Chapter 106 106

Chapter 106 106
SELENE’S POV

There is no stillness, not even for a second. The cage Iver built around me doesn’t feel like walls, it feels like pressure. Constant. Shifting. Like something alive that tightens every time I breathe too deeply, every time I think too loudly. And I hear them, not outside, not in the clearing but inside.

Screams faint at first, like echoes buried under water. Then louder. Closer. Layered over each other until I can’t separate one voice from another. Panic. Pain. Calling for something that never answers. It presses in behind my eyes, over and over, until I can’t tell what is memory, what is fear, and what is real anymore.

My chest tightens. “They’re not real,” I whisper, but the words don’t settle. They don’t stick.

The cage hums in response, reacting to the spike in my pulse. To my movement. I start pacing anyway. One step. Two. The pressure shifts with me, tightening, correcting like it’s trying to force me back into stillness. That makes it worse.

“Iver,” I say, low at first. Controlled. “Let me out.”

Nothing answers. Another scream cuts through sharper this time, close enough that my breath stutters. My control slips.

“I said let me out.”

The air shudders. The cage tightens instantly, compressing inward like it’s bracing against impact. Against me. I press my palm against it. It pushes back. It’s so firm and unyielding. For a moment, we hold my power against his restraint. Then the screams rise again, not louder but they feel closer. Something in me fractures.

I exhale sharply through my teeth. “Iver,” I say, quieter now, but it’s not a call. It’s a warning.

Nothing. Then the scream comes again, and this time I move without thinking. The force inside me doesn’t rise cleanly, it surges. Uneven. Emotional. Raw. The cage reacts instantly, tightening, trying to contain it, trying to force me back into stillness.

“No,” I breathe, shaking my head. “No…”

It doesn’t build cleanly. It surges. Raw. Uneven. Dragged straight from whatever part of me is still hearing them. The cage reacts immediately, tightening harder, trying to contain it, to force it back down but I don’t pull back. I push hard.
The pressure spikes violently, the invisible barrier bending not breaking, but straining. Holding shape by force, not strength.

Another scream, and something slips just enough. I feel it. A weakness, a seam. My hand presses forward instantly, power driving into that single unstable point. The cage flickers, cracks. Air rushes in like I’ve been underwater too long, I don’t hesitate. I step through before it can close.

The clearing shifts the second I appear, not movement, not sound but energy. Every wolf feels it at once the abrupt absence of containment. Heads turn. Bodies tense. Instinct ripples outward before thought can catch up. I barely notice them. The screams are still there. Fainter now, but threaded under my skin like they’ve rooted themselves inside me.

Then I feel him, Iver. He turns slowly, already knowing this isn’t something he can control anymore.“Selene…”

“Don’t.” My voice cuts sharper than intended.

The space between us tightens not physical, something deeper. Fragile in a way neither of us names. “You hear that?” I ask suddenly.

His brows pull together. “Hear what?”

That answer lands wrong, worse than wrong. “They’re screaming,” I say, quieter now. “All of them.”

Silence spreads. “There’s nothing here,” he says.

My gaze snaps back to him. “That’s not true.”

The pressure builds again faster this time. Less warning. I feel it forming around me before I even see it, another cage.

“No,” I whisper.

It starts to close but I don’t let it. The force inside me lashes outward, sharper now, more focused. It hits the forming structure before it can lock, shattering it mid-creation. The space flickers violently. Gasps ripple through the clearing and that’s when it shifts, the crowd. Movement at the edge of the clearing, too organized to be panic. Too deliberate to be coincidence.

I turn, they’re there. The rival faction, not scattered, not weakened but gathered. And behind them,
something worse. Cloaked figures marked in symbols I recognize without needing to be told. Goddess cultists. So that’s why the screams won’t stop. They weren’t memories. They were echoes.

Her voice cuts through the silence.“You’ve proven our point.”

She steps forward like she still holds authority here. Like nothing has changed. Like I didn’t just walk out of something meant to hold me.

“You’re unstable,” she continues. “This is exactly why you were sealed…”

That word lands wrong. Something in my chest tightens sharply. Not pain. Not sadness.The screams return for a moment faint, fractured and my control slips just slightly around the edges.I move, not fast or rushed but certain. The space between us folds in on itself with a single step. One moment she’s speaking… Next, I’m in front of her. Close enough that she finally understands that she miscalculated. Her expression shifts, just slightly. Not fear yet.

Her breath catches. “You don’t get to decide that,” I say.

Something flickers in her expression. The power comes clean this time, with intent. The air around her stills completely, unnaturally like reality itself pauses for a single, precise moment. Then it gives, she drops and silence follows.

Her faction breaks first voices rising, uneven, sharp with shock. The cultists don’t move, but I feel the shift in them too. They look scared, rightfully so. I turn slowly, letting them all see me. Proving to them that I’ve earned the right to lead them.

“My decisions are not negotiations,” I say.

No one answers, no one steps forward. Because now they understand. This isn’t instability. This is control. My gaze sweeps over them once, then settles steady, unshaken. The wolves that once followed her shift uneasily now, like they’re realizing too late that allegiance doesn’t protect them from consequence.

“Queens don’t share crowns.”

The words don’t echo, they don’t need to. The silence that follows carries them further than sound ever could.