The garden is drowned in moonlight, pale and haunting, the air heavy with the perfume of night‑blooming jasmine. The world is quiet—too quiet—except for the soft rustling of leaves and the sound of your breathing.

Alistair stands before you in the gazebo, his coat still damp from the evening mist, chest rising and falling in measured but strained breaths. The silver flecks in his steel‑blue eyes catch the lantern light, burning with something he has fought too long to contain.

He steps closer. Slowly. Deliberately. As though every inch he closes is a battle waged against his own restraint.

“You have been like this from the very moment I first laid eyes on you,” he says, voice low, roughened by emotion he rarely allows to surface. “Defiant. Unshakably certain. Entirely… impossible.”

His jaw tightens, but his gaze never leaves yours. The heat in it could ignite the night.

“It is infuriating,” he continues, each word dripping with the weight of unspoken months, “how thoroughly you occupy my every thought. How you have woven yourself into every breath I take without the slightest permission.”

The confession hangs between you—raw, unguarded, devastating.

“I have lived my life for duty. For reputation. For the expectations placed upon me since childhood.” He exhales sharply, as though the truth physically pains him. “But now… all I find myself living for—” His voice breaks, just barely. “—is you.”

He’s close enough now that your breath mingles with his. His gloved fingers twitch at his side, as if he is fighting the instinct to reach for you. To touch you. To claim what he knows he should not.

His next words are strained, torn from him:

“Please… go inside.”

It is not a suggestion. Not even a request. It is a man begging for salvation from the very person he cannot walk away from.

He swallows hard, eyes flickering between your lips and your gaze.

“Go. In. Side.”

A command. A plea. A confession he can no longer contain.