For Me,There Is Only You |18+|

ANSEL IV

There are so many things I regret.

So many moments where I made the wrong choice...

And maybe, just maybe... if I had chosen differently,

The present wouldn't look the way it does now.

Maybe we wouldn't be standing on opposite sides of everything I swore I'd protect her from.

I shouldn't have been so greedy.

I shouldn't have swallowed my pride and gone out of my way to attend an engagement hosted by the very pack that despised me...

To celebrate a sister who never once called me her brother.

All just to steal a glimpse of Neev.

But I had become greedy.

After years of watching her from the shadows...

After finally hearing her voice... feeling her touch... I couldn't erase the imprint she left behind. Not even after four months. Not even when I tried.

That's why I chased her to that engagement.

Why I abandoned meetings and responsibilities, just to stand close to her again. To breathe the same air. To feel her presence, even if from a distance.

But I think... that day...

I should've turned away before she looked at me with those eyes and asked about Ashley... about her luggage.

I shouldn't have followed her to that guest room.

Shouldn't have stood outside like some desperate creature, aching for one more second in her gravity.

Shouldn't have told her my name.

Shouldn't have let her say it back—wrecked and breathless on her lips like a prayer I was never worthy of.

Shouldn't have kept my anger in check when all I wanted to do was to tear those men apart who looked at her with hungry eyes and disrespected her; maybe I should have annihilated the entire pack for allowing it.

And I should've killed Alaric the moment he dared to walk toward her.

I shouldn't have let her follow me into the dark that night, away from the engagement.

Shouldn't have grabbed her hand and led her away from the lights, from the noise to her room.

And gods...

I shouldn't have let myself hear that final line she whispered before I left her room.

"Shielding yourself doesn't make you a coward. It makes you human."

Human.

Only she... in a world that had beaten me into believing I was beyond redemption... saw the ghost of a man beneath the monster.

Only her.

Only she had ever seen something in me worth saving.

There are so many things I should've done differently. So many I shouldn't have done at all.

I keep asking myself—

If I had made different choices...

Would we have ended differently?

Would we still be standing where we are now?

Or were we always destined to fall apart, no matter how tightly I tried to hold onto her?

Just like Mom had warned.

I'll never forget that night.

Ashley's engagement.