THIRD PERSON POV
In this world, everyone moves through their days carrying a secret wish buried so deep they barely recognise it as their own.
The wish to be chosen.
Not for what they provide. Not for what they bring to a table or a boardroom or a dynasty. Not for their usefulness or their surname or the doors they can open. Just chosen — seen in their darkness and their light, in the anxiety they hide under their smile, in the fear of never being enough — and wanted anyway.
Just because they are human.
That day, three things happened.
Adrien Aurélien Laurent — who had been chosen before he was born, chosen by bloodline and legacy and the weight of two hundred years of expectation — was rejected by the first person he had ever truly needed.
Theodore Schweitzer — who had never been chosen by anyone, not by his father, not by his family, not by the world that called him monster — was chosen for the first time in his life.
And Beatrice Kenz — who had sworn she would never choose someone simply because of who they were — let her walls fall, and let one person walk through.
Theodore kneels before her on the balcony floor.
Not because she's broken. Not because she needs comfort. Because this is where his body goes when he's near her — downward, level, eye to eye.
He looks at her the way a compass points north. Not by choice. By nature.
Beatrice lets herself be looked at. For the first time, she doesn't deflect, doesn't joke, doesn't cross her arms or lift her chin in defiance. She sits on the balcony couch and lets Theodore Schweitzer stare at her like she is the axis his world turns on.
Sunlight spills over them like a warm blanket. No words. No agenda. Just two people looking into each other's eyes and not running from what they find.
"Did you eat?" he asks softly, thumb stroking her cheekbone.
She shakes her head. "No."
She doesn't tell him that the soup he made yesterday melted something inside her that hasn't resolidified. Doesn't say that when his lips met hers, she felt a permanent shift — like a door closing behind her that she'll never be able to reopen.
Theodore nods. "I'll make something. The front entrance is destroyed — could be dangerous until the repairs are finished."
A small smile tugs at her lips. "Who's going to harm me with you here?"
His hand stills against her face. His heart skips — she can feel it in the way his breath catches, in the way his pupils dilate. Those violet eyes flood with something overwhelming and foreign, an emotion too large for the container he's built for it.
He doesn't fight it.
Unlike Adrien — who has spent week denying, controlling, calculating his way around what he feels — Theodore doesn't know how to avoid this. His feelings for Beatrice have been all-consuming since the moment he saw her running barefoot through kerosene. A salvation and a possible destruction.
He accepted both the day he sat next to her on a bus.
A smile breaks across his face. Slow. Then wide. Like sun emerging after a season of grey.
Beatrice feels the familiar tingle in her fingertips. The want to reach out and touch him.
This time, she doesn't fight it either.
Her hand rises. Her fingertip traces the outer corner of his eye — gently, barely grazing the skin, following the line where his lashes meet the faint crease of his smile.
"Why are you smiling?"
"Just — it's ironic. Yesterday you were so determined to shake me off."
"Don't get too comfortable."
"Can't a man be happy that the woman who's ruined his sanity is finally giving him a chance?"
She bites her lip. Tries not to smile. Fails.
"Hmm."
Theodore's grin widens. The dimple surfaces on his left cheek — the one she discovered last night, the one that has no business existing on the face of a man the world calls a killer. She wants to press her lips to it. She doesn't. Not yet.
"Hey." He nudges her knee.
"Hmm?"
"If I asked you to marry me right now — would you still say no?"
She narrows her eyes. "Yes."
He chuckles — low, warm, entirely undefeated — and pulls her off the couch into his lap on the floor. A yelp escapes her.
"What are you —"
His arms close around her. His face buries into the curve of her neck. His breath warms her skin. His familiar scent wraps around her and she melts faster than she can resist.
"Keep rejecting me." His voice is muffled against her throat. "I know you'll say yes eventually."
She looks down at this man — six foot three, patriarch of a 300-year dynasty, currently nuzzling into her neck like an oversized puppy — and something between amusement and awe fills her chest.
"You need to work much harder for my approval," she murmurs.
Theodore peeks up from the crook of her neck. Grinning. "Oh, Sonnenschein — you have no idea how hard I can work."
She blinks. Then laughter escapes her — genuine, full, warming the air around them like a living thing. Theodore watches her laugh with an expression that says he would gladly spend every remaining second of his life causing that exact sound.
"You're ridiculous." She slaps his arm.
He groans dramatically. "That actually hurt."
"Drama king."
She rubs the spot she hit. Her fingers linger on his forearm longer than necessary.
He grins. "At least you're smiling."
"People laugh at clowns too."
"I'll be your clown if it makes you laugh."
Her smile falters — not fading, shifting. Something deeper settling behind it. Awe. Involuntary adoration. The terrifying recognition that this man means every word he says without exception.
"Hmm."
"Hmm."
That afternoon, sitting on the floor of Theodore's balcony, cradled in his lap with sunlight warming her shoulders, Beatrice realized something dangerous and intoxicating.
She felt safe.
Safe enough to joke. Safe enough to cry. Safe enough to let him close. Safe enough to stop performing the version of herself that the world requires.
She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt safe without running or proving something first.
She lowered her eyes to his face. Studied him — the sharp jaw, the violet eyes, the barely-visible scar near his temple she'd never noticed before.
"You're beautiful."
Theodore stilled. Completely.
He had been called handsome. Dangerous. Monster. Devil. Predator. Ice King.
Never beautiful.
The word entered him like something warm and sharp simultaneously — cracking through a layer of armor he didn't know he was still wearing.
He stood. Lifted her with him as he rose — one arm under her legs, the other around her back. She gasped, gripping his shoulder.
"What are you doing?"
His jaw was clenched. Tight. The muscle twitching visibly beneath his skin. She could feel the shift in his body — a tension that hadn't been there moments ago. Something coiling.
" Stop calling me beautiful unless you want me to fuck you." He growls low, carrying her through the balcony door. Into the bedroom.
He set her down on the edge. Gently. Carefully. The way he did everything with her.
Then he stepped back. One full step. Creating distance his body clearly didn't want.
"I'm going to cook something." His voice was lower. Rougher. Stripped of the playfulness from moments ago.
His grip on the bedframe turned his knuckles white. His chest rose and fell with controlled, deliberate breaths — the breathing pattern of a man actively fighting his own body.
"Yeah," she whispered. But her fingers were curled in the front of his shirt. Not pulling. Just holding. Not letting go.
Neither of them moved.
The silence between them changed texture. Heavier. Warmer. Charged with something that had been building since a bus ride and a scarf and a doorstep and a bowl of soup and a first kiss that tasted like coffee and strawberry.
"Sonnenschein." His voice came out strained. Almost pained.
Her breath caught. She could see it now — the war behind his eyes. The hunger pressing against every boundary he'd built for her sake. The veins surfacing along his forearms. The way his breathing had turned shallow and ragged despite every effort to keep it even.
"I'm a man, Beatrice." He looked at her with an intensity that made her skin burn. "A very hungry man. And I have been starving since the moment I met you."
She swallowed. Her chest rose and fell faster. No clever response came. No sharp deflection. No armor.
His violet eyes dropped to her mouth.
She licked her lips.
Something behind his expression snapped — quiet, irreversible, like a wire pulled past its tension limit. He closed the distance in one stride. His mouth found hers with a firmness that bordered on desperation.
This kiss was different from their first.
Their first kiss was discovery — tentative, sloppy, the kiss of a man who'd never done this before. This kiss was claim. His lips moved against hers with a confidence that hadn't existed twelve hours ago, as if her mouth had taught him a language overnight and he'd become fluent.
Beatrice opened for him. Invited him in. Their tongues met and the sound that escaped the back of his throat — low, guttural, involuntary — sent electricity arcing down her spine, " mmm"
His hand slid into her hair, pulling her closer. Like he needed something to hold onto before the current swept him under entirely.
Her arms wrapped around his neck. Her back arched into him. She could feel every hard line of his body pressed against hers — chest, stomach, hips — and the evidence of exactly how much restraint this was costing him.
Theodore pulled away. Barely. His forehead against hers. Both of them panting. His eyes were dark — darker than she'd ever seen them. The violet had deepened to something almost black, lit only by the thin ring of amethyst at the edges.
"Tell me to stop." His voice was wrecked. Shaking. The voice of a man offering an exit he was praying she wouldn't take.
Beatrice Kenz looked up at him. At the trembling in his arms braced on either side of her. At the jaw clenched so hard the tendons stood out like cables. At the eyes that held more hunger and more fear than she'd ever seen in a single human expression.
She thought about her rules. Never get involved with one of the five families. Never spread herself open for a man with a sharp jawline and desperate eyes. Never become another woman consumed by this world.
"Don't stop."
Theodore froze. Three full seconds of absolute stillness — as if his brain needed time to verify that the words were real and not another fantasy he'd constructed in the dark.
Then he moved over her. Slow. Deliberate. Lowering himself with the controlled precision of a man who has decided to stop holding back and wants her to feel every second of the transition.
His weight settled against her — warm, solid, consuming. His mouth found the hollow beneath her ear. His breath was hot against her neck when he spoke.
"You have no idea what you've just unleashed, Sonnenschein."
A gasp escaped her lips. His mouth traced her jaw. Her collarbone. The space where her pulse hammered beneath her skin.
His hand found the hem of the shirt she was wearing — his shirt. His fingers grazed the bare skin of her stomach and she shivered so hard her back lifted off the mattress.
He rose slightly. Looked down at her. Eyes burning with something between reverence and ruin.
His fingers moved to the first button at her collar.
Slowly.
Watching her face as he worked it free.
One button.
Her breathing stopped.
His thumb brushed the skin it revealed — just below her throat, where her pulse was visible and racing. He studied it the way he studied everything about her — like he was memorizing something sacred.
"Beautiful," he whispered. Returning the word she'd given him.