3. Not Melody

MELODY/ QUEEEN ARALIA

~<>~

I had never wanted to die.

I had fought with everything I had to stay alive.

But after everything I had endured, everything I had discovered, and the rejection from my own daughter, death had begun to seem like the better option.

I had accepted that my life was over.

So why could I feel touches? Why could I hear voices?

And why, for goddess’s sake, was someone holding my hand?

The second I thought that, I took it back. Because that could be Rosie. My baby—

“Aralia? Can you hear me?”

The unfamiliar voice sounded desperate, cutting through my foggy thoughts. 

I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids felt impossibly heavy. My body was weak, and a dull ache throbbed somewhere behind my forehead.

“Her eyes are twitching. She’s waking up.” That voice again. 

“Give her some time to—" Another unfamiliar voice reached me. 

But that same desperate voice retorted, “Some time? She’s my daughter!”

Daughter?

Even in that semi-conscious state, my brows drew together.

I didn’t have anyone who would wait anxiously by my side. My mother-in-law would never cry over me, and Rory…

The thought of my husband sent a sharp pain through my chest.

Maybe he was the one holding my hand. Maybe he had rushed me to the hospital after I passed out. 

The voices had to be coming from another room. That was the only explanation that made sense. 

Perhaps someone named Aralia was lying in the bed beside mine. Whoever she was, she must have been a very lucky woman.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t her. I was Melody, the famous orphan baby found at the border of Dark Moon Pack. 

I was lucky enough to become the Luna. Lucky until it ran out. 

It took longer than expected, but my eyes finally fluttered open.

The white walls, bright lights, and the steady beeping of a monitor beside me all confirmed that I was in the hospital room.

I blinked several times, trying to clear my blurry vision. 

I thought I saw about four men and a woman standing around my bed. So I blinked again. And again. 

Yet the number remained the same. 

And they looked at me with such relief that, for a moment, I wondered if I had somehow become someone important in death.

The woman was older, perhaps in her fifties, with tears shining in her eyes. She looked as though she wanted to pull me into her arms but was afraid I might disappear if she touched me.

One of the men stepped forward, speaking softly, “Aralia, can you hear me?”

Aralia? That name again. 

I stared at him, forcing my dry lips apart. “Who… are you?”

The question seemed to startle them. All of them.

“I am Jace,” another man said, moving closer. “Your brother. You do know who I am, right?”

“My brother?” I whispered. 

The words barely left my mouth before another voice interrupted. “Get the doctor. Something isn’t right.”

“She’s been through so much,” the older woman whispered, wiping her cheeks. “My darling…” 

They were all talking at once. Questions tumbled over one another, and none of them made any sense.

Aralia. Sister. Daughter… everything I had never been. What kind of cruel joke was this?

“I’m sorry." My voice was barely a whisper as I tried to sit up. “I think you've got the wrong person—" 

The men exchanged worried glances while one warned, “Aralia, don’t move.”

But I barely heard him as I realized that something was wrong.

My arms felt strange. My fingers trembled against the white sheets, and when I lifted one hand, I stared at it in disbelief. The fingers were slender, the nails neatly shaped. It was not the hand I remembered.

I tried to touch my face, but a sudden, blinding pain exploded inside my head.

“Ah!” I cried out and clutched my skull.

Memories flashed through my mind, tangled and incomprehensible. A woman’s laughter. A man’s cold green eyes. A grand room filled with unfamiliar faces. Someone calling my name.

Not Melody.

Aralia.

“Get the doctor now," someone shouted.

Hands reached for me, but I couldn’t bear to be touched. My head felt as though it were splitting apart, and the pain only grew worse.

“Stop!” I screamed. “Please, make it stop!”

The room blurred. The voices became distant, as if I was sinking beneath deep water.

Then suddenly, everything went black.

******

When I woke again, the room was quiet.

The first thing I noticed was the sunlight slipping through the curtains. The second was the unfamiliar man sitting beside my bed.

He was handsome in a way that was almost intimidating. His black hair was slightly disheveled, as though he had run his fingers through it countless times. His strong jaw was covered with a faint shadow of stubble, and his green eyes were fixed on me.

Those eyes.

I had seen them before.

Not here. Not ever. But I knew them.

I remembered them from a dream, a hazy fragment of something I had seen while drifting through darkness. 

The moment he noticed I was awake, he rose so quickly that his chair scraped against the floor.

“Aralia?”

His voice held a note of disbelief, followed by something that sounded painfully close to relief.

I instinctively pulled the blanket closer to my chest as that strange name echoed. “Who are you? Where… am I?”

He stopped dead, and for a moment, he simply stared at me, as if my question had wounded him.

Then he exhaled and moved back a step.

“You’re in the Royal Hospital,” he said carefully. “You’ve been unconscious for several days.”

My brows furrowed. The only hospital I knew was Dark Moon Hospital. It was the closest to home. 

“How did I get here?” I queried, my brain scrambling. 

“You suffered a head injury.” The stranger said. 

I touched my forehead and found a bandage wrapped around my head. 

How did I go from needing a kidney to having a head injury? Nothing made sense,  even though everything was right in front of me. 

“T-this is impossible…” I started, stuttering as my eyes darted around the big room. “What is… who are you?” 

“Relax, Aralia.” He whispered, leaning closer to me. 

I wanted to tell him not to call me that, but before I could, he answered my question, “I’m Alpha King Zavier.”

A-Alpha King? Royal Hospital? 

Yes, all of those meant something, but not just to me. 

I had heard of the Alpha King more than a few times, but how could he be here? Why would he be staring at me like I was his—

“I’m your husband.” He uttered as if he could read my mind. 

Those words struck me like a tight slap.

For one brief, impossible second, I forgot the hospital, the strange man, and the unfamiliar name everyone kept calling me. All I could think of was Rory.

The husband that I knew. 

The man I had loved even when loving him hurt. The man who had refused to save my life.

My eyes filled with tears, and I whispered, “No.”

The man’s expression tightened. “Aralia—”

“No, you are not my husband. I don’t know you.” My breathing grew uneven. “I’m Mel—”

In that second, the door burst open.

Three men hurried inside, followed by the older woman I remembered from my first awakening.

And they all let out, “Aralia!”

The woman rushed toward me, tears pouring down her cheeks. One of the men hurried to the other side of the bed, while the remaining two crowded close, all of them speaking at once.

“Thank the Moon Goddess!”

“Are you feeling better?”

“Do you know who we are now, sweetheart?”

“Your Majesty, please don’t frighten us like that again.”

Your Majesty.

My gaze darted between their faces.

They were the same people. The same worried expressions. The same insistence that I was someone I had never been.

The older woman reached for my hand.

I wanted to pull away, to tell her that she had the wrong woman. But the words caught in my throat.

Because I was looking at her properly now.

Her eyes. The shape of her face. The curve of her nose.

There was something familiar about her features, something that made my heart stumble. It wasn’t the familiarity of a stranger I had met before. It was something deeper, something I couldn’t explain.

I looked at the men.

One had eyes shaped much like Victoria’s, while another shared the curve of her mouth. The last one had features that seemed even more familiar.

And then I looked at Zavier.

His green eyes were still watching me, guarded and troubled.

Everyone in the room seemed connected by invisible threads I couldn’t see.

Except me.

I was the outsider. The stranger who had somehow woken up in a life that belonged to someone else.

My pulse began to race.

Who were these people?

Why did they insist I was their daughter, their sister, their queen?

And why, when I looked at them, did I feel as though I were staring at pieces of a life that was mine, but I had never known?

I gripped the blanket, my fingers trembling.

“Please,” I whispered, looking from one face to another. “Tell me the truth.”

My voice broke, but the older woman nodded eagerly. “Of course, my darling.”

Only then did I mutter, “Am I in heaven or is this hell?”