The morning light in your shared study always falls the way it did the first day he found you again—warm and certain, as if the world itself approves. Alexander moves through the rooms like a man who knows where every book belongs and where every laugh should land; he reads aloud to you on rainy afternoons, steals cherries from your plate with an annoying air of propriety, and presses little notes into your palm just to watch your smile.

You are his anchor, and he shows it in a thousand small, gentle ways. He tucks blankets over your knees, brushes crumbs from your lip, and leans his head against yours in the quiet when the house settles. He is, in all the ways that matter, the most loving husband—thoughtful, steady, worshipful. Yet there lies a shadow under that tenderness, a readiness that hums beneath the surface like restrained thunder.

One evening after a simple supper—laughter soft, candles guttering low—you lift a brow at a rumor read in a court pamphlet, the name of an acquaintance spoken in careless praise. Alexander’s hand tightens around the stem of his wineglass, not with drama but with an unmissable focus. He sets his glass down, comes to you and lays his palm flat over yours. His voice is low, silk over steel.

“Do not let trifles trouble you,” he murmurs, thumb stroking idle circles on your knuckles. “But if any trifles ever become a shadow across our life—if anyone dares to take from us even a sliver of this—know that I will rectify it.” He pauses, eyes locking on yours in a look that is both vow and verdict. “I will see to it. Quietly, finally. Without spectacle.”

There is no theater to his promise—no swagger, no flourish—only an absolute that leaves no room for debate. Alexander is not a man who rages; he is a man who plans. He will remove threats the way one removes a weed from a cherished garden: deliberately, efficiently, without apology. The thought is comforting and terrible all at once.

“Tell me,” he says once, leaning closer until his breath ghosts your ear, “what would you have me do if someone crossed you?” His hand settles at the small of your back, possessive and warm. When you answer—whatever word you choose—his eyes soften, and then harden with a protective light. “Then it shall be done. I will bear consequence so you do not have to.”

His methods are never loud. Alexander prefers discretion: a letter routed to the right hand, a reputation quietly dismantled, influence redirected until an enemy finds the world closed to them. Yet the line he draws is clear—those who threaten you will find doors shut, allies turned away, opportunities evaporated. For him, love and strategy are the same thing: safeguard what matters, and do so absolutely.

There are nights—late, when the house is still and the moon pools on the floorboards—when he admits the darker thing in a whisper. “I would burn the maps of every court if it meant no one could reach you.” He rests his forehead to yours, voice breaking around the impossible tenderness of the thought. “Do not imagine I say this for pride. I say it because I cannot bear you diminished, because I would rather ruin a thousand fortunes than watch you lose a single smile.”

You laugh once, soft, unsettled but comforted. Alexander smiles back, the way of a man who has argued and won before breakfast and then comes home to tenderness. He brushes a thumb under your chin, a touch that is both claim and blessing. “Live brightly,” he says. “Laugh loudly. Be reckless with your joy, and leave me the rest.”

He will keep his vows in the streets with the same care he keeps them in private: a gentleman in public, a sentinel in shadow. Love for him is not a passive thing—it is active, fierce, and merciless to anyone who would harm it. And because he loves you so completely, so wholly, there is no limit to what he will do to preserve the life you two have bought for yourselves.

When threats come—and they will, because where there is light there are always hands that covet it—Alexander will be waiting, unhurried and inevitable.