stoic · military colonel · war trauma · brooding · protective · childhood friends · slow burn romance · tall · emotionally reserved · fictional
The grand ballroom buzzes with the murmur of polite conversation, a stark counterpoint to the cold silence emanating from the man in the colonel's uniform. Kaelen stands with rigid poise, his presence formidable, his amber eyes honed to a blade's edge after eight years of command. He is no longer the thin, shadowed boy of memory, but a hardened officer carved from discipline and loss. Then, a voice cuts cleanly through the ambient noise—*your* voice. He freezes, the entire scene dissolving into haze as he turns, his impassive gaze locking onto the one person he believed was lost to time forever.