Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
Selene
Silver water rained down from the laboratory ceiling, heavy and viscous, coating the floor and rising around my ankles like liquid mercury. It made no sound. The fire alarm flashed—red, red, red—but the world had been muted.
I screamed, but my voice was gone. I hammered on the glass of the containment cube, but my fists slid off the surface, useless and weak.
Inside, Eamon was dying.
No longer strapped to the table, he floated in the rising silver tide, the tubes in his arm glowing bright white, pulsing like a second heartbeat. He looked at me. His face was grey, drained of everything that made him my father, leaving only clear, terrifying eyes.
He opened his mouth. In the waking world, the water and the alarm had swallowed his voice. Here, in my nightmare, the words hit me like stones.
“I’m sorry, Selene.”
I begged him to stop. I begged him to live.
“Trust him.”
The command echoed inside my skull, vibrating against my teeth. Trust him.
I shook my head. “Who?”
Then the shadows moved.
Riven stepped out of the silver rain. He stood beside the glass, dry, untouched, perfectly composed. He focused entirely on me, ignoring Eamon. His eyes were dark, the silver magic spinning lazily in their depths.
Varessia appeared at his shoulder. She placed a hand on his coat—possessive, familiar. She leaned in and whispered something in his ear, and Riven nodded.
He stood there, motionless while Eamon died, then turned his back on me.
They walked away together, disappearing into the dark mouth of the tunnel, leaving me to drown in the silver.
I woke screaming.
The sound tore through the silence of my flat, a ragged, ugly noise that scraped my throat raw. I bolted upright, gasping, skin slick with sweat, hands clutching the duvet until my knuckles turned white.
Home. I was home.
I stared at the familiar cracks in the ceiling, the grey light of dawn filtering through the curtains. My chest heaved, trying to drag in air that felt too thin.
Trust him. The words lingered, a ghost in the room.
I squeezed my eyes shut against the nausea rolling in my stomach. My arrival here was a void, a missing stretch of time that refused to surface. Memories of the past hours arrived in jagged shards, smeared like wet ink on a page.
The explosion of light. The overhead walkway groaning as it collapsed.
Then Mira’s face—pale and terrified—looming over me through the rain outside the mill. The flashing blue lights of the patrol cars were a rhythmic, blinding assault.
Mira had shouted at someone—Darian, perhaps. She cannot give a statement. I am taking her home.
The journey remained a blur of movement, smelling sharply of antiseptic. I remembered the weight of her hand on my shoulder, guiding me through the door of the flat and towards the bedroom. She had moved me like a doll, pulling the duvet up to my chin and lingering until my breathing steadied.
Stay inside, Selene. Avoid the news. Try to sleep.
Now, I looked at the empty side of the bed.
Riven’s scent was fading, buried beneath the damp, heavy smell of fever-dreams and grief. He had left me. He knew where Eamon was and what Varessia planned. He stood by while she killed my father, doing nothing to stop it.
Trust him.
I twisted the sheets in my fists. "Go to hell," I whispered to the empty room.
I pushed the covers off. My limbs were filled with lead. My magic—the force that had torn a building apart yesterday—had burned itself out, leaving only a cold, hollow silence in its wake.
I needed to shower. I needed to scrub the sensation of silver from my skin.
I swung my legs out of bed and stood up. The room spun. I caught myself on the dresser, breathing hard.
On the side table next to my bed lay the scattered debris Mira must have salvaged from my pockets: my keys and my phone. Beside them, sat the books Eamon had given me.
I tried to stand fully, but my body locked up.
Every muscle seized in the aftermath of the adrenaline crash. I ached everywhere—my ribs, my legs, the hollow space behind my eyes where the tears gathered.
But the worst pain was in my shoulder.
The scar throbbed—a dull, steady misery that felt like a toothache in the bone. It hadn’t hurt like this in days, not since Riven started training me.
Now, with him gone—with the distance stretching between us across the city—the mark screamed. It was lonely. It missed its shadow.
I hated it. I hated that my own skin mourned a traitor.
I dragged myself to the bathroom, keeping one hand on the wall to stay upright as the hallway stretched out, warped by dizziness.
I reached the shower and cranked the tap as far as it would go, not bothering to test the temperature.
Steam filled the small room instantly, billowing up in white clouds. It coated the mirror, erasing my reflection. Good. I couldn’t face the eyes that had watched him die.
I stripped off my clothes. My jeans were stiff with the stagnant water from the mill; my shirt clung to my skin, damp with sweat and the stench of the lab.
I kicked the sodden mess into the corner and stepped under the spray.
It was scalding. Borderline unbearable.
I gasped, the heat shocking my system, turning my skin red in seconds. But I didn’t step back. I stood there, letting the water hammer against my skull, my spine, my chest.
I scrubbed at my skin until it stung, trying to wash off the sensation of the silver rain, the metallic taste of the air, the memory of Eamon’s cold hand in mine.
The tears came then—hot, silent, mixing with the water so I didn’t have to acknowledge them running down my face. I cried until my throat was raw, until the water started to run lukewarm.
Then I turned it off. I stepped out, shivering violently, and wrapped a towel around myself, but the chill had settled inside my bones now. It wouldn’t leave.
I walked back to the bedroom. I needed something to wear. Something warm.
My eyes landed on the floor near the bed.
His shirt.
The black shirt I had ripped off him last night lay in a heap where it fell. I didn’t know why he left it, it was just there. A ghost of him.
I picked it up, my hands moving without permission, and slipped my arms into the sleeves. It was huge on me, the fabric falling to my mid-thighs and swallowing me whole.
And it smelled like him. Dark amber. The clean scent of rain. For a second, my knees buckled. It felt like an embrace. It felt like he was here, wrapping his arms around me, protecting me from the world.
Then the memory hit—him walking away with Varessia.
I grabbed the hem, ready to rip it off, to burn it. But my hands froze. I couldn’t. I was freezing, and this was the only warmth left in the world.
I hated myself for it, but I kept it on.
I sat on the edge of the bed, hugging my knees to my chest, breathing in his scent and hating him with every breath.
My gaze drifted to the dresser. To the small pile of things I had salvaged from the wreck of my life. The books.
The Little Sun and the Little Moon.
It looked so small. Battered. The cover had been lost years ago, torn off by a careless child—me—leaving only the binding and the raw first page.
I picked it up. The paper was soft, worn velvety by decades of fingers. It smelled of old dust. Of lavender. Of Eamon’s hands. I could hear his voice in my head, deep and rumbling, reading the rhymes to me when the thunderstorms were too loud.
One bright as the morning… one soft as the moon.
It was just a story. A fairy tale he read to a frightened child. But right now, it was the only piece of him I had left.
I gripped the book harder, the spine digging into my palm. I couldn’t stay here.
The quiet of the flat pressed against my eardrums, and the scent rising from Riven’s shirt had turned from a comfort into a chokehold. I shoved the books into my satchel. It hit the bottom with a dead thud—a burden I didn’t know how to carry yet, but refused to leave behind.
I pulled a thick jumper over the shirt, burying the scent under wool, then threw a thick coat on top. I grabbed my keys and left.
I drove to the hospital on autopilot. The city was grey, washed out, as if Eamon’s death had drained the colour from the world. I needed an anchor. I needed the only person left who remembered who I was before the magic broke me.
I walked down the sterile corridor, counting the numbers. 302. 303. Just as I reached 304, the door opened.
A man stepped out. He was tall, taking up too much space in the narrow hallway, with dark golden skin and black hair clipped short, military style.
But it was the air around him that made me stutter in my step.
It was heavy. Dense. The sheer, overwhelming pressure of a wolf that commanded total authority.
He paused, his gaze locking onto mine. His eyes were dark, intelligent, and carried a weight that made the hair on my arms stand up. We didn’t speak. He assessed me in a single, sharp beat—a predator deciding if I was prey or peer—and then moved past me, his stride silent and commanding.
I didn’t turn to watch him go. I didn’t have the energy to wonder who he was or why he was visiting my partner. I just needed to get inside.
Dane was propped up against pillows, looking pale and frustrated, a cage of sensors and wires monitoring his healing spine. A datapad sat on his lap, casting a blue glow on his face.
He looked up, his eyes widening as he saw me.
“You’re in demand today,” I said, my voice sounding thin but steady. I gestured vaguely behind me with a thumb. “That guy in the hall looked like he could tear a tank in half. Friend of yours?”
“That was my Alpha,” Dane said, his tone clipped. He set the datapad down on the bedside table with a hard clack, dismissing the hierarchy of his entire species in a single motion. “He came to check how my spine is healing. It doesn’t matter.”
He scanned my face—the red-rimmed eyes, the damp hair, the way I was holding myself together with nothing but surface tension.