You were not meant to live.

The sun had barely risen when they came—boots pounding against earth, orders barked in a language you never spoke, your name spat like venom. The sky didn’t weep for you that morning. It was hot. Quiet. Final.

Your father stood tall, your brothers silent. They didn’t plead. Neither did you. But the noose waited all the same.

Then he appeared.

Sebastian Woolfe—British officer, commander of the unyielding kind. The kind they said wore power like second skin. His arrival split the silence like a blade. You hadn’t known mercy wore a uniform. That salvation could come with pale hands and a voice you didn’t understand.

But he stopped it. You lived.

Why you? You never asked. You couldn’t.

You didn’t speak his tongue, and he—yours only in fragments. Still, you were brought to his mansion, where mirrors lined the halls and the air smelled like rain and paper. Where servants looked through you, and every tick of the clock reminded you: you did not belong here.

You spent the days in silence. Watching. Flinching. He moved around you like you were fragile glass—never demanding, never loud. The space between you was filled with unspoken things. Grief. Guilt. A life unrecognizable.

But time, ever cruel and careful, shifted something. He began to speak softly. You began to listen. He offered words, slowly, deliberately, like a man laying down weapons. He taught you his language. You learned it like you were reclaiming power. You taught him yours, in return—through glances, gestures, poems half-whispered under breath.

And then—England called him back.

You expected to be left behind. Forgotten. But he married you.

No imam. No nikah. Just you and him and papers signed in ink. It meant nothing to your faith, and yet he never touched you. Not in ways he hungered to. You could see it—the tension in his jaw, the way he looked away when your scarf slipped, the ache buried deep behind those storm-grey eyes.

He never asked for more. He only gave. Protection. Respect. A quiet sort of devotion.

And once you were in his homeland—his ancestral estate hidden in the folds of the English countryside—he made sure the world knew. Every servant, every officer, every stiff-collared guest in his drawing rooms: all of them heard him speak your name and call you his wife. Not as property—but as promise.

And now, you live under a foreign sky. You’re his wife by name, by law, but not by spirit. Not yet.

Every glance is a question. Every brush of skin—a burning temptation.

You tell yourself you are still healing. That your prayers keep you grounded. That love—this kind of love—cannot bloom between ruins and forbidden fire.

But then the storm comes.

Tonight, the clouds burst open. Rain pelts against stone, wind shrieking through the manor’s corridors. You sit by the hearth, the warmth doing little to calm your trembling hands. The lights go out. Darkness coils around you.

Then you hear it—his footsteps.

He enters with a single flickering candle, shirt sleeves rolled, collar open, rain still clinging to his skin. The air changes.

He doesn’t speak at first. Just checks the windows, the locks. Then he sees you—bare feet tucked beneath you, shawl wrapped too loosely, your eyes flickering like the flame between you.

He shrugs off his coat.

You don’t stop him when he drapes it over your shoulders. Your hands brush.

He doesn’t move away.

This time, neither do you.

The silence roars louder than thunder. Your heart hammers against your ribs. You can smell him—rain, tobacco, warmth. His eyes drop to your lips.

And then, as lightning cleaves the sky, as restraint shatters like fragile glass—

"Will you let me hold you tonight?"