Rebirth

Chapter 2: Rebirth.

I woke with a gasp that tore through my throat, my body jerking upright as if I had been shocked back to life. My hands flew to my chest, my face, my arms, and I was stunned to find myself whole and unbroken. No burns. No cuts. No crushing weight of concrete pressing the air from my lungs. My heart pounded so hard I could hear the blood rushing in my ears, and I looked around the room with wide, desperate eyes, trying to understand where I was and why I was not dead.

The bedroom was achingly familiar. It was mine and Julian's, the room where I had spent countless nights crying myself to sleep while he claimed to be working late.

Sunlight spilled through the windows in warm gold beams. Birds sang outside. I could hear the distant hum of traffic and voices, all the ordinary sounds of a city that had not yet been consumed by fire.

"This cannot be real." My voice came out hoarse and shaking. I threw off the covers and stumbled out of bed, nearly falling as my legs buckled beneath me, my head pounding like something was driving nails into my skull.

I gripped the edge of the dresser to steady myself, and when I looked up into the mirror, I gasped. I looked younger. Healthier. The years of stress and sadness had vanished from my face overnight, and there was a vitality in my reflection I had not seen since long before I started shrinking myself into the woman Julian wanted.

"No, no, no." I dragged my fingers through my hair, trying to piece together the fragments swimming through my mind. "I was dying. I was in the streets, the buildings were falling. So how am I here?"

I lunged for my phone on the nightstand, and the date on the screen made my blood run cold. Three months. Three months before the apocalypse began. Three months to prepare for a nightmare only I remembered.

"This is impossible." I sank onto the edge of the bed, legs no longer able to hold me, staring at the screen as if it might explain the universe to me. "I remember dying. I remember the pain of Julian choosing his mistress over me, which hurt more than any fire could. He chose her without a second thought, after so many years of sacrificing everything for him. Was I hallucinating? Was it just a dream?"

But the date did not lie, and the pain had been too real to be a dream. I was alive, and the apocalypse had not happened yet. I had been given something I never expected and never thought I deserved, a second chance. Tears slid down my cheeks, but they were not tears of grief. They were relief, and hope, and a fierce, burning resolve. I would not waste this. I was going to work hard and make sure Julian paid for what he had done to me.

"Get a grip, Elara. It's not the time to get heartbroken. We have an apocalypse to prepare for."

"I have three months." My voice grew steadier with each word. "Clearly no one else remembers or understands what's coming. I am the only one who can prepare, the only one who can survive. I will use every second I have left to make sure I never die such a tragic death again."

I thought of Julian's cold eyes, his cruel, casual words, the way he had looked at me like I had never mattered at all. I thought of every dream I had given up and every piece of myself I had carved away to become someone he could love, and the pain of it nearly buckled me. But there was no time for grief. Only survival.

I stood, steadier now, hands no longer trembling. I knew exactly what I had to do. I crossed to the closet and pulled out a plain dress, nothing chosen to please him, nothing but comfortable and practical, because I was finished trying to be a woman he would approve of. I dressed quickly and studied my reflection one last time. The woman looking back was ready to fight for survival.

"Julian Sterling." My voice was cold and steady, resolved in a way I had never felt before. "You are going to regret everything you did to me. I am done giving you the power to destroy me. When the world ends, I am the one who survives, not you."

I grabbed my purse and keys and walked out without a backward glance at the apartment that was never a home, only a cage I was finally breaking out of.

The streets of Veridia were calm and sunlit, nothing like the burning ruin I remembered, and it was almost impossible to believe this beautiful city would be ash in three months. People walked past me laughing, living their ordinary lives with no idea what was coming. I wanted to scream at them to run. I knew they would only call me mad.

At Julian's office building, I crossed the lobby with a confidence I had never carried before, one that made the security guards nod at me with something like respect instead of the usual polite pity.

In the elevator, I watched the floor numbers climb while my heart beat slow and steady. I was not afraid. I was not the woman who used to tremble at the thought of displeasing him, who begged for scraps of his attention. I had died and come back with a purpose nothing could shake.

His assistant looked up, startled, as I strode past without slowing. I pushed open his office door without knocking. He sat with his back to me, staring out at the city he meant to conquer, and he did not turn, did not acknowledge me, because he was used to me hovering in doorways waiting for permission to exist in his space.

The old Elara would have waited. Would have apologized for the interruption. Would have begged, quietly, for a single second of his attention.

This Elara had more important things to worry about than Julian Sterling's attention.

"I'm ready to sign the divorce papers, Julian."

My voice was clear, certain, and it made him spin his chair around to face me, his expression sliding from indifference to confusion to something that might have been amusement.

His jaw clenched as his eyes swept over me. He couldn't believe the woman he had spent years shaping into obedience would ever do something this bold. I held his gaze without flinching, without a trace of the fear that used to consume me in his presence.

He opened his mouth, but I didn't give him the chance to fill it. I crossed the room and dropped the papers onto his desk with a loud thud that made him flinch, and he leaned back in his chair, studying me, probably wondering what had gotten into me.

"You've always wanted a divorce, right?" I said, my voice firm. "Here, I'm finally agreeing to it. I'm letting you go."

"I want you to sign them right now."

I had loved Julian for seven years, from high school, where I fell for him at first sight, to this very day, married to him as his wife. But Julian had never once loved me. He despised and resented me because I had chosen to marry him even after learning his heart belonged to someone else.

So yes, maybe I had been foolish to want a man whose heart clearly belonged to someone else. But I wouldn't have stopped loving him if I hadn't been reborn. So now, fin

ally, I was letting him go.

"What are you doing, Elara?"