**Beast World's Beloved Queen**
*Chapter 1: The Bloodied Earth*
**(1,000+ word expanded version)**
The scent of gunpowder and rotting concrete filled Aria's nostrils as she pressed her back against the crumbling skyscraper wall. Her ribs screamed with each shallow breath - three broken, maybe four. The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth where she'd bitten through her lip during the explosion. Somewhere in the ruined streets below, boots crunched through broken glass. They were still hunting her.
*"You were always too soft,"* Lila's voice echoed in her memory, that infuriatingly calm tone she used when explaining why she had to betray someone. *"The new world order doesn't need healers. It needs conquerors."*
Aria's fingers tightened around the serrated combat knife at her belt. The same knife she'd used to suture Lila's wounds after the Pittsburgh ambush. The same knife she'd gifted Lila on her birthday. Now it was the only weapon standing between her and the firing squad her former best friend had sent after her.
A shadow moved at the alley's entrance. Aria didn't breathe. The mercenary's night vision goggles glinted as he swept his rifle across the debris-strewn passage. She could take him - a quick slash to the femoral artery, another to the throat before he could scream. But the other five in his squad would hear the body drop.
The communicator on the merc's belt crackled. "Anything on thermal?" Lila's voice, crisp and commanding.
"Negative, Commander. Sector 7 clear."
"Move to the extraction point. We're blowing the sector in ten."
Aria's blood turned to ice. Lila wasn't just executing her - she was erasing the entire block to cover her tracks. The Forbidden Zone was the only place the demolition charges wouldn't reach. A death sentence either way, but at least she'd choose how she died.
As the mercenary turned, Aria moved like liquid shadow between the skeletal remains of office buildings. Her boots made no sound on the irradiated concrete - a skill learned through three years of surviving in the wasteland's corpse. The perimeter fence came into view, its rusted chain links swaying in the toxic wind. Warning signs hung at drunken angles: 'RADIATION ZONE - NO SURVIVORS BEYOND THIS POINT.'
The first contraction hit as she scaled the fence. Aria gritted her teeth against the white-hot pain radiating from her abdomen. Not now. Not when she was so close. She'd known the pregnancy wouldn't last - not with the radiation sickness already rotting her from inside. But the timing felt like one last cruelty from the universe.
The ground beyond the fence wasn't earth. It was a graveyard of melted asphalt and twisted metal that crunched like broken bones underfoot. Aria's Geiger counter screamed its warning, the radiation levels enough to kill within hours. She shoved it in her pocket to muffle the sound. Death wasn't the concern - what came before it was.
Something shimmered ahead. At first she thought it was a heat mirage, but as she staggered closer, the outline solidified into a stone archway covered in glowing runes. The stories whispered around campfires flooded back - the Gateway, the Last Door, the place where the world ended twice. Aria traced a finger along one glowing symbol. It burned like dry ice against her skin.
Behind her, the countdown reached zero.
The explosion lifted her off her feet. Aria had just enough time to register the fireball consuming the ruins before the archway's runes flared blinding white. The world dissolved into screaming light and a sensation of falling forever.
When consciousness returned, it came with the scent of loam and living greenery. Aria's fingers dug into actual soil - rich, black, and vibrantly alive. She rolled onto her back, gasping as her broken ribs protested. A canopy of impossible blue leaves stretched overhead, filtering sunlight into liquid gold. The air tasted... clean. Not the metallic tang of filtered bunker air, but genuinely pure.
A shadow moved between the trees.
Aria was on her feet in an instant, knife drawn despite the agony screaming through her body. The figure paused at the tree line, head tilting in a distinctly inhuman motion. Then it stepped into the light.
Her first thought was: *Dragon.*
Emerald scales gleamed along a powerfully muscled torso that tapered into a serpent's tail where legs should be. His face was angular and beautiful in a way that made her throat tighten, with high cheekbones and slitted golden eyes that reflected the light like a cat's. When he spoke, his voice was a velvet rasp that raised the hair on her arms.
"Now this is a surprise." His tongue flicked out, forked and shimmering. "A softskin, alive in the deep jungle. And bleeding, too."
Aria adjusted her grip on the knife. "Stay back."
The serpent-man's lips curled, revealing elongated canines. "Or what, little creature? You'll stab me?" He moved closer with hypnotic grace, his tail leaving a smooth trail in the loam. "I could swallow you whole before that pitiful blade touched my scales."
A drop of blood from Aria's wound splashed onto the leaves between them. The creature froze, his pupils dilating into black pools. His nostrils flared as the scent reached him.
"That's... not possible." For the first time, his confidence wavered. "Your blood smells like-"
A thunderous roar shook the trees. Aria barely had time to register the massive striped form crashing through the undergrowth before the tiger pounced.