The night was too still. Even the ocean below seemed to hold its breath, waves crashing in slow motion against the jagged rocks. Alison stood at the cliff’s edge, the wind clawing through her hair and cloak. She had walked this path alone too many times in her dreams, but tonight was different. Tonight was real.
She sensed him before she heard him,the bond humming inside her veins, calling her to turn, to face him one last time.
“You came,” she whispered, her voice carried away by the storm.
Daniel’s reply was low, steady, almost broken. “I always will.”
Tears blurred her vision. She wanted to scream, to strike him, to demand why he had cursed them both again with this love, this hunger, this endless cycle of betrayal and forgiveness. Instead, her chest heaved with words she could no longer hold back. “I should hate you. For everything. For breaking me. For binding me to this fate. For making me love you when I swore I wouldn’t.”
He stepped closer, eyes glowing faintly in the darkness. “But you don’t,” he murmured. “You never could.”
The horns of the Council echoed from the forest, cold and final. Torches flared against the night, shadows moving closer. Their time had run out.
Daniel cupped her face with trembling hands, his lips ghosting against her forehead. “Then let this be the last promise between us. No matter what they take from us, no matter how this ends, our bond will not die. Not in blood. Not in eternity.”
Alison’s tears fell freely now, cutting hot tracks down her cold skin. She pressed her lips to his in a kiss that tasted of salt, sorrow, and finality. “Goodbye, Daniel. Until eternity calls us back.”
The night swallowed them as the Council closed in—two lovers cursed, shattered yet bound, their story ending not with mercy, but with legend.