Chapter 88 Kaden's POV
I ran after Elara, tracking her scent through the pack house. She was heading toward the gardens toward the forest.
I caught up to her at the edge of the tree line. She was leaning against a tree, gasping for breath, tears streaming down her face.
"Go away," She said when she heard me approach.
"No."
"I mean it, Kaden just leave me alone."
"I'm not leaving you alone when you are this upset." I moved closer carefully, like approaching a frightened animal. "Talk to me."
"About what? About how my entire life might be a lie? About how I might not even be who I think I am?"
"About how you are feeling about what you need."
She laughed bitterly. "What I need is for this to not be happening. What I need is to wake up and find out this was all some terrible dream."
"If it's true….if you really are Elena Silvercrest-"
"Then what? Then I'm supposed to just accept that everything I remember is fake? That someone stole me when I was eight years old and made me forget who I was? Made me think I was nothing?"
"You were never nothing."
"I was an omega! The lowest rank! I spent years being treated like garbage because I was weak and powerless and insignificant!"
Her voice broke. "And now you are telling me that was all a lie? That I was actually someone important and I just didn't know it?"
"We don't know anything for certain yet-"
"The birthmark, Kaden. I have the exact birthmark Helena described. The same face as a missing girl. The power that no omega should have."
She slid down the tree until she was sitting on the ground. "It's true. All of it. And I don't know how to process that."
I sat down beside her, close but not touching. "Then don't process it all at once, take it piece by piece one thing at a time."
"How am I supposed to do that? My whole identity is in question. Who I am. Where I came from. Why am I here?"
She looked at me. "Do you understand what that feels like? Do you know who you are? To have your entire sense of self called into question?"
"No…I don't. But I'm here anyway and I'm not going anywhere."
We sat in silence for a while. Elara cried quietly while I just stayed beside her, a steady presence.
"There's something else," She finally said.
"What?"
"Something I haven't told anyone, something I thought I might be imagining."
"Tell me."
She took a shaky breath. "I have been seeing things. A dark figure has appeared three times now. In my room….In a bathroom mirror. In the library today."
"What kind of figure?"
"Just darkness shaped like a person. It doesn't speak, doesn't make sound, just watches me.
And today..."
She touched her throat. "Today it tried to choke me."
Ice ran through my veins. "It touched you? It hurts you?"
"It grabbed my throat…. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't call for help. It held me until I was about to pass out and then it just disappeared."
"Why didn't you tell me immediately?"
"Because I thought I was losing my mind! Who's going to believe me about some shadow creature that only I can see? That leaves no evidence? That vanishes whenever anyone else is around?"
She had a point. If she'd told me without this context, I might have thought it was stress or medication or trauma manifesting as hallucinations.
But now, with Helena's revelation, it felt different.
"If you really are Elena Silvercrest," I said slowly,
"If someone has been hiding you and suppressing your true nature for fifteen years, maybe this figure is connected to that. Maybe it's part of whatever magic or ritual they used."
"Or maybe I'm just going crazy from stress and none of this is real."
"Do you believe that?"
She was quiet for a long moment. "No. I don't. The figure feels real, the choking feels real. And everything Helena said..."
She looked at me. "I think I am Elena Silvercrest. I think someone took me after my pack was destroyed and made me forget who I was, made me believe I was powerless so I would never question anything."
"Then we will figure out who did this and why. And we'll make them pay for what they took from you."
"But what if I don't want to be Elena Silvercrest? What if I just want to be Elara? An omega who's pregnant and trying to figure out her life?"
"Then you can be both or neither or whoever you decide to be."
I took her hand carefully. "Your past doesn't define you. Who you were doesn't matter as much as who you choose to be now."
"Who I choose to be is terrified and confused and completely lost."
"Then be that one terrified and confused be lost. And I will be here while you figure it all out."
She leaned against me, exhausted. "This is too much of it, the pregnancy. The Erebus threat selena and now this. It's all too much."
"I know."
"I don't know if I'm strong enough for all of this."
"You are, you have survived everything thrown at you so far you will survive this too."
We sat there as the sun set, two people trying to make sense of a world that kept shifting beneath our feet.
And somewhere in the darkness, I knew, something was watching. The figure Elara had described. The thing that had tried to choke her.
Connected to her past to whoever had stolen Elena Silvercrest and turned her into Elara.
And it wasn't done with her yet.