The realization hit her like a physical blow. These weren’t mindless beasts. They weren’t animals acting on instinct. They were organized. Equipped.Advanced.
Which meant this was planned. All of it.
Another flash, closer now. The amber-eyed creature vanished, taking one of the survivors with it. The blue light left spots dancing across Elsa’s vision.
Where are they going? Where are they taking us?
The pack thinned. Eight became six. Six became four. The forest around them grew darker, the trees pressing closer, the snow falling harder. Each flash of blue took another monster, another captive, until only three remained—her captor and two others flanking them.
A howl broke through the storm, different from the others. Higher. More musical. It reminded Elsa of something—a sound she’d heard in old documentaries about Earth’s wilderness. Wolves calling to the moon.
But this wasn’t Earth. And that wasn’t a normal moon hanging in that alien sky.
Her captor’s chest expanded with a deep breath. The creature’s head tilted back, and for a moment, she caught aglimpse of its profile—elongated muzzle, pointed ears laid flat against the wind, teeth that caught the faint light.
Wolf.The word surfaced through her confusion.They look like wolves. Standing upright. Evolved. Wrong.
The creature looked down at her.
Cyan blue eyes met hers—bright and piercing and far too intelligent. There was nothing animal in that gaze. Nothing mindless. Whatever this thing was, it knew exactly what it was doing. It studied her the way she might study a particularly interesting star chart.
Cold assessment. Calculation.
Then its lips pulled back from its teeth in something that might have been a smile.
“Sleep,” it said.
The word hit her like a command. Deep. Resonant. Impossible to ignore. It shouldn’t have worked—she should have fought it, should have screamed, should have donesomething—but the sound seemed to bypass her brain entirely, sinking straight into her bones.
No. No, I need to stay awake. I need to—
A tingling sensation rushed over her, starting at her extremities and rolling inward. It soothed the chill that had enveloped her, eased the pain in her ribs, softened the sharp edges of her terror.
Blue light flared.
The forest vanished.
The cold vanished.
Everythingvanished—replaced by a warmth that felt wrong, artificial, like being wrapped in something that wasn’t meant for human skin.
Elsa’s last coherent thought, before the darkness swallowed her whole, was a question.
Where are they taking me?
But there was no one left to answer. Only the dark. Only the artificial warmth. Only the fading echo of that single word, still reverberating through her consciousness like a funeral bell.
Sleep.
She surfaced once,briefly.
Flashes of light and shadow. Voices that weren’t quite voices—growls and barks layered with sounds her brain struggled to categorize. Movement. Being carried again, but differently now. Horizontal instead of slung over a shoulder. Something firm beneath her back.
Cold air on her face, then warmth. The smell of stone and metal and something else—something organic, like wet fur and ozone.
A shape loomed above her. Dark against darker. Eyes that glowed.
Words she couldn’t understand. Sounds that might have been her name, filtered through a language that scraped against her ears like gravel.