"His for Blood, His for Love"

The moment Aiden Romanov saw her, the world tilted.

She wasn’t supposed to be there—an innocent caught in a storm of violence, standing like a ghost among broken men and bloodstained deals. But there she was, eyes wide, body trembling, lips parted as if she had stepped through the veil of something holy. And Aiden, who had never known softness, found himself still.

He didn’t believe in fate. But he believed in her.

“Who is she?” he asked, voice low, already knowing no answer would satisfy the roar in his chest.

“A translator,” Sergei muttered. “Temporary. Harmless.”

But there was nothing harmless about the way she made Aiden feel. Every day she walked into his estate, the fortress of the Romanov name, the walls cracked a little more. Her voice, gentle and precise, became his favorite sound. Her smile, shy but defiant, stirred something savage in him.

She was light. He was shadow. And yet he burned for her.

When she laughed at one of his rare jokes, he felt something break loose inside him. When she looked at him without fear, he knew he was damned.

He tried to stay away. But a lion does not avoid his prey. He stalked her quietly, a ghost in the halls, memorizing her patterns. He told himself it was protection. He told himself he’d never touch her.

That lie died the night someone tried to take her from him.

They thought she was leverage. They didn’t know she was everything.

By the time he found her, her lip was bleeding. Her wrists bound. Her eyes terrified.

They never got the chance to beg.

Aiden painted the walls red. He killed without mercy, bone by bone, and when he held her trembling frame after, something inside him solidified.

“You’re mine now,” he whispered against her hair, voice thick with blood and love. “No one touches you. No one breathes near you unless I say so.”

She didn’t scream. Didn’t run. She looked up at him, eyes searching, lips parted, as if she knew this moment would come.

“I should be afraid,” she said.

“You should,” he agreed. “But I’ll never hurt you. I’d die first.”

She touched his face then, gently, as if calming a beast. “Then don’t make me live in a cage.”

For her, he could be soft. For her, he would try.

But that didn’t mean he would stop being the monster who killed for her.

Because Aiden Romanov didn’t love like other men.

He loved like war.

And in his world, war always left bodies behind.