Maya POV
The cave smelled like death and desperation.
I stood at the entrance as the twin suns rose, staring at what passed for their camp. Calling it pathetic would be generous. A shallow cave barely deep enough to keep out rain. No fire pit. No food storage. No basic sanitation. Just eleven more males sprawled on bare rock, shivering in the pre-dawn cold, their ribs showing through skin like xylophone keys.
Fifteen total. Fifteen dying men who now thought I was their salvation.
"This is a mass casualty situation," I muttered, my ER training kicking in automatically. Triage. Assess. Prioritize. "And I don't even have a band-aid."
"It's not much," Kael said quietly behind me. His shoulder was bandaged with strips torn from someone's clothes—my handiwork from last night. "But it's kept us alive. Barely."
"How long have you been here?"
"Six months for me. Oryn came three months ago. Soren four months back. Thorne just two months ago, more beast than man. The others..." He gestured at the sleeping forms. "They trickle in. Exiles always find their way to the Wastelands eventually. It's where you go when you have nowhere else."
I counted injuries with a practiced eye. Infected wounds. Malnutrition. Frostbite damage on several extremities. One male was coughing wet, rattling breaths—pneumonia, probably. Another had a poorly healed broken leg that made him limp even in sleep.
"Why hasn't anyone tried to organize?" I asked. "Build shelters? Store food?"
"Because we're exiles," Kael said bitterly. "We were cast out for being broken, weak, or disobedient. We came here to die with what little dignity we had left. Survival was just... postponing the inevitable."
"Well, that's the most depressing thing I've heard today, and I woke up with a psychopath planning my future wedding." I rolled up my sleeves. "Let's start with medical triage. Wake them up. I need to examine everyone."
It took an hour to assess them all. Each examination revealed another tragedy, another reason they'd been thrown away like garbage.
There was Rafe, a lean coyote-shifter with burn scars covering half his face. "My alpha's son did this when we were cubs," he said quietly. "Because I beat him in a hunt. They exiled me for being 'too ugly to represent the tribe.'"
Marcus, a young deer-shifter who couldn't have been older than eighteen. "I refused to fight in the territory wars. I don't believe in killing." His brown eyes were haunted. "My father called me a coward and drove me out."
Finn, a massive elk-shifter with a shattered horn. "I challenged my alpha when he ordered us to abandon the old and sick during a harsh winter. Lost the fight. Lost my place."
Each story was worse than the last. Each one made my blood boil hotter.
By the time I finished, Thorne had woken and was watching me with those unsettling golden eyes. His broken ribs were wrapped, but I could see the pain in how carefully he breathed.
"Tell me your stories," I said, sitting down among them. "I need to understand. Kael, you first."
The wolf-shifter's jaw tightened. "My tribe was at war with a rival clan. I was general, leading raids. One night, my alpha ordered me to burn a village—women, children, everyone. Said we needed to send a message." His ice-blue eyes went distant. "I refused. Tried to stop it. My own warriors turned on me, said I was weak. Gave me these—" He touched the scars on his face. "And threw me out for treason."
"You saved innocent lives," I said firmly. "That's not weakness. That's courage."
He looked at me like I'd spoken a foreign language.
"Oryn?"
The blind panther-shifter smiled sadly. "I was my tribe's healer. Best plant-knowledge they had. During a famine, I found a grove of mushrooms I thought were safe. Fed them to the sick and elderly first." His cloudy eyes glistened. "They were poison. Ten people died before I realized. The guilt made me careless on a hunt—a tree branch took my sight. My tribe said the Earth Mother cursed me for my failure. Cast me out."
"It was an accident," I said gently. "You were trying to help."
"Doesn't matter. Dead is dead."
"Soren?"
The fox-shifter's sharp smile was bitter. "I'm a fox in a world that values strength. We're seen as weak, sneaky, untrustworthy. I survived by being clever—trading, making deals, occasionally stealing when I had to. Got caught taking food during winter. The alpha said it was theft. I said it was survival. He disagreed." Soren shrugged. "So here I am, still stealing. Now I just steal hope instead of bread."
"Thorne?"
The tiger-shifter's voice was barely a growl. "Born weak. Runt. Parents left me to die. Beasts raised me. Forgot how to be... person." He struggled with words. "Tribe found me. Said I was cursed. Drove me away."
My throat felt tight. "They abandoned a child."
"They abandon lots of things," Rafe said quietly. "Anyone different. Anyone who doesn't fit. The Beastlands don't forgive weakness."
I looked at these fifteen broken males—each one cast out for being too kind, too different, too human. Society's discards, left to rot in a wasteland.
Something fierce and protective woke up in my chest. The same thing that made me become a doctor. The same thing that made me run into a collapsing building for a screaming child.
"Listen to me," I said, my voice cutting through their despair. "I'm only going to say this once. You are not weak. You are not cursed. You are not mistakes. You were thrown away by people too stupid to see your value. But I see it. And we're going to prove them all wrong."
"How?" Marcus asked, his young voice cracking with desperate hope.
"We're going to build something they can't ignore. A settlement that thrives. A home that's stronger than any tribe because it's built on choice, not force. On cooperation, not domination." I stood up. "But first, we need to survive six weeks. So here's the plan—"
A shadow fell across the cave entrance.
Everyone froze.
Brutus stood there, his eyes still red and swollen from last night's plant sap but functional. And he wasn't alone. Behind him stood five more Stone Tribe warriors, all in human form, all armed with crude stone weapons.
"Mother sent me with a message," Brutus said, his voice cold with hatred. "She's changed the terms of your little deal."
My heart sank. "What terms?"
"You don't get six weeks alone anymore. I'm moving in." His smile was poison. "Right here, in your pathetic little camp. Watching you work. Watching you fail. Watching you try to sleep knowing I'm ten feet away, counting the days until you're mine." He stepped into the cave. "And my warriors will be posted at every exit. No one leaves. No one enters. You want to build your miracle? You'll do it in a prison."
The males around me tensed, ready to fight. But Brutus's warriors raised their weapons.
"Try anything," Brutus said, "and Mother's deal is void. The female comes with us now, and you all die. Your choice."
Kael's hand found mine, squeezing once. A question. Permission to fight.
I squeezed back. No.
"Fine," I said, my voice steady despite my hammering heart. "You can watch. But you follow my rules in my camp. You don't touch my people. You don't interfere with our work. You're a guest, Brutus. Act like one."
He laughed. "Your camp? Your people? You really think you're in charge here, little female?"
I met his dead eyes without flinching. "I think you're terrified I might actually succeed. Because if I turn this wasteland into paradise, your mother loses her leverage. And you lose your bride."
His hand shot out, grabbing my jaw so fast I couldn't dodge. His grip was bruising, painful.
"Six weeks," he breathed into my face. "And if you survive that long without me breaking you first, it'll be a miracle."
He shoved me backward into Kael's arms and claimed the warmest corner of the cave for himself.
And I realized with sinking certainty: the real battle wasn't against time or winter or impossible farming.
It was against the monster now living in my home.