Loving Her Body

a confession from her

POV: Selene

I've missed this.

Just cuddling with her and rubbing her back while she sleeps, her face buried in my chest as she breaths in my scent. She has the most adorable small and content smile over her lips as she snuggles close.

I plant soft kisses on the top of her head as I admire her being so comfortable with me. I just can't sleep tonight since I've been thinking so much about what was in Athena's place but seeing her so snuggly with me and so happy to be sleeping soothes me. Just thinking about her is putting me in a better mood.

She managed to eat a little bit again today, even though she did struggle to keep it down at first, but I'm still so proud for her trying. I hadn't expected her to be improving so quickly and I can't help but just keep supporting her. She definitely won't have improved enough for a Christmas roast dinner but maybe she will be able to eat with the rest of us.

I want her by my side all day, just enjoying herself without a care of what she eats or does. I want her to feel safe completely and utterly, even for just one day.

My admiration is interrupted as my phone buzzes and lights up with a message on my bedside cabinet. Haelyn whines for a moment before settling again, snuggling into me as I slyly grab my phone and unlock it looking over her sleeping body to deal with the message Cooper just sent.

I make sure to keep rubbing her back as I start reading it, scrolling through the medical documents he's sent over. Since Haelyn's weird moment over the skeleton, we decided to look into her files to see if the skeleton is a match and to speed this investigation up. According to what he's just sent over, it truly was hers.

All the broken bones in her medical records match but there were a few she didn't point out some of the more severe ones that hadn't come close to healing. The main ones were a fractured spine and a cracked skull. There was some extra damage to the ribs but apparently the skull and spine damages were severe enough to almost kill her. The rest was severe blood loss that finally ended her.

Just thinking about it makes me realise how much pain she must have been in before she died. We haven't really talked about how she died but I want to know what her life was like before now. Before I met her and fell head over heels for her.

As I keep scrolling through everything that he managed to find, the blood viles also matched Haelyn and Elise. I can't help but wonder what Athena was trying to do. According to the books she was doing something to switch two people, but why Haelyn and Elise?

They had nothing in common. The only reason for Elise was probably to fuck with my head, but, according to Haelyn, she wasn't very good at anything. As much as I hate that she puts herself down, from what she's said there wasn't much of a reason for Athena to choose her. I can't even figure out when she would've had the chance to meet Haelyn. Maybe it was simply because Haelyn was an easy target.

I freeze as Haelyn shuffles in my arm, stirring a bit from her sleep. I rub her back but it doesn't seem to stop her from rubbing her eyes and tiredly looking up at me. She nudges her head into my chest, grumbling about waking up.

"I'm sorry, baby girl," I mutter, kissing her forehead. "Did I wake you up?"

"A little bit," she murmurs into my chest. "You kept sighing onto my head."

I apologise and go to kiss her forehead again but she swerves so that I catch her lips instead. I give a playful gasp as she snuggles back into me, a delicious smirk over her lips. Clearly she's proud of herself for it and I want to get back, just a little bit.