~SELENE~
The Keep’s great hall had never been so silent.
Torches burned low in their sconces... casting long shadows across the cold stone floor. Snow drifted gently outside the windows... as if the world were trying to soften what was coming.
But nothing could soften the truth.
The Council of Elders had arrived.
Six of them. Cloaked in white, silver thread woven into their sleeves like veins of frost. Their magic clung to the air—old, brittle, and heavy with judgment.
At the center stood Elder Kael, his eyes like ice chips, his voice the kind that had condemned thousands without ever raising a blade.
“We have felt it,” he said.
“The Moonborne has risen.”
They didn’t bow to me. They didn’t acknowledge me as Alpha. Only as a threat.
“And we have felt… the bond,” Elder Nyra added,
