Who Are The Main Characters In Born To Fly: A Memoir?

On my twentieth birthday, I had to choose a husband from the six angel heirs. Everyone thought I would choose Adrian Seraphiel, the brightest golden-winged heir and the man I had loved for years. In my last life, I did. Because of me, he inherited eighty percent of House Seraphiel’s fortune and became the next ruler of the angel clan. But after our marriage, he got involved with Celeste, my adopted half-siren sister. When my dragon family cast her out of House Drakon, Adrian blamed me. From then on, he hated me. He surrounded himself with women who looked like her, humiliated me again and again, and finally replaced my life-saving medicine with slow poison. I died carrying his child, while the last of my dragon blood burned away. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on my twentieth birthday. This time, I decided to let them have each other. So in front of everyone, I chose Cassian Seraphiel, the sixth son of the angel family. Broken-winged. Mocked by everyone. No one believed he could ever inherit anything. The room burst into laughter. Adrian looked at me coldly and sneered. “Elena, are you choosing that useless cripple just to get my attention?” I ignored him. Because in my last life, after I died, this so-called useless cripple was the only one who collected my body, found the truth, and avenged me by stripping Adrian of his golden wings. But then Adrian stepped closer. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Funny,” he said. “That wasn’t who you chose in your last life.”

In my previous life, I was accepted as a pilot and was about to enter aviation university for training. But because I stepped in to save the campus belle, Diana Fowler, from being assaulted by thugs, they retaliated against me. They broke both my legs, shattering my dream of flying. What angered me even more was that Diana, the very woman I saved, led the police to my hospital bed and identified me as the rapist. The two thugs who assaulted her were praised as heroes instead. My mother was so furious that she suffered a heart attack. When I was in prison, I fell into despair and took my own life. After being reborn, I watch indifferently as Diana cries for help in the alley. This time, I coldly put on my headphones.

On the flight home, the plane starts shaking violently. Certain I'm about to die, I call my husband, Rhys Callahan, to say my last words. He hangs up on me, and his auto-reply flashes on the screen. "Driving. On my way to pick up Daphne." I've taken 86 flights in our five years of marriage. Every time I'm about to land, I ask him to come get me, and every time, the answer is the same. "Daphne's getting in too. I have to pick her up." He picks up Daphne Langston all 86 times. The lowest point comes during a rainstorm. I drag my suitcase through the downpour outside the terminal for two hours, unable to get a ride. When I call him, Daphne's voice comes through, laughing. "Oh, Rhys is helping me with my luggage right now. He can't come to the phone." Now the cabin fills with screaming and sobbing. The plane spirals out of control at cruising altitude, the left wing shearing away as flames light up the windows. My phone buzzes with a message from him. "Just picked Daphne up. What time do you land? I'll come get you." I stare at the screen and let out a bitter laugh. After five years, he's finally offering to pick me up. But fire swallows the plane as it plunges toward the ground. He doesn't know I'm no longer coming home.

Ethan Hale was the name every pilot at North Ridge Air Base looked up to. I was Ava Morgan, his wife and his only flight partner. To earn my ace qualification, I had to complete three final evaluation missions within the review period. I failed all three. I refused to accept it as coincidence, so I followed the access logs, flight records, and maintenance files until every abnormal detail pointed to one person. Chloe Bennett. When I took the evidence to Ethan, I heard him arguing with his deputy, Liam Reed, behind the office door. "You are putting Chloe forward for the ace-track recommendation? She can barely hold steady in a back seat," Liam said, his anger barely restrained. "Ava is my wife and my flight partner. Chloe is different. She has nothing." Standing outside the door, I suddenly laughed. Then I turned around and accepted the return offer from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Before I left, I gave Ethan three things. And he would regret them for the rest of his life.

Our family is planning a ski trip at a luxury resort. However, my mother gives my snow-view room to my adoptive sister and makes me, her biological daughter, stay in the storage room. I'm about to protest when my father and brother accuse me of being selfish. "We've always given Madie the best of everything; she won't be able to sleep in any other room." "Madie is our family—she's the one who's lived with us this whole time. We're a family, so we have to stay together." I'm the one who shares their blood, yet they consider me an outsider. If that's the case, they can go on vacation without me. I board a cruise and travel the world for a month without ever going home. That's when they panic.

While packing Ethan's flight bag, I found a custom solo wings pin. The engraving on the back read: For Lark, to celebrate your first solo. Beneath the box sat the receipt for Skyler's flight school tuition, paid in full by Ethan, along with a photograph. In the photo, she was sitting in the pilot's seat. Ethan's gloved hand rested over hers on the control yoke. Seven years ago, I had sat in that same seat. Back then, I was one step away from my first solo flight, but Ethan talked me out of it again and again, always claiming it was "for my own good." He said flying was dangerous, that someone had to stay home and take care of things. I put down my logbook, pressed the wrinkles out of every one of his captain's uniforms, and spent seven years living by his flight schedule. Only now did I finally understand. It wasn't that he didn't want to take anyone flying. He just didn't want to take me. What made it even more absurd was that the night Skyler first flew through the clouds, I was alone in a hospital, losing our baby. I called him over a dozen times. At three in the morning, he finally called back, his voice flat and indifferent. "I just took Lark through the clouds. Next time something comes up, give me a heads-up." I put the wings pin back exactly where I found it, then pulled the crumpled ultrasound printout from the bottom of the drawer and tucked it inside the logbook that had been gathering dust for seven years. This time, I wasn't going to wait for him to look back. He convinced me to leave the pilot's seat, then turned around and put another woman in the sky. So I would leave him and take back the sky that had always been mine.