Beneath the Alpha's Moon
Chapter 287: He Chose Me

Chapter 287: He Chose Me

Nova’s POV

Three weeks.

It had only been three weeks since I had dinner and went bowling with Eldur’s friends—Mai, Liam, and Ollie—and somehow my world had transformed into something I never thought I’d have.

It felt like... magic.

Not the card-trick, top-hat kind. The real kind. The kind that breathes life into dead days and paints color into the grayest corners of your soul.

And the root of it all? Eldur Daegon.

School used to be a drag—wake up, go through the motions, get through the day, repeat. But now? Now, school was a thing I looked forward to because Eldur was always there, waiting outside my dorm building like a dark cloud with pretty silver lightning. Sometimes he’d lean against a tree with that brooding smirk, his arms folded, white hair catching the morning sun like strands of moonlight. Other times he’d just appear beside me mid-walk, no footsteps, no warning, just suddenly there—and I’d scream and slap his arm while he laughed in that low, lazy way that made my stomach twist into butterflies.

And work? Don’t get me started.

There’s something deliciously dangerous about working in a bookstore with a guy who looks like he stepped out of a gothic romance novel and acts like chaos bottled into a human form. Eldur would slide into the store when it was quiet, pretending to browse books while staring holes into my soul from behind a dusty shelf. The first time he knocked over a stack of books and muttered "pathetic human structures" under his breath, I nearly collapsed laughing.

I didn’t know how someone so cold to the world could be so warm with me.

"Nova," he said one afternoon while lazily spinning a bookmark between his fingers, "if another man even looks at you like you belong to them, I’ll rip out their spleen and feed it to the crows."

I blinked. "That is... deeply disturbing."

He tilted his head, silver eyes gleaming. "You’re welcome."

Oh, and the best part? Amara was gone.

The witch—okay, not literally, but maybe spiritually—had left the city. Apparently, she decided she couldn’t "grow as a person" here anymore and needed a fresh start. She packed her tiny suitcase full of drama, self-importance, and neon lip gloss, and poof—she was gone. Left her grandpa’s bookstore, the city, school, everything. I half expected Eldur to do a victory dance on top of the shop’s counter, but he just muttered, "Good riddance," and then kissed my cheek so softly I forgot how to breathe.

And for the first time, I realized something...

No one could take Eldur from me.

Not Amara. Not some hypnotic goddess with a PhD in temptation. Not even a siren crooning love songs across storm-tossed seas. Eldur was mine—not because I claimed him, but because he chose me.

And that choice? Coming from someone carved from shadow and fire, someone who could burn the world down but decided to hold my hand instead—it meant everything.

Every time he looked at me like I was something sacred.

Every time he stayed close like I was something fragile.

Every time he said my name like it was a spell only he could cast...

It sealed the truth deep in my bones:

He was mine. And I was his.

No force in this world—or any other—could touch that.

And, in other news of the wonderfully bizarre—Lara, my unfiltered, spontaneous, chaos-on-two-legs best friend, now had a boyfriend.

His name? Ollie.

Yeah. Ollie. As in, Eldur’s best friend. The guy with abs that could make statues jealous and dimples that threatened national stability. The same Ollie who called Eldur "ice cube" and could down three milkshakes in under five minutes.

Lara was obsessed.

"I think he’s the one," she announced while eating flaming hot chips on my bed. "I’m serious. He might be an actual angel. Or a Greek god. Or, like, a criminally attractive stray dog that learned how to walk upright."

I snorted. "You’ve been dating for one week, Lara."

She spun around, chip in hand, eyes dreamy. "Seven days of pure happiness. Do you know he opens doors for me? Like—literally races me to them just to open them first? And he listens, Nova. Like, actually listens. Yesterday, I told him about the time I cried because I stepped on a snail when I was ten, and do you know what he said?"

I grinned. "What?"

She threw her hands up like she was delivering scripture. "He said, ’May the snail rest in peace. He was clearly too pure for this world.’"

I wheezed. "Ollie said that?"

"Word for word."

Honestly, I wasn’t even surprised anymore. Ollie might’ve looked like the kind of guy who moonlighted as a Calvin Klein model and probably bench-pressed cars for fun—but under all that muscle and energy, he was a total dork. Sweet as powdered sugar. And very, very into my best friend.

Of course, Lara didn’t know he was a werewolf. She thought he just worked out a lot and had unusually good hearing.

But it wasn’t my secret to tell.

I glanced across the room, where Eldur stood with his back leaned lazily against the bookshelf ladder, arms crossed, silver eyes locked on me like I was the only thing worth looking at in the entire world. When he noticed me watching him, he raised one snowy eyebrow and tilted his head slightly, as if to say, "You thinking about me again, pretty girl?"

I smiled without meaning to.

God, he made it so easy to fall for him.

Eldur wasn’t a secret in my life. Not anymore. The portals, the fire in his palms, the quiet way he murmured spells under his breath like second nature—it was all out in the open. He was magic and moonlight and barely leashed chaos, and he chose me.

And even now, weeks after he first told me the truth—really told me—I still found new things to love about him.

Like how he always made sure my coffee stayed warm. Literally. Like, if I got distracted reading and forgot my mug for twenty minutes, I’d come back and it would be warm again. Not piping hot—just the perfect drinkable temperature. Every time.

Or how he’d vanish with a blink just to bring me books I’d mentioned in passing, showing up with them like some casually overpowered delivery service.

Or how he’d pause time—just slightly—if I tripped over something, only so I could catch myself and not feel embarrassed. He never told me when he did it. But I knew.

And then there was the way he looked at me.

Not like I was breakable. Not like I was just a girl.

But like I was some kind of spell he couldn’t undo. Something ancient and sacred he never expected to find.

Sometimes, I’d wake up to find him sitting at the edge of my bed, sketching quietly in a worn leather journal, his silver hair glowing faintly in the early light. He once told me he liked watching the sun touch my face—said it made me look like a painting. Moments like that made life feel like a fairytale.

A wild, glitter-dusted, sometimes terrifying, often hilarious, utterly beautiful fairytale.

We had lazy evenings on the bookstore rooftop, where we’d sit side by side with steaming mugs of coffee, saying nothing, just watching the stars. And there were the midnight adventures—like the time he conjured a "shortcut" and we ended up on a mountain in Norway. I lasted five minutes before screaming about frostbite, and he brought us back laughing so hard he nearly dropped me.

There was so much laughter.

Like the time I tried to prank him by swapping his shampoo with glitter gel, only to find out, deadpan, "I’m not mortal, Nova. My hair self-purifies."

Or the night Lara hosted board game night and Eldur took Monopoly so seriously he threatened to "burn Ollie’s bank to ash" if he didn’t hand over Boardwalk.

"It’s a game!" I shouted, trying to drag him back by his hoodie.

"It’s about power, Nova!" he declared like a war general.

Even now, as I sat on the bookstore counter while Lara restocked the "Romance" shelf, and Eldur leaned lazily against the ladder, watching me with that unreadable expression, I felt it—that rare, quiet stillness inside.

Not boredom. Not emptiness. Just peace.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" I asked, smiling.

He shrugged one shoulder. "Because you’re beautiful. And you don’t even know it."

Lara dropped a book. "Okay. Rude. Let the rest of us breathe."

Eldur glanced at her, utterly unbothered. "Breathe quieter."

"Ollie would never say that to me," she muttered, grabbing the book.

"I’m not Ollie," Eldur replied coolly.

"Nope," she said under her breath. "You’re Wednesday Addams with a jawline."

And Eldur—stoic, ancient, unshakable—actually grinned. "She’s one of the good ones."

I laughed until my stomach hurt. Because somehow, through all the scars, secrets, and broken pieces—we’d found something real.

Something golden.

And deep in my soul, I knew... our story was only just beginning.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.