Chapter 124 124

Chapter 124 124
SELENE’S POV

I stay in the forest longer than I should. Even after it’s over, after Vayer falls and doesn’t rise again…

The world feels delayed, like it hasn’t caught up to what I’ve done. The air holds, heavy and unmoving, and my breath doesn’t come right.

The power I used is still inside me, quieter now but not gone. It’s settled into something controlled, something that knows it crossed a line I can’t undo.

The clearing stays silent. The wolves keep their distance lowered, watching me like I’ve become something unfamiliar. I don’t react to it.What settles in me isn’t relief or regret, but something colder. I made my choice. Everything that follows belongs to it.

The bond shifts, as an elder steps forward carefully and tells me it’s done. I nod, because there’s nothing else to call it.

When I leave, the forest seems to loosen its grip. The wolves part without being told, bowing their heads as I pass. I feel their submission, their fear, their respect, but I don’t acknowledge it.

Each step back toward the pack feels heavier, like the ground itself recognizes the difference in me.

The bond pulls again, softer this time. A reminder. He’s still there. I don’t let myself feel more than that.

By the time the pack house comes into view, the silence has already spread. They know something has changed, even if they don’t understand how. They gather at a distance, hesitant, watching.

I walk past them without stopping. The doors open before I reach them.

Inside, no one meets my eyes. Not out of disrespect but something else. The shift happens the moment I step in. One wolf bows. Then all of them.

The movement spreads through the hall until everyone is lowered in complete submission. The sound echoes against the stone, sharp and final.

It should feel like victory. It doesn’t. It feels like a line I can’t step back across. I keep walking, controlled, measured, while the bond pulses unevenly, like something on the other end is pushing against it. Then the air changes, cold, familiar, wrong.

The shadows along the wall stretch, not with the light, but against it. I turn. At first, there’s nothing. Just darkness pooled too thickly in the corner. Then it moves, peeling away from the wall. The wolves closest to it go still, their instincts sharpening.

The shadows separate and he steps out. Everything in me locks. The bond snaps tight, stealing the air from my lungs, and reconnecting with force. My breath falters as I take him in. Iver stands there, alive. But not unchanged.

There’s no visible damage, nothing obvious, but something about him is heavier, sharper, like whatever he went through didn’t leave him the same. It reshaped him. His gaze lifts and finds mine instantly.

The hall goes completely still. No one moves or speaks. Even the air feels like it’s waiting.And all I can feel is the bond, fragile, altered, but still there, pulling tight between us.

“You’re alive,” I say.

The words come out steady. But quieter than they should be. His head tilts slightly, like he’s considering the weight of that before answering.

“Wasn’t that the plan?,” he says.

I fought so much for this that now that he’s here, I don’t know how to act. The bond tightens again, uneven, pulling at something in my chest that hasn’t settled since the forest.

“This doesn’t make it stable.” My voice is quieter now.

I feel one of the twins shift against my side, small fingers curling instinctively into the fabric of my clothes, grounding without understanding why.

The other lets out a soft, restless sound, unsettled by the tension still hanging in the air.
Iver’s gaze flickers briefly toward them.

Something in his expression changes.
“No,” he says.

And when his eyes come back to mine, there’s nothing uncertain in them anymore. “It doesn’t.”

He steps closer again. Close enough now that the space between us isn’t distance.

“And it probably never will be,” he adds, quieter.

My breath catches slightly, but I don’t step back. “Then what was the point?” I ask.

It’s the question that stayed when everything else broke. For a moment, he just looks at me. Really looks. Like he’s not measuring distance this time, but everything we almost lost to it.

“You,” he says.

“You were,” he continues, voice lower now, roughened at the edges in a way he hasn’t let it be before. “You… and them.”

His gaze dips again, briefly, to the twins before returning to me.

“I felt it slipping,” he says. “Everything. The bond, you…” A breath, steadier than it should be. “And I knew if I let it go…”

I don’t let him finish the sentence.

My chest tightens anyway. “So I didn’t.” The words are quiet.

“I held onto you,” he adds, softer now. “The same way you were holding onto me.”

The bond reacts to that, tightening, not painfully, but with a kind of fragile certainty that wasn’t there before.

“You don’t get to fight that hard for me,” he says, his voice dropping just enough to carry something more vulnerable beneath it, “and expect me not to fight just as hard to stay.”

I exhale slowly, the tension easing just enough to let something else in.

“You almost didn’t make it,” I say again. That lingers under my skin.

“I know.” His answer doesn’t change. But the way he says it does.

“And you still came back.”

“For me.”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

I swallow, my grip tightening slightly around the baby at my side as they shift again, sensing the change without understanding it.

“This isn’t over,” I say. Because it isn’t. Nothing about this feels finished.

“I know,” he repeats.

And then, after a beat, “I’m not asking for easy.”
His gaze holds mine, steady, unwavering. “I’m choosing this anyway.”

This is his choice now. And it is deliberate, not fate. I study him for a long second.

Everything in me still feels stretched too thin, too changed, too close to the edge of something I don’t fully understand yet. I take a slow step forward, closing the last of the distance between us.

No uncertainty. Just… clarity. The twins settle slightly with the movement, their small presence a quiet reminder of everything that didn’t break with us.

“Then don’t let go again,” I say. It’s the truth.
His hand lifts, not quite touching me, but close enough that I feel the heat of it, the hesitation there for the first time.

“I won’t,” he says.

And this time, I believe him wholeheartedly.