Beneath the Alpha's Moon
Chapter 277: Return of the Past

Chapter 277: Return of the Past

Nova’s POV

I should’ve been over it by now.

It had been two weeks.

Two weeks since Eldur vanished like smoke between my fingers. Two weeks since I sat by the moonflowers, hoping he’d just appear in that dramatic way of his—long coat, eyes like a storm, voice that tasted like a secret.

But he didn’t come.

And I started to wonder if I had made him up.

You know when someone’s presence is so intense, so otherworldly, that when they’re gone, reality starts to feel... cheap? That was Eldur. He didn’t just walk into a room—he bent the air around him. When he left, the air stopped bending. It just... existed. Flat and ordinary.

I was back to being plain old Nova.

Well—just Nova with a not-so-tiny catch: my monster of an ex-boyfriend had popped back into my life like the world’s worst sequel no one asked for.

Jimmy.

Yeah. That Jimmy.

I hadn’t laid eyes on him since that awkward run-in three months ago, when Eldur and I were out job hunting. Before that? Not since senior year of high school. He was my first boyfriend. My first kiss. My first everything. Also, my first heartbreak—the kind that doesn’t just sting, it scorches. I’d done a decent job of locking those memories away, of pretending he never existed. But then he showed up at the gates of my college like he belonged there. Like I’d been waiting for him.

"Nova," he said, smooth as ever, like this was just another Chapter we were meant to keep writing.

And just like that, my knees nearly buckled. My stomach turned into a washing machine on spin cycle.

I didn’t say a word. Couldn’t. I just stood there, staring at him like he was a ghost I wasn’t ready to face.

His smirk was still the same. That signature, crooked little curve that used to feel like safety now looked like a warning sign. Once, it made my heart skip. Now it made my lunch threaten a comeback.

"I heard you go here," he said, casually flicking imaginary dust off his jacket like he wasn’t blowing a crater into my day. "Crazy, huh? Small world."

I think I muttered something—probably a dumb "Oh" or a very weak "yeah." Doesn’t matter. What I do remember is the way a cold shiver danced down my spine. Not because of his voice, but because of the storm of memories it dragged in behind it.

The things he used to say. The venom disguised as concern.

"You’re lucky I’m still here. No one else is gonna love you."

"If your own mother didn’t stick around, what makes you think anyone else will?"

"Don’t raise your voice at me, Nova. You’re nothing. You hear me? Nothing."

He used to hit me when I talked back. Never hard enough to leave a bruise, but always just enough to shake the foundation I was building beneath myself. And every single time, without fail, he’d look me dead in the eye and say in that low, guilty voice, "You made me do it."

And I believed him. I actually believed him.

Back then, I had no parents. No support. No one to tell me love wasn’t supposed to feel like drowning with a smile. Just this boy, who wrapped his fists in flowers and called it devotion. I thought that was what love looked like.

Until the day he stopped pretending. He looked at me—really looked—and said, "You were born to be unwanted. Even I can’t keep pretending anymore."

Then he left.

And in the strangest, most painful way, I felt both broken and free.

Now he was back. And in the space of one breath, I was sixteen again.

And just when I thought it couldn’t get worse...

He started showing up.

Everywhere.

At the campus café. The parking lot. The library. Even that cursed vending machine outside the bio lab.

Always there, wearing that fake, plastic grin. His voice thick and sticky, like spoiled honey.

A week after Eldur disappeared, Jimmy showed up at the bookstore where I worked—like some bad memory kicking the door open.

I was halfway through shelving a mountain of romance novels when I felt him walk in.

Like a cold wind in the middle of a summer afternoon.

"Hey, Nova," he said, all casual.

I jolted so hard I knocked an entire stack of books off the shelf.

He just grinned, like he thought that was cute.

"I wanted to talk," he said, sauntering closer.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t trust my voice not to crack under the mountains of emotions on me.

He kept going anyway, like he always did. "I’ve been thinking," he said. "About us. About everything."

"There is no us," I said, sharper than a paper cut—but still not sharp enough to make him bleed.

He just smiled wider. Like he knew something I didn’t. "You don’t mean that, Nova," he said. "I know you’re single. I checked."

That one sentence made my stomach twist itself into knots.

He had checked.

Has he been stalking me all this time?

"What do you want?" I managed, keeping my voice as level as I could.

He shrugged, like we were talking about something careless and simple. "I want us back," he said. "Come on, Nova. Who else is gonna love you like I do? Nobody. You know it. You’ve always known it."

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. Every instinct I had screamed to run, to hide and never come back out.

He took my silence like it was permission.

"You’re not seeing anyone," he went on. "You’re not that kind of girl. So stop pretending. Stop playing hard to get. I’m your best option, and you know it. You need to wake up before it’s too late."

He leaned in, breath hot and sour against my cheek. I froze. "I’ll be seeing you around."

And then—like the villain at the end of some bad horror movie—he disappeared.

I stood there, trembling, my heart hammering against my ribs like it was trying to punch its way out.

My whole body knew what my brain was too slow to admit: Jimmy wasn’t just bad news. He was a walking storm, and I had no umbrella.

And through all the panic and disgust and shame, one thought burned hotter than the rest:

I let Eldur go.

The one person who never made me feel like I was less.

Who never laughed when I stumbled over my words.

Who looked at me like I was made of galaxies and thunderstorms and all the fierce, aching beauty of a human heart.

And I let him go.

Because I was afraid.

Afraid of what he was.

Afraid of what I saw the night he ripped open the night sky like it was paper, throwing people into dark, swirling portals like he belonged to a different universe entirely.

Afraid of those silver eyes that glowed in the dark, catching the light in a way no human eyes ever should.

Afraid of the way I loved him—even when none of it made sense.

Now Jimmy was back. Eldur was gone.

And I was stuck in a no-man’s-land between dread and heartbreak.

That night, I curled up in bed, clutching my blanket like it could protect me from monsters—the ones that lived in the shadows and the ones I had loved.

I cried. Quiet, bitter tears that soaked into the pillow, carrying away all the words I didn’t have the strength to say.

Into the dark, I whispered, "I’m sorry, Eldur."

And it crushed me, the weight of it—the way the world felt hollower without him in it.

He had never been soft, never easy.

But his presence had filled the air like a storm you didn’t want to hide from.

His voice used to rattle through my bones.

His gaze cut through walls I didn’t even know I’d built.

He could be terrifying, yes.

But he had been my terrifying.

And there were moments—little cracks in his armor—that proved how much he was trying. Like when he secretly stuffed three kinds of chocolate into my bag because he didn’t know which one I liked best.

Or when he’d glare daggers at anyone who looked at me too long, grumbling under his breath, "Humans are exhausting," like it was a public service announcement. Or when he muttered, in the most painfully awkward voice, "You, uh... smell like jasmine and vanilla fusion. It’s not bad."

He didn’t know how to love the way humans did.

But he was learning.

And I threw all of that away.

The next day, I found myself back at the campus greenhouse. Same cracked bench. Same stubborn moonflowers still daring to bloom.

I sat there, heart heavy, words burning my throat.

"I don’t want to be afraid anymore," I said aloud, like the flowers could hear me.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

"I just want you back but I don’t know where to look."