Chased into Reality
1034 Words
Ivan's POV
For three years, Ivan Ashford had been haunted by a ghost.
It always started the same way. That heavy smell of cold pine and wet asphalt. Then this unbearable heat — electric, impossible. And then, she was there.
In the dark of his subconscious, she belonged to him. He would hold her, possess her, and love her with a fierce, primal intensity that left him waking up in cold sweats, gasping for air in his lonely Edinburgh apartment.
He could never see her face.
Every morning for three years, Ivan woke up with his heart slamming against his ribs. His fingers still tingled from the phantom heat of her skin.
He was a billionaire, a man who commanded markets and bought whatever he desired, yet he was completely enslaved by a woman who didn't exist.
At first, he thought he was losing his mind. He consulted top neurologists, thinking it was a glitch in his brain.
But science couldn't explain the profound ache in his chest. It couldn't explain why every real woman who tried to climb into his bed felt like a cheap, hollow imitation.
He was ruined by the real world.
So, he started looking. Quietly. Secretly.
Ivan used his vast resources to scour the globe. He tracked down missing persons databases, cross-referenced facial descriptions, and even looked into paranormal anomalies. He spent millions looking for a shadow. But how do you find a woman when you don't even know the color of her eyes?
"You're chasing smoke, Ivan," a friend had told him a year ago. "It's just a dream. Let it go."
But Ivan couldn't. The pull was too visceral. It was a tether woven into his very soul.
When his father called from Manhattan, demanding he come back for a "special announcement," Ivan almost said no.
He hated the sterile, performative world of Victor Ashford's galas.
But Victor had insisted. "I'm getting married, Ivan. It's official. I want you here to meet her."
Ivan had flown across the Atlantic out of sheer, cold duty. He had walked into his father's estate tonight with a heavy glass of whiskey, prepared to tolerate whatever social climber his father had bought this time.
And then, the air in the ballroom had changed.
The crowd didn't part. But Ivan felt it anyway — that shift in the air. That electric static he always felt right before the dream.
He had turned his head.
Twenty feet away, standing in a flawless emerald dress, was a woman.
When she turned and her eyes met his, the universe violently collapsed.
Hazel. Warm, like amber lit from behind.
The whiskey glass nearly slipped from his hand.
For three years, he hadn't been able to see her face. But the moment his gaze locked onto hers in the waking world, his soul recognized her instantly. The elegant curve of her collarbone, the way she held herself, the unmistakable, shattering electric current that sparked between them across the crowded room.
It was her.
Not a phantom. Not a glitch in his head. Just her. Flesh. Bone. Real.
Ivan's heart had roared to life with a feral, possessive triumph. I found you. After three years of hell, I finally found you. He had started moving toward her, unable to control the sheer gravity pulling him to her side. He had reached out, his hand desperate to finally touch the reality of her—
"Elara."
His father's voice had dropped like an iron curtain between them.
Ivan had frozen as Victor's heavy, proprietary hand clapped down on her bare shoulder. He watched, his blood turning to pure ice, as his father smiled that practiced, billionaire smile.
"Ivan — this is Elara. Your future stepmother."
Stepmother.
The word cut something loose inside him.
Now, sitting across from her at the long mahogany dinner table, Ivan swirled the red wine in his glass, his knuckles white. He listened to the older board members praise his business acumen, and he smiled politely when the foolish heiresses whispered about him.
They thought he was a brilliant, shining star. They thought he was the ultimate prize.
None of them knew that he was currently suffocating in his own skin.
Every time Victor reached over to touch her hand, every time Victor's voice softened when speaking to her, a dark, murderous rage clawed at the walls of Ivan's composure.
Then came Margot's venomous voice, cutting through the chatter.
"What do you think, Ivan? A new stepmother——who's even younger than you are."
The dining room grew dangerously quiet. Ivan set his glass down, the sharp clink echoing like a gunshot. He didn't look at his father. He kept his furious, burning gaze locked entirely on Elara.
She was looking back at him, her warm hazel eyes wide with a terrifying, shared realization. She knew. She recognized him too.
"I think," Ivan said through his teeth, "three months is a long time. A lot can change before the ink dries."
It wasn't a business variable. It was a vow.
He didn't care about his father's empire. He didn't care about the scandal that would rock Manhattan high society. He had spent three years drowning in the smoke of her memory, and he hadn't crossed an ocean just to watch another man put a ring on her finger.
Even if that man was his own father.
Hours later, alone in his dark suite, Ivan closed his eyes and let the sleep take him.
The familiar darkness rushed in, and like clockwork, the static electricity flared. He didn't waste a single second. He stormed through the shadows of the dreamscape, his heavy footsteps echoing with a relentless, unyielding fury.
There she was.
No longer a faceless mystery. Now, she had the face of the woman in the emerald dress.
Ivan marched over to her, closing the distance until the profound, electric heat of their souls fused together. He reached out and grabbed her hand, gripping her fingers so tightly it bordered on a bruising possessiveness.
He locked her against him in the dark, his grey eyes burning with a terrifying, beautiful madness.
"I caught you," he whispered.
And this time, he was never letting her go.
- Writer
