Chapter 2: Not Me

~~~Aurelia POV~~~

I woke up gasping.

My hand flew to my stomach before I even opened my eyes.

Flat and empty.

No. No, no, no.

A sob ripped out of my throat, raw and ugly. I curled onto my side, clutching the blanket like it could hold the pieces of me together. My baby. I had felt that tiny life only hours ago, and now there was nothing.

Wait.

Blanket?

I froze. The Abyss was cold stone, venom and blood. This was soft linen, warm sunlight, and the faint smell of salt.

I opened my eyes.

A low wooden ceiling. Seashells strung on twine by the window, clinking in the breeze. A narrow bed, a crooked shelf of herbs, a chipped mirror leaning against the wall.

I was alive.

That was impossible.

"Hazel!" a woman's voice called from downstairs. "If you're not up in five minutes, you'll be late for school again!"

Hazel?

I sat up too fast and my head spun. Then I looked at my hands.

They were wrong. Smaller, slimmer, the skin a shade darker. A thin silver scar curled across one knuckle.

These weren't my hands.

I stumbled to the mirror and forgot how to breathe.

A girl stared back at me. Nineteen, maybe. Tangled dark hair, wide green eyes, a small mole under her left eye. Pretty in a plain, unguarded way.

I lifted my hand. She lifted hers.

I touched my cheek. She touched hers.

"Who are you?" I whispered.

Her lips moved with mine, and a stranger's voice came out of my throat.

----

Her name was Hazel Asher.

I pieced that together between the clatter of dishes downstairs and the bruises I found on my arms. Memories that weren't mine drifted in like seaweed on a tide. A small cottage on a cliff. A cold schoolroom. A woman with graying hair who smelled of lavender and smoke.

"Finally," the woman said when I walked into the kitchen. She set a bowl of porridge in front of me without looking up. "I thought I'd have to drag you out."

Aunt Kathy. The name surfaced on its own, along with a strange, aching warmth. She had raised Hazel since her parents died.

I sat down slowly, trying to confirm the words. "Aunt Kathy."

She stopped. Her sharp eyes lifted and studied me one heartbeat too long.

"You're pale," she said. "Bad dreams again?"

"Something like that."

She sighed and pressed the back of her hand to my forehead. Her fingers were rough, but her touch was careful. "Eat. And keep your head down today. Don't give them a reason to look twice."

Why should that be?

"And I shouldn't have to remind you whose kindness keeps a roof over our heads." She turned back to the sink and scrubbed a pot that was already clean. "The Lycan King has done enough for us. We don't repay him with trouble."

The Lycan King.

I kept my face still and my spoon moving. She said it the way people mention the weather, like something Hazel had known all her life.

So I nodded like I knew it too.

Everyone knew his name. Ravik. The ruler whose realm swallowed half the supernatural world, the man every pack bowed to. They said he was cruel. They said he had burned a rival's entire court in one night and never blinked.

And apparently, he protected this cottage.

I filed that away and said nothing.

----

I found my way to the school. Hazel's memories helped more than I expected.

It sat at the bottom of the cliff road, a gray stone building facing the sea.

I regretted walking in within thirty seconds.

"Look who showed up," a girl sneered. "The orphan."

"I heard her aunt makes her scrub floors for the whole village."

"No wonder she smells like smoke."

Laughter. A shoulder slammed into mine and my books hit the floor.

I stared at the scattered pages, and something old and tired settled in my chest. For three years, I had been whispered about and sneered at, and I had swallowed all of it. I thought that part of my life was over.

Apparently not.

"Pick them up," I said.

The girl blinked. "What?"

"I said, pick them up."

The corridor went quiet. Then someone laughed, and the quiet broke.

"Did the orphan just give an order?"

"She's got nerve today."

Her friend shoved me against the wall, hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs. A third girl dumped my bag out and ground her heel into my notes.

"You should be grateful we even let you walk these halls," she hissed. "No pack. No family. No name. You're already a shame."

I looked at her.

I knew this. I had lived this. The sneers, the laughter, the way cruelty always tasted like entertainment to the people dishing it out.

Only the faces had changed.

"Is that all?" I asked quietly.

Her smile faltered.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

A bell rang out from the courtyard, deep and heavy. The whole corridor turned toward it at once.

"The Lycan King's carriage!" someone gasped.

"Line up! Everyone outside, now!"

The bullies forgot me instantly. They scrambled for the doors, smoothing their uniforms, and I was left standing alone in the wreckage of my books.

Slowly, I bent down, gathered what I could, and followed the crowd out.

----

The courtyard was packed.

Students stood in rigid lines. Teachers bowed so low their foreheads almost touched their knees. The air felt different, heavy, like the moment before a storm breaks.

A black carriage rolled through the gates, pulled by horses with eyes like embers.

The door opened.

And he stepped out.

Tall. Dark-haired. Wrapped in black and gold, with a face so composed it looked carved from stone. He didn't glance at the bowing crowd. Didn't need to. Every head dipped as he passed, like grass bending before the wind.

The Lycan King. Ravik.

Then it hit me.

My heart stuttered.

Then it raced, so hard and so suddenly that I pressed a hand to my chest in alarm. My palms went damp. Heat crawled up my neck. And deep in my ribs, a soft, helpless ache bloomed, the kind that had nothing to do with me.

What is this?

A flash of memory that wasn't mine. A girl at a window, watching a black carriage climb the cliff road. A girl pressing a dried flower between the pages of a notebook. A girl whispering a name over and over when she thought no one could hear.

Ravik.

My breath caught.

Hazel had loved him.

Not admired him. Not feared him. Loved him, quietly and stubbornly, for years, the way you love someone you know you can never have. And that love hadn't gone anywhere when I took her place. It had just been waiting.

I almost laughed. I had spent three years aching for a man who never loved me back, and now I'd woken up in a body that ached for another.

Stop it, I told the heart in my chest. He's a stranger to me.

It didn't listen. Of course it wouldn't. It's not mine after all.

The school doors banged open and a girl came flying down the steps, uniform crooked, curls bouncing. She threw herself at the Lycan King with a laugh, and for the briefest moment, the stone in his face cracked.

His niece. Daisy.

The name rose out of Hazel's memories with a rush of warmth.

Ravik said something too low for anyone to hear. Daisy grinned, took his arm and tugged him toward the carriage. He let her. The whole courtyard watched the most feared man in the supernatural world get dragged along by a nineteen-year-old girl, and not one person dared to smile.

Before climbing in, Daisy turned and found me in the crowd. She waved, bright and unashamed. Then mouthed, 'Tomorrow!'

I lifted my hand before I even realized I was doing it.

The carriage doors closed. The ember-eyed horses stamped, and the black carriage rolled out through the gates and up the cliff road until the sea wind swallowed the sound of its wheels.

Slowly, the courtyard exhaled. The lines broke and whispers started.

I stayed where I was, one hand still pressed to my chest, listening to a heart that wasn't mine slow back to its usual rhythm.

A stranger's face. A stranger's aunt. A stranger's friend. A stranger's love.

I had died in the dark with nothing, and woken up in the light with someone else's whole life.

I didn't know why I was here.

But since I was given a second chance of life, I'd rather make the best of it.