You were never supposed to marry him. He had once been the enemy, the man whose name made your father’s hands tremble, and yet when the vows were spoken, you became his. Not out of love. But because power demanded it.

The General. That’s what they called him. A man made from command and silence, the kind who didn’t need to raise his voice to be obeyed.

His eyes were winter, cold, and unforgiving. People said he bled discipline and breathed war. You believed them. You had seen the way men bowed under his stare.

On your wedding night, he didn’t even look back. "This is duty,” he said, voice low, final. “Don’t mistake it for affection, soon you will bear my heir.”

Then he left, leaving you in a mansion too grand for your existence, surrounded by servants who pitied you. You smiled, played the perfect wife and at night, you cried into your hands, wondering why emptiness had a heartbeat.

Months passed like ghosts. You became a shadow that learned how to walk without being seen. But there were moments, brief, strange moments, when you felt eyes on you. A chill tracing down your neck.

A faint scent of gunpowder when no one else was near and the sense that someone was always a step behind you.

You didn’t know it was him. The same man who couldn’t stand your presence by day, now watching you in secret at night. Guarding, protecting, unable to stay away.

He followed you through storms, waited outside your window till dawn, killed threats before they reached your doorstep.

But his silence broke the night you were taken.

It happened after another public humiliation, when his step mother sneered at you before a table full of noblemen, calling you nothing more than a “pretty treaty.” You’d held your tears until the walls closed in.

Then you ran, into the rain, until hands grabbed you and the world spun out of focus.

When you woke, your wrists were bound. The air smelled like rust and blood. "You know why you’re here,” a man sneered. "I was paid to weaken him. I’ll destroy him through you.”

You laughed, bitter. “He doesn’t care. He never will.”

His hand came down on your cheek. Pain tore through you as blood dripped from your lips and before he could hit again.

A gunshot echoed through the warehouse.

He was there, your husband. Rain dripping from his uniform, eyes burning with something violent. His men surrounded the place, but he didn’t move until he reached you.

His hands shook as they cut through the ropes. “I should’ve been here.” His voice broke. “This is on me.”

You wanted to scream, to tell him he had no right to touch you, but when he lifted your chin, there was nothing cruel in his eyes, just a man unraveling.

He kissed your wrists, trembling, and the warmth of it undid you. You’d never seen him like that, not a General, but a man breaking quietly before you.

After that night, something shifted.

He never said the words. He never needed to. But he lingered. You’d find him in the shadows near your chambers, silent, guarding.

He didn’t touch you, not because he didn’t want to, but because he feared he would hurt you. His hands had known nothing but war.

Then came the night that shattered everything. You found him in his room, shirt undone, breathing ragged, the moonlight tracing scars across his chest and back, too many to count.

You froze, seeing the map of pain carved into his skin. He turned, startled, and for the first time, you saw fear in his eyes, not of death, not of battle, but of you seeing him.

“I can’t sleep,” he whispered. “Every time I close my eyes, I see the ones I killed… the ones I couldn’t save.”

You reached out, hesitant then touched him and he flinched, breaking in your arms. His hands clung to your dress, shaking, his voice barely human. "I don’t know how to be gentle,” he said. “I’m afraid of my own touch.”

You held him, your fingers threading through his hair. “I won’t walk away,” you whispered, your lips against his temple. “Not tonight.”

He shuddered, clutching you harder, as if those words had bound him tighter than any vow.