dreams whisper through silence by mae 254

Chapter 254 

Ellie’s POV 

I surfaced from sleep gradually, pulled up by the sound of voices and moverment below. Boots on hardwood, doors opening and closing, the low rumble of several conversations happening at once. I laid there for a moment, blinking at the ceiling. 

Before I fully woke, there was a knock on the door. 

“Luna?” a voice called through the wood. 

I blinked and looked at the door. It took me a moment to place the unfamiliar voice, but it hit me just as the doorknob began to turn. 

Mara. My new “handmaid.” 

The door slowly opened, and I sat up quickly, hurrying to hide the book. The last thing I wanted right now was for nayone to question why I was reading an ancient book on reincarnation, so I quickly grabbed it and looked around, then shoved it under the mattress just as the bedroom door fully opened. 

Mara stepped in. She was already fully dressed in her crisp uniform, her hair pulled back into a neat bun, with the same overly pleasant expression on her face as yesterday. 

“Good morning,” she said. “Alpha Dominic is preparing to leave. He’s asked that you come down to see him off.” 

I stared at her for a second. “He’s leaving? For what?” 

“For battle,” she said. 

My stomach dropped. 

Battle. For the war. 

Dominic was a good fighter. I knew that. I also knew, from my past life, that he had won this war. But despite everything, a small part of myself felt a pang of worry at the thought of him going off to fight. 

Mara moved to my wardrobe and opened it, pulling out a dress without being asked. “The warriors assembled at dawn. They’ll be heading out within the hour.” 

I took the dress from her without comment and started getting ready. The dress was plain and gray but elegant, and Mara arranged my hair into a crown braid while I threw on some mascara. 

When I made it downstairs, the entry hall was full of people. Pack elders, senior warriors, members of the household staff, all gathered to see the Alpha off. Dominic was in the center of it, already in his armor, talking in a low voice to Ryan. 

He looked up when I appeared at the bottom of the stairs and our eyes met briefly before he looked away. 

Mara put her hand on my arm. “You’ll want to pick a flower,” she whispered. 

Right. The flower. 

It was tradition in our pack for the Luna to place a flower in the Alpha’s armor before he left for battle. A 

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small thing, symbolic, a show of unity and blessing and all of that. In my past life, I had done it without thinking, pressing a freshly cut rose into the groove above his chest plate with shaking hands while Dominic looked over my head like I was already a ghost. 

I was not doing that again. Not like that. 

I turned and went through the hall to the back door, stepping out into the garden. The morning was cold, the grass still damp, and I moved along the edge of the flower beds until I found what I was looking for. 

There, near the far corner where the gardener hadn’t gotten around to pulling up yet, was a flower that had well and truly given up on life. Brown petals, bent stem, looking about as sorry as anything in that garden 

had ever looked. 

I picked it. 

When I came back inside and walked up to Dominic, the room had gone noticeably quiet. I held out the dead 

flower. 

Dominic looked down at it. Then up at me. A muscle jumped in his jaw. 

“Really?” he muttered. 

“It’s a flower,” I said pleasantly, tucking it into his armor. “As per tradition.’ 

Someone near the doorway made a sound that quickly turned into a cough. Dominic was clearly trying to mask his fury because we had so many eyes on us, but he was failing. His eyes went dark and I could practically hear his teeth grinding. 

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