An Echo in the Blood Chapter 1

When my life became a story, I knew nothing about the plot except for my name.

I woke up one day inside a novel I now know is called The CEO’s Crimson Contract. For the longest time, I was convinced I was the heroine. It made a perfect, beautiful sense. The protagonist’s name was Aurora, and my name—Elora—was its echo.

The day I met my husband, Alaric, I fell in love so instantly and completely that I was sure I was the luckiest woman alive.

But three years into our marriage, an intern named Aurora started at his company.

And that’s when the voice in my head told me I’d gotten it all wrong. The heroine wasn’t the echo. It was the other way around.

I wasn’t the star of the show. I was just the warm-up act. The disposable first wife.

…

[Elora, it’s time to face reality.]

For the three months since Aurora had first walked through the doors of Aethelgard Industries, that voice—the one that called itself the System—had been a constant, cruel whisper in the back of my mind.

[You aren’t the heroine, ‘Aurora.’ You’re the forgotten side character, ‘Elora.’ The story is correcting itself. The hero is destined to fall for the heroine. You are destined to be discarded.]

I ignored it, just as I had every other time. I focused on the task at hand: arranging candles for the third-anniversary dinner I was making for Alaric and me.

I wasn't the heroine, maybe. But three years of marriage couldn't be a lie. The feeling was real, even if the story wasn't mine.

When I first arrived in this world, I was just a grad student studying abroad. The moment I saw him, my heart simply gave itself away, no questions asked. I pursued him with a single-mindedness that felt like fate.

And fate, it seemed, answered. One afternoon, in a grimy alley near my apartment, I found him. He was bleeding, weakened, leaning against a dumpster as if his strength had evaporated. He’d been shot with some kind of specialized silver round.

The sunlight, slanting between the buildings, was like a physical poison against his skin. I didn’t hesitate. I threw my trench coat over him, shielding him with my own body as I frantically called an Uber, getting him to the private, unmarked address he’d managed to whisper.

To repay what he called a life debt, Alaric offered me a blood bond and, with it, a marriage contract.

After the wedding, he remained distant, a man carved from beautiful, cold marble. But his actions… his actions were warm.

When my period cramps were agonizing, he would disappear into his high-tech private medical lab and return with a small IV bag of dark, rich fluid. He’d call it a “family nutritional supplement,” his touch gentle as he hooked it to my vein and let it drip, slowly, into me. The relief was immediate, a wave of warmth and strength that washed away the pain.

Once, I mindlessly liked a picture on Instagram—a box of macarons from a century-old patisserie in Paris. The next day, he returned from a business trip to New York. Sitting on the table of his private jet was that exact same box, the confections still impossibly fresh.

It was in these moments that I learned to read his love language. His affection wasn’t in words, but in quiet, overwhelming gestures. He was a man whose actions screamed the devotion his lips would never speak.

I didn’t believe a heart like that could change.

After placing the last fork, I glanced at the ornate clock on the wall.

8:23 PM.

He should have been home from the office by now. Usually, he was.

I called him. “Honey, what time will you be home tonight?”

There was a pause on the other end, a pocket of silence that felt too heavy. Then, his voice, a low, magnetic rumble that always made my heart skip. “Elora. I’m sorry. Something’s come up. I won’t be home for dinner. You should eat without me.”

Each word was a hammer blow against my chest.

My fingers tightened on my phone. “Do you remember what today is…?”

Before I could finish, the line went dead. He’d hung up.

A cold dread coiled in my stomach. And then, the System’s voice returned, slick and venomous.

[Do you want to see what your husband is doing right now?]

I didn’t. God, I didn’t. But the System never gave me a choice. An image flooded my mind, vivid and unwelcome.

Alaric was in the emergency room of the city’s most expensive private hospital. He was kneeling, his movements impossibly gentle as he massaged the swollen ankle of a young woman on the hospital bed. It was Aurora. And in his silver-grey eyes—eyes that were always so cool and distant with me—was a universe of raw, unguarded worry.

A thousand silver needles pierced my heart all at once. The pain was everywhere.

The System’s voice was as cold as a morgue slab.

[Do you see? The hero’s heart is already turning toward the heroine. If you refuse to let go, the plot will ensure you end up dead in the street. And your family in the human world? They’ll meet with unfortunate accidents as well…]

My hand clenched into a fist, my nails digging into my palm. I bit down on my lip, hard, just to keep myself from trembling.

A consequence like that… Could I really afford to bear it?