Reborn Hybrid: I Tame the Ruthless Alpha King

Chapter 2: The Day It All Begins Again

Elara’s POV

I was dead.

I knew I was dead because I had felt the cold spreading through my fingers, the grey sky blowing above me, Nia’s face behind my eyes and then nothing. So why was I staring at the ceiling?

I didn’t move for a long time. Just lay there with my heart hammering and my breath coming in short, staring at the small crack near the light fixture like it might disappear if I blinked.

I sat up slowly and the room swayed around me, and I grew the edge of the mattress, looked at my hand. Steady Hand that had reached Jaxon’s collar.

I pressed my palm flat against my chest. My heart beating fast.

I’m alive.

I stood up, walked to the mirror on unsteady legs, and the face that looked back at me was younger, or marked by three years of sowing grief, and pretending it was love. I touched my own chick just to be sure and the reflection touched itself back.

I remembered everything. Nia in the pond, already cold. Jaxon crouching beside me in the dirt, straighten his shirt like I was an inconvenience he had finally dealt with. My leg gave out, and I sat down hard on the edge of the bed just breathing loud.

She gave me another chance. The moon Goddess, it had to be. Because nothing else explained this. Waking up in a room I recognized. In a doom I had left behind, on a day I knew without checking a single calendar.

The Full Moon Ceremony. I was back at the very beginning.

The door to my room swung open without a knock, the way it’s always did in my past because no one has ever considered I deserve a courtesy of a knock.

Jaxon’s mother walked in with Lila right behind her, already dressed for the bouquet and wrapped in gold, both of them looked at me the way they always looked at me, like my existence was a minor administrative problem.

“You’re not dressed yet?” his mother said.

I opened my mouth and closed it again because I was still trying to piece the words together, and my mind was between a cold garden and the sunny, lit room, and could not quite land in one place.

"We need your sapphire set." It was Lila who said it, not her mother, and her voice was soft and sweet, the kind of sweet that cost nothing and meant less. She stepped toward me with that familiar smile, the one she wore when she wanted something and had already decided she was going to get it.

"I know it's a lot to ask, but I'm wearing blue tonight and nothing I have does it justice the way your set would." She tilted her head slightly. "You always know how to put things together so beautifully. I've always admired that about you."

I stared at her.

She held my gaze, warm and patient, waiting.

I knew this moment from the past. I knew exactly how it went. She borrowed the set tonight and smiled when I handed it over, but weeks passed without her returning it, and when I finally asked, her hands slipped, and the necklace my mother gave me, the one thing I had left of her warmth, hit the floor in pieces.

She had called it "an accident" and never apologized. I swallow it because back then, I believed keeping the peace was the same thing as being loved.

Jaxon's mother stood by the dresser with her arms folded, watching, like the outcome was already decided and this was just the formality of getting there.

Lila stared back and her eyes narrowed. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s just jewelry. Don’t be so stingy.”

And that word stingy landed somewhere in my chest and cracked something open, because I remembered this moment now, remembered it fully and completely. I had stood in this exact spot in my past life. I argued with them and his mother had spoken over me for so long that I had eventually handed the Jewell over just to make the noise stop.

The rage came fast and hot and I let it rise up to my throat and then I breathed and let it back down again.

Not yet, I told myself. This is not the moment and you know it. They didn't know what they had done yet. And I needed them comfortable and unsuspecting for a little while longer because a revenge rush is a revenge ruin and I have not been giving a second life to ruin it.

I walked to the jewelry box and open it, lifted the sapphire necklace, and earring out, and "Oh," I said, turning it over in my hands like I was only just remembering something. "I can't give you this one."

Lila's smile flickered. "Sorry?"

"I promised to wear it tonight." I set it back in the box gently, like it was fragile, like I was doing her a favor by explaining. "Jaxon specifically asked me to. He said he loves how it looks at formal events." I closed the box and turned to face her with an apologetic smile that cost me nothing. "I would have offered it gladly otherwise. You know that."

Lila stared at me.

I held her gaze, warm and steady, the generous sister-in-law with nothing to hide.

She couldn't argue with Jaxon's name. She never could.

"I have the emerald set," I offered. "It would look beautiful on you."

She took it, because she had no choice, and Lila blinked and looked at me like she wasn’t sure if she had won or lost.

“They’ll suit you,” I said, and my voice was even and warm and meant absolutely nothing.

Jaxon's mother looked faintly disappointed that there was nothing to fight about and said, “Be ready in an hour,” and then they were gone. I closed the jewelry box and sat back down on the bed, letting out a long, slow breath.

One day, I thought. Every single thing. But today is not that day.

The ground hall was full of candlelight and silver lanterns, and I had known it would be, the same way I knew everything about tonight. But they didn't know that I knew.

I had let Mira, my quiet little maid who always worked with her hands and never with her mouth, dress me. When I told her which dress I wanted tonight, she had paused for just a second, her fingers stilling on the hanger.

"The red one, my lady?" Her voice was careful, then she paused, holding out a pale, modest dress on a hanger. "Lord Jaxon left instructions this morning. He said you were to wear this tonight."

I looked at the dress. Then I looked at Mira.

She looked back at me, and something quiet passed between us.

She set Jaxon's choice down slowly, turned back to the wardrobe, and drew out the red dress. She held it out with both hands, not quite smiling, but almost.

"This is what I'm wearing," I said.

"Yes, my lady." This time she did smile, small and quick, before she moved behind me and began to work on the buttons.

She dressed me without another word, and when she was done, she stepped back and looked at me the way people sometimes do when they aren't sure if they should talk or not. I looked at my own reflection and felt something settle quietly in my chest.

In my past life, I had worn pale blue, Jaxon had instructed, exactly what he wanted me to be. I had stood beside him like a shadow and called it being a good wife.

I knew what Kael would notice and what would make those cold eyes pause, even for a second. And tonight, I needed him to pause.

Jaxon's jaw had tightened the moment I came downstairs. He said nothing because we had guests already waiting, and scenes were for closed doors. But his hand on my back when we entered the grand hall pressed just a little harder than necessary.

I smiled and let him lead me in.

Jaxon kept his hand on my back the whole walk in and murmured, “Smile, people are looking,” in that warm devoted-husband voice he saved for public, and I smiled because I knew exactly what he was and smiling cost me nothing tonight.

He walked the room the way he always did, touching my shoulders and laughing easily and making every man feel specifically valued. I watched him do it and felt nothing but a cold and quiet patience. I knew what lay behind that charming mask—greed, cruelty, a hunger for power that would destroy anyone who got in his way.

And one day soon, the whole world would see it too.

Something suddenly shifted in the room, and I turned slowly. He was standing at the entrance with two of his men, tall, dark hair, dressed in black, and the kind of quiet that made every other person in the room seem loud just by comparison.

Kael, the Alpha king Jaxon had made me warm his bed severally.

His eyes moved across the room and when they reached me like my the past life. But back then, I didn’t notice that, let alone the curiosity in his eyes. My entire attention was on my husband,

This time, I didn’t look away and I didn’t blush and I didn’t drop my gaze. I looked straight back at him and let one slow, small smile move across my lips. Calm and warm, I know from this angle, I looked like the girl in the picture the most.

I saw it—the faintest flicker of surprise in his cold eyes, a split second of curiosity, before his mask slipped back into place. But it was enough.

I’d caught his attention.

And that was all I needed.