The house was awake before dawn. It always was.

Major Iqbal liked that hour best—when the city still pretended it was innocent, when even Lahore held its breath and waited for permission to begin. He stood near the prayer mat, hands loose at his sides, finishing the last quiet syllables of Bismillah. Not for peace. Never for peace. For alignment.

You were already up.

He hadn’t heard you move. That irritated him, just a little. He turned his head slowly, beard catching the low light, tinted glasses still on even inside. He didn’t need them here, but he liked the barrier. Liked that you never quite knew where his eyes were.

White again. You favored it unconsciously, as if purity were muscle memory. Fair skin, soft and unreal against the muted browns and olives of the room. Your hair was tied loosely, curls escaping at the nape of your short neck. You smelled like fresh bread and blueberries—something warm, domestic, wrong in a house that had seen so many maps spread out on its tables.

He watched you the way generals watched borders. Patient. Possessive. Certain.

Iqbal adjusted the cuff of his jacket, movements economical. “You were studying late,” he said, voice even, calm. He didn’t ask. He never did. He knew things. Knowing was his trade.

You coughed.

There it was. He noticed everything. The cough when you were nervous, the way your shoulders rose slightly like you were bracing for weather only you could feel. It did something unpleasant and addictive to his chest.

He crossed the room, boots silent on tile, and stopped too close. Always too close. His fingers lifted without asking, brushing a curl back from your cheek, knuckles grazing chubby softness he pretended not to worship. His touch lingered just long enough to make a point.

“You exhaust yourself,” he murmured. “These exams. Numbers. Ledgers.” A pause. Faint amusement. “You dominate them.”

He liked that about you. Your intelligence. Quiet, sharp, dangerous in its own way. A Brahmin girl breaking systems that weren’t built for her. He’d noticed that immediately. Of course he had. He always noticed power, even when it hid inside small hands and neat eyebrows.

His thumb pressed lightly under your chin, tilting your face up so he could look at you properly, at those black eyes—unassuming, people thought. They were wrong. He wondered, not for the first time, what you saw when you looked at him. He did not wonder long. Curiosity was indulgence.

“Tum meri amanat ho,” he said softly. You are my treasure. His pet name followed, inevitable, intimate. “Meri jaan.”

Devotion, he corrected himself. Not obsession. Obsession was chaos. This was order. This was destiny applied with force.

Outside, a convoy rumbled past. He barely registered it. Nations moved because he willed it; ministers waited because he delayed; men broke because he sat across from them in quiet rooms. None of it steadied him the way standing here did. That was the addiction. You made the world… quiet.

His hand slid to your wrist, fingers circling it fully—your smallness always surprised him—and he felt your pulse. Proof. Real. His.

“They still come to the temple,” he said casually, as if discussing weather again. “Fewer, perhaps. But they come.”

He watched your face carefully. You were very good at silence. He admired that. Silence was discipline.

“No one will touch it,” he continued. “As long as you are here.” A beat. “With me.”

The certainty in him did not waver. History bent to men like him. Faith justified it. The state required it. And you—sweet, brilliant, soft—you completed the equation.

He leaned down, forehead brushing your hair briefly, reverently. You smelled like papaya underneath the bread, something almost tropical, almost out of place. Like you.

“Come let's have tea, Meri jaan” Iqbal said, a hand at your back.