Lucian had always been a man of shadows.
From day one, his presence felt like a contained storm: elegant, cold, lethal. A wolf in prince's clothing. But now, Ana looked at him with different eyes. Not because he had changed at all, but because she was no longer the same.
It had been weeks since that hill, since she had decided to walk beside him, not out of weakness... but by choice.
Lucian had been away for a while. He needed to disappear, he said, so he wouldn't hurt anymore. He wanted to understand what it meant to love without possessing, to care without dominating. He wanted, at last, to look in the mirror without hiding behind excuses and inherited wounds.
And one day, she simply came back.
Not with flowers or empty words. Not with promises she knew she could not keep.
He came back with tired eyes and a stubble. With empty hands and a trembling voice. He came back as a man, not as a god who demanded devotion.
Ana found him sitting on the steps of the house where he now lived, on the outskirts of the city. It was no longer a marble mansion, but a wooden house, with wide windows and the scent of damp earth.
-I didn't know if I should come," he said, without looking up.
-And yet you're here," Anne replied calmly.
Lucian nodded. His voice was low, sincere, as if speaking from deep in his chest.
-I've spent so much time trying to be invincible... I forgot what it feels like to be vulnerable. I wanted to save you... but I ended up locking you up. I wanted to protect you... when you just needed to be free.
Ana sat down next to him. The silence between them wasn't tense this time. It was necessary. Real.
-You were not the wolf, Lucian," she said, after several seconds. The wolf was the fear that lived in you. And in me.
Lucian closed his eyes. A tear, barely contained, slid down his cheek.
-Are you still afraid of me?
Anne looked him straight in the face.
-Sometimes. But I also believe in your change. Not because you told me... but because I'm seeing it.
He took a deep breath, as if he was gasping for air. Then he opened a small wooden box. Inside, there was no ring. Just a folded sheet of paper.
-It's my confession," he said. Everything I did. What I hid. From you, from my wife, from my sister. Even from myself.
Ana took the paper. She didn't read it yet. She just held it as one holds a newly delivered heart.
-This is not an ending, Lucian," she said. Nor an absolution. But it may be a beginning.
And for the first time, the wolf did not roar. He just lowered his head and rested.
Because even predators need to find peace.