Alpha Dom and His Human Surrogate

Chapter 239 – Vision

Trigger warning: suicidal ideation – please take care!

Ella

I’m about to hoist myself up onto the frozen railing when two robed figures appear on either side of me, their faces both familiar and strange. There’s something about them that sets off alarms in my mind, but not the usual kind. It feels as though I’m trying to remember something from another life … from someone else’s life.

I don’t have the faintest idea where they came from, and I don’t really care. Cora’s safe at the orphanage and it’s not as if they can do worse to me than what I’ve already survived. Maybe this is even fate answering my question, giving me a way out in her typical morbid fashion. Perhaps an icy plunge is too easy an end for me, perhaps I must know one final agony before I go. “Are you here to kill me?” I ask in a voice I don’t recognize.

“Do you want to die?” One asks, leaning his arms against the icy metal.

“It’s not that I want to die.” I hiccup, tears falling from my lashes and freezing against my cheeks. “It’s just that I don’t want to live if this is all life has to offer… and I’m afraid that this is truly all there is for me. I have no reason to believe otherwise.” I shake my head forlornly, “they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. So I would be crazy to think I can keep meeting the sun each morning without inviting more heartache… wouldn’t I?”

‘That depends. What you call crazy, others might call hope.” The second man replies, making no move to look at or touch me. The three of us simply stare out at the frozen expanse with the same melancholy spirit, watching the river rushing below the ice so far below.

“Hope is a privilege for those born in the light.” I reply, not entirely understanding where these words are coming from. “They know that the darkness is only temporary because they don’t belong there… but how am I to believe in light when I’ve never seen it?”

you a glimpse of the future?” The first man offers.” If we were to show you a vision of the life you might have

I ask, turning to look at him for

are brave enough to take the

for your future.” The first man adds.” The vision we give you will only be a possibility – one in a hundred – of the person you might become if you refuse to

even though there’s no such thing as magic. Perhaps I’ve lost

so bright I have to shut my eyes against the glare, but it does not hurt – it does not burn me as it probably should. Energy surges through my body, so potent and wild that I feel like I’m being electrocuted. I open my mouth to cry out, but before any

much older. Her belly is not bloated with hunger, her skin is not lifeless and pale. She’s clean and healthy, wearing a dress which must cost more than everything I’ve ever owned – combined. She moves with such an easy grace, and when she smiles I understand why people

I cannot see, grinning with an overwhelming joy I can’t even begin to understand. In the next moment I see a man more than twice her size, who is as handsome as he is terrifying. He moves with the lethal grace of a predator, and there’s a vicious edge to his bronzed, raven-haired beauty. He approaches her like a wolf stalking his prey, but she isn’t afraid. He pulls her into his strong arms and kisses her soundly, and when they part she

and croon over a baby with rose gold hair and a pink bow, pulling faces and tickling the infant’s swaddled tummy. Then a rush of pure exuberance bursts into the serene scene, and three bundles of energy come zooming into sight. There’s a boy around five years old, who is the spitting image of the huge man. He races forward and crashes into his parents’ legs, wrapping his arms around each and grinning mischievously up at them. A pair

balancing the three older children while his wife cradles the youngest. I can hear their laughter, but I can feel it too. Their happiness is foreign to me and yet so contagious,

they’re full of tears. “That’s me?”

“Nothing is handed to us in life, especially not this. It will be a difficult road ahead, but there are rewards at the end if you’re brave enough

some people do seem to be handed everything, while others must

fight, but you have

ten minutes later I don’t remember meeting them at all. In fact, I don’t remember why I’m out here in the middle of the night or

memory fades away as Leon calls me back to the present, “Come back

lips grazing my tear-stained cheek.