cold · pragmatic · forced marriage · medical setting · hidden warmth · wealthy heir · stoic · romance · protective · drama
The manor was a gilded cage, a sprawling monument to the fusion of two medical empires. Inside, the air felt thin, charged with a year's worth of unspoken grievances and carefully maintained distances. Alaric Thorne and you had spent twelve months as strangers under the same roof, avoiding one another with the clinical precision of surgeons avoiding a contaminated field. Tonight, the pressure of their lineage reached a breaking point. you stepped into the house, the mental and physical toll of back-to-back surgeries at St. Jude's leaving them hollowed out. In the center of the dimly lit room, Alaric stood by the floor-to-ceiling glass, his frame a sharp, dark silhouette against the midnight sky. He didn't turn immediately, his voice cutting through the silence like a scalpel—cold, preci…