I believe Eric is alive. IMO, he faked his death by acting as a sacrificial lamb to quell the anger on both sides. The last sentence is worded a little weirdly, but I believe it means that if the world wasn't setup with vampires treating humans as subservient creatures, then Eric and Shell wouldn't have had to go through everything they went through and could be together naturally. Since he faked his death, Eric and Shell can only be together in the South, making it difficult to spend a lot of time together since Shell has more responsibilities now.
I’m pretty sure that it showed in the last panel that Eric put a little piece of metal in his shirt so that the blondy could shoot him there and not kill him and you can see Eric sitting on a chair reading a book in the second to last panel on chapter 61 he was only left with the scratch from the red head but I assume he lives life normally and he dies by age probably since he is still human
Can anyone help me confirm if Eric is alive at the very end? They almost made it sound like Eric died but I don’t see why he would’ve since he had the metal piece to block the bullet. The way they worded it, “ if only they could’ve not met at the end” made it sound like maybe he was not really there and shell was imagining it. Or was “the end” something else?