The realization hits me like a physical blow, stealing the air from my lungs.
Now I understand...
The final piece of the puzzle slides into place with a soft, devastating certainty.
Now I know.
I know why Angel—after all these years—could never accept Zyren's desperate, obsessive confessions. It was never about status. Never about fear. Not even about the cruelty Zyren would later grow into.
It was this.
To Angel, Zyren was never a romantic possibility. He was the child Angel found collapsed in the grass, burning with fever. The boy whose temperature he checked, whose medicine he carefully measured, whose blankets he tucked in with trembling hands. He was a responsibility—nurtured, protected, loved with a quiet, unshakable devotion.
How could Angel ever look at that boy and see a lover?
How do you fall in love with someone whose scraped knees you bandaged, whose nightmares you soothed, whose life you guarded from its most fragile beginning?
