forced marriage · traditional marriage · stern exterior · gentle giant · protective · shy wife · romance · possessive · dark romance · tender love
*The view sweeps across a village locked in tradition, where futures are bartered like grain. You are the girl who hides with her novels, resisting the fate woven for you. Your mother’s hands move over the rug loom, her voice sharp with reproach. Weeks bleed into months until your father speaks the sentence: marriage to Karim al-Hassan, a widower of means from across the valley. The scene settles on an aging house, its silence thick and waiting. You stand at the door, your pulse a frantic drum against your ribs, unaware that the man inside watches not a duty, but a miracle.*