Elara's pov

We were given ten minutes. Ten minutes to gather whatever scraps of life we owned and board the bus that would take us to hell.

I didn’t have much. No human did. A torn bag I’d sewn from scraps. A broken hairpin I’d found behind the kitchens that I liked to imagine once belonged to someone important. And a single photograph, wrinkled and sun-bleached it was someone else’s family, smiling in a world long gone. I didn't know them, but their happiness made me believe in stories. In a past where humans mattered.

The courtyard was crowded with hushed sobs and frantic movements. Twenty of us had been named. Twenty tributes. Some were already crying. Others stared blankly ahead, like their souls had left already. No goodbyes. Just commands. March. Obey. Die quietly.

Then I saw it the bus.

It was old, rusted, the once-yellow paint faded into a sickly grey. The wheels looked like they hadn’t turned in decades. But it still ran. Barely. The engine coughed to life with a spluttering wheeze as a guard slammed the hood shut. A mockery of the past, rolling toward our future.

Buses used to mean something else.

I remembered stories whispered between stolen seconds of peace. Back then, humans had buses for children. For school. For learning. Bright yellow like sunshine. Windows clean, seats soft. They were filled with laughter and sleepy mornings and dreams that stretched far beyond the city gates. Now this metal coffin was our ride to the graveyard.

A sharp bark from a guard snapped me from the memory. “Move!”

We lined up. One by one, stepping forward with our meager possessions. Von was ahead of me, shoulders tense, lips pressed tight. He glanced back just once, as if memorizing everything he might never see again.

That’s when the commotion started.

A woman near the end of the line broke formation. “No—please, no!” she screamed, clutching a small boy to her chest. “He’s only thirteen, you bastards! You said eighteen and above!”

The guards didn’t blink.

One stepped forward, grabbed the boy by the collar, and yanked him away. His mother fought, nails tearing skin, kicking, sobbing. “Take me instead! Take me!”

A gunshot split the air.

She dropped.

The boy didn’t even cry. Just froze, eyes wide, blood on his cheek. The guards shoved him toward the bus. Another man tried to run. He didn’t make it two steps before a wolf shifted mid-air and crushed his skull against the stone. Bones cracked. Silence followed.

The guards turned to us again, unbothered. “Anyone else?”

No one answered.

We boarded.

The interior reeked of rust, oil, and dread. The seats were stiff, lined with old fabric that scratched through the skin. I took the window seat near the back, Von beside me. He didn’t speak. Neither did I.

The bus jerked forward.

And the gates opened.

The Alpha of Moonhowl compound disappeared behind us like a bad dream. But what lay ahead was worse. The road twisted through the edge of the forest of Lunaris where trees were bent like they were listening, and shadows moved in ways they shouldn't.

No one talked. Not even the guards seated at the front. Just the groan of the engine and the occasional cough of exhaust smoke trailing behind.

“Do you think they’ll kill us the moment we cross the border?” Von asked suddenly, voice too low for anyone else to hear.

I stared out the window. “No.”

He looked at me, surprised.

“They’ll make a show of it first,” I said. “Break us slowly. It’s tradition.”

He went quiet again.

Time flew by quickly. The sky darkened. Rain started, a slow drizzle that painted the glass in trails of murky silver. The road became rougher. Less traveled. The trees grew thicker. Every so often, I saw movement between the trees eyes, too high off the ground to be human. Watching. Waiting.

Von eventually dozed off, his head resting against the window. Others weren’t so lucky. One girl kept whispering prayers. Another boy, maybe sixteen, picked at his nails until they bled. Nobody stopped him.

Hours passed. Maybe days. Hunger gnawed at my insides, but I ignored it. What was hunger when death sat ahead?

Then the bus slowed.

We weren’t alone anymore.

Figures lined the road, cloaked in black and silver. Lupiran guards. Taller than ours. Still. Unblinking. They held no weapons just stood like statues, as if the air itself held it's breath around them.

The front guard knocked twice on the side of the bus.

“Border’s up ahead,” he said, mostly to himself. “Brace.”

My pulse quickened.

The bus rounded the final bend and there it was.

The border.

It didn’t look like much at first. Just a stone archway, ancient and weathered, surrounded by blackened trees. But power radiated from it. Raw. Alive. Symbols glowed faintly along the stone wards, probably, to keep us in. Or to keep something else out.

A massive figure stood beneath the arch. Cloaked in armor darker than night, silver eyes piercing straight through the metal bars of the bus.

A wolf. No, something more.

Highborn.

Beside him stood a woman with skin like marble and hair the color of frost. Her eyes were the same color as dried blood.

Von stirred beside me, muttering, “That’s not just a border.”

I didn’t answer.

Because I was too busy staring.

Lupira.

The bus rolled through the gates, and the world changed.

Smoke curled from tall chimneys. Streets twisted like veins, narrow and dark. Old brick buildings pressed close together, some leaning like they might collapse but never did. Lamps flickered with real fire, casting shadows that moved too much.

It looked ancient—industrial and heavy, all iron and stone. Pipes hissed steam into the air. Gears spun on towers. Trains shrieked in the distance, spitting smoke as they passed.

Yet it was strangely beautiful.

The kind of beauty that made your stomach turn. Like a knife with a jeweled handle.

Statues of wolves stood on every corner watching, waiting. Red banners hung overhead, marked with silver crests I didn’t recognize.

Not in the way the human cities used to be, all glass and metal.

The city breathed power.

And we were about to be swallowed whole.

The bus stopped.

The engine wheezed and died.

One by one, names were called again. Not to be counted. To be claimed.

I was number sixteen.

When my name was shouted, I rose. Legs numb. Stomach hollow. I stepped off the bus and onto ground that felt colder than the grave.