ELLA'S POV
I'm standing in a glowing forest that shouldn't exist, watching purple lightning shoot from my fingers, and the worst part is—I don't remember choosing to attack Adrian.
One second I'm me. The next, I'm someone else. Someone angry and powerful and totally certain that Adrian Wolfe deserves to die.
But as the magic crackles from my hands toward where he fell, something inside me screams NO.
The lightning veers at the last second, hitting a tree instead. The trunk bursts into splinters.
"Ella!" Lyra's voice cuts through my confusion. "What are you doing? He's the enemy!"
"I don't want to kill him." My voice sounds strange—layered, like two people speaking at once. The powerful Ellaria Silvermoon and the normal Ella Chen who just wants to go home.
"Your grandmother showed you the truth," Lyra insists, grabbing my shoulders. "You saw what the shifters did. How they killed our people. How Adrian's kind destroyed everything we built."
Did I see that? The images feel slippery, like trying to hold water. I remember my grandmother's face, her words, her telling me things. Important things.
But I can't remember what those things were.
"Something's wrong," I whisper.
"What's wrong is you're hesitating." Lyra's grip tightens. "The awakening serum should have cleared everything. Shown you your true meaning. Unless—" Her eyes widen with something like fear. "Unless you didn't finish the vision."
"What vision?"
Before she can answer, my grandmother's voice echoes through the forest: "She didn't finish because I stopped it."
The sparkling trees part. My grandmother walks through them—young, vibrant, exactly as she looked moments ago. But something's different now. She looks sad. Guilty.
"Grandma?" My voice cracks. "What's happening?"
"I'm so sorry, sweetheart." She touches my face with fingers that feel real but somehow aren't. "I'm not really here. I'm a dream. A powerful echo your grandmother left behind in the awakening serum, triggered when you drank it."
"So none of this is real?"
"The forest is real. Your power is real. But the vision I was meant to show you—the one designed to make you hate shifters—I couldn't do it." Tears run down her face. "Because it would have been a lie."
"Mother, stop!" Lyra's voice turns sharp. "You're confusing her."
"I'm saving her." Grandma looks at Lyra with something like sadness. "You've been planning for this moment for so long, you forgot what actually happened. You rewrote history to excuse your revenge."
"They killed you!" Lyra shouts. "Marcus Steele murdered you in front of me!"
"He did." Grandma nods. "But not because I was trying to save the Forgotten Ones. I was trying to save Adrian's parents. They were helping us, Lyra. Building bridges between our species. Marcus killed them because he feared peace more than war." My head spins. " So Adrian's father—"
"Was a hero. And his mother was my best friend." Grandma smiles sadly. "Adrian doesn't know this. His uncle told him his parents died because they were weak. But they died because they were brave."
"That doesn't change what the Council did," Lyra argues. "They still hunted us. Still killed children."
"And you think killing Adrian fixes that?" Grandma turns to me. "Sweetheart, listen carefully. The awakening serum I made was supposed to show you objective truth. But after I died, the Forgotten Ones changed it. They added fake memories. Designed to make you hate shifters automatically. To turn you into a weapon."
"Why are you telling me this?" I ask.
"Because you have a choice." She gestures, and the forest shimmers. I see Adrian slumped on the ground, his pack surrounding him protectively. David is screaming my name, asking me to stop. Adrian is fighting to stand, even though he can barely move.
And his eyes—when he looks at me, there's no anger. Just heartbreak.
"You can believe the false memories," Grandma says. "Become the weapon Lyra needs. Destroy the shifter Council and probably start a war that kills millions. Or—" She touches my chest, right where the mate bond used to pulse. "You can choose him. Choose peace. Choose the path your grandmother and Adrian's parents died trying to make."
"But the bond is broken," I whisper. "I felt it snap." "It's dormant, not dead. Incomplete mate bonds can be restored if both sides want it badly enough. But only before the awakening completes." Grandma looks at the purple magic still whirling around me. "You have maybe sixty seconds before the change becomes permanent. After that, you'll be full Forgotten—powerful, immortal, and unable to join with shifters ever again."
"That's not fair!" Lyra's voice cracks. "We need her. The Forgotten Ones are going out. She's our last hope for life."
"Then maybe," Grandma says gently, "we should survive by making peace instead of war."
"Peace with the species that massacred us?"
"Peace with the next generation who might do better." Grandma looks at Adrian again. "That young man suffered as much as we did. His parents tried to save us. The least we can do is give their son a shot."
The purple magic increases, crawling up my arms. I can feel it changing me, rewriting parts of my DNA, making me something other than human. Something powerful and old and utterly alone.
Because that's the truth Lyra won't say: Forgotten Ones don't mate. Can't mate. The magic makes them sterile, solitary, forever. I'd gain power but lose the chance of love, family, children—everything I've ever wanted.
"Choose, Ella," Grandma says softly. "Sixty seconds."
I look at Adrian. At his pack surrounding him protectively. At David who came back for me even though I'm supposed to be the enemy.
Then I look at Lyra. At the dozen other Forgotten Ones watching with hopeless hope. My people. My bloodline. The family I never knew existed.
"If I choose him," I ask Lyra, "what happens to you?"
"We keep hiding. Keep dying out. Keep waiting for a miracle that never comes." Her voice breaks. "Please, Ella. We've waited three hundred years for someone like you."
"And if I choose you?"
"You become our queen. Our protection. Our salvation." She holds out her hand. "You become everything you were meant to be."
The magic reaches my heart. Thirty seconds left.
I close my eyes. Think of Adrian's cruelty that was actually defense. His three years of torture because he couldn't bear to let me get close. His readiness to betray his own kind to save me.
Then I think of my grandma dying alone, trying to bridge two species. Of centuries of pain that could end—or continue—based on my choice.
"I'm sorry," I whisper.
I reach out my hand.
The forest bursts in blinding light. When it clears, I'm standing over Adrian's unconscious body, my hand extended toward him, glowing with magic.
His pack tenses, ready to protect him to their deaths.
"Wait," I say, and my voice is steady now. Clear. Fully mine. "I'm not here to kill him."
"Then why—" David starts.
I kneel beside Adrian, putting my glowing hand over his heart. The dormant mate bond sparks barely beneath my touch.
"I'm here to wake him up," I say. "And then we're going to do something no one's done in three hundred years."
"What's that?" David asks carefully.
I smile, feeling the magic and the tie intertwining in ways that shouldn't be possible.
"We're going to prove everyone wrong."
I pour my awakened power into the bond, forcing it back to life. Adrian's eyes snap open—glowing gold, wild, fierce.
He sees me kneeling over him. Sees my gray hair and purple eyes. Sees the magic sparking around us both.
"Ella?" His voice is rough with hope and fear.
"Yeah," I say. "It's me. And we need to talk about changing some very old, very stupid rules."
Behind me, Lyra screams in rage.
The other Forgotten Ones surge forward, magic blazing, treason written on every face.
"You chose wrong!" Lyra screams, power building in her hands. "Now you'll die with him!"
She attacks just as the mate bond snaps back into place—stronger, stranger, merged with my awakened magic.
The clash of power levels the entire forest.