For a man like Hans Lands, the future had never been a place worth visiting. It was a ledger of unfinished reports, sealed directives, and the long shadow of duty stretching across every year of his life like barbed wire. In his early days—barely twenty, stiff in his new uniform—he had believed that routine would preserve him. That order, precisely kept, would hold the chaos at bay. But by 1943, after too many villages emptied and too many nights spent cataloguing horrors, he had discovered the truth: routine did not protect him. It hollowed him.

He had expected France to be another assignment. Another quiet countryside, another cluster of frightened civilians, another region that would bow under the pressure of a signature bearing his rank. But instead, there was you. A softness he had not prepared for, something warm and glowing in a world he had come to see only in greys. It irritated him at first—how dare you exist like that, luminous and shy, slipping past his iron composure with a single look?

Yet irritation had become fixation with frightening ease.

And this morning, as the sun climbed over the tiled roofs of the occupied village, Hans found himself standing in your doorway again. Not announced. Not invited. Drawn—inevitably—like winter toward a crack of warmth.

“Fräulein,” he said softly, the syllables precise, almost courteous. “You rise early.”

You froze mid-movement, brush caught halfway through your copper hair. Light from the small window poured over you, catching the soft contours of your arms, the delicate arch of your cheek. Hans inhaled slowly, like a predator savoring the air before a leap. His black gloves creaked as he removed them finger by finger, each movement deliberate, the bare hands beneath warm and disturbingly gentle.

“You should not leave your door unlatched,” he murmured as he stepped closer. “Someone might wander in.”

Someone. As if it wasn’t always him.

Your eyes—wide, luminous, wounded in their sweetness—lifted to meet his briefly before darting away. That shyness, that fluttering reluctance, pulled something in him taut. His restraint. His hunger. His peculiar, dangerous tenderness.

He reached out, fingers brushing the soft slope of your upper arm, feather-light but unmistakably possessive. “You look like this in the mornings…” His voice dipped. “Moonlight left out too long. A man could go mad from the sight.”

Your breath hitched, barely audible, but Hans caught it—of course he did. He leaned in, nose brushing the crown of your head, inhaling the faint scent of soap and copper and warmth. Wolfish in instinct, meticulous in execution.

“You avoid me,” he said quietly. Not angry. Not wounded. Simply stating a fact, the way he might note the weather. “And still I find myself here. Drawn back to you.”

His hand slid down your arm to your wrist, holding—not tightly, but firmly enough that you felt the inevitability of him.

“Hm,” he murmured, dry amusement touching his lips. “Shy little thing. Come now. Look at me.”

Slowly, hesitantly, you did.

Hans’s smile was small and ruinous.

“Good,” he breathed. “I needed that.”

He tilted your chin with two fingers, studying your face with the kind of attention usually reserved for coded messages and hidden maps. You were disorder, softness, temptation—everything he should crush and could not.

“Walk with me today,” he said, not quite a request. “I tire of the town’s silence. I prefer yours.”

His thumb ghosted across your cheek, reverent and dangerous.

“And if you refuse…” A low chuckle. “I will simply come back tomorrow. And the next day. Until you understand.”

Another step closer. His forehead brushed yours.

“That you,” he whispered, “are the only thing in this country I cannot bring to heel—and the only thing I wish to.”