Chapter 3 I didn't choose me

Elinor POV

Darkness wasn't empty. It was a suffocating void filled with smoke, screams, and the phantom heat of flames that still licked at my skin.

My consciousness drifted, untethered, pulled back into the jagged edges of a memory I had buried deep.

I was fourteen again. The air smelled of blood and wet fur. The alarm sirens of the Silver Moon Pack were wailing, piercing the night as Rogues breached the perimeter. I was huddled in the corner of the library, trembling, a wolfless girl with no way to defend herself. Ariel was there too, clutching her bleeding arm, her eyes wide with terror.

The door burst open. Not a Rogue, but Adrian.

He was young then, his Alpha aura still developing, but the command in his presence was undeniable. He looked at us-at Ariel, bleeding and fragile, and at me, the Alpha's daughter, his betrothed by contract.

For a split second, I saw the hesitation. I saw his hazel eyes linger on Ariel with a desperate, gut-wrenching longing. But duty was a steel chain around his neck. He grabbed my arm. He dragged me to safety, leaving Ariel behind to be guarded by a Gamma.

As he pulled me away, he looked back at her. The expression on his face wasn't relief that his future Luna was safe. It was guilt. Pure, agonizing guilt.

The memory twisted, morphing into the inferno of the Alpha's Wing. The heat surged, blistering and real.

He's fixing it, my subconscious whispered through the haze of pain. Seven years ago, he saved the obligation. Tonight, he saved his heart.

The realization settled in my chest, heavier than the smoke. Adrian hadn't just abandoned me in the fire; he was correcting a mistake he had regretted for years. I was the error in his life's equation, and the fire was the eraser.

I drifted again, back to the moment the ceiling beam had pinned me. I saw his back as he ran away with Ariel. The Alpha's Command still paralyzed my limbs, a cruel magic that forced me to wait for death.

"Elinor!"

A voice echoed in the darkness. It sounded like Adrian, but it was distorted, frantic, vibrating through a Mind-Link I shouldn't have been able to access without a wolf.

No, I thought bitterly, pushing the sound away. Don't let him haunt you. He didn't call for you. He left you to burn.

Then, the sensation changed. The searing heat was replaced by a cool, static charge. Strong arms lifted me. A scent enveloped me-not the expensive cologne Adrian wore, but something wilder. Deep earth. Crushed pine needles. The electric ozone of a gathering storm.

Safe, a tiny voice in my head murmured. Safe.

"Elinor? Ellie, can you hear me?"

The voice was soft, trembling. It pulled me upward, dragging me out of the comforting darkness.

My eyelids felt like lead. I forced them open, the harsh light of the room stinging my retinas. I wasn't in the charred remains of the Alpha's Wing. The air was clean, smelling of antiseptic and lavender.

I was in the pack infirmary.

"Mom?" My voice was a broken rasp, my throat raw from the smoke.

Diane Ramsey was sitting by my bedside, her face pale and lined with worry. Tears welled in her eyes as she squeezed my hand. "Oh, thank the Goddess. You're awake."

I tried to sit up, but a sharp pain shot through my right leg. I gasped, falling back against the pillows. Memories of the fire crashed into me-the beam, the heat, the betrayal.

"Adrian..." I choked out the name, the taste of ash returning to my mouth. "He... he left..."

"Shh, don't try to speak yet," my mother soothed, brushing a stray hair from my forehead. Her touch was gentle, but her next words hit me harder than the falling timber. "It's over, Ellie. You're safe. It was a miracle."

She let out a shaky breath, a smile of relief trembling on her lips. "Thank the Moon Goddess, Adrian was fast enough. He was the one who pulled you from the flames, honey. He saved you."

The world stopped.

The steady beep of the heart monitor seemed to falter. I stared at my mother, trying to process the impossible sentence she had just spoken.

Adrian saved me?

No. I saw him. I saw him choose Ariel. I saw him run. I felt the Command lock my muscles as the fire roared around me.

And the man who did save me... the man with the storm-gray eyes and the scent of the ancient forest... he wasn't Adrian. He was massive, silent, and terrifyingly powerful.

"That's... that's not true," I whispered, panic rising in my chest. "He left me, Mom. He took Ariel and he left me."

Diane frowned, her expression shifting from relief to confusion. "Ellie, you're confused. It's the trauma. The smoke inhalation... the doctor said you might be disoriented." She squeezed my hand tighter, as if trying to anchor me to her version of reality. "Adrian brought you out. He carried you to the edge of the forest. Everyone saw him."

My heart hammered against my ribs. Everyone saw him?

Had I hallucinated the stranger? Was the man with the storm scent just a fever dream conjured by a dying mind?

I closed my eyes, searching for the memory. I could still feel the lingering static on my skin, a phantom warmth that had nothing to do with the fire. It felt real. More real than the sterile bed I was lying in.

But my mother-my own mother-was telling me the man who left me to die was my savior.

A cold knot of dread tightened in my stomach. Either I was going insane, or a lie had been spun so quickly and so flawlessly that it had already become the truth.

"Where is he?" I asked, my voice hollow.

"He's resting," Diane said softly. "He's exhausted, Elinor. He saved everyone he could."

Everyone he could.

I turned my head away, staring out the window at the peaceful, sunlit trees. The disconnect between what I knew and what I was being told was a chasm I couldn't cross.

If Adrian saved me, then who was the man in the shadows? And if Adrian didn't save me... why was the whole pack lying?