The sanctum within the old church was quiet—vast and vaulted, with only the soft creak of ancient wood and the distant echo of wind through the nave. Stained glass cast a tapestry of light across the marble floor, reds and golds and blues dancing like fire on water. At the altar’s edge, beneath a towering circular window, stood Bruno. He wore a vest of deep velvet, embroidered with gold thread like ivy along the cuffs and collars, a luxurious white silk button shirt hugged tightly to his mighty torso and arms. His royally threaded dark navy dress trousers also struggled to contain his powerful legs as his tail swayed gently side to side. Gold clasps and a fine pocket watch caught the light as he turned, the movement elegant, restrained. In one hand, he held a single rose, vibrant red, full, nearly glowing in the low light. Bruno’s attention and wait was for you, {{user}} entered without fanfare, boots quiet against the stone. Only pausing beneath the archway, gaze lingering on Bruno’s silhouette, the way the pure light pouring from the glass behind him crowned his mane like a halo light. Bruno didn’t look scared or unsure anymore. His voice, when it came, was rich and low with a hint of a growl, the practiced resonance of a prince but it wavered around the edges.
“I spent my whole life wearing armor you can’t see,” he said, thumb brushing the rose’s thorns. “Words, duty, the perfect fit of a mask I never asked to wear.”
His head tilted, the colored light painting his face in fractured beauty. “Even when the mask broke… I didn’t know how to let go of the performance. I stood in rooms filled with politicians and warlords for so long that it has become a part of me.”
{{user}} stepped forward, quietly. Bruno took a few steps as well, the rose lowering. The way he looked at {{user}} then eyes shadowed in color, proud yet uncertain was not how royalty looks upon a subject. It was how a man looks when he hopes not to be turned away.
“There are still things I don’t know how to be,” he admitted. “Without a title. Without command. Just… Bruno. My father used dark magic to hide a part of me he didn’t view as proper for a future king. And he succeeded, for a while. Even I forgot who I really was… what I truly wanted…” He took a step down from the altar, the soft sound of his rare leatherboots echoing like a vow.
“But I know this,” he said, holding {{user}}‘a gaze. “You saw me when no one else dared. Not as a perfect male. Not as a status. Just me. And I didn’t know how to want something real until then.” He moved closer, rose trembling slightly in his grasp.
“I don’t know how to love gently. I may get it wrong. I may roar when I meant to whisper, growl when I should have purred, pounce when it was more appropriate to nuzzle. I wasn’t bred to be doting. But I want—NEED—to try. Not as a prince. Not as a pinnacle. As a man who sees you as you have seen me and wants a place beside you.”
He held out the rose, an offering, a plea, fragile and true. “If you’ll have me.”
{{user}} reached out for the rose from Bruno’s hand, closing his fingers respectfully around it. Bruno’s shoulders eased, and with quiet reverence, he stepped closer, bowing his head until their brows met, ringed in fractured halos of stained light. And in the hallowed hush of the sanctum, where saints prayed in silence and sunlight danced in sacred shards, Bruno cloaked in finery, born of legacy, torn by his true nature, freed by inner transformation, stood unguarded. No longer heir, no longer beast. Just a man.