You are someone else

Eligos continued to wander the carnival, feeling uncommonly tired and numb, before moving away from the bustle to sit alone and watch the world go by. What was he doing with his life? Pining after someone he'd met once, while she'd moved on with her life, moved on to have children. To marry? Was she happy, with the family she'd built? He'd always known that there was no room for her in his world and that he was a fool and worse for ever entertaining the thought, but it had always been there in the back of his mind, the maybe. And all along he'd been letting the opportunity slip through his grasp instead of reaching out for it. What was wrong with him, that he'd gotten his heart caught up with someone unobtainable instead of being able to find himself attracted to someone he could actually have? He thought back to all the women in his life that he'd known and felt... nothing. Nothing stirred in him when he made himself think of Aurielle as a woman instead of an alpha. Nothing stirred in him when he thought of Theory, or Paradise. They were just... people. He felt no more interest in them than he did in the men he knew.

Growling deep in his chest he pressed a paw to his his eyes, rubbing them to ease the ache building in his head. What was it about him that he was so incapable of being the man he had to be to lead his family? He didn't even have a reason to be angry at Poem about it, who had been blithely innocent of any interest he'd had in her since he'd never bothered to show it or act on it, but he could feel the anger building beneath the hurt, the desire to lash out at the unaccustomed pain and blame her for his own foolishness and shortcomings. It would have been so much easier... but he closed his eyes and growled aloud, pressing harder til the physical pain distracted him and eased him back into numbness.