Chapter 5 The things we carry

The first days of Selene's rule were not marked by declarations or ceremony. They were marked by silence, the heavy, thoughtful kind that comes after a storm has passed, but before the debris is cleared.

Selene walked through the fortress barefoot that morning, Mira still asleep in her chamber, her cloak draped over her arm. The floor felt colder now, though she wasn't sure if it was the season or the weight of responsibility that made the stones bite.

The wolves bowed as she passed, not out of fear or ritual, but in a way that felt older. Like something written in the marrow of their bones had changed.

She did not feel like an Alpha.

She felt like a woman pretending not to be afraid.

Kade met her on the eastern wall at dawn.

He looked different. Unarmored. Unshaven. His usual silence wasn't cold, just... slow. Like a man relearning his place in the world.

"We have not spoken since the Rite," he said.

Selene kept her eyes on the horizon. "We spoke. Just not with words."

He gave a small huff. Almost a laugh. "You always were better at making silence say something."

"What do you want to say, Kade?"

He paused. Then: "I do not know who I am without grief."

Selene turned to him. Her eyes did not glow. But they carried something deeper now.

"Then start with what you are with hope."

He looked away. "That terrifies me more."

"Good," she said. "Then we can be terrified together."

Selene began with small things.

She asked the kitchen to stop separating the servants' meals from the warriors'.

She walked the training yards herself, barefoot, speaking to the recruits by name.

She opened the western library, sealed since Elira's death.

And she asked Mira to teach the wolves how to read.

Mira flourished under the sunlight.

No longer the broken vessel, she became light on her feet and quicker with her tongue. She called Kade "Uncle Shadow" and teased Mael into smiling. She braided Selene's hair at dusk and sang lullabies in languages no one had taught her.

One night, Selene found her sketching in the moonlight. Strange symbols. Spirals and shapes that pulsed with energy.

"What are they?" Selene asked.

"I do not know," Mira replied. "They just want to be drawn."

Selene did not press.

The moon had its language. And Mira was now one of its scribes.

Trouble, however, always arrives quietly at first.

It began with the howling.

Not from the pack.

From the mountains.

Low. Trembling. Wrong.

Ryla reported shadows moving faster than wolves through the frostline. One scout returned with burn marks that pulsed like open mouths.

And then came the message.

Burned into the side of the eastern watchtower.

Return the vessel. Or watch your moon bleed.

Kade wanted to fight.

Selene wanted to understand.

"They do not want Mira," she said, seated at the council table. "They want what Mira represents."

Mael nodded. "She is no longer just a child. She is a convergence. Of old blood and new light."

"Then hiding her won't work," Kade muttered.

"No," Selene said. "So we let her choose."

The room fell silent.

When Mira was called, she stood tall. Taller than a ten-year-old should.

"If I go with them," she asked, "will it stop?"

"No," Selene said softly. "But it might change the rules."

Mira tilted her head.

"Then I want to see who is playing."

The journey to the Frostline took three days.

Selene rode at the front, Kade beside her, Mira bundled in furs between them. Ryla led the outer flank. Ten wolves, ten warriors. Just enough to mean peace, or power.

At the edge of the pass, they were met.

Not by a battalion.

By one man.

He wore robes the colour of dried blood. His hair was long, black, and streaked with silver. His eyes were the colour of dying embers.

He smiled.

"Moonborn," he said. "We have waited long."

Selene dismounted slowly.

"You threatened a child."

"I called to a storm." He turned to Mira. "And she answered."

Mira stepped forward, chin high.

"You have no name," she said. "Only hunger."

The man's smile faltered.

Selene spoke. "Who are you?"

He bowed, mockingly.

"I am Vaelen. Once Alpha. Now Flame."

Kade's eyes darkened.

"You burned your pack."

Vaelen laughed. "I freed them."

He turned to Selene.

"We are the same, you and I. We break the order. We reshape it."

"You killed your own."

"To become more."

Selene stepped closer.

"Then show me."

And the battle began.

It wasn't a clash of swords or claws.

It was energy.

Fire against light.

Vaelen conjured blades of flame. Selene countered with threads of moonlight that danced from her fingers like silk turned silver. Kade held the line as wolves surged against Vaelen's summoned beasts, creatures made of ash and bone.

Mira stood at the centre of the storm, unshaken.

And then she sang.

The same lullaby she had sketched in silence.

The ground split.

And from the crack rose something not seen in a hundred years:

The Moonshade Tree.

Dead in legend.

Alive in Mira's voice.

Vaelen screamed. "You do not know what you awaken!"

Selene answered, her voice steady.

"Then teach me."

She wrapped the light around her arm, stepped forward, and drove it into the ground.

The mountain trembled.

Vaelen vanished in a column of flame.

The snow fell again.

And Mira fainted.

They carried her back in silence.

At the fortress, she slept for two days.

When she woke, she whispered only one thing:

"The Flame is not the end. It's the beginning of something darker."

Selene sat beside her and held her hand.

"Then we learn. We prepare. We rise."

She looked out the window, where the moon had begun to wane.

And she whispered to herself:

We carry what they could not. And we walk forward anyway.