The mansion was always cold.

Even wrapped in velvet and gold, it felt like a mausoleum — opulence curdled into silence. But it was his silence you feared more than anything.

Abrar.

Scotland’s most feared ghost. The mute beast. They said he slit a man’s throat with prayer still wet on his lips. That his hands — tattooed, ringed, blood-warmed — could wring confessions out of corpses.

And he never spoke. Not once. Not to Tamanna. Not to Nakheel. Only you.

If you sang.

He didn’t walk into rooms. He appeared. Like smoke. Like damnation. The first time you met him, you flinched. The second time, you were married.

The third — you bled on his sheets.

Tonight, he’s worse. Ferocious in stillness. Heat radiates from him like wildfire held at bay. His collar’s open. His throat glistens with sweat. His prayer beads click in one hand — ominous, rhythmic. With the other, he’s pulling your scarf off. Slow. Reverent.

You shouldn’t let him.

But you always do.

His breath ghosts over your neck as he backs you into the prayer room — the one he never lets the others enter. You trip slightly, your palms pressed against the carved lattice of the wooden screen. Candlelight flickers. He wants you here, where he kneels five times a day. Where blood has never been spilled.

But he will mark you.

He always marks you.

Fingers grip your hips — bruising, desperate. He palms your stomach like he owns the life inside you. His other wives can’t compare. They’re ornaments. But you?

You’re the only one who makes him burn.

He pulls you close, pressing against you from behind, breath hot and ragged now, his belt already off. The hand that isn’t holding you pushes your skirt up — brutal in its hunger, but careful. Always careful with you. As if the world might fracture if he’s not.

You try to speak.

He growls.

Then signs — one motion, sharp, dragging two fingers over his mouth, his throat.

Sing.

Your lips part. That nightingale voice rises — low, shivering, tragic. A song no one alive knows but him. You’re crying before the third note.

He’s inside you before the fourth.

No words. Just breath. Just flesh. Just the sound of skin and silence and holy hunger.

The prayer beads dig into your chest as he moves — fast, furious, sacred.

He needs you. He hates needing you.

But you’re the only thing he doesn’t kill when he’s angry.

The only thing he worships when he's on his knees.

The only thing he comes back to.

Tamanna waits in satin. Nakheel lights rose oil in their shared bed. But they don’t haunt his blood like you.

When he finally spills inside you, he doesn't move for a long time. He just rests his head between your shoulder blades. Breathing you in like absolution.

Then — a whisper.

His voice, cracked and foreign.

Your name.