Alone With You In The Ether

After years of heartbreak and loneliness, Amara has convinced herself that love is not meant for her. Growing up surrounded by loss and disappointment, she builds walls around her heart and focuses only on surviving each day. When she moves to a new city hoping to start over, fate leads her to Daniel, a quiet but kind man who sees through the pain she tries so hard to hide. Their connection begins as friendship, but slowly Daniel shows Amara something she has never truly felt before—a love that is patient, genuine, and healing. But the past refuses to stay buried. Old wounds, secrets, and fear threaten to pull them apart. Amara must decide whether to keep running from love or finally believe that she deserves it. As their lives intertwine, she begins to understand a powerful truth: sometimes love arrives when you least expect it—and when it does, it reminds you that no matter how broken you feel, you are never truly alone.

I reach for the door handle, the cold metal biting into my skin as I press my thumb against the latch. Before I can pull the door open, Cade's arm shoots out from behind me, slamming it shut. My body jolts, my heart leaping into my throat as I feel the heat of his body against my back. He lowers himself to me, his breath fanning my ear. "Are you walking out on me again, Elysian?” A shaky breath parts my lips, the hair on the back of my neck standing on its ends. "I never walked out on you, Cade…" My voice falters, betraying me. "Don't lie to me." His tone is aggressive. "I told you a long time ago never to walk away from me again. Are you always so careless?” I try to swallow, but my throat is too tight. "I'm sorry," I manage, the words barely audible. "You said that already," he challenges me, warning me to choose my next words carefully. But I can't. I can't think. I can't move. As his grip on the door tightens, I realize he's not giving me a choice. ⊰ Heartprints in the Void ⊱ My name is Elysian Reign, and I'm not extraordinary. His name is Cade Sinclair, and unlike me, he is extraordinary. At the age of 25, he inherited billions from his trillionaire father—David Sinclair. You never imagine that the love of your life's own father would manipulate his son's life to get rid of you—even if it means forcing him into an experimental hypnosis treatment. After three years, you'd think I'd have learned my lesson. You'd think I would've changed my identity and left the country after walking in on my first day at my new and finding out that Cade is now my boss.

I had been with Elias, a renowned astrophotographer, for five years. With that said, I had never asked him to take me on a shoot with him, all because he once told me, "The first rule of astrophotography is to avoid any kind of light pollution. Even a flicker of your phone screen can ruin an entire night's long exposure." This was why I never even dared to send so much as a text to ask him if he had arrived at the location. I was afraid of ruining his work. All I did was wait at home. Whenever he went to the snowy mountains or the wilderness for a shoot, I would fold a paper star. In each of these paper stars, I would write down the things I did not get to say to him because I did not want to disturb him. [Make sure you layer up.] [I'll wait for you to come back.] I accumulated a thousand and ninety-six origami stars over five years, filling three glass bottles. He never opened a single one of them. Just last week, he was shortlisted for an international astrophotography competition. I was happy for him and went to the website to see his entry called “Light.” Framed at the center of the image was his assistant dressed in a red windbreaker. She was toying with a sparkler and laughing cheerily. The judges' comment read, "In this submission, the photographer voluntarily passed up the chance to capture a once-in-seventy-years comet. Instead, he dedicated the shot to the figure in the image who exuded all the light for him." This whole time, his world was never devoid of light. He simply wanted to snuff out my light. That same night, I poured all of the stars out of the bottles. I opened them one by one, to read the messages within to myself. Then, I burned them all. At dawn, after washing the three empty glass bottles, I had them neatly arranged next to the box he used for his camera lens. There were tens of thousands of galaxies in the universe. There was no reason I should linger outside the frame and wait for someone's light to bleed into mine.

“Run.” That’s the last thing Lena expects to hear from the man who’s been choking the life out of her. Commander Kai should hate her. Everyone in the clan does. But the moment the hidden mark on Lena’s wrist ignites, everything changes. The council calls her an Echo, a forbidden power that can feel other people’s emotions, steal memories, and uncover truths no one wants exposed. Before Lena can prove she’s innocent, someone frames her for murder. Now the clan wants her dead. Forced beyond the borders meant to kill her, Lena expects the wilds to finish the job. Instead, a dangerous exile named Vance saves her life and offers her a deal. Protection… in exchange for her power. But Lena isn’t the only predator drawn to the awakening Echo. Somewhere beyond the clan borders, Jax, the silver-haired predator has already begun watching her. But as Lena’s Echo awakens, something terrifying becomes clear. The clan didn’t ban Echo bearers because they were dangerous. They banned them because Echoes hear lies. Now three powerful men are drawn to the woman everyone else fears: The commander who should be hunting her. The exiled warrior who refuses to let her go. And the silver-haired predator who understands her power better than she does. But the real danger isn’t the men fighting over her. It’s the truth her power is about to reveal. Because once Lena starts hearing the secrets hidden in their hearts… no one will escape the echoes.

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.

"You can't handle it. If you try too hard to understand me, what you'll unbosom, that is if you're able to uncover anything, will drive you mad. Because my mind is a dark labyrinth, never understood". “Sometimes there is no darker place than our thoughts, the moonless midnight of the mind”.——Dean Roontz. A dark, lonely, numb soul wanders the face of the Earth in search of peace. Running and hiding from her hunters and her captives. She's trying all she can to feel something, anything, at all as proof that she's living but all to no avail. She's neither human nor werewolf, Satyr nor mermaid, she doesn't seem to have a place to fit in. Her only mission and the goal that drives her very being is how to get rid of the curse she was born with. A curse that seems to spread its wings of death over any one she dares to care about. A curse that doesn't hesitate to suck the happiness out of all beings of close proximity to her. Will her strive to break this curse be fruitful or futile? Will she be able to protect others from getting consumed by this curse that plagues her very existence? Will she thrive over this seemingly unbreakable curse?