explode.
Behind us, something roars—not a wolf sound, not anything I can identify.
The last thing I see before Kieran shoves me behind him is a creature that shouldn't exist: twenty feet tall, covered in black scales, with more teeth than any mouth should hold.
And it's looking at me like I'm dinner.
[EMERGENCY QUEST ACTIVATED: SURVIVE THE SHADOW DRAKE]
[REWARD: 200 POINTS]
[FAILURE: DEATH (OBVIOUSLY)]
Perfect. Just perfect.