Chapter 19
ELISE
The carriage ride home feels like wearing clothes that belong to someone else.
Day forty-six, and I sit between Father and his new wife Vivienne, watching familiar countryside roll past the windows. Everything looks exactly as I remember—the rolling hills dotted with sheep, the stone walls marking property lines, the village church where I was christened twenty years ago.
But I'm not the same person who left this world.
The dormant bond sits in my chest like a stone, heavy and cold and utterly wrong. Not painful exactly, but incomplete. Like I'm a melody missing its harmony, a equation with variables removed. The ache is constant, a hollow echo where something vital used to live.
"You're very quiet, dear," Vivienne says, her voice carefully gentle. She's younger than I expected, probably not much older than me, with kind eyes and nervous hands. "Are you feeling unwell?"
I want to laugh at the understatement. Unwell doesn't begin to describe the wrongness spreading through my bones, the way every cell in my body screams that I'm in the wrong place, with the wrong people, living the wrong life.
"I'm fine," I lie, the words tasting like ash. "Just tired."
Father shoots me a worried glance, and I can see him cataloging the changes.
The silver threads in my hair that catch the afternoon light.
The way frost patterns flicker across my skin when I'm distressed.
How I keep touching my throat where the claiming bite has scarred over, a nervous gesture I can't seem to break.
"The physicians in town will examine you properly once we're home," he says. "Dr. Morrison has experience with... unusual conditions."
Unusual conditions. As if what's been done to me is some rare disease rather than fundamental transformation of my very nature.
The carriage wheels hit a particularly rough patch of road, jostling us together. When Vivienne's warm hand accidentally brushes mine, I flinch away instinctively. Her touch feels wrong—too warm, too human, lacking the ice-cold perfection my body was conditioned to crave.
"I'm sorry," I murmur, seeing the hurt flash across her face. "I'm not... I don't mean to be rude."
"You're adjusting," she says kindly, but I catch the uncertainty in her voice. She doesn't understand what she's dealing with any more than Father does.
How could they? How do you explain to someone that you've been fundamentally rewired, that your body was trained to respond to specific stimuli they can never provide? That every human interaction now feels like trying to speak a language you've forgotten?
The Montgomery estate appears as the sun sets, its familiar silhouette unchanged by my absence. The same ivy climbing the stone walls, the same windows glowing with warm light, the same gardens where I once played as a child.
Home. This should feel like coming home.
Instead, it feels like a beautiful prison designed for someone else entirely.
Day forty-seven, I wake up in my childhood bedroom and everything is exactly as I left it. Rose wallpaper, delicate furniture, the view of the gardens I once loved. But lying in my old bed feels like wearing a costume that no longer fits.
The sheets smell wrong—human soap and lavender instead of frost-pine and winter air.
The mattress is too soft, too warm, nothing like the enchanted silk that molded perfectly to my transformed body.
I find myself arranging the pillows in ways that make no sense, my hands automatically creating the nest-like structure that brought comfort in another life.
Dr. Morrison arrives after breakfast, a distinguished gentleman with graying whiskers and the kind of serious bearing that speaks of medical training in the capital. He carries a leather bag filled with instruments I don't recognize, and his eyes light with scientific curiosity when he sees me.
"Fascinating," he murmurs, studying the frost patterns that appear on my skin when I'm nervous. "The cellular changes are quite unprecedented. May I examine your magical emanations?"
He produces a device that looks like a cross between a compass and a jeweler's loupe, holding it near my hand while making careful notes. The readings seem to excite him, though his expression remains professionally neutral.
"The magical matrix has been completely altered," he explains to Father, speaking about me as if I'm not in the room. "Her body now operates on different fundamental principles. The bond you described acts as a grounding mechanism—without it, her magic becomes increasingly unstable."
"Can it be treated?" Father asks desperately. "Some way to help her adapt?"
Dr. Morrison shakes his head slowly. "The transformation appears to be permanent.
Her magical signatures show dependency patterns that would be fatal to disrupt completely.
" He gives me a sympathetic look. "I'm afraid you're caught between worlds, Miss Montgomery.
Neither fully human nor Fae, requiring elements of both to survive. "
After he leaves, I sit in the parlor watching frost spread from where I touched the armrest. My magic responds to emotional distress now, beyond my conscious control. Every spike of anxiety creates ice flowers on the walls, every moment of despair turns the air cold enough to see my breath.
"Tell me about the bond," Vivienne says that evening, settling beside me with tea I can't bring myself to drink. Father has retreated to his study, overwhelmed by medical reports he doesn't understand.
"What do you want to know?" I ask, though even thinking about it makes my chest tight with longing.
"What it felt like. When it was... active." She chooses her words carefully, like someone walking on ice. "Your father says you seemed content there, toward the end."
Content. Such a simple word for something so complex.
"It was like..." I struggle to find words for something beyond human experience. "Like being a piano that had been tuned perfectly. Every note clear and true and exactly what it was meant to be."
"And now?"
"Now I'm out of tune. Every song sounds wrong." I touch the scar at my throat, feeling the faint echo of connection that will never fully fade. "I knew exactly what I was for, what I was meant to do. There was no confusion, no uncertainty. Just... purpose."
Vivienne is quiet for a long moment, absorbing this. "That sounds beautiful," she says finally. "And terrifying."
"It was both." The honesty surprises me. "I was happier than I'd ever been in my life. And I wasn't myself anymore."
"Which matters more?"
I don't have an answer for that. Don't know if happiness can justify the loss of self, or if being yourself is worth eternal dissatisfaction.
Day forty-eight brings a revelation that changes everything.
I'm in the garden, trying to tend the roses with hands that keep leaving frost on everything I touch, when a carriage arrives. Two women emerge, and my heart sinks as I recognize what they are.
Omegas. Claimed and marked and perfectly empty.
The first introduces herself as Lady Margaret Thornfield, claimed by the Shadow Court. She moves with inhuman grace, her dark hair gleaming with silver threads, her eyes reflecting depths that seem to hold nothing at all.
Her companion is Miss Eleanor Ravencroft from the Stone Court, equally beautiful and equally hollow. They glide through Father's house like they're floating, leaving no trace of their passage except the faint scent of otherworldly magic.
"We heard one of our sisters had come home," Margaret says, her voice like honey over ice. "We wanted to offer our support."
"Your support?" I study their faces, looking for any spark of the women they used to be.
"You're suffering unnecessarily," Eleanor explains with a sad smile. "We understand the pain you're experiencing. The emptiness, the wrongness of being apart from your alpha."
"I chose this."
"Did you?" Margaret tilts her head with childlike curiosity. "Or did you choose the lesser of two impossible options?"
The question hits too close to home. "I chose freedom."
"Freedom is just another word for having no purpose," Eleanor says gently. "For being unwanted. Unneeded."
"I fought Lord Blackthorne for months," Margaret adds, settling gracefully onto the garden bench. "Ran twice. Each time, the separation nearly killed me. Each time, I returned weaker, more grateful when he allowed me back."
"Eventually, you realize that resistance is just choosing pain over peace," Eleanor agrees. "Why suffer when contentment is offered freely?"
"Because contentment built on surrender isn't real," I say, though the words feel hollow even as I speak them.
"Isn't it?" Margaret's empty eyes fix on mine. "What makes happiness less real because of how it's achieved? If you're content, if you're fulfilled, if you have purpose—does the method matter?"
I can't answer that. Can't explain why it should matter when the preservation magic keeps whispering how perfect I felt when I stopped fighting.
"You'll return," Eleanor says with absolute certainty. "They always do. The bond won't let you die, but it will make you wish you could."
"And Lord Aratus will take you back," Margaret adds. "Because omegas who run and return are always more grateful. More willing to trade independence for the mercy of being owned."
They leave me with that thought, flowing out of the garden like beautiful ghosts carrying prophecies I don't want to believe.
That night, I lie awake thinking about their words. About happiness and purpose and the price of both.
Day forty-nine, everything human feels wrong.
I try to eat normal food and gag on every bite—nothing tastes right without the subtle magic that seasoned every meal in his palace. I try to sleep in normal beds and toss all night, my body searching for the cold comfort of his arms around me.
I catch myself setting his place at dinner without thinking, arranging flowers the way he preferred, adjusting my posture to positions of submission even when I'm alone.
The conditioning runs deeper than thought, deeper than consciousness. It's written into my bones, my blood, my very essence. Every instinct has been rewritten to serve him, and no amount of conscious choice can undo that fundamental programming.
"You're different," Vivienne observes over afternoon tea I can't bring myself to drink. "Not just the obvious changes—something deeper."
"I'm broken," I admit, the words scraping my throat raw. "He didn't just change my body. He changed how I think, how I feel, what brings me satisfaction. I can't want things for myself anymore."
"What do you mean?"
"Every desire I have relates back to him. I want to read books he'd approve of. Wear clothes he'd find pleasing. Even my rebellion is about getting his attention." I laugh bitterly. "I can't escape him because he's become part of how I define myself."
Vivienne reaches for my hand, then stops when frost begins spreading from my fingertips. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm so sorry this happened to you."
Day fifty, I write letters I'll never send.
The first is full of rage—pages documenting every cruelty, every manipulation, every moment my choices were stolen from me. I burn it and watch the smoke rise toward the northern mountains.
The second is full of longing—describing the emptiness, the wrongness, the way every breath feels incomplete without him. This one burns easier, the flames eager to consume my weakness.
The third is honest—admitting that I miss the structure, the purpose, the simple satisfaction of being exactly what someone needed. That freedom feels like punishment when you've forgotten how to want things for yourself.
I burn this one too, but my hands shake as I watch it turn to ash.
By evening, I'm sitting in the ruins of the parlor my uncontrolled magic has accidentally destroyed, frost covering every surface, ice flowers blooming from the walls in patterns that hurt to look at.
The preservation magic whispers its constant refrain: You were happiest when you stopped fighting. You were most yourself when you belonged completely to him.
And every day, it becomes harder to remember why I thought that was wrong.
Because maybe it wasn't wrong. Maybe resistance is just another form of suffering, and peace is worth any price.
Maybe the other omegas were right—contentment is the same as surrender, and there's nothing shameful about choosing happiness over pride.
Maybe I should stop fighting and just go back to him.
The thought should horrify me. Instead, it brings the first moment of peace I've felt since choosing freedom.
Which terrifies me more than anything else.