The Human Among Wolves (Aurora) novel Chapter 310

Chapter 310

AGONG

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I woke to darkness that wasn’t quite empty.

For a moment, I didn’t move, I didn’t breathe too loudly. The air felt wrong too thick, too aware of me–pressing against my skin like it knew

my name. The first thing I noticed was the heat. Not suffocating, but steady, alive. Fire.

I slowly pushed myself upright,

I wasn’t in my parents house anyIOTE.

The room around me was small, built of rough wood and stone, the kind of place that had been assembled by hand rather than designed. A wide fireplace dominated the far wall, flames licking upward and casting restless light across the space. The shadows it created didn’t stay still. They stretched and recoiled, sliding along the walls and ceiling like they had a will of their own.

Shelves lined nearly every free surface. They sagged under the weight of glass jars, bundles of dried plants tied with twine, thick books with cracked spines, and objects I didn’t recognize–things that caught the firelight and reflected it back in dull, unsettling glints. The air carried the sharp bite of smoke mixed with herbs and something metallic that clung to the back of my throat.

My heart slammed against my ribs.

I knew this place.

“No,” I whispered.

The cabin.

Seraphina’s cabin.

I swung my legs off whatever I had been lying on–an old cot, I realized distantly–and stood too fast. The room tilted, but I stayed upright, gripping the edge of a nearby table until the dizziness passed.

This wasn’t possible.

She was gone. No body, no proof–just silence that stretched on too long mean anything else.

My chest tightened painfully.

Then I saw her.

She stood near the fire, half turned away from me, her figure outlined by the glow behind her. For a split second, my mind refused to connect what my eyes were seeing to anything real. I took a step forward before I buld stop myself.

“Seraphina?” My voice broke on her name.

She turned.

And the world narrowed to just her.

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Chapter 310

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Her hair, once a muted silver, hung longer now, duller, threaded with darker strands, as if ash had settled into it and never left. Her face was

thinner, sharper in places that hadn’t been before. Her skin looked strained, like it had been pulled too tight over bone.

Her eyes–those unmistakable eyes–were still red. Not glowing, not burning, but deep and endless, like staring into something ancient and

bottomless. They locked onto mine, and for a heartbeat I couldn’t breathe,

She was real.

Alive.

Relief hit me so hard my knees nearly gave out. My lips parted, a laugh and a sob tangling in my throat all at once.

“You’re-” I swallowed. “You’re alive.”

Her mouth curved, just barely. Not a smile. Something tired. Something earned.

“You look surprised,” she said.

Her voice was rougher than I remembered, scraped raw at the edges, like it had been worn down by screaming or silence. Only then did I really

look at her.

There were marks on her now. Bruises fading into yellow and sickly green. Cuts that hadn’t healed properly. And the scar along her face–once thin and pale–looked angrier, wider, as if it had been reopened and forced to knit itself back together badly.

My chest ached.

“What happened to you?” I breathed.

She didn’t answer that. Instead, she took a step toward me, and I noticed the slight stiffness in her movements, the way she favored one side.

“I was starting to think you’d never let me in,” she said softly.

I frowned, confusion pushing past the shock. “Let you in?”

She stopped a few feet away from me, close enough that I could see the exhaustion etched into her features, the faint tremor she tried–and

failed–to hide.

“Finally,” Seraphina said, her gaze never leaving mine, “I’ve been trying to reach you for weeks.”

I couldn’t speak for a moment.

This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be–and yet it felt too solid, too vivid to dismiss. The warmth of the fire brushed against my skin. The air pressed

in around me. Even the ache in my chest felt real. I knew what this was the same way I’d known before, instinctively, without needing to name

1. it. Dreams weren’t supposed to feel like this.

I lifted my eyes to her, my heart hammering.

“Where are you?” I asked quietly.

“The king took me,” she said quietly. “I… I don’t know where I am.” Her voice wavered, but she forced the words out. “I’m not in his kingdom-

that much I know. But they torture me. Every night.”

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The Human Among Wolves