Chapter 250: Wednesday’s conclusion

[Wednesday’s POV]

Journal Entry – March 25

It’s been ten days since the mission involving the deranged cultist who created the chimera by kidnapping normies and two outcasts.

The bite Enid suffered on her arm turned out to be more serious than I initially thought. She had a fever for three days and couldn’t get out of bed.

The chimera’s poison was slow and persistent. According to Nevermore’s head nurse, it interfered with regenerative processes.

I skipped classes those days and took care of her. Something I normally wouldn’t do. The only person capable of pulling that out of me is Luke.

I didn’t do it out of obligation. Maybe partly out of guilt. It was my fault she got hurt. I got overconfident, underestimated the situation.

But I also did it because… I wanted to. Deep down.

And in these cases, I know how to distinguish between impulse and will.

Larissa granted me permission without too many questions. She knows about our missions. She’s a reliable ally, more intellectual than combative.

During those days, I brought Enid’s fever down with cold cloths. I changed the bandages on her wounded arm. I watched over her while she slept. I served her tea, though she barely sipped it.

I kept my video calls with Luke. I just changed the setting. I sat on a chair next to Enid’s bed.

He didn’t see her. He spoke in his usual confident tone, telling me how his training was going, how many hits he managed to land on my uncle, on Stalin, or on my father. How he’s training Nyra (the Wendigo we somehow adopted…).

I listened carefully and replied, but I also kept a discreet eye on Enid as she rested.

Every time she heard Luke’s voice, she reacted, and I’m certain she was paying close attention. Her eyes remained closed, but her face relaxed. The rhythm of her chest became more even.

It bothered me a little, I must say, but not as much as it would’ve in the past, when I might have wanted to stab her.

This was… a different kind of discomfort.

Not jealousy. I already know Luke is mine, and he doesn’t have eyes for anyone else.

Even Enid has kept her word and never acted like she wanted to get close to Luke, or murder me to get me out of the way, or anything of the sort.

And that, coming from someone with lethal claws and a latent obsession, deserves a certain level of respect.

She’s had plenty of situations where I entrusted her with my back, the mission with the chimera could’ve ended with that beast tearing my arm off, just to give one example.

I realized that when it comes to Enid, I don’t mind so much sharing moments with Luke.

Letting her enjoy his voice. Letting her calm down when she hears him.

She doesn’t feel like a threat.

After her fever broke, Enid had to rest for a full day, and I stayed by her side then too.

In the days that followed, we had no missions, and—almost unbelievably, our relationship improved.

It’s strange.

How something can be rebuilt without you even noticing.

…

Journal Entry – May 22

One week left until the school year ends. I’ll finally be able to go home and see Luke.

The missions resumed after the incident in Eltanin village. We had a short break thanks to the fever and venom affecting Enid more than expected, but that’s all it was: a break. Not an end.

The war has escalated on multiple fronts since then. More nighttime skirmishes. More lunatics performing dark rituals in remote towns. Vampires hunting normies for blood like in the old days. Cultists roaming free like never before…

Since that moment, Enid and I didn’t just become a tactical team again.

Our friendship fully healed.

I suppose when you go through so many life-or-death situations together, literally entrust each other with your backs, share a dorm, patch up wounds and awkward silences, what was broken gets rebuilt. Without asking, without announcing it.

It simply returns.

More than that, it’s better now than our brief friendship back when I first arrived at Nevermore.

But there’s something I can’t get out of my head. A detail that planted its seed in me sometime in April and has been quietly growing ever since.

I’ve started researching werewolves. Not as an academic project, but for personal reasons.

I’m not sure what led me to do it. Maybe an offhand comment, a look on her face when I mentioned Luke, or perhaps the way her mood shifts whenever she hears him speak.

Werewolf culture is intense. Traditional. Proud.

And at the center of it all lies the concept of the mate, the fated partner. A bond that, once formed, is almost impossible to truly break.

The texts are clear.

It’s not always the first boyfriend. Not always the first relationship. But when a werewolf falls in love, truly, with instinct, with soul, with body, that person becomes their mate.

And that bond… doesn’t dissolve with time. Or rejection. Or distance.

From the way Enid acts around Luke, how she wants to protect him at all costs, it’s obvious to assume he’s her mate.

He was her first real love. Her first total surrender.

And even though he’s not a werewolf, and the bond isn’t biologically mutual… Enid was marked.

She can pretend to be distant. She can say she no longer chases him.

But I see the cracks.

It’s not just obsession. It’s something else.

Something that could become dangerous, not for me, or for Luke.

For her.

How does someone survive knowing the person they marked as their life partner… didn’t choose them?

How long can someone as emotional as Enid live with that emptiness, that wound?

I feel like I’m watching someone walk the edge of a cliff. Not out of betrayal. Not out of revenge.

But because maybe… everything else in her life just isn’t enough.

And me…

I don’t know why I care so much. Well, maybe I do. Because I consider her my friend.

And that, for me, means a lot. In my entire sixteen years of life, Enid is the only one I could truly call a friend.

It’s a strange relationship.

It’s not like what I have with Luke.

It’s not love. It’s not desire.

With him, there’s a passion that consumes me: a connection that’s intellectual, psychic, strategic, brutal, and romantic. He is my equal, my other distorted reflection.

With Enid, it’s different.

It’s a trust rooted in camaraderie between girls, something I’ll never have with Luke.

Conversations with a friend. Like the ones Luke probably has with Xavier and Ajax. Jokes I don’t understand. Junk food I’d never willingly put in my mouth…

And maybe that’s why I keep thinking about the inevitable. About what’s going to happen once this war is over.

Enid will drift away. She said it herself.

She’ll help Luke as long as the conflict lasts. Without crossing paths with him more than necessary.

And when the war ends, she’ll leave, and let us be.

Because no one can live their entire life beside the person who won the heart of their soulmate.

I know that.

And I know she does too.

That’s why, these past few days, she’s stopped listening in on Luke’s video calls. She no longer pretends to be asleep while I talk to him.

She no longer smiles when his voice comes through.

It’s as if she’s distancing herself. To protect herself. To start preparing for what’s coming.

And that distance, just the thought of her pulling away in the future, hurt more than I expected.

That’s why the idea, the one I’m still not ready to say out loud, has become more persistent.

Not just to keep her from falling off the edge.

But because I don’t want to lose a connection I know I’ll never be able to recreate.

…

Journal Entry – May 29

In two days, school ends and I’ll return home.

I’ve made a decision.

One I never thought would cross my mind.

One that, a year ago, I would’ve considered absurd, uncomfortable, unthinkable.

But now… it feels logical. Or rather, necessary.

I’m going to propose a polyamorous relationship.

Not out of a desire to experiment or on a whim.

I’m doing it because I don’t want to lose Enid. I don’t want her to vanish from my life the moment the war ends.

I don’t want this friendship we’ve rebuilt to dissolve as if it never existed.

I want her in my life as a friend and companion.

As a presence that balances my darkness with her light, though now, that light is dimmer and more cynical than it used to be.

And I know: she still loves Luke. He’s her mate, an instinctive, chemical bond.

Difficult, if not impossible, to break for a werewolf in love, especially one like Enid: so emotional and loyal.

Luke isn’t a werewolf. He doesn’t feel that bond. But he did love her once. Now he loves me.

But… what if he could love us both?

Not as an object, of course…

Even though, for the average guy, having his girlfriend suggest something like this, with his ex, might sound like a fantasy.

Two girls who love him.

Two girls willing to fight and die for him.

Luke should be grateful. Many would kill just to be with one of us.

Polyamory isn’t foreign to the outcast world.

Especially in older generations, it was more common, sometimes for inheritance, for reproduction, for strategy.

In my case… it would be for something far rarer: genuine affection.

A romantic and obsessive love for Luke.

And a deep friendship for Enid.

My parents are monogamous. The epitome of eternal, exclusive love.

Two lunatics bound in a marriage that looks like a gothic stage play.

I grew up watching that.

I saw how one person could be enough for another. And because of that, I believed I’d never be able to share Luke.

That I’d never even consider the possibility.

But…

Who says I want to be like them?

Repeat their patterns?

Fit into their mold?

No.

I’m not my mother.

First, I’ll talk to Enid.

I’ll propose it and see what she chooses, though I’m sure she’ll say yes.

If I’m willing to do this, because I consider her an important friend, then I’m certain she’ll be willing too.

The hardest part will be talking to Luke, and getting him to agree.

Because even if any other guy would be thrilled by the idea, I know Luke isn’t just any guy.

Any other teenager his age would probably faint from joy if his girlfriend said, “How would you feel about having two?”

But Luke wouldn’t.

I know him.

I know the idea might sound appealing… in theory.

But I also know he’d immediately understand what it actually means in practice:

Being the emotional center of two people who love him.

And while that might sound romantic… it’s a hell of a responsibility.

Luke, being who he is, can be many things: strong, brilliant, loyal…

But emotionally lazy.

He wants peace. Balance.

Room to train, to play videogames, to think, to wander.

Having to manage two romantic bonds, even if those bonds get along, would be, for him, draining.

I know because I wouldn’t be able to handle it if the roles were reversed.

Let’s consider the impossible scenario:

Suppose that, through some cursed crack in the multiverse, I fell in love with another boy besides Luke. Someone as compatible with me as he is, which is impossible, but let’s pretend.

Having to split my time, my attention, my emotional energy between two people who love me, who need me, who expect things from me…

Utterly exhausting.

Just thinking about it gives me a headache. I’d probably end up trying to kill one of them if they became too annoying.

But Luke isn’t me.

He doesn’t have my level of neurosis, or my ability to plan efficient murders in enclosed spaces.

He is lazy.

He does hate unnecessary drama.

Complications irritate him. And deep down, he has a dangerously strong tendency to crave emotional peace.

A tendency that constantly clashes with the lives we lead.

But… he’s also him.

And if there’s anyone capable of navigating something like this… it’s Luke.

He already loved Enid once, which makes things easier.

And then he loved me, even more deeply.

And if I explain the whole mate thing…

How werewolves become emotionally and biologically bound to their first love…

The real danger lies in letting that connection collapse. Enid’s potential depression, her slow deterioration.

With a bit of manipulation, tactical, necessary, merciful, maybe that’s how he’ll understand and accept it.

And if none of that works… I still have one last card up my sleeve.

Myself.

My most unusual expression: vulnerability.

I could tell him I don’t want to lose Enid. That she was my first real friend.

And that once this war ends… she’ll walk away.

I know it’s a low move, even for me.

But even Luke, with all his emotional apathy, couldn’t ignore that.

Not when it comes to my pain.

Besides, few things are more alluring than having the unconditional love of two girls as different as we are.

I finished writing those last lines when a soft laugh broke my thoughts.

I recognized it instantly.

Joyful, though perhaps calmer than before.

Enid.

The door opened before I could hide the page. She walked in with a smile and her usual spark of energy.

“Wednesday! You won’t believe what Thing did today,” she said, laughing, while my family’s hand rode comfortably on her shoulder.

Thing gave me a salute with his fingers in military fashion. And I stood still for a second, watching them.

An Addams hand, heirloom of generations, showing affection to someone who doesn’t share our blood.

Who doesn’t carry our name.

Who doesn’t even dwell in our darkness.

’It’s time,’ I thought, as I tucked the page away and rose to my feet.

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