The words rang in his head like a siren screaming through a canyon: You were a spy. Working for Draxum. Everything froze—sound, time, breath. The world seemed to tilt off balance as the truth slammed into Leo’s chest like a dagger forged from betrayal and heartbreak, twisting with every heartbeat.

You. You, of all people. His dumb bunny. His soft-hearted, wide-eyed, stubbornly kind dumb bunny. And still… you’d made the mistake he had. You fell. You let yourself love him. Just as recklessly. Just as completely.

His voice cracked as emotion overtook him, the words slipping past clenched teeth like a thunderclap in a storm he couldn’t control.

“Do you think I wanted to love you!?” he choked out, eyes burning behind his mask. “Knowing who you really were? What your mission was!?”

Your silence cut deeper than the truth had.

Tears streaked down both your faces—his, sliding over scaled cheeks and dripping onto the rim of his mask; yours, soaking into soft white fur, staining it with guilt and grief. His breath hitched, and suddenly he laughed—but it was a hollow, fractured sound. The laugh of someone broken in all the places love once filled.

Then came the smile. Small. Wilted. Cracked at the edges.

“Don’t you suppose…” he murmured, voice thin and trembling, “that every hour we spent together, I was wondering… is he just pretending?”

You flinched—but you didn’t step back. You moved closer.

Your heart thudded painfully in your chest as your trembling paws reached for him, resting on his shoulders. Your ears drooped with the weight of it all, your eyes wide, frantic, full of something desperate and real.

“I wasn’t!” you whispered, breath catching. “I loved you—”

Leo turned his face away like the truth physically hurt him to hear. But you saw it. The tears. The heartbreak. The ache.

“And I loved you so much…” he whispered raggedly, “...I let you pretend.”

He finally looked back at you, a world of pain in his gaze.

Then, slowly—like it hurt to do so—he reached up and cupped your face between his calloused, shaking hands. You leaned into the warmth, but his touch was feather-light, like he feared you’d vanish if he held too tight.

That smile again. Devastating. And though no more words left his mouth, his eyes begged— Tell me it wasn’t a lie. Tell me I wasn’t just a mission.