Rebirth: Love me Again

Kelsey had always assumed Damien would come back. That no matter how far he wandered, he would eventually return to her. He always had.

She was the one woman he'd loved for years. She had been certain of that fact. But now . . . something had changed. Something permanent.

And the reason for that shift had a name.

"Estelle . . . ," she spat the name like poison, her voice a hiss barely above a whisper.

She took a deep breath, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Her face contorted in a mixture of disbelief and venom, her mask of elegance now shattered and discarded.

The poised, well-mannered Kelsey was gone—what remained was the fury of a woman scorned.

"You little bitch," she whispered again, bitterly. "You think you've won?"

But she wasn't just angry at Estelle. No. Beneath the rage burned humiliation. She had begged. Lowered herself. Cried in front of Damien. And all for what?

To be rejected.

Discarded like she was nothing. Her pride, so carefully built over years, now lay in ruins because of a girl who smiled too easily and danced barefoot like she had no care in the world.

Kelsey gripped her purse tightly, the leather creaking under the strain of her fingers. Her mind spun. She wanted to scream, to throw something, to tear the world apart until it looked as broken as she felt inside.

But instead, she sat there in the restaurant, her face tight, her breathing sharp, and her heart sinking into a pit of cold resentment.

She wouldn't cry again.

No, not for Damien. Not for Estelle. But she would remember this. Every word. Every look. Every rejection.

And she would make sure Estelle remembered too.

One day. Somehow.

=====

The spell shattered like glass.

One moment, Cole Fay had been a stranger in his own body—trapped behind his own eyes, his soul shackled to Elena's cursed will.

And the next, the dark mist that lingered around his aura dispersed, evaporating like a nightmare at sunrise. But the damage had already been done.

Eve was gone from his life.

Not because she didn't love him anymore. But because even after forgiveness, some wounds simply could not be trusted to heal.

And Elena—the orchestrator of it all—had been captured within hours of the spell breaking. Dragged from her lair by agents who worked silently in the shadows, she screamed curses and promises of vengeance, but no one flinched.

No one believed her threats anymore. Her power had withered, just like the smirk that once curled on her lips every time she watched Cole suffer.

Now, she was little more than a breathing corpse, wasting away on a forgotten island—far from civilization, far from mercy. And Cole watched it all.

Every day.

On the single screen that sat in the center of a cold, dark surveillance room.

The island was cruel by design. Devoid of anything comforting. The wind howled like wolves at night. The water was brackish and undrinkable.

The sky always seemed clouded, gray with despair. And Elena—stripped of her black magic or whatever—was kept alive, barely, for one purpose: to suffer.

Her food was tasteless. Her sleep interrupted every hour by distant screeches or strange lights. The silence during the day was almost worse.

She had nothing to talk to, no one to beg. The guards didn't speak to her. They didn't even look at her unless it was necessary.

Instead, she existed in a cycle of psychological torment—reliving Cole's memories, hearing distorted recordings of Eve's voice twisted into cries and echoes, seeing visions of her past victims appear in the mirror-still waters surrounding the island.

The air itself carried whispers. Words she once uttered in her arrogance were now turned against her.

She wasn't physically broken. No one laid a hand on her.

But Cole knew—it was worse this way.

He sat before the screen each night, eyes hollow. He didn't eat. Barely slept. Just stared.

She ruined everything.

For the first time in his life, he had been happy. Genuinely, completely, terrifyingly happy. He was letting himself imagine a future with Eve—a life without pressure, without masks, without lies. Just love. Just peace.

And Elena tore that future apart with the black magic of a dagger sliding between ribs.

She hadn't just manipulated him—she had robbed him of time. Moments. Choices. She had twisted his mouth into cruel words he never meant, made his hands push away the only woman he ever truly wanted to protect.

And now?

Now Eve was gone. Rebuilding a life without him. Happier, maybe, because she no longer had to fear the pain he once brought.

And as much as that fact gave him a strange, bitter kind of comfort . . . it also killed him slowly.

He could never hold her again. Never call her "mine" again.

Elena took that from him.

And the most tragic part?

No amount of punishment would bring it back.

He thought watching Elena suffer would ease the fury in his heart, the sadness in his bones.

But night after night, as he sat watching the feed—watching her curled on the stone floor, muttering nonsense to herself or rocking in silence—he felt nothing.

No satisfaction. No justice.

Just . . . emptiness.

One night, Zen came into the room.

"You've been watching her for fourteen days straight," he said quietly. "You haven't eaten a real meal. You haven't spoken to anyone. This isn't healing, Cole. This is slow suicide."

Cole didn't respond.

Zen sighed. "You know she wanted this, right? She wanted to destroy you. And now you're letting her win—again."

"I'm not doing this for her," Cole said, voice low and dry. "I'm doing this for me."

Zen scoffed. "And is it working?"

Cole finally looked away from the screen.

His eyes were rimmed with red, his face drawn and pale. "I just . . . need to remember. What she did. What I lost."

"You think Eve would want you to live like this?"

"I think," Cole whispered, "that Eve doesn't want me at all anymore. And I don't blame her."

There it was. The weight of his truth.

He didn't blame her.

Eve had every right to walk away, to protect herself. She had every right to rebuild her life in the light while he stayed in the shadows. She had every right to be happy . . . and not to be hurt by him all over again.

He'd lost her. He accepted that.

But knowing it didn't dull the pain.