**CHAPTER 14**
**The Price of Power**
The silence in the chamber was unnatural. Not empty, but heavy—like the air itself was listening, waiting. I stood alone, the door shut behind me, the walls carved with runes that pulsed faintly beneath my fingertips.
Then the ground shifted.
I stumbled, reaching out for the wall—but it was gone. The chamber melted away like mist beneath sunlight, and in its place, the world darkened.
A vision.
Aerie stirred. *"Something's pulling you in. Brace yourself, Selene."*
The name struck like a thunderclap. Not Rory. *Selene.* I tried to speak, to ask what he meant, but my voice was gone. The air shimmered, then cracked open like glass—and I was no longer in the castle.
I stood in a vast forest beneath a sky streaked with violet and silver. The moon above was massive, too close, almost alive. Its light poured down like liquid, bathing the trees in shifting, radiant light. My skin tingled beneath its touch.
"Where… am I?"
No answer came. Only the rustle of wind through the trees and the haunting song of a wolf far off in the distance. But something drew me forward—an invisible thread tugging at my soul.
I walked barefoot through the glowing grass, and the ground pulsed with energy beneath every step. The deeper into the forest I went, the more I could feel it—something ancient, waiting.
And then I saw her.
She stood in the clearing, cloaked in moonlight, her face hidden by a veil of stars. Her presence was so overwhelming it brought me to my knees. My heart pounded, my breath caught in my throat.
"You've come," she said, her voice layered—one tone soft and feminine, the other deep and echoing like a chorus.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
She lifted her hands and pointed to my chest. "I am what lies within. I am your echo. Your future. Your origin."
My breath caught as her form flickered, revealing flashes of herself—eyes like galaxies, claws like silver blades, wings that shimmered with darkness and starlight. She wasn't a woman. She wasn't a wolf. She was both, and neither.
"You are the last of a bloodline forgotten by time," she said. "The Moon did not make you. She birthed you."
The wind howled around us, and the trees bent inward like they, too, were listening.
"You are not bound by werewolf laws. You are not their child. You are something else. Something they fear."
Her words sent shivers down my spine. I wanted to speak, to ask what I was, truly—but my body began to glow, silver cracks racing up my arms.
Pain.
It coursed through me, sharp and wild, like lightning trapped beneath my skin.
Then it exploded.
Light burst from my chest, my arms, my eyes. I screamed, but it wasn't in pain—it was power, ancient and untamed, roaring from within. I felt it all. Every cell in my body lit up, burned with raw moonlight. I saw memories that weren't mine—battlefields under full moons, thrones carved of bone and crystal, and a voice—my voice—commanding stars to fall.
"This is what they fear," the figure whispered. "Not your name. Not your wolf. Your potential."
The forest began to tremble. The vision was collapsing. The woman—no, the goddess—stepped back into the moonlight, her eyes locking with mine one final time.
"Remember this: you are not theirs. You are Selene."
The light snapped inward.
And I woke up screaming.
The chamber walls were intact. I was back on the floor, drenched in sweat, heart racing like a drum. My hands glowed faintly, pulsing with a new kind of energy that hummed in my bones.
Aerie's voice returned, quieter now. *"You saw her. Didn't you?"*
"Yes," I breathed. "And I felt… everything."
I touched my chest, half-expecting it to burn again. Instead, a calm warmth radiated from inside me, pulsing in rhythm with the moonlight outside the chamber walls.
There were no more illusions now. No more pretending I could live a life as Rory. That name—those memories—were only half of who I was. The other half had just awakened.
For a moment, I stayed on the floor, feeling the energy settle inside me like a sleeping star. I wasn't sure how to control it, or if I even could. But I *knew* it was mine.
The chamber door creaked open.
I didn't move.
The same guard stood there, but this time he didn't speak right away. He stared at me, his hand tightening on the hilt of his blade.
"You're different," he said finally. "What happened in there?"
I met his gaze, my voice steady. "I saw the truth."
He stepped back, cautious. Afraid.
Good.
Because whatever came next—whatever the Council decided, whatever games they wanted to play—I was no longer the frightened girl they dragged from the human world.
I was Selene.
And I wasn't theirs to command.