Awakening By Kate Chopin Novels & Stories

***"And she realized the story was a cage. So, she closed the book." --- ### The Awakening (The True One) **GASP.** Liquid flooded out of my mouth as I bucked upward. My lungs burned with a cold, chemical fire. I wasn't in a park. I wasn't on a desk. I was in a dark, cold room filled with the hum of a thousand cooling fans. I was naked, covered in a thick, translucent gel, and there were tubes—real, rubber and plastic tubes—plugged into my spine and my throat.

I choked out. “No.” His grip tightened. “It is beginning.” “What is beginning?” His voice was barely a whisper. “The awakening.” My eyes flew open as light exploded through my entire body. And the world vanished.

“They weren’t rogues. They were… organized. Too calm. Too sure of something they thought I was.” Maxine frowned. “Which is?” I hesitated. That word—awakening—still crawled across my spine. I had heard it in the dark, tied to a chair, breath shaking, Myron unconscious beside me. “She’s awakening,” one of them had said. “If we don’t trigger it now, someone else will.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “They kept talking like there was something inside me. Something that was supposed to… emerge.” Maxine blinked. “Like what? A power?”

Alternating pov: Dawn had barely touched the horizon when the pain woke me—sharp, rolling, electric. My whole body trembled, skin too tight, bones burning. I gasped and clutched the blankets, trying not to scream. The door flew open. “Sera.” Kade was already at my side, dropping to his knees. He must have been waiting. Watching. Ready. “It’s starting,” I breathed, voice shaking. “I know, baby. I’ve got you.” He swept me into his arms, holding me like I weighed nothing.

“How are you feeling?” “Like I’m losing my mind,” I said. “What did you put in that tea?” Her brows lifted. “Nothing unusual.” She stepped closer, studying my face. “Your pupils are dilated. And your scent is different.” She stopped. “It’s happening,” she said quietly. “The awakening.” “The what?” “I hoped I was wrong.” She opened the journal. The pages were filled with careful handwriting and old drawings. “This belonged to your grandmother. Maelis Vale.”

"Help! Someone, help me!" I heard loud cries for help. When I opened my eyes, I was back to the day my mom's foster daughter, Edith Kellie, jumped into the river. My mother, Evelyn Newbury, leaned over the railing, her heart sinking and rising with Edith. In my previous life, Evelyn had jumped in without hesitation, only for Edith to push her head underwater. The result? Evelyn had drowned, while Edith had been saved.

** TRIGGER WARNING: This chapter contains graphic descriptions of rape. ** Celine had no idea how long she’d been unconscious for, but she awoke in a chair, her wrists and ankles held in place with leather straps. She looks around the room as her vision slowly clears. The room seems to be a large stone lined room, there was a drain in the floor in front of the chair she was in. The wall in front of her had a small cupboard the door of which was open, and she could see several keys hung up in neat rows.

As a babe he fed me to the hounds, and now it is your time. "No, no, no, please you don't understand! I'll do anything! Just let me warn them! Dad! Father! Xerxes!" He didn't answer, he had left me to die. No, I had to walk up but how? How was I supposed to wake up from my own mind? My head was pounding and my body was trembling. I felt something wet tickle my nose and my ears. I knew it was blood. I had tried and tried and yet nothing was working. Nothing–

“It listens. It responds.” “Oh God…” My shaky hand lifted to my stomach. “No. No, no, no….” Because it didn’t feel like sickness, it felt like an awakening. A crawling pressure climbed up my ribs, hot and cold all at once. My vision blurred, and a violent pulse throbbed at the base of my skull. I squeezed my eyes shut, but that only made everything sharper, the movement under my skin, the tightening around my lungs, the whispering sensation spreading through my veins.

My name rang out, not Nayla, but another. Older. Forgotten. Sacred. And in the silence that followed, something whispered through the wind. “She’s awakening.” F