The wolf's still silence only worsened Angel's fear. The only sound filling the room was the tap of his claw, steady and purposeful. The scraping screech it made on the stone sounded uncomfortably like bones grating together.

It was Jaser who spoke first, his eyes bright red, sparkling with excitement. "Nice to finally meet you all," he proclaimed, surveying the room. "The mighty Wylfrost - I must say, you've been very evasive. We've wanted to talk for ages." He grinned. "It's rather rude to spy on us like that, you know, and not hang around for a chat."

Turning, he looked towards Angel's corner of the room. His gaze fixed onto hers. "And for the Twilytra... well, you've been staying here a little while. I trust you're having a pleasant stay?"

The edge in his voice made Angel's skin crawl.

Thea snickered. "I still think you could have found somewhere better." She was crouched on the floor, but now she straightened, clearly hiding a wince at the strain.

This time, Jaser didn't rise to her mockery, though he did shoot an angry glare her way. "Too bad you'll have to stay here for the rest of your short lives," he replied, tone casual, though the underlying growl wasn't difficult to hear. His glare turned from Angel and Thea to Fiammetta, eyes reflecting her fire in shining crimson. "Doubt our spies now, Flamewylf?"

"It wasn't spies that brought us here," Fiammetta said, voice tight.

"Perhaps not, but it was expertise far greater than yours." He was fully smiling now, basking in his clear victory. "No wolf can save you here."

His snout was still open, ready with more words to fire, but a voice silenced him.

"That's enough, Jaser."

The voice perfectly suited its speaker. Finally, the grey-eyed wolf ceased his tapping, and just like that any control Jaser had held vanished. It was the wolf in the centre who truly held that control. He paused, letting every wolf feel his cold presence.

If Miyuki's words had been ice, his were a frosty river - flowing slowly but deliberately, winding around every bend with careful ease. No joy, no warmth, nothing. Just the empty chills even his voice left behind. His eyes were the same - a flat grey, devoid of emotion, perfect mirrors to reflect the rock wall beside him.

Before he'd even spoken another word, Angel's throat was closing up. Tremors gripped her forepaws.

"Apologies for the wait," the Shadewylf began eventually, taking a purposeful step forward so that Jaser and Harisah fell into his shadow. "My senior soldiers and I were discussing... certain matters." The flick of his gaze to follow the final word made Angel shiver.

"What matters?" Katana snapped back, clearly less frozen by the wolf. She pushed to her paws, ears folded forward in challenge. The healing magic had at least restored her fiery courage, even if her step still wavered.

Cold eyes settled on her. Without meaning to, Angel flinched sideways, dodging away from Katana and the chilling promise those eyes whispered.

"Nothing that concerns you, Earthwylf," he told her. "Our plans for you were already decided." Another pause, yet just as effectful as every one before it, letting the ominous edge in his flowing tone wrap around each heart. "No, matters that concern your Shadewylf friend."

Angel stopped breathing. The air was snatched from her lungs. She stared at the Shadewylf in horror, guilt and fear and failure all sizzling bright and stinging inside her.

How could she forget about Toivo? Of course he was nowhere to be seen, she saw that now. When they'd knocked him out, they'd taken him somewhere else. He wasn't like the rest of them. Perhaps they would try to twist his mind... or maybe he was nothing but a traitor to them. Maybe he was already dead.

After all their work, all their grasps for the meaning of Dawn's visions and their fight to keep Toivo safe, here she was letting him slip through her claws and into the claws of their enemy.

Another voice, one ironically much warmer than the Shadewylf's, speared her racing thoughts and gave her hope to grasp on to. "That pup's a fighter," Konrad proclaimed, from the opposite corner, now fully stood to show that he did in fact carry himself higher than all three Shadewylves. "You can't take him that easy."

"But we did," Jaser chipped in, his tail swishing. One glance from his leader silenced him before he could say any more.

"Moving on," the leading Shadewylf continued, "to matters that do concern your own fates. Now, usually for wolves in your situation, our prefered option would be execution. But," he added, before the stated fact had fully circulated through Angel's brain, its true meaning barely deciphered, "this time, since we have such important guests, we have chosen to be merciful."

Something about the way his voice hung on the last word felt even more terrifying than the mention of execution had. Angel was sure that the Shadewylf definition of mercy was far different to that of the Twilytra.

"We don't want your mercy," Katana hissed, that similar feel reaching her pointed ears and provoking more of her endless anger. Her hind legs were tensing, her shoulders bunched up and tail sliding in a horizontal fashion. 

Though Jaser moved in to a similar position in response, the grey-eyed Shadewylf didn't even acknowledge her threat. If anything, his snout curved in a faint smile.

"We are offering you a choice, all of you," he continued, after cooling Katana's fury with his piercing gaze. Even a wolf like her couldn't fail to stumble under the view of that stare. He let it linger for a few moments before pulling it away to rest on the Icewylves, his jaw parting just as his eyes clicked on to Konrad's glaring form.

Before he could speak, however, another voice replaced his.

"Oh hey, Uncle Monty! I was wondering where you'd got to!"

The sound made Angel flinch, her paws nearly leaving the ground as her body jerked. Not one bit of her was prepared for the chaos of Lucifer's voice. It contrasted with the grey-eyed wolf perfectly - where his lay flat, flowing ever on at the same icy level, Lucifer's leaped and twirled, more like a bubbling stream than anything slow or deliberate. His tongue raced at bemusing speeds. Even when he fell silent, Angel still couldn't keep up with his twitches and twirls as he slipped out of the shadows behind the other three Shadewylves.

With a spinning bound, he landed beside Jaser, looking positively excited.

Shaking herself, Angel tried to yank her attention from Lucifer and instead latched on to his entry's words. Uncle Monty. So this was the General Montasir both he and Jaser had mentioned. As she thought back to those comments made about him, the name made immediate sense.

Angel's eyes slid to land on Montasir just as he turned towards Lucifer. For the first time in his entire talk with them, a flicker of emotion crossed his stone-like eyes - though it was so small that Angel couldn't quite make out what exactly it was.

Again, Lucifer cut across him before he could speak. "This an execution, Monty? Great, I love those. Especially when they're so colourful." His eyes were darting around the room, recording every face in a heartbeat. They passed Fiammetta, reflecting her fire in a burst of orange that brightened the natural amber of his eyes, before flicking on to Angel. His snout parted in a broad smile. "Hey, Angelina! Have fun dying!"

"That's quite enough, Lucifer." Montasir's voice was a frozen dagger, cutting through the energy Lucifer brought in an instant. If any emotion had existed before, it had vanished now, gone with the clammy air of the cave. "Go back to your training."

"I'll only sneak back in and tickle your tail," Lucifer replied, voice perfectly even, but eyes clearly glimmering with the joke. Nobody laughed. He didn't seem to care. "Besides, executions are like parties. You can't not invite me. I'm the life and soul."

Jaser looked like he was waiting for permission to rip Lucifer's throat out. Montasir just released a quiet sigh. "This isn't an execution. As I was about to explain before you barged in..." Again, that flicker of emotion emerged and vanished. "... We are being merciful. To each of you, we offer a choice."

Lucifer looked ready to add something else, but Jaser's tail smacked him in the snout before he could speak. With a smirk, the smaller wolf dove sideways and vanished, his fur deepening to a black that made him seemingly invisible. The shadow had swallowed him whole. Before Angel could even begin to consider how it was possible, Montasir's following words spiked her attention.

"One option is to follow our usual route and choose death." The spark in his eyes was unmistakable - a different emotion to the one that flashed when he looked at Lucifer, but far sharper. A spark of feeling he wanted them to know.

"And the other?" Katana asked, shifting her claws, to fill his elongated pause. Montasir let his tail swish gently, the faint smile tugging again, as if he enjoyed their tense impatience.

"The other," he said, dragging the words even longer than usual, "is--"

A yelp interrupted him.

Jaser sprung upwards, whirling around, pulling his tail close to the insides of his legs. Claws faded back into the light, having released the tail from a sharp yank. The rest of Lucifer followed, his eyes flashing bright as chuckles shook him wildly.

He was the only one laughing.

In an instant, Montasir was bearing down on him, cold gaze fixed sternly on the smaller wolf. The constant glower had intensified. "Go to your training."

"Right, right," he said with a dramatic sigh, turning his gaze to the ceiling in what Angel could have sworn was an eye roll. "I'm going. Kill-joy." Added mutters of, "Life and soul," accompanied him as he scampered out of the room and vanished into the dark outside.

Something in Angel wanted to laugh with him. But the cave's thick chill seemed to clog the laughter, crumpling it in her throat. Instead, as she watched Lucifer leave, she felt only a solemn pity for him.

He would have fitted in just fine with the Peltless she'd seen playing together on the streets.

Jaser shook his head, tail still tucked between his legs as he shuffled uncomfortably to rest at his previous position. Embarrassed anger flowed blood-red in his eyes. On the other side, Harisah was staring fiercly at a blank wall, hiding her face so that her expression was difficult to make out.

But Montasir only needed to let the dust settle. After a few moments, the cold of his tone returned, and it was hard to recall that there had ever been laughter present in this place.

"Now, your choice." Inching forwards, he let his gaze sweep them all once more, and Angel felt something even deeper than brushing chill sink into her heart. It was as if he had cast a clawing spell with even his eyes. Folding her ears, she took a shaky breath, bending her head downwards in an attempt to hide the fear she knew was clear in her eyes.

Her eyes fell on her paws. A faint orange swathe stretched up one leg, whilst the other was darkening steadily. It was dusk. Pulling her wings tight against her sides, she snatched another deep breath, fighting away her longing to watch the last glimpse of today's sunset for real.

"You are all such talented wolves," came Montasir's voice, washing over her like a crashing wave in the depths of winter. She kept her snout pointed downwards. "It would be a shame to condemn you to death so quickly. So," he said with a glint of delight, yet again forcing his words to linger, "if you wish to join the Shadewylf ranks, please make it known."

Angel's head snapped up. She wasn't the only one. With wide eyes, she exchanged glances with a dozen wolves, all of them surveying their comrades in a similar panic.

"It's quite simple, really," Montasir said. "Join us, or die. None of you really want to die, now, do you?"

No. Of course Angel didn't want to die. Her whole life had been about survival - hunting enough prey, not getting caught, avoiding the Wylfire at all costs, even before she'd joined the Twilytra. That survival provided a steady rhythm. She knew, at least most of the time, what to expect of life.

But death was an unknown. A strange darkness, deeper than that of Shadow's dark, which promised only of loneliness. As much as Angel enjoyed the comfort of being alone from time to time, being lonely was an entirely different scenario.

Being sent to the stars was an unreachable dream. There was a chance Fiammetta or Katana might, but Angel didn't expect she'd done nearly enough to deserve that heavenly treatment. She'd lose herself as she was now forever. That meant losing her friends, her wings - everything she'd come to hold dear.

She looked at each of the wolves beside her, her friends. Fiammetta, Katana and Thea. They all shared each other's gaze, and in that moment, Angel knew what her choice was.

Maybe death was bad. But survival at the expense of others - the sort of survival Shadewylves lived by - was much, much worse.

It was Katana's unspoken task to voice just that. Muscles taut, tail high, fangs bared and hissing, she delivered the Twilytra's definite desicion. "We'd rather die as ourselves than live to become monsters."

Montasir didn't even twitch.

From the other corner, Konrad stood in the midst of his Wylfrost, his military power rippling in his forepaws. "Well spoken." As he raised his head, ears almost brushing the stone room's ceiling, his words were punctuated by the frost that mingled with the air as he exhaled. "Death holds hope of light. Your path is filled with darkness, General Montasir."

Montasir's smile widened. His eyes sparkled with pale silver.

"Are you sure?" he asked, tilting his head a little to the side. "Last chance to accept our mercy."

This time, it was Fiammetta that stepped forward, the flames licking the back of her neck intensifying along with her stare. Their crackling was the only sound audible. "We're sure."

From Konrad's side, Miyuki gave a firm nod. Her fellow Icewylves mirrored the gesture.

In the moment of silence that followed, Angel could have sworn that the air turned colder. Whether it was Pelt-made ice or simply her own fear, she could never be sure.

When Montasir finally spoke, his voice seemed to have done the same, the frosty river becoming a glacier. Yet pure glee shone in his eyes, brightening the grey within. "Alright then. Don't say I never gave you a chance."

Behind him, the flash of pink from earlier reappeared. She lingered for even less time than before, but her presence had a similar effect.

Where the wall had parted to reveal darkness beyond, it now slammed shut, opposite to the enchanted tool's silence, the sound instead heightened to create a thundering crash. The whole room shook, and Angel shivered with it.

Trapped had taken a whole new meaning.

Panic pounding in her chest, she stood bolt upright, gaze darting between her three friends. Thea looked just as terrified as Angel felt. Fiammetta's snout was compressed, eyes hardened in grim determination as her fire flowed from her neck to blend with the fur on her paws. Katana was crouched, ready to pounce, a crack appearing by her forepaw as she gave the rock another tremor of her own.

They'd failed to save Toivo. It was up to him now to fulfil his destiny. And now, all of them were going to die.

Flaring her wings, Angel moved to stand beside Katana. Her claws tingled as she let her energy slide to them, ready to sink them into any who dared to hurt the wolves beside her.

They were going to die. But at least they had the chance to die fighting.