Not a question.
A statement that requires confirmation.
A choice that she's placing before me with all the weight that such choices deserve.
It's now or never.
The realization settles into my consciousness with the particular clarity of moments that define everything that follows. Whatever she's planning, whatever intervention she's attempting, it requires my trust. My cooperation. My willingness to surrender control to someone else—something that hellhound nature should make impossible but that my love for her makes essential.
Now or never.
Trust her or remain this way forever.
Accept her offer or watch the only hope I have walk away.
And just having felt her touch one more time?—
The sensation lingers where her hand rests against my neck, warmth that I didn't know I was capable of feeling in this form, comfort that I assumed the curse had stripped away along with everything else that made me human.
It ignites a calm wave of peace.
I never thought I'd feel this again.
Never expected peace to be possible while trapped in a form designed for nothing but destruction.
But she brings it.
She always has.
Even when I was watching from shadows, even when I was playing the villain, even when she hated me for masks I had to wear—just being near her brought something that my existence desperately needed.
I can't answer.
The curse doesn't permit verbal response, doesn't allow me to speak even in this mental space where physical limitations shouldn't apply. Whatever Elena did when she transformed me, whatever specific malice she wove into the magic that claimed my body, it stripped communication as thoroughly as it stripped my human form.
But there's something I can do.
One gesture that doesn't require words.
One response that might transcend the barriers the curse has created.
I lean in.
The motion is slow, deliberate, carrying all the intention that I can't express through language. My massive hellhound head—or whatever representation of it exists in this space—moves toward her with the particular care of someone who has been wanting to do this for years but never had the opportunity.
Our foreheads touch.
The contact is gentle despite the size differential, soft despite the violence that this form usually embodies. I press against her with the particular pressure of connections that go deeper than physical touch—bond acknowledging bond, soul recognizing soul, the particular intimacy of beings who belong to each other regardless of what forms they currently wear.
This is all I can offer.
All I have left to give.
One moment of connection before whatever comes next.
One gesture that I hope communicates everything I've never been able to say.
That I loved her from the moment I understood what loving her would cost.
