~AUTHOR'S POV~
The moment Lyra and Selara met, the field changed.
Not strategically. Not tactically. In the way the air changed before lightning, a pressure drop that every wolf on the clearing felt simultaneously without understanding what they were feeling. Two sources of power occupying the same space, both at full capacity, both no longer holding anything back.
Lyra moved first.
She came in fast and low, the Moonborn light blazing white-silver on her arms, and Selara met her with the particular unhurried composure of someone who had been in more fights than Lyra had been alive. Dark energy curled at Selara's palms, not her soul-tethered wolves, her own power, the accumulated weight of three centuries of stolen, hoarded, refined energy, and she directed it with the economy of long practice.
The first exchange was brutal and immediate. Light against dark, and the impact between them cracked the ground at their feet, a clean split running six feet in either direction.
