Chapter 116 UNSTABLE GROUND
SELENE'S POV
The first scream reaches me before the howling does, cutting through the morning like a blade drawn too quickly, sharp enough that my body reacts before my mind catches up. I am already moving by the time Damien turns, already pulling on boots, already feeling the air tighten the way it does before something breaks.
We reach the outer yard at a run. Wolves are pouring in from the eastern patrol route, some half-shifted, some locked in bodies that cannot decide what they are meant to be. One collapses to his knees, bones cracking audibly beneath skin that ripples and then stills. Another staggers into a wall, claws gouging stone as his spine arches, stuck between forms.
“Hold them back,” Damien snaps, his voice carrying command even as his shadows hesitate, curling uncertainly at his feet like animals unsure of a storm. “No one crowd them.”
Fear has weight. I feel it pressing outward, distorting the space between us. Wolves are not meant to fear their own bodies. The moon has always been their rhythm, the certainty beneath instinct but now that rhythm has fractured.
“I can’t—” one of them gasps, voice breaking. “I can’t finish it.”
His wolf surges, then retreats. Surges again. The strain is tearing him apart from the inside.
I step forward.
The ground is cold beneath my bare feet. I do not remember removing my boots.
Moonfire stirs in my chest.
“Selene,” Damien warns, low and urgent.
“I know,” I say, though I am not sure what I know yet.
The patrol wolf nearest me cries out as his shift spasms again, a raw sound that splits the air. I feel his pain like a wrong note struck too hard. Instinct takes over, older than fear, sharper than doubt.
The Moonfire pours out of me in a controlled stream, guided by intent rather than emotion. It slips past the wolf’s body and sinks into the earth beneath us, threading through soil and stone like liquid light.
The effect is immediate.
The wolf’s scream cuts off. His body stills, then shudders once as his form settles cleanly into place, whole and breathing and human again. He collapses forward, unconscious but alive.
Around us, the others falter. The pressure eases. The frantic edge dulls.
It worked.
Relief flashes through me.
A sound like distant thunder rolls up through my feet. The earth trembles, subtle at first, then stronger, the vibration climbing my legs as cracks spiderweb outward from where I stand. Stone fractures. Soil splits. A jagged line tears across the yard, wide enough that one of the wolves stumbles back with a shout.
“Move!” Damien orders, pulling others clear as the ground shifts again.
I stagger, shock punching the breath from my lungs.
The cracks glow faintly silver like something stretched too far and refusing to snap cleanly. The tremor subsides slowly, reluctantly, leaving the yard scarred and uneven.
Silence follows.
I stare at the fissures in the ground, my pulse roaring in my ears. My hands are steady. My breathing is not.
“I didn’t mean—” I start.
Damien is beside me in an instant, one hand hovering at my back without quite touching. His shadows curl protectively around us both, uncertain but present, responding to his will rather than my power.
“You stabilized them,” he says. “They’re alive.”
“And the land?” I whisper.
He looks at the cracks, at the faint glow already fading into dull stone. “Still here,” he says carefully. “But changed.”
The wolves are being helped away now, supported by their packmates, shaken but whole. They look at me with a mixture of gratitude and fear that twists something painful in my gut. I am no longer just a shield.
I sink down onto a low wall, suddenly lightheaded. The Moonfire inside me feels different again, unsettled, restless. It did not resist being redirected. It adapted.
“I didn’t release it,” I say slowly. “I guided it.”
Damien nods. “You didn’t burn the problem away. You displaced it.”
“I scarred the ground,” I say. “What happens when I do that somewhere else? A forest? A river? A city?”
His jaw tightens. “Then we learn where it can go safely.”
“And if there is nowhere safe?”
He does not answer.
The light changes overhead, brightening and dimming in uneven pulses. Wolves freeze mid-step, heads lifting as one. I feel it a second later, a pressure behind my eyes that makes me gasp and clutch at my chest.
The moon begins to flare violently. Silver light slams down from the sky in a blinding surge, washing over the yard with no rhythm, no intent I can sense. It is not a command. It is not guidance.
I cry out as the Moonfire inside me responds reflexively, surging upward, desperate to meet its source. Pain lances through my spine as the two forces collide, not merging, not aligning, but clashing like mismatched currents.
“No,” I choke, forcing the power down, away from the sky, away from the ground, containing it with sheer will. My knees hit the stone hard enough to bruise. Damien is there, gripping my shoulders, anchoring me as the flare peaks and then fractures, breaking apart into erratic shards of light that scatter and fade.
The yard goes still again.
I sag against Damien, breath coming in shallow pulls. My skin prickles with residual heat, my head ringing. Around us, wolves whisper prayers I barely recognize, fear bleeding into reverence and back again.
“That wasn’t you,” Damien says firmly, his voice low against my ear.
“I know,” I whisper.
“She didn’t guide it,” I say. “She reacted.”
Damien stiffens. “The Goddess?”
I nod, dread pooling in my stomach. “She didn’t speak. She didn’t warn. She just… lashed out.”
The Moonfire inside me twists, unsettled, not resisting the thought.
I push myself upright, ignoring the ache in my bones, and look once more at the cracked earth beneath us. The glow is gone now, but the scar remains, a silent record of what I have done.