Chapter 115

Chapter 115
Alora’s POV

I stand where I once believed I would never survive standing alone.

The hill is quiet now. Grass bends in the wind. The old stones—once marked with symbols of prophecy and blood—have been left untouched, their carvings softened by time and weather. No guards. No banners. No one telling me where to stand or what I represent.

Just sky above me.

Just ground beneath my feet.

There was a time when this place terrified me. It was here that people whispered about fate as if it were a chain, heavy and unbreakable. Here that they looked at me with fear and hope tangled together, as if I were a door that could save them or ruin them, depending on which way I opened.

I used to believe them.

I used to believe fate was something written before I could read, decided before I could choose. A path laid out so clearly that any step away from it meant disaster.

The curse taught me otherwise.

Not all at once. Never kindly. But fully.

I close my eyes and breathe in the air. It smells of earth and distance and possibility. Somewhere far below, the city moves without waiting for me. People argue. People love. People make mistakes and repair them. Life continues, unbothered by prophecy.

That used to hurt.

Now, it feels like freedom.

I remember the girl I was when this story began. Afraid to speak too loudly. Afraid to want too much. Afraid that if I stepped out of line, everything would fall apart.

I thought survival meant obedience.

I thought love meant endurance.

I thought power meant control.

None of those things were true.

Power, I learned, is responsibility without ownership. Love is choice renewed, not fate endured. And survival—real survival—means becoming someone who can change without breaking.

Behind me, footsteps approach, then stop. I don’t turn.

Darren knows better now than to interrupt moments like this.

“I didn’t mean to hover,” he says softly.

“You’re not,” I reply. “You’re existing.”

He steps beside me, close but not touching. We no longer reach for each other out of habit or need. When we touch, it is because we choose to.

“How does it feel?” he asks.

I consider the question.

“Strange,” I say. “Light. Like I’ve put something down and only just realized how heavy it was.”

He nods. “Do you miss it?”

I know what he means.

The crown. The certainty. The weight of being needed.

“No,” I say. Then, after a pause, “Sometimes I miss who I thought I had to be. But not who I was.”

That feels important to say out loud.

We stand in silence for a while. No grand moment arrives. No voice from the sky announces that we have done well. The world does not bow.

And that, I realize, is the point.

Later, I walk alone.

Not because I must. Because I want to.

I follow the path down the hill, past the stones, past the markers of old stories. At the edge of the road, a child has tied ribbons to a post—bright scraps of fabric fluttering wildly in the wind. There is no ritual here. No meaning passed down.

Someone simply wanted color where there had been none.

I smile and keep walking.

The future stretches ahead, undefined and open. There is no prophecy waiting to catch me if I step wrong. No curse bound to my blood. No crown waiting to be inherited or stolen.

For the first time, I understand how rare that is.

I think of all the people who came before me, trapped by stories they could not rewrite. I think of those who come after, who will never know my name or the fear that shaped me.

That is not loss.

That is success.

When night comes, I return to a home that does not belong to the crown. The door creaks. The hearth is warm. A table waits, not for a queen, but for a person who will sit, eat, laugh, and rest.

Darren meets me there. Not as an alpha. Not as a mate chosen by fate.

As a partner.

As someone who walks beside me because he wants to.

“Tomorrow?” he asks.

“Tomorrow,” I agree.

We do not define what that means.

I sit by the fire later, alone again, and open a fresh page in a book that has no title. I write not to record history, but to remember how it felt to arrive here.

I write:

There was once a girl told she was cursed.

She believed it, because everyone else did.

But the curse was not meant to be lifted.

It was meant to be outgrown.

I pause, pen hovering.

Then I add the final words, the ones that matter most:

Fate was never broken.

It was outgrown.

I close the book.

Outside, the wind moves through the trees, unconcerned with endings. The stars burn without prophecy. The world continues—not perfect, not safe, but open.

And for the first time in my life, I step forward without fear of where my feet will land.

Because the future is not something waiting to claim me.

It is something I will meet.

On my own terms.

THE END.