Chapter 190: Resuced Him
Aurora’s POV
"Oliver, I’m so sorry," I sobbed into his shoulder, the words pouring out of me in a wild rush. "I’m so, so sorry. I never knew. I never knew you were Raymond. If I had known, I would have died before I ever pulled that trigger. I thought Raymond was the masked killer who murdered my parents. I thought I was protecting my baby from a monster. Please, Oliver, you have to fight. You have to wake up. I can’t live with this guilt. I need you. Our baby needs you."
For a second, his arms moved up as if he wanted to wrap them around me and pull me tight. But then, his body went completely stiff.
Gently but firmly, he placed his hands on my shoulders and pushed me back, breaking the hug.
I looked at him, confused, and saw a sudden, sharp anger flashing in his dim blue eyes. The soft sadness on his face was gone, replaced by a cold, hard look that made me step back.
"Why didn’t you just tell me, Aurora?" Oliver asked, his voice low and vibrating with a deep, painful anger.
"What?" I stammered, wiping a tear from my cheek.
"Why couldn’t you just confide in me?" he demanded, standing up from the log. He towered over me in the gray fog, his jaw clenching tightly. "If you had just told me about the tattoo on the man who killed your parents, I would have known instantly. I would have told you it was Alex! If you had just told me what you were planning, if you had just spoken to me about Raymond instead of keeping secrets and hiding to go fuck another man, none of this would have happened!"
"Oliver, I was scared—"
"You didn’t trust me!" he cut me off, his voice rising, echoing angrily through the dead forest. "I loved you, Aurora. I asked you countless times to tell me what was happening in your life, but you didn’t. You chose to put three silver bullets into my chest!"
A sudden spark of hot anger flared deep inside my own chest, breaking through my guilt. I looked up at him, my eyes flashing.
"What about you?" I shouted back, stepping right into his space, my voice cracking with emotion. "You are blaming me for keeping secrets? You lied to me for months, Oliver! You played me for a total fool!"
Oliver frowned, his brow furrowing deeply. "I was trying to—"
"No!" I screamed, poking a finger against his hard chest. "You wore a scary mask and called yourself Raymond. You forced me into a cold contract. You let me sit in your house, crying and terrified of a faceless monster, while you pretended to be the sweet, loving Alpha king during the day. You watched me struggle. You watched me hate Raymond with everything I had, and you never said a single word!"
The gray fog began to swirl around us violently as our argument grew heated, the dreamscape reacting to our rising anger.
"If only you had told me you were Raymond!" I sobbed, the anger turning back into pure heartbreak. "If you had just taken off that mask and trusted me with the truth, I would have known the man I loved wasn’t my enemy. We wouldn’t be here right now. You played a dangerous game with my head, Oliver, and now we are both paying the price for it!"
The gray fog around us suddenly turned a deep, ink-black. The twisted, dead trees began to shake violently, their skeletal branches cracking as a freezing wind ripped through the clearing. The dreamscape was reacting to Oliver’s rising heart rate and the raw distress of our shouting.
Our anger had unlocked something dangerous.
"Aurora, you don’t understand—" Oliver started, his voice cracking. But before he could finish his sentence, he suddenly gasped. His sea-blue eyes widened in pure agony, and he clutched his chest right over his heart.
"Oliver?" My anger vanished in a second, replaced by a cold spike of fear.
Thick, thorny black vines began to burst from the ash-covered ground around his feet. They looked like the gray, toxic veins that were creeping up his neck in the real world, but here, they were real and physical. They wrapped tightly around his ankles, digging deep into his skin.
Oliver groaned, his knees buckling beneath him as the dark force started to drag him down into the dirt. The ink-black fog began to swallow his broad shoulders, pulling him away from me.
"Listen to me carefully, child... If the force of the poison or the darkness inside his mind becomes too much for you to handle, you must come back instantly." Lady Hailee’s warning echoed sharply in my head.
I looked down at my hands. They were starting to turn faint and see-through. The dreamscape was trying to push me out because Oliver’s spirit was losing the fight against the wolfsbane. If he gave up right now, he would die, and I would wake up to a corpse.
"No! I’m not leaving you!" I screamed.
I forgot about the anger. I forgot about the lies, the mask, and the months of crying in his house. None of it mattered if he wasn’t alive to answer for it.
I threw myself onto the freezing ground, digging my fingers into the black ash as I reached for him. I grabbed his large, trembling hand just as the vines dragged him down to his waist. His skin felt like ice, and his grip was incredibly weak.
"Oliver, look at me!" I begged, tears streaming down my face, mixing with the dark ash on my cheeks. "Don’t you dare let go! Look at me!"
With a heavy struggle, he lifted his dim blue eyes to meet mine. He looked so tired, so ready to just stop fighting the pain. "Aurora... go back," he choked out, the black veins creeping up to his jawline. "It hurts too much. Let me go."
"No! I won’t let you go!" I cried, pulling against the heavy vines with every single ounce of strength my human body had. I took his hand and forced it flat against my stomach, pressing his cold palm right against the hidden warmth of my belly.
Oliver stiffened, his frozen fingers twitching against my clothes.
"Feel that, Oliver," I sobbed, leaning over him to shield him from the freezing wind. "That is your blood. That is our baby. I know you are angry at me. I know I broke your trust and shot you. But if you won’t fight for me, then fight for our pup!"
A low, rumbling sound came from deep inside Oliver’s chest—not his human voice, but the faint, desperate growl of his alpha wolf. The mention of his child seemed to spark a tiny drop of heat in his freezing spirit.
"I love you, Oliver," I whispered, my voice breaking as the black fog threatened to swallow us both. "I love the Alpha King who protected me, and I love the Raymond who held me in the dark. I need you to wake up. Please, don’t leave us alone."
The rawness of my words seemed to pierce right through the freezing dark.
For a terrifying second, nothing happened. The black vines dug even deeper into his skin, and the ink-black fog began to wrap around his chin, trying to drown him completely. My hands were becoming so see-through that I could barely feel the grip on his fingers. I was slipping away from him, losing my hold on his soul.
But Oliver’s hand, still pressed flat against my stomach, suddenly twitched.
The low, rumbling growl from deep inside his chest grew louder, shaking the very ground beneath us.
A sudden blast of brilliant, burning golden light erupted from Oliver’s body.
The heat of it hit my face like a warm summer sun, instantly pushing back the freezing wind. The black veins on his neck began to shrink, turning a faint, powerless gray. With a loud, angry roar, Oliver clenched his fists and pulled his arms upward with terrifying strength.
The thick, thorny black vines snapped like cheap pieces of thread.
He ripped his legs free from the dirt, completely shattering the dark force that had been dragging him down. The ink-black fog screamed as it was burned away by his golden light, turning back into harmless gray smoke before vanishing completely. The twisted, dead forest around us fell silent once again, but the heavy, suffocating pressure of the nightmare was gone.
Before I could even gasp in relief, Oliver reached out and yanked me forward.
His big arms wrapped tightly around my waist and back, pulling my body flush against his hard chest with a desperate, crushing strength. He buried his face deep into the crook of my neck, his hot breath brushing against my skin as he shook right down to his bones.
"Aurora," he choked out, his voice thick with tears and raw emotion. The anger from before was entirely gone, replaced by a fierce, protective warmth. "God, Aurora... I’m some. I’m so sorry."
I clutched at his back, my fingers digging into his shirt as I sobbed against his shoulder, finally feeling the strong, steady beat of his heart against my own.
"I heard you," he whispered roughly, his large hands moving to cradle the back of my head, holding me like I was the most precious thing in the world. "I felt our pup. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving either of you."
He pulled back just enough to look down into my eyes. The dim, lifeless look in his gaze was completely gone, replaced by the brilliant, glowing sea-blue color I loved so much. He reached up, using his thumb to gently wipe the dark ash and wet tears from my cheeks.
"I love you," Oliver said softly, his voice vibrating right through my soul. "I love you so much, Aurora. I don’t care about the mistakes, or the secrets, or the pain. We will fix it. We will fix everything. But right now, we need to leave this place."
He pressed his forehead gently against mine, his warm hands sliding back down to rest protectively over my stomach, right over our baby.
"Let’s go back home," he whispered.
The moment the words left his mouth, the gray forest began to dissolve around us, turning into a beautiful, bright white light that swallowed us whole.
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