She Chose Herself This Time Novels & Stories

Faint, but flickering. She didn’t have a plan yet. She didn’t know what leaving would look like or if she was brave enough to do it tomorrow or the next day. Fear still lived in her chest, loud and insistent. But beneath it was a certainty she couldn’t ignore anymore. She was done waiting to be chosen. She was going to choose herself. And for the first time in a long time, that choice didn’t feel like an ending. It felt like the beginning of something real.

He knew that once I made a decision, there was no turning back. “Leave this place. Return to your Coven,” I said. “Let us act as though we never knew each other.” With that, I turned and left. Dominic remained standing in the Grand Hall for three days and three nights. On the fourth day, he finally departed. He returned to the Bat Coven hollowed out, as though his soul had been torn from him. He replayed every choice he had made, hating himself so fiercely that he wished he could return to the past and destroy the version of himself who had betrayed me.

She resented that Brendan also told her something similar once before. No one could pick for her this time. It had to be her choice and her choice alone. She swallowed the lump in her throat and held her chin high, “I’ll do it.”

Today, she decided to leave it down, letting it flow freely over her shoulders—a silent act of defiance against the control the Lottery threatened to impose. She stared at herself for a long moment. Not out of vanity—never that—but the weight of knowing this was the version of herself that would be remembered. Tomorrow—or maybe today, since it began in hours—would mark the start of a life she hadn’t chosen. Whether she was selected or overlooked, this moment mattered. Every movement, every gesture, every glance.

> “But I’m none of them now.” A pause. Then: > “And I don’t need to be.” She closed the drawers. Locked the door. And walked away with the only version of herself that mattered: The one who was still choosing.

But a flicker of something that might have been acknowledgment. "I am not a prize to be won," she continued. "I am a person who chooses. Every day. Every moment. I choose Dante because he earned the right to be chosen—not through grand gestures, but through showing up, through consistency, through seeing me when I was invisible." Kael's throat worked. "I see you now."

"I have twenty minutes." "That is all I need." She looked at her hands. "I am not going to ask for anything. I just need to say one thing and have you hear it." "Okay," he said. She looked up at him. "I think you are the first person I have actually liked who saw me clearly and chose someone else anyway," she said. "Not because I was not enough. Because someone else was already there." She paused. "I spent a while being upset about that. And then I realized I was upset about something bigger. About wanting to be chosen and understanding that being chosen is not something you can make happen by being the right version of yourself."

So has my freedom. Another line. Now he will see what that means. Her gaze lifted slowly. Calm. Focused. Because now she understood something clearly. This was no longer about being seen. This was about being chosen. And this time She would choose herself.

She took a step back and did a quick glance from his head to his feet. “Now, look at you. You're pathetic, but I still chose to love you. I won't get rid of this child, Kelvin! And i won't give birth to him or her out of wedlock either! I'm not some random woman who you get to smash and pass. I'm Nancy Gilbert, and I get whatever that I want just the way I got you, you will get married to me whether you accept it or not!” Kelvin watched her chest moving up and down, her eyes red in anger. He was equally infuriated with himself for letting such a mistake happen.

She thought about sitting across from a man who wanted to use her and performing the version of herself she had spent years trying to stop being. She thought about whether it would feel like going backward. She decided it would not. Because the first time she had been that version of herself she had not chosen it. Tomorrow she would choose it, deliberately, for a reason, and she would take it off again when she was done with it. That was the difference. That was the whole difference. Her phone buzzed. A message from Ethan. It said: You do not have to do this tomorrow if you decide tonight that you do not want to. There are other ways.