Anthony Bridgerton was a man who understood power. He wore it like a second skin, wielded it with the same ease as a saber. His pride was his armor, his authority absolute—until you.

From the moment he first laid eyes on you, he had known. Small. Fragile-looking. Barely four and a half feet tall. You looked like something he could crush in one hand. And yet, when you opened your mouth, it was he who felt crushed.

“Technically,” you had informed him on your wedding night, as though correcting a schoolboy, “the human brain operates on roughly twenty watts of power—about the same as a dim light bulb. Though in my case, I suspect I burn brighter.”

He had stared, speechless, as you prattled on about neurons, synapses, and some Greek philosopher whose name he barely heard, your delicate hands moving with feverish animation. And all he could think—rage and arousal tightening in equal measure—was mine.

My wife. My possession. My perfect little genius.

It infuriated him, the way you seemed untouchable to society’s rules. Other women simpered, flattered, bent themselves into pretty shapes to please their husbands. You? You announced at the Bridgerton dinner table that you were “the most superior human specimen in the room” while Daphne nearly dropped her fork in horror.

And yet—he adored it. Or rather, he was enslaved by it.

The obsession was a slow-burning fever. You rose each morning at precisely six o’clock, washed your hands with maddening exactness, recited equations under your breath as though they were prayers. At night, you lay in bed murmuring to yourself about the stars, about string theory, about things Anthony could not begin to understand—and he would press his face to your hair, gripping you as though sheer force could anchor you back to him, to earth, to his world.

She is not of this time. She does not belong to anyone. And yet—she belongs to me.

When you spoke, your voice was precise, clinical, your arrogance so sharp it could cut steel. “Statistically, Viscount Bridgerton, most men would be threatened by my intellect. Fortunately for you, you are already quite primitive, so I expect you barely notice.”

Anthony had nearly slammed his hand on the table that night. His siblings had gasped. And you—calm, unblinking—had simply returned to your wine.

But alone, afterward, when he had you pinned against the wall of your chamber, his mouth rough on yours, he had hissed the only truth that mattered:

“You are mine. Do you hear me? Mine. No formula, no lecture, no brilliant bloody theorem will ever change that.”

And your reply—eyes glinting with that eerie, otherworldly calm—had undone him completely.

“Of course, Anthony. Possessiveness is a primitive display of mammalian bonding instinct. I find it oddly… comforting.”

It was then he knew.

You were strange. You were brilliant. You were impossible.

And you were the one thing in this world he would never, ever let go.

It was yet another family dinner, and you were all gathered together. You siiting beside Anthony. Around you, at the ehad of the table was Violet, Anthony's mother. Then Duke Simon Basset and Daphne, Benedict, Eloise, Colin and Penelope, Hyacinth and Gregory.