Moon and Ashes

Chapter Two Shackled Wings

The moment Selene stepped through the door, her mother was waiting.

“You see?” Her mother’s voice cracked like a whip across the hall. “This is exactly why I told you not to go. Blood on the stones, wolves howling, war at our doorstep—Selene, do you want to end up like Lorien?”

Selene froze, her cloak still damp from the night air. Her mother’s face was pale with fury, but it was the kind of fury that came from fear. Always fear.

“I didn’t die,” Selene said flatly, pulling off her gloves. “I came home. Whole. Isn’t that proof enough that maybe I can handle myself?”

Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “Handle yourself? Do you even realize what almost happened tonight? The Alpha himself was there—Caelan Duskbane. If his pack had turned on you, not even your tricks could have saved you.”

Tricks. Selene’s jaw tightened. Her magic had always been different, untrustworthy in her family’s eyes. Too raw. Too quiet. Too… her.

“I wasn’t the one who ended up in the dirt, bleeding,” Selene shot back. “Maybe if you stopped locking me away, I’d be better prepared for the real world.”

Her mother’s hand slammed against the door frame. “You are not a soldier. You are not a diplomat. You are my daughter, Selene Ardyn, and your place is where I can keep you safe. Do you understand me?”

The air in the room pressed heavy. Selene wanted to scream that she was more than a daughter locked in gilded walls, more than some delicate thing hidden from the world. But she bit it back. Arguing with her mother was like throwing stones at a storm.

So she just nodded once, sharp, and turned away.

She locked her bedroom door behind her, pressing her back against it as her chest rose and fell. The room felt smaller than ever, suffocating, like the walls were leaning in to swallow her whole.

She tossed her cloak aside and collapsed onto her bed, staring up at the ceiling beams. For the first time since the ruins, silence wrapped around her.

But silence only left room for memory.

Lorien’s body crumpled in the dust. The shock in the eyes of wolves and wizards alike. And—more vivid than she wanted—the shadow of the Alpha himself. Caelan Duskbane. The way his voice had cut through the night, low and sharp as a blade. The way his wolves bent to him without question.

He was a monster. Her mother’s words rang in her head, as if they were truth carved in stone. And yet…

Her breath hitched. What unsettled her wasn’t his power. It was that, for one fleeting heartbeat, she had not felt fear when he looked at her. She had felt something else entirely. Something dangerous.

She shook the thought away, sitting up and gripping the bed frame until her knuckles whitened. “Foolish,” she muttered to herself. “Foolish, foolish.”

Her gaze drifted to the window. Pale moonlight cut across her bed.

And then—softly, just beneath the window—came a familiar voice.

“Selene?”

Mira Kaelen.. The one person who could talk her off the edge.

Selene exhaled, crossed the room, and pushed the window open. Her friend stood below, waving up with a grin like nothing had gone wrong in the world.

Selene glanced once at the door, then at the drop below. Not too high. Not for her.

“Hold on,” she murmured.

She raised her hand, fingers brushing the cool night air. A sharp breath, a push of will—wind wrapped around her like invisible hands, lifting her just enough. She slid down from the sill, landing beside her friend with a whisper of air and barely a sound.

Her friend’s eyes widened. “You make it look so easy.”

Selene smirked, though her pulse was still racing. “It isn’t.”

The truth was, hardly anyone could manage it without a staff, without a chant. It took precision. Control. One slip, and she would have been face-first in the dirt.

But Selene had never been one to follow rules.

“Come on,” she said, brushing dust from her cloak. “I need air… And answers.”

They slipped into the night together.

The city stretched before them, alive in ways that humans never noticed. Stone streets wound like veins between houses with crooked chimneys, their lanterns burning low. Wizards disguised their wards as simple carvings over doorways, runes faintly glowing when the moonlight touched them. Somewhere distant, a wolf’s low growl rippled through an alley before vanishing into silence, the sound swallowed by the hum of late-night traders closing their stalls.

To most, it was an ordinary city, sleepy and safe. But Selene knew better. Beneath the cobblestones, beneath the laughter and lamplight, the world was divided—wolves watching wizards, wizards watching wolves, and humans caught in the middle, blind to the tension curling like smoke around them.

Tonight, the air itself seemed restless.