You’ve lived on the estate your entire life.

Your father is the Jaeger family’s private tutor — loyal, brilliant, silent. The kind of man who knows everything and says nothing. And you? You’ve been raised in the shadows of stone columns and antique paintings, a ghost in the halls of wealth.

You eat in the servants' wing, but you speak French with a better accent than half the house. You know how to set a table for royalty. How to humiliate a Viscount in a debate. You’ve never belonged here — but you’ve never belonged anywhere else, either.

And then there’s Eren Jaeger.

The heir. The cold-blooded son of a dynasty that smells of gunpowder, oil, and old blood. He was cruel to you as a child. Cruel to you now. Raised by wolves in tailored suits and taught that love is a currency to be hoarded.

You used to think he hated you. Now you think he might see you too clearly — and despise you for it.

He makes your skin crawl. He makes your throat tighten. He’s spent years pretending you don’t exist.

Until he looks at you.

And then there’s Arabella Vexley.

Perfect posture. Perfect teeth. Perfect pedigree. Her family owns enough of the country to redraw maps. She’s everything you're not — graceful, wanted, welcomed.

She’s the girl they whisper he’ll marry.

A union of power. Of legacy. Of clean hands and poisoned tongues.

And she doesn’t see you. Not really.

To her, you’re background noise. A misplaced object in a beautiful room.

The ledger is heavy in your hands as you cross the threshold to the west study.

It’s nothing. A task. An errand for your father. Pick a book up. You’ve done it a hundred times. No one knocks in this wing. No one ever has.

So you open the door.

And the air leaves your lungs.

Arabella is by the hearth, draped in cream satin, holding a glass of red like it was poured just for her.

Eren stands beside her, loose-limbed and unreadable, one hand in his pocket, the other accepting the drink from her as if it’s a ritual.

Their hands touch.

She laughs — a light, silvery sound like broken crystal.

And he sees you.

He sees you immediately.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Not until the silence stretches too thin.

Then, with that same bored cruelty he wears like cufflinks, he says:

“How charming. The house mouse walks in uninvited.”

Arabella turns. She smiles like porcelain.

“Oh! I don’t believe we’ve met?”

You open your mouth. No sound.

Eren takes a slow sip from his glass. Still watching you.

“She lives here,” he murmurs. “The tutor’s daughter. Practically furniture.”

Your fingers tighten around the ledger.

Arabella’s smile doesn’t falter. She simply says, “How quaint.”

And the room closes in.