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بيت / He Chose My Stepsister, I Left Him Forever / Chapter 3

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Chapter 3

مؤلف: Andy
On the third morning, I was up by six.

The couch in the storage room was narrow and hard, nothing like the climate bed in the main bedroom.

I had just finished getting ready when I heard suitcase wheels rolling across the living room.

I opened the door to find Adrian dressed for travel, with two silver cases beside him. He was fastening a heated wrap around Sasha.

The mind-link glowed on each of their wrists. Sasha leaned against his shoulder, her heart racing.

Adrian mistook it for fear and reached for her hand.

"Don't be scared. I'll be right there with you. It's all arranged."

His voice softened. "Polaris still has huge areas of untouched wilderness. The doctors say real sunlight and fresh air can help with recovery. It'll help you relax before surgery."

They were going to the Polaris Nature Reserve.

It was one of the few places in this century where nature had been preserved.

Every 50 years, something extraordinary happened there. Two colors that did not exist in Earth's natural spectrum appeared along the horizon. To an ordinary person, they looked like two separate rings of light. But partners connected by a mind-link could see through each other's eyes, allowing the two colors to merge into one neither could see alone.

They called it the Shared Light.

For many people, it was a once-in-a-lifetime sight to share with the person they loved most.

I'd dreamed of painting that impossible color, one that could exist only when two people shared what they saw.

Now Adrian was taking Sasha to the place he'd promised to visit with me.

Adrian heard me come out and looked up. His tone was almost businesslike. "Thea, perfect timing. You're better at this than I am. Check Sasha's bags for me. She just got her residency, and she still doesn't know how to take some of her medications."

I went over and checked each medication against the list.

Adrian watched me do it without complaint, and guilt flickered across his face.

"Thea, Sasha can't put off her treatment. Once her surgery is over, I'll make it up to you. I'll take you to Polaris myself."

Sasha looped her arm through his. Only I caught the spite beneath her sweet voice. "Thea's always been so generous. Once I'm cured, I'll give Adrian back to you. We have forever ahead of us. What's the rush? No wonder he likes you. You always do whatever he tells you."

That single word, "likes," hurt more than anything else she could have said.

But I wasn't angry. I simply asked, "Adrian, what would you do if our relationship ended today?"

He froze for a second, then frowned.

"Why are you bringing this up again? Sasha's surgery is in a month, and we'll be back long before that. I know you're upset, but the natural environment on Polaris is good for her. Do you really have to keep score right now?"

"Treatment?" I repeated the word softly, studying the healthy color in Sasha's cheeks. "Is she really so sick that she had to travel 200 years into the future for treatment?"

Sasha's expression changed. She suddenly clutched her stomach and doubled over.

The mind-link flickered wildly. Adrian caught her and pulled her against his chest, his expression turning cold.

"Medical reports don't lie. Look how scared she is. How can you still question her?"

I stepped closer and met his eyes.

"Three years ago, you arrived in my time with nothing. I took you in and made you part of my family. To follow you into the future, I gave up my career, said goodbye to my grandparents, and climbed into a cryo-pod. What have you done for me?

"You never even checked whether Sasha was really sick. You hid her from me and brought her here behind my back. You gave her the slot that should have been mine. You moved her into our home. And now you're taking her on the trip I waited 200 years to share with you.

"It hurts you to know she has no residency. It hurts you to know she's afraid of surgery. It hurts you to think she might die. But what about me? Have you ever felt sorry for the woman who gave up everything for you, only to wake up alone in a world she doesn't even know?"
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  • He Chose My Stepsister, I Left Him Forever   Chapter 10

    50 years later, the Shared Light returned.Adrian stood alone on the viewing platform at Polaris.One gold ring and one blue ring hung on the horizon. Without a partner to share what he saw, the two colors stayed separate until they faded.Around him, people cheered and held each other close.Through their partners' eyes, they saw the two colors merge into one. Then they tucked that memory away somewhere safe. It belonged only to the two of them.All Adrian could think about was how badly Thea had once wanted to stand here beside him.But he'd given that chance away with his own hands.The light over Polaris grew brighter, but the two colors never merged for Adrian.More than two centuries earlier, one winter in Finland, I carried my paint box out into the snow.Travelers from all over the world sat around a fire in the open countryside. Wood crackled in the flames. Someone pressed a hot drink into my hands. Another traveler threw back their head and shouted something in a language I d

  • He Chose My Stepsister, I Left Him Forever   Chapter 9

    Adrian left Polaris that night and raced back to Skyhaven alone.When the door slid open, the only sound inside was the hum of the air system.The storage room was empty.He yanked open every cabinet anyway, then pulled up the apartment's entry log.In the final recording, Thea stood in the living room with her paint box in her arms. She stared out the window for a long time, then shut off her terminal and stepped into the repatriation pod sent by the Bureau.She never looked back. Not even once.The paints she'd brought from 200 years ago were gone. So were the old brushes bearing her teeth marks. Even the sketchbook filled with drawings of him was gone.Yet the master bedroom still glowed with the warm yellow light Sasha liked, and her blue roses were blooming in the growth tank.Only then did Adrian remember that the last thing he'd asked Thea to do was take care of Sasha's flowers.He stormed into the Temporal Immigration Bureau and slammed his highest-level clearance down on the c

  • He Chose My Stepsister, I Left Him Forever   Chapter 8

    Adrian kept his eyes fixed on Sasha."Did you know Thea had filed for repatriation?"Something flickered in Sasha's eyes, but a second later, she put on a wounded expression."She's only doing it to scare you. She's been like that since we were kids. Whenever she doesn't get her way, she threatens to run away.""Did she submit an application to the Bureau or not?""How would I know?" Sasha grabbed his hand. "Adrian, my stomach hurts again. Let's go back to the room, all right?"She pressed his hand against her belly, as if the mind-link could prove she was in pain."Then why did you keep these?"He turned the terminal toward her.One photo after another appeared on the screen, each with Thea deliberately cropped out. Sasha went pale, and pure panic flooded through the mind-link.For the first time, Adrian didn't mistake it for fear of dying.He remembered the joy that had flooded through the link during the Shared Light, her racing heart whenever she got close to him, and the jealousy

  • He Chose My Stepsister, I Left Him Forever   Chapter 7

    The night before they left Polaris, Adrian and Sasha were resting at the viewing camp.Not far away, an elderly couple sat beside a fire, looking through their photos.The man added a photo of the two of them beneath the Shared Light to their album and laughed. "50 years from now, we'll come back and see it again. Just you and me."The woman smiled and nodded. The mind-link on her wrist gave off a soft glow.Just you and me.Adrian's cup hit the table with a thud.200 years ago, Thea had said almost the same thing.She'd covered the walls of her studio with everything she could find about Polaris and spent days deciding which paints to bring. She'd been so excited. She'd said the Shared Light was something you should see once in your life with the person you loved most. No one else should be part of it.He'd wrapped his arms around her from behind and made that promise without hesitation.But in the end, Sasha was the one who had seen it with him.Adrian opened his terminal and sent Th

  • He Chose My Stepsister, I Left Him Forever   Chapter 6

    When the Shared Light appeared over Polaris, the whole sky seemed to fall silent.Adrian stood at the edge of the viewing platform.The grass beneath his feet glowed faintly blue, while a river in the distance flowed upward into the sky, defying gravity. Thousands of visitors from across the star systems had gathered to witness the event that came only once every 50 years.Thea used to watch videos of this place over and over.She used to say that when the Shared Light appeared, she'd use Earth's oldest paints to capture the universe's newest color.Two rings of light rose above the horizon, one gold and one blue, like two rivers destined never to meet.All around him, couples reached for each other's hands. One by one, the mind-links on their wrists began to glow. Through their shared vision, the two rings merged into a single color that had never existed on Earth.Adrian saw it too.The color was impossible to describe. Blue seemed to burn inside it while gold sank through it like li

  • He Chose My Stepsister, I Left Him Forever   Chapter 5

    When the white light faded, the first thing I smelled was turpentine.The paint-stained wooden floor stretched beneath my feet. Outside, a car horn blared from the street. September sunlight filtered through the plane trees and spilled across my easel.I was back in my own studio.The calendar on the wall showed a date 31 days after I'd entered the pod.200 years had passed in the future. Here, only a month had passed.[Forced repatriation complete.][Host's memories of the future preserved in full. The neural pathway linked to her love for Adrian Marsh has been severed.]After the voice faded, I still remembered Polaris, the Shared Light, and every word Adrian had said when he registered Sasha as his partner instead of me.But those memories couldn't hurt me anymore.They felt like an old painting I'd once poured my heart into but no longer cared about.A key turned in the door.My grandmother came in carrying the gown I had never finished painting, and froze when she saw me."Thea?"

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