Chapter 16: The Trial Concludes
The air still shimmered with lingering energy. Cracks spiderwebbed across the obsidian pedestal, the floating orb now dimmed, pulsing weakly like a dying star.
I stood, legs trembling beneath me—but upright. Present. Whole.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then the silver-haired woman stepped forward, her expression unreadable.
"You survived."
Her words hung in the silence.
"I did more than survive," I said. My voice was rough but steady. "I took control."
The man with the kind eyes—Elias, I remembered now—nodded slowly.
"That's what we feared. And hoped."
The contradiction stung. "Feared?"
"You're not like the others," he said, not unkindly. "No vessel has ever… shared power. Let alone allowed a male wolf spirit to take full form."
Aerie stirred at the back of my mind, prideful and quiet.
"She didn't allow it," he murmured. "We chose."
Elias looked to the Council. "Well? Shall we pretend this was ordinary?"
"No," murmured the silver-haired woman. "There is no precedent for this. She unlocked the flame, mastered it… or rather, merged with it. That cannot be dismissed."
One of the remaining Council members—a hawk-nosed man in deep navy robes—crossed his arms.
"She is dangerous. Unstable."
"I'm standing right here," I snapped.
"You burned our sacred chamber!" he barked. "You cracked the Trial relic. That orb has withstood centuries of magic—"
"Because none of them touched it like I did," I said. "None of them were me."
The room quieted again.
My mother stepped closer, her presence steady behind me.
"She completed the trial. That is the point. You set the terms. She rose above them."
"Barely," the hawk-nosed man sneered.
"No," the silver-haired woman cut in. "Perfectly."
She turned to me now, something flickering behind her cold expression—respect, maybe. Or warning.
"You are no longer in testing. As of this moment, your trials are complete."
A pause.
"By unanimous decision of the Council, Rory Selene—vessel of Aerie, flame-bearer of the Moonfire—you are recognized as awakened."
I blinked. "That's it?"
Elias smiled faintly.
"Nothing about you has ever been just it, girl."
There was no applause. No cheers. Just the slow release of tension, like the mountain itself exhaled around us.
"Now what?" I asked.
The silver-haired woman looked at me over her shoulder.
"You live your normal life as every werewolf would. You have now been accepted as one of us—different, but stable."
"Welcome to the Werewolf Kingdom, Rory… or should I say Selene," Elias said with a smile.
I smiled back, and my mother did too.
'Now you have been accepted, finally,' Aerie said, and for once, I felt a glint of happiness.