as years of carefully restrained emotion surfaced across his face, the mask slipping just long enough to reveal the man beneath it—a man who had made a promise he was now failing to keep, and who understood, perhaps more deeply than Dakota herself in that moment, exactly what that failure would cost.
"I know exactly what I've done."
The confession hung between them.
Neither spoke.
Outside, the helicopters continued searching.
Rain continued falling.
The forest waited, vast and indifferent, holding its secrets the way it always had.
Dorian tightened his grip once more and led her toward the front entrance.
"We don't have another minute."
Dakota stopped resisting just long enough to look at him, and in that stillness something in her shifted—not surrender, never surrender, but a terrible kind of clarity.
There was no fear in her expression anymore.
Only certainty.
"You still don't understand."
He frowned but said nothing.
"You think running will save you."
