After a lot of thinking, debating and going through her memories of Minhyuk, Calissa allowed a smile to grace her face. Yes, she was in love with Minhyuk, she was in love with the hunter and nothing would change that. No, she wasn’t going to leave her clan, her family, she would find a way to keep both.

With those answers in mind, she planned how she was going to break Minhyuk out of the imprisonment bubble. Although Calissa was quiet, her family seemed to not have noticed or had attributed it to her needing to readjust to things again.

“What are you planning?” Castor questioned her.

She immediately put an innocent and confused expression.

He gave her a look before saying, “I want you happy, that is what is most important to me. Knowing you are alive and happy is all I want, that’s what I realised after you were captured.”

The day had finally arrived, they picked the closet date where there would be a celebration. The bubbles would have fewer patrols and the Angels would be lax about security.

Castor went to create distractions for the patrol while Calissa hurried to Minhyuk’s bubble and started to disable it.

Calissa hurried to Minhyuk, “Minhyuk! Wake up!”

Minhyuk stirred and got up as soon as he saw her, “Calissa…”

“I’m getting you out of here. We’ll have to run towards the boundary and get to the Academy then to the sanctuary.”

“Calissa, you shouldn’t. They’ll banish you,” he said imploringly.

She stopped and truly looked at Minhyuk. It had been some time and she could see that the imprisonment had gotten to him, he was less muscular and there was a gauntness to his face. “Say that you don’t love me and I’ll stop,” she commanded him.

He looked at her with desperation, he wouldn’t lie but he didn’t want her to get hurt. He looked down, “You know I love you,” his voice was soft, this was the first time that he had ever said it out loud.

Calissa gave him a large smile before going back to breaking him out. As soon as the wards fell, she grabbed his hand and ran out.

They turned this way and that but it was clear that they were steadily running towards the boundary. The alarm had immediately sounded when the wards had fallen without authorisation and the patrols were running after them.

Calissa and Minhyuk narrowly missed the Angels and made it across the boundary. They were in the woods just before the Academy grounds when they stopped.

Both were out of breath and collapsed on the ground. They were silent as they got back their breaths.

Calissa moved closer to Minhyuk and laced their fingers together. Minhyuk allowed the link for a moment before letting go.

“I don’t deserve you,” he said.

She scrunched her eyebrows in confusion, “Minhyuk you’re not making sense.”

He looked at her with eyes of someone who was about to lose everything.

Calissa was silent as she listened to Minhyuk’s story.

As he reached the end of his tale, his eyes glinting with cruelty he said coldly, “I have always been tainted. A stain upon my families, no wonder no one wanted me.”

Her eyes glistened with tears as she listened to him. Some were born with a tortured life and had very little guaranteed happiness.

"I don't belong to any single race. I am a respected family's traitor's son because my father chose an angel as his love. I am a powerful family's kins-killer's son because my mother fell in love and chose to hunt her own kind," he let out a laugh but it came out as a sarcastic, bitter sound. "As a child I worked twice as hard as everyone else. I tried to gain as much approval as I could. I was told that I had to uphold the Lee name and bring glory back to our family. As a teenager I trained every day without fail in every possible field. I soaked up more knowledge than anyone else in my year. Yet still I was scorned, side-lined, seen as lesser. I never understood why till now, I guess they had every reason to treat me the way they did."

She wanted to cry out and contradict his words. They had no business blaming an innocent for sins that had not been committed and for sins not his own.

"Do you see why we can't be together? No matter what we do, no one will accept us. There is no place for us to be together," his voice sounded dead and defeated. For that is the truth, there was no future for them.