Chapter 4

Elena's POV

Father was silent for a long time. Then he finally looked at me.

His expression was complicated, as though only now, in this moment, he was seeing for the first time that this daughter he had never paid much attention to was capable of thinking through something so carefully.

He stood and crossed the room toward me.

“Elena.”

“This family has wronged you.”

He said it haltingly, as if he meant to reach for my hand.

“Don't worry. Once your mother's things are gathered, I'll see that you're compensated separately as well.”

Before his hand could touch mine, I stepped quietly back.

Father's hand hung in the air.

I looked up at him, still wearing a composed smile.

“I'm not aggrieved.”

“As long as you return my mother's inheritance to me, I have nothing to be aggrieved about.”

Father's face fell.

In that instant, he seemed to finally understand: I was no longer the daughter he remembered.

The old me would have had tears in my eyes just from a single offhand word of concern from him.

But now I only stood before him with polite distance, nothing in my gaze but clarity.

He looked at me for a long moment, then said quietly:

“You've changed.”

“You've grown up. Matured.”

I laughed inwardly.

Indeed.

I had grown up.

Dying once will do that.

I was done foolishly waiting for anyone to come and save me. In this house, not even the father who shared my blood truly cared about me.

I had always known that. I just hadn't been strong enough before to stop lying to myself, to stop pretending I didn't see it.

Vicky hugged Ryan's coat, cheeks flushed with excitement, already pressing Stepmother to start planning the wedding ahead of schedule.

She had begun to imagine how Ryan would lift her veil on the wedding day, how he would announce in front of everyone that she was the one he had truly loved all along.

She had no way of knowing that I had been secretly seeing Ryan for two years.

I watched her, and the corner of my mouth curved slowly upward.

Since she wanted it so badly, let her have it.

What she didn't know, what she couldn't know yet, was what I did.

In my last life, vampire hunters had launched an assassination attempt at our wedding.

A silver bullet cut through the crowd, aimed straight at Ryan's heart.

I hadn't stopped to think. Almost by instinct, I threw myself in front of him and took the shot.

Afterward, Ryan held me in his arms, covered in blood, his eyes red and his voice shaking as he said over and over that he couldn't lose me.

Everyone who witnessed it was moved.

The Elder Council, shaken by the assassination attempt, found themselves extending more sympathy and trust toward Ryan than ever before.

Later, Ryan uncovered the truth.

The vampire hunter had been secretly hired through the black market by his younger brother.

That brother also held a claim to the throne. If Ryan had died on his wedding day, the line of succession would have been thrown open again.

At the time, I had only felt the cold dread of how close it had been.

I had naively believed that by stepping in front of that bullet, I had saved Ryan not just from a wound, but from the most dangerous moment of his political life.

But after dying once, I was finally able to think through everything clearly.

Ryan, that careful, calculating man — could he really have been unaware of what his own brother was planning?

The venue had been full of his personal guard and the Elder Council's people. How had a vampire hunter slipped in so easily?

And the most absurd thing of all: Ryan moved with a speed that bordered on teleportation.

When the bullet came, he had more than enough time to get out of the way.

He hadn't moved.

He hadn't tried to dodge, hadn't tried to block it.

He had simply waited for me to throw myself in front of him.

Waited for his fragile human bride to bleed in front of everyone.

It had probably been a calculated act of cruelty all along.

He needed the Elder Council to see that his brother had grown reckless enough to attempt a public assassination at a wedding.

He certainly wasn't willing to let Vicky get hurt.

And he had no intention of enduring the searing pain of a silver bullet himself.

So he chose me.

He chose a woman who loved him so desperately she had lost all judgment, a woman with a pure enough bloodline to bear his heir.

If I hadn't been fool enough to throw myself forward, he might well have pulled me in front of him at the last second himself.

I lowered my eyes, turning the ruby necklace slowly in my palm.

The wound in my chest, the one that no longer existed, began to ache again, quietly, distantly.

But this time, the person who would stand at Ryan's side and stop that bullet would not be me.