The distance is too great, and hellhound ears apparently don't share the enhanced hearing that vampire nature provided. Words pass between them—conversation that probably decides my fate, discussion that I have no ability to influence or even accurately observe.
Only Zeke walks forward.
The quiet one approaches Gwenievere with the particular calm that defines his every action—unhurried despite the urgency of their circumstances, composed despite the chaos that still surrounds them. He reaches her side with patience that contradicts everything about their current situation.
He whispers something in her ear.
Information that I can't access, knowledge that he possesses and she apparently needs. The exchange is brief—just a fewwords, just a moment of communication that passes between them with the intimacy of shared understanding.
I see the immediate disappointment.
Her shoulders sink with the particular weight of hope being crushed by reality. Whatever Zeke told her, whatever information his quiet observation has provided, it clearly wasn't the news she wanted to receive. The posture of someone who has just learned that the path she wanted to take has been blocked.
She looks my way.
Those silver eyes meet my multiple gazes across the distance that separates us—connection that the curse can't fully sever, bond that apparently survives even hellhound transformation.
I know what that look means.
She has no choice but to give up on me.
And if it meant protecting the others, she would.
She would always choose their survival over sentimental attachment to a monster who can't prove he deserves salvation.
I knew she would.
Because I didn't earn her mercy.
It's too soon for that.
Too early in whatever relationship we might have built if the Academy had given us time.
It's a shame, I think to myself.
Because the Academy never allowed them that.
The time to reminisce on what was learned. To grow and excel at our own pace. To develop connections that circumstances kept interrupting with life-threatening trials and enemies who wanted us dead.
We were all simply in survival mode.
That's all that mattered—staying alive long enough to reach the next crisis, the next challenge, the next threat that the Academy generated to test whether we deserved to continue existing. No space for genuine relationship development.No opportunity for bonds to mature beyond the desperate connections that shared danger creates.
I hate it.
Hate everything about how this worked out.
Because I never really got to love her in a way she'd understand.
The regret settles into my consciousness with weight that threatens to crush whatever remains of the man beneath the beast.
Instead, I loved her the way I was forced to learn how.
In silence.
In secrecy.
In longing that could never be expressed.
