Chapter 245
Ellie’s POV
Sneaking out of my own house wasn’t something I thought I would ever have to do again after the ripe age of sixteen. Those days should have been long behind me, right along with high school crushes and underaged drinking in the woods.
But now here I was. Putting on dark clothes, waiting until the house had gone quiet, and standing at my bedroom door for a full minute listening for footsteps before I opened it. Like a goddamn teenager.
I poked my head out into the hall. It was empty. I slipped out, pulling the door shut behind me without a sound, and started for the stairs.
I hated this. I hated that Dominic had put me in a position where meeting my own friend required me to creep around in the dark like I was breaking curfew. I was a grown woman and a Luna, techtrically, and I was tiptoeing down a staircase in my own house because my husband had decided he got to tell me who I was allowed to speak to.
Unfortunately the downstairs lights were still on in one room when I padded downstairs, holding my shoes in one hand so as not to make a sound. Thankfully, there was no one moving about. I quietly hurried down the rest of the steps and rounded the corner to the side door, where I would be least likely to run into
anyone.
I had made it about halfway there when I heard voices coming from the sitting room. Dominic’s, low and tired, and then Vivian’s, softer and higher. I should have ust kept going. I knew that. The door was twenty feet away and all I had to do was cross the hallway and then I was out.
Instead, I stood there and listened.
“She keeps pushing this plague thing,” Dominic was saying. He sounded worn out. “Twice now. Like I’m not already dealing with enough.”
“She just wants your attention.” Vivian’s voice was gentle, soothing. “You know how she gets. When she feels like she’s being left out of something, she manufactures areason to be included.”
A pause.
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“You think that’s all it is?” Dominic asked.
“Dominic.” Vivian said his name like she was telling him something obvious. “She didn’t come to you with documents, or research, or anything to actually prove that this so-called ‘plague’ is coming. She read something in a book and decided to bother you with it just because it’s fun for her to throw you off!”
Dominic said something else, but I didn’t linger to hear it. I needed to get out of here before I jumped into the conversation and embarrassed myself, again, in front of two people who thought so little of me.
The side door opened and closed without a sound. Cold air hit my face and I stood on the back steps for a moment, staring out at the dark yard.
Inhale… Exhale…
I tried not to think about Vivian comforting Dominic. Or about Dominic letting her. Especially not the two
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of them in the sitting room in the middle of the night, knitting closer together one conversation at a time.
I knew this part. I had lived this part. And I knew exactly where it ended up if I let it keep going.
But right now I had bigger problems, so I tucked it’away and went to meet bucas.
He was already there when I arrived. His car was parked at the overlook, engine off, the forest dark and dense on three sides. The valley spread out below, a scatter of distant lights under a clear sky. I got in and pulled the door shut.
“Good Goddess above,” Lucas gasped, pressing his hand to his sternum, “You could’ve announced yourself before opening the door.”
“Sorry.” I rubbed my hands over my face and leaned back in the seat.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Ask me again in an hour,” I said.
Lucas accepted that and waited.
I’d been trying to figure out, on the walk over, exactly how much to tell him. The plague, the biological warfare, the refugee family-those were the facts I needed him to understand. I could give him those without the rest. That was what I’d been telling myself.
!
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s the situation. If this war with the Emberlight pack goes the way I think it’s going to go, we win. But the Alpha won’t accept that. So he’ll send say, a refugee family to our border right after the conflict ends-sick, highly contagious, probably not even aware of what they’re carrying. By the time anyone realizes it’s a plague, it will have already spread through the pack. The children go first. Their immune systems can’t keep up with how fast it moves.” I paused. “A fifth of the pack will die before a vaccine is developed.”
Lucas was quiet for a moment. “Okay,” he said slowly. “And how do you know this?”
“I’ve done research-”
“Ellie.”
I stopped.
す
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“You said ‘the way I think it’s going to go,”” he said. “Not ‘the way it could go.’ Not ‘historically.’ You said it like you already know the outcome.” He turned to look at me. “And last week, you recognized an assassin that you had no real reason to recognize, you knew to ask about a specific poisoning method before anyone mentioned anything of the sort, and now you’re describing a plague in enough detail that I can picture it” He paused. “What aren’t you telling me?”
I looked out the windshield at the valley below.
“I’m not trying to corner you, because I know how much you hate that,” he said, “but if this is as serious as you’re saying, and you actually know something, then I need to understand where it’s coming from. Otherwise I’m just taking your word for it. And that can be dangerous. You know that.”
He was right. I knew he was right. I had known it before I even got in the car.
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The problem was that there was no version of this that didn’t sound completely insane. If I told him, he would probably just stare at me like I had totally lost my marbles.
But as I thought about what happened in my past life… I knew I couldn’t just sit here and keep the truth from everyone forever. If I was going to make a difference in this life, a real one, then I needed allies. And Abigail, bless her heart, didn’t exactly have the resources to help me with something this big.
No. If I was going to stop that plague from spreading, I needed help from someone who could actually do something about it.
Even if telling him was risky.
I took a deep breath to look at Lucas.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to tell you something, and I need you to hear the whole thing before you say anything. Can you do that for me?”
He nodded once.
I took another breath. It did nothing to slow my racing heart, but there was no going back now.
“Lucas, there’s something I need to tell you. I already lived this before. I died and came back, years younger, and now I need to stop all of the bad things that happened in my past life from happening in this one.”
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