Chapter 296
Ellie’s POV
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The library was quiet this late in the afternoon. Most of the students had already gone home for the day, and the few who remained were clustered around the study tables near the front entrance, hunched over textbooks and notes.
I walked up to the front desk and reached into my bag with a slightly shaking hand, still on edge from earlier. The librarian glanced up as I set the book down that I had checked out from the restricted section.
“Oh,” she said, taking it. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
I smiled wryly. “Sort of.”
She nodded curtly and set the book on the put-back cart. Shouldering my bag, I turned and slipped into the stacks without another word. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the book revealed very little other than a very sad and very familiar story.
Not that I ever expected to find the answers to my death there, anyway. Or anywhere at this point, for that matter.
Once I was alone, I tucked myself into an armchair in the back corner, hidden behind a row of shelves stacked with outdated medical journals that nobody ever touched anymore and the librarians hadn’t gotten around to phasing them out. It was my favorite spot to hide when I needed to think. Or, in this case, when I needed to avoid going home.
Setting my bag down on the floor, I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them.
Colt’s words kept replaying in my mind on a loop, just as they had been the entire drive to the academy.
“You’re both just as bad as each other.”
I gnawed on my lip until it hurt.
Was he right?
All this time, I had been so focused on survival, on making sure history didn’t repeat itself, that I hadn’t ever fully stopped to consider what I was becoming in the process. I had manipulated Colt without thinking twice. I had used an innocent man as a pawn to hurt Vivian, to throw a wrench in whatever plans she and Dominic had brewing between them.
And yeah, Vivian was a scheming bitch who had probably had a hand in my death in my past life. But that didn’t mean I had to stoop to her level and hurt other people.
I pressed my forehead against my knees and shut my eyes.
The worst part was that, throughout all of this, I had thoroughly convinced myself that I was doing the right thing. That bringing Colt here, making that perfume, forcing the mate bond to the surface was all justified because it was self-defense. Because Vivian deserved it, in some sick and twisted sort of way.
But watching her collapse on the floor, screaming as the bond tore apart inside her chest, I’d felt something I didn’t expect.
Guilt.
It wasn’t much guilt. I couldn’t feel completely guilty for such things happening to her when she had made sure to turn my lite into a living hell in my past one, and had tormented me many a time in this one.
But it was just enough to make my insides twist with revulsion at my own actions. It was just enough to think that maybe I was becoming the exact person I hated, and I hadn’t even realized it was happening until it was too later.
Vivian had spent years manipulating people, playing games, hurting anyone who stood in her way. And what had I been doing since I woke up in this life? The same thing. Just with pretty reasons made up to conceal it. A nice little bow to put on top of a gift box full of shit.
I’d told myself it was survival. That I had to be ruthless, had to stay one step ahead, or I would only end up dead again.
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But maybe that was just an excuse.
Maybe I was just scared.
I was terrified, actually. Every single day since waking up in this timeline, I’d been terrified. Terrified of Dominic, terrified of Vivian, terrified of the future barreling toward me with no way to stop it. And when I got scared, I lashed out. I schemed. I hurt people before they could hurt me.
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