(From the perspective of Seraphina Vesper)
The morning after the party, the hotel suite was filled with a soft, hazy light and a profound sense of peace. I woke first, a rare occurrence. I turned my head on the pillow and watched the two people who had, against all odds, become the entire center of my universe. Iris was curled in a nest of blankets on the sofa, a new stuffed unicorn tucked under her arm, a contented smile on her sleeping face. And in the bed beside me, Kaelen was finally, truly at rest.
Her face, so often a mask of stoic control or haunted anxiety, was completely unguarded in sleep. The faint, fading bruise on her cheek, a gift from her monster of a father, was a stark reminder of the battles she had fought for us. My fingers traced the air above the faint, thin scar on the back of her hand, the one he had given her with his ring. An inheritance of pain. I felt a surge of cold, protective fury so intense it was almost dizzying. A dragon had woken within me since meeting this new Kaelen, a beast that would burn the world down to keep her safe.
It was this feeling, this fierce, all consuming possessiveness, that was so new to me. For years, my emotions had been a landscape of grief and rage. Love was a memory, a ghost that belonged to my parents and my sister. Now, there was this. This terrifying, exhilarating, obsessive need to protect, to claim, to hold. I knew it wasn't entirely healthy. It felt like standing at the edge of a cliff the view was breathtaking, but the drop was fatal. My life had been defined by loss. My parents, my sister, my company, my autonomy all of it, stripped away, leaving me with nothing but Iris and a burning, righteous anger.
Then came Kaelen. Or rather, the woman who wore Kaelen's face, as I like to think of it. In the dead of night, I'd found myself researching personality disorders, scrolling through medical journals, trying to find a logical explanation for the shift. But as far as I knew, Kaelen didn't have any accidents, so this wouldn't be amnesia. Nothing seemed to fit her sudden change. And I realized, with a startling clarity, that I don't care. Whatever this is, I want this Kaelen right now, and I don't want the old Kaelen back. A cold, hard thought, one I didn't shy away from, solidified in my mind: if I needed to shackle this new soul to Kaelen Blackwood's body to keep her, then I would have to.
She was my lifeline, the first and only one thrown to me in a decade of drowning. This feeling, this obsession, was simply the desperate, primal instinct to cling to that anchor with all my strength, because I knew, with a certainty that shook me to my core, that I would not survive losing anything ever again. Kaelen Blackwood was mine, and I would not let her go.
My mind drifted back, trying to pinpoint the exact moment the monster had been replaced by the woman beside me. It wasn't a single event, but a thousand tiny, inexplicable moments. I remembered her inexplicably knowing Iris's shellfish allergy, a detail the original Kaelen would have been too cruel and self absorbed to ever notice. I remembered the patience she had when she teaches Iris math, sitting with her for over an hour, a quiet, steady presence. The original Kaelen would have been too impatient and, frankly, too dumb for that kind of emotional labor. Then there were the moments of crisis. I remembered the night of her rut, her voice cutting through the agony to ask, with genuine confusion, "Who are you?" as if she didn't recognize herself. And I could never forget that horrifying day in the car, on the way to the hospital for a check up, when my heat came on suddenly. I had braced myself for the inevitable, for the violation the original would have seen as her right, a monstrous act of sexual assault. But this Kaelen had gritted her teeth, fighting her own instincts, and wrapped me in her coat and helped me relief, her only concern getting me to safety. The original Kaelen wouldn't do that. After that, the public declarations began, each one a shock to the world that thought they knew her. The night she bought me the Vesper Rose, a necklace that cost 20 million, at the charity auction, simply because she liked the way it looked on me. The way this Kaelen defended me from my own uncle, her voice like ice as she put him in his place. The way she had stood before everyone at the gala and called me hers, a clear and defiant statement. But the moment that truly haunted me, the one that proved she was something else entirely, was that time on the ferris wheel. As we reached the very top, overlooking the glittering city, she had gone silent. A look of profound, soul deep longing had crossed her face, as if she missed something out of this world. It was the first time I ever saw her cry. Each moment was a piece of an impossible puzzle. The woman beside me wasn't acting. She was fundamentally different.
And that brought me to yesterday. Her birthday.
I'd been noticing for weeks how tense Kaelen was about Iris turning ten. It started the moment I mentioned the date on the calendar. The change in her was instantaneous and absolute. A shuttered, haunted look had entered her eyes, a terror so profound it seemed to suck the warmth from the room. I had assumed it was stress from the business, a generalized anxiety born from her new responsibilities. But yesterday morning, her reaction was anything but general.
Her panic when I suggested a trip to the park was not the caution of a security conscious Alpha; it was the abject terror of someone who had seen a ghost. Her lie about "intelligence" was clumsy, unbelievable. Throughout the entire day at the Ocean Park, even when she was laughing with Iris, a part of her was somewhere else. Her eyes were constantly scanning, her body a coiled spring of tension. She wasn't just worried about a random threat. She was worried about something specific. Something she expected to happen simply because Iris was now ten.
Does she know something?
The question had been circling in my mind all night, a quiet, unsettling whisper. How could she? How could anyone know what the future held? It made no sense. And yet, the a I saw in Kaelen's eyes was real. The meticulous, obsessive security she had put in place, the way she had watched Iris with a desperate, heartbreaking intensity… it was the look of someone trying to fight off a prophecy.
I looked at her sleeping face, at the woman who had given me back a future I thought was lost. She had secrets. I had always known that. But I had assumed they were secrets of the past, ghosts of the villainess she used to be. I had never considered that her deepest secrets might be about the future.
Iris began to stir on the sofa, and I knew our quiet morning was about to end. I slipped out of bed, my mind made up. The old me, the broken and suspicious Sera, would have confronted her, demanded answers. But this new me, the one who had been loved and protected by this strange, impossible woman, knew better. Kaelen was carrying a burden so heavy it was breaking her, and she was carrying it alone.
I would not demand her secret. I would earn it. I would watch, and I would listen, and I would be the partner she needed me to be. And when the time came, when whatever invisible monster she was fighting finally showed its face, I would be standing beside her, ready to fight it together. The fortress had two pillars now, and I would not let ours fall.