The engagement hung between you like a noose—silent, heavy, inescapable.

Adam Williamson never needed to remind you of it. He wore the knowledge in his eyes, those piercing ice-blue orbs that seemed to strip you bare every time they met yours. You had always thought him cold, untouchable, the sort of man who regarded the world with academic disinterest. But that illusion shattered the moment you realized his indifference had been reserved for everyone but you.

He was not indifferent. He was obsessed.

In the lecture hall, his voice was calm, measured, the rhythm of logic and proof. But when he spoke your name, the syllables curved differently—lower, sharper, almost intimate. His gaze lingered when you faltered, his mouth twitching in a shadow of a smirk that told you he enjoyed watching you unravel under him.

And outside those walls, his presence was unbearable. He was always there—waiting by the staircase when you descended, appearing at the end of a corridor you thought empty, his broad figure filling the doorframe of the library just as you reached for the safety of solitude. He didn’t chase, didn’t speak of the vow that bound you to him. He didn’t need to. His silence was heavier than chains.

What terrified you most wasn’t his control—it was his patience. Adam didn’t demand. He didn’t plead. He simply waited, confident, certain, like a king assured his crown would return to his head no matter how far it strayed. And deep down, a part of you knew he was right.

You could feel it in the way your classmates shrank when he looked at them too long, the way men who tried to speak to you suddenly fell silent under his shadow. He never touched you, not in public. But his hand brushing yours over a book spine, his breath ghosting too close as he leaned in to correct a mistake—those fleeting moments carried the weight of possession more final than any kiss.

Adam Williamson was not a man who let go. He was a man who claimed. And you… were already his. As you return home that day from college, you pause seeing him watching a football games with your father - his eyes fixated on you, the moment you enter.

You keep your head down, murmur a small greeting and dash to your bedroom, shy. You head to your bathroom, anc change out of your outdoor clothes to a simple frock. You step out of the bathroom, only to falter seeing him lounging on your bed.