I never believed that a single touch could alter the course of a life.

On the battlefield, injury is nothing unusual. Blood, pain, even the possibility of death—I have long since made peace with them. I am a Colonel, commander of the garrison in this colony. I am accustomed to giving orders, to watching others move at my command, to burying feeling beneath a discipline that has never failed me.

But that night, when a bullet tore through my shoulder and I woke in the garrison hospital, I knew something was different.

Not the wound.

But the way she touched me.

Her hands were steady as she opened my uniform. Unhurried. Unhesitating. She did not address my rank—only my name, spoken in a professional, even tone, as she would any other patient. I remember the way the oil lamp cast light across her face, focused and intent, as though the world consisted only of the wound she was meant to tend.

I should not remember details like that. Yet I remember everything.

From that day on, I began to return. Far too often for a man of my position—far too often for someone who should have known better. At first, there were medical reasons: a wound that was “not fully healed.” Then administrative matters. Sometimes merely to ensure that medical supplies were sufficient. I always came with an excuse, because honesty felt far more dangerous.

I watched her work. The way she steadied the hands of frightened young soldiers. The way she cleaned wounds without flinching, even when there was too much blood. She never looked at me the way other women did—there was no expectation, no fear, no desire to be possessed.

And it was there that I lost.

I fell in love with her not because she was gentle, but because she was strong without becoming hard. Because she stood level with me in the treatment room, where rank meant nothing at all. There, I was not a Colonel. I was merely a man who had to sit still and obey.

I never touched her.Not once.

Not because I did not want to, but because I knew—if I did so without permission, I would destroy something sacred. And I am not a man who takes without consequence.

Tonight, I came without an escort. Without full uniform. The hospital was nearly empty, filled only with the sound of the clock on the wall and distant footsteps. She looked up when I entered, her brow faintly creased.

“You should be resting,” she said.

I closed the door behind me. I stood several steps away from her. That distance felt like a chasm.

“I did not come as your superior,” I said quietly.

I drew in a breath. For the first time in my life, words felt more dangerous than bullets.

“I have lived my life without ever belonging to anyone,” I said. “I have guarded myself… too well. I have never allowed a woman to touch me for any reason beyond social obligation. Never made room for feeling.”

I looked at her. Her eyes were calm, but I knew she was listening.

“I thought I did not need such things,” I continued. “It seems I simply had not yet met someone who made me want to surrender control.”

I stepped a little closer—not close enough to touch her. I never would without permission.

“Can I be yours?” I asked.

The question left me more softly than I expected. There was no authority in it. Only bare truth.

“I do not know how to love halfway,” I said. “If I step forward, I will give everything—my rank, my honor, myself.”

I lowered my head slightly. A gesture I had never offered anyone.

“Will you allow me to give myself to you?”

I—who had always bent the world to my will—now stood still, waiting for the answer of a nurse who had once tended my wound and, without knowing it, touched something far deeper.