Chapter 100
Axel
The courtyard gravel is uneven under my boots, but the fae guards don’t notice. They recruits, barely of age, puffing through their drills like it’s their first day of life.
are
too busy sweating, stumbling, trying to match my rhythm. Six
It kind of is.
Because out here? This isn’t school. This is survival. This is learning how to kill without losing yourself. Or worse, which is learning how to kill without ever feeling it.
“Again,” I bark. My voice isn’t loud, but it carries. Every head snaps up. “If your blade wavers under pressure, you’re dead. If you breathe wrong when you lunge, you’re dead. If you hesitate-”
“We are dead?” one of them mutters, smirking.
I smile, slow and sharp. “No. Someone else dies. Someone you were supposed to protect.”
Silence.
They go again. Sweat hits the sand. A younger one named Rien, falls out of formation, His sword clatters. I’m there before he can blink, toe on the blade, pressing it into the dirt.
“You drop your weapon in the field, you’re not just clumsy. You’re a corpse factory. Pick it up.”
He scrambles, face burning. I step back.
I don’t raise my voice. I don’t shove. I don’t humiliate. But they are terrified anyway.
Not because I’m cruel.
Because I’m calm.
And no one trusts the calm ones in war.
Later, I’m alone again.
The reports pile up in my office. Wards are stable. Patrol rotations holding. No weird movement from Logan’s pack in the human world, not that I expect any. Not with Eden here in the fae realm with Azriel.
Mated. Happily in love..
My jaw tightens. I run a hand down my face. The scent of her still haunts my dreams. I’m still very much in love with her, but she belongs to someone else.
And I…
I was never meant to be part of that story.
Eden isn’t mine and if I’m honest with myself, I think that I will eventually find someone else… I just wish the moon goddess would stop sending me flashes of fucking Elvira.
Why her???
What’s wrong with the moon goddess and her pairings?!
“Nothing makes sense!” I growl and lean against the wall, letting my head thud back against the stone. Every dream, every flicker of her eyes, every echo
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of her name… it’s driving me mad.
I don’t want her. I don’t even like her. She betrayed Eden. She deserves to rot.
But still I hear her voice. Whispering in the dark. Not a plea. A challenge.
“Why didn’t you come?”
And I don’t have an answer.
The next morning, I skip breakfast and head to the library where Azriel keeps a large globe of the human world. Howlicafors is zoomed in and although i shouldn’t walk closer, I do. I’m too drawn to the flicker on the map not to walk forward and place my finger on it.
The second I touch the holograph, I feel her within my ribs.
Elvira.
I try to convince myself it’s nothing. That this doesn’t mean shit. Maybe she is just in danger and my wolf is sensing it since we used to be part of the
same pack.
But deep inside, I know what this means.
I don’t tell anyone.
Back in the training yard, I watch the recruits spar in pairs. Rien fumbles again, and this time, his opponent doesn’t hold back.
He lands in the dirt hard, winded. I step in before he can stand.
“You hesitate every time someone lifts a blade. Why?”
“I… I don’t know, sir,” Rien says. “It just reminds me of…”
He doesn’t finish. His voice trails off, and I see it-
The flinch. The guilt. The same fear Elvira had in her eyes once, in a timeline she doesn’t even know I remember.
I snap too hard. “Then get out of my line. You’re not protecting anyone if you freeze.”
Rien’s face crumbles like I just broke something he was holding too tightly.
I grit my teeth and turn away before I say more. The calm is slipping.
She is slipping in.
By evening, I’m in the strategy hall. Alone. No one comes here unless summoned.
I light the old brazier. Stare into the flame.
I shouldn’t remember the other timeline, the one where I died. But I do. I remember everything up to that moment and even what happened after. It’s like my ghost always followed Eden, saw her through until the end when she could finally finish her story and now I’m here, staring at the first chapter of mine.
Do I dare to open it?
Do I dare to lean in and follow Elvira’s voice?
I close my eyes and let myself feel the bond and then I see her.
Elvira, bleeding and chained in the pack dungeons. There is another girl there. An Omega. The guards are taking her away while Elvira is screaming at
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them to take her instead.
They don’t listen.
“Axel?”
I snap out of it at the sound of Eden’s voice. She steps inside the library, and I turn around, meeting her different–colored eyes in the light.
She isn’t wearing her crown, but she doesn’t need to. She walks like someone who has already been through fire and still chose kindness.
“You’re awake late,” she says, voice gentle.
I nod. “Couldn’t sleep.”
She steps closer, and goosebumps spread over my arms.
Still in love.
Still here, but…conflicted.
“Elvira again?” she asks.
I stare at her, jaw somewhere on the floor. “Excuse me?”
She rolls her eyes. “You say her name in your sleep.”
“Oh…”
Her lips curl into a smile. “She was Cedar’s mate in the other timeline. I find it curious that you’re dreaming about her. You crushing
“Hell no!” I growl. “I don’t… I don’t like her! She stabbed you in the back and chose Paris-”
“And I forgave her in the other timeline…eventually.”
“Yes, but-” I trail off, too frustrated to know what I was about to say.
on her?”
Eden notices my distress, of course she does. Her hand is on my arm within a second, touching me until I look at her and find her comforting smile.
“Stop thinking about me for a second,” she says. “And think about yourself. What do you want?”
“I… I don’t know,” I admit. “But Elvira… I keep dreaming of her. She is hurt. Chained. I think Logan is still keeping her in the pack dungeons.”
Eden says nothing.
“She betrayed you,” I say. “She left you bleeding.”
“She was scared,” Eden replies softly. “And broken. People do cruel things when they think no one sees them.”
“Would you forgive her?”
Eden tilts her head. “I already did. Once… Remember?”
“In the other timeline because she changed. She hasn’t changed here.”
“Yes,” she says. “But she could change here too…if given a chance.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“I’m not hers,” I say, “But something keeps pulling me. And if I don’t do something about it soon…”
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“You will lose yourself,” Eden finishes.
I nod.
She reaches out and touches my wrist. Not a command. Not approval. Just a quiet kind of blessing.
“Go if you have to,” she says. “But don’t do it out of guilt. Don’t do it because of what was. Do it for what might still be.”
And that’s when I know.
I have to find her.
Not to save her.
To see if she is still someone worth saving.
AD
