Chapter 250: Mine by Choice 2

Chapter 250: Mine by Choice 2
Elara Campbell’s POV
When I fell, he moved one step before stopping himself. I felt the effort through the bond. It made me love him so fiercely I almost lost balance again.
“Do you want help?” Jaxson asked.
I lay in the grass, white-gold fur damp with sweat, breathing hard and annoyed at myself. My wolf grumbled. “Yes,” I said through the bond, exhausted and embarrassed.
Only then did he come. His dark wolf approached slowly, lowered his head, and nudged my shoulder with a gentleness so careful it nearly broke me. My wolf leaned into him for three breaths, then pushed herself back up. Not carried. Not rescued.
Helped. There was a difference. My solar magic recovered gradually.
Not like some perfect ending where power answered every call because I had finally accepted myself. Some days, my palms lit cleanly and I could hold a blade of sunlight for longer than before. Other days, trying gave me migraines that sent me to bed with cloth over my eyes while Jaxson sat in the dark beside me pretending not to worry loudly. If I used too much light, fever followed. If I pushed past Philip’s limits, my hands trembled for hours and my wolf went quiet in protest.
Philip remained strict. Sira remained worse. “You are not allowed to confuse progress with invincibility,” Sira told me after I tried to coat two blades in one morning.
“I did it,” I argued weakly from the cot.
“And then bled on my floor.”
“It was a small amount.”
“It was an unnecessary amount,” Sira replied.
Jaxson, standing near the door, said nothing. I looked at him. “You agree with her.”
“I am trying not to sound pleased that someone else is scolding you,” Jaxson said.
Sira gave him a look. “I am scolding you next for letting her try the second blade.”
Jaxson straightened. “I advised against it.”
“You advised with your face. Use words next time,” Sira said.
I laughed into the pillow. Jaxson looked offended. Then he looked relieved because I was laughing instead of hurting. That was how healing came. Not in one grand sunrise.
In small, stubborn moments. Kael and Ivy visited often with Cassian and Amara. Kael held the twins as if the world still owed him an explanation for how anything so small could belong to him. Cassian had his father’s dark scowl whenever he disliked being moved. Amara seemed calmer until she wanted something, then she screamed with enough authority to make three guards straighten at once.
“She gets that from Ivy,” Malric said one afternoon.
Ivy lifted a brow. “She gets it from survival,” Ivy replied.
Kael looked down at Amara with absolute devotion. “She may scream at anyone she likes.”
Ivy sighed. “You cannot raise an infant like a ruling Alpha.”
Kael looked genuinely confused. “Why not?”
Malric, passing behind them, said, “This family is doomed.” But he smiled at the twins when he thought no one watched.
Malric still watched the political shadows. He did not believe Dorian’s death ended every danger, and neither did Jaxson. Other vampire clans had accepted boundaries because fear and coalition force made wisdom convenient. The reformed ACSC had exposed and abolished the neutral-feeding treaty, but old systems never died in one announcement. There were always men who missed hidden power.
Always families who thought they could rebuild rot more cleanly next time. Malric tracked them. Quietly. With pleasure. Tobias earned small moments with his sons.
Nothing more dramatic than that. Sometimes Kael brought the twins into the garden and allowed Tobias to see them while Ivy watched closely. The first time Tobias touched Cassian’s tiny hand, he looked as if the baby had granted him mercy too large to hold. Kael did not forgive him in that moment. But he did not take the child away.
Malric sometimes sat in the same room as Tobias without speaking for thirty minutes, which Jaxson said was progress because Malric could insult a portrait if silence offended him enough. Jaxson met Tobias twice a week in the library. Some visits ended calmly. Some ended with Jaxson walking out white-faced and silent. Tobias stayed.
Jaxson returned. Repair remained slow. Incomplete. Real because no one pretended otherwise.
Samuel kept his distance because I demanded it and because perhaps, finally, he understood that love did not entitle him to closeness. He wrote letters sometimes. Not too many. He did not ask when I would visit. He did not mention walking beside me, blessing me or reclaiming the word father as if time could be bullied into obedience.
I read some letters. Not all. In one, he wrote about Helena’s favourite song and how she used to sing it while sweeping sunlight from the shop floor in the morning. I cried over that one. I still did not answer.
Understanding did not undo the sale. Maybe one day I would write back. Maybe I would not. Both choices were mine, and that was the only mercy I owed either of us.
Susan and Patrick began building their future with the serious determination of people who had seen how quickly futures could be stolen. Their wedding plans became half romance and half battlefield logistics because Patrick could not stop checking entrances and Susan could not stop inviting people who made him nervous. “You are marrying me,” Susan told him once in the courtyard. “Not guarding the cake.”
Patrick looked genuinely torn. “The cake could still be vulnerable.”
Susan stared at him. Then they both laughed, and he kissed her hand with a tenderness that made me look away smiling. Tessa lived independently.
She visited when she wanted, left when she wanted, and spoke of Ronan only when she chose. Whatever future waited there would have to meet her on ground she owned herself. That was perhaps the best thing the estate had given her after taking too much. A life with doors that opened outward. As for me, my life grew slowly around the shape of choice.
Then came the morning I sat in the medical wing with Jaxson beside me, my hand in his, waiting for Sira to speak. No war. No venom. No restraints. Only a test.
A quiet one. A wanted one. And fear so sharp I could barely breathe.