Chapter 71. She’s Going to Ruin You

Selena’s POV

Snow falls in soft sheets, gentle and ignorant. As if the mountain hadn’t been carved open only hours ago. As if the dead weren’t still cooling beneath its trees. The hush that followed the battle wasn’t peace, it was exhaustion. It was the air too afraid to speak.

I moved slowly, my boots crunching across blood-caked snow and ash. My limbs ached, but not from wounds, those were already fading. The ache was something deeper, in my marrow, in the threads that made up who I was. Every inhale felt borrowed. Every step, unsteady.

Around me, survivors work in silence. Some bandaged, some buried. The doctors and nurses murmurs diagnosis, but even their voices feel hollow. No one cheers. No one dares.

I pass Cleo first. She is kneeling beside a body, her shoulder bandaged but bleeding through again. She doesn’t seem to notice. Her hand rests gently over the fallen wolf’s chest, someone I didn’t know, but clearly someone she had.

Desmond sta