Treacherous God

I didn't want Lilac.I selected her.Sweet. Untouched. Mine.To secure my place inside the secret society that governs North Haven University, I needed a wife-someone controllable, compliant, temporary.Lilac was supposed to be leverage.So I lied to her.I bound her to me in a marriage she believes has an expiration date.She thinks escape is possible.She doesn't understand the rules were written long before she arrived.Her trust destabilizes me.Her fear anchors me.I don't protect her because I love her.I protect her because once she chose me, I couldn't allow her to belong to anyone else-including herself.She can resist. She can hate me. She can try to break what I'm building.But every shared breath, every trembling touch, every moment she survives because of me pulls her deeper into a dependence she doesn't yet recognize.This marriage was never meant to end.It was meant to erase the version of her that existed before me.And Lilac will learn the truth the hard way:the most dangerous thing about loving meisn't what I'll do to her-it's what she'll become when she can no longer imagine life without me.