The first thing I feel is silk — cool against my skin, like water slipping down satin.
The next is confusion.
My eyes open slowly, the light unfamiliar, filtered through champagne-colored curtains draped across impossibly tall windows. The ceiling is vaulted, the walls a soft cream with gold accents. A chandelier hangs above the bed — the kind of delicate thing you'd see in royal palaces or movies about rich people I've never met.
This is not my room.
This is not my life.
My heartbeat races as I sit up. My head throbs. The bed is far too soft, the sheets far too clean, and my body… my body aches like it's been through something I can't remember.
Panic creeps in slowly, like a tide at my ankles.
And then I see him.
A man, broad-shouldered and sharp-featured, lies on the other side of the bed, shirtless, one arm stretched toward where I'd been sleeping. His presence steals all the air in the room. He's calm. Asleep. And devastatingly attractive in a cold, untouchable way — like a statue carved from marble and secrets.
I don't know him.
But I know the danger. And this… this feels like danger wrapped in expensive cologne and designer sheets.
I slide out of bed carefully, my legs shaky. There's a mirror across the room — tall, antique, and cracked slightly in one corner. My reflection stares back, and I have to grip the bedpost to steady myself.
I'm wearing a white silk nightgown. My makeup is smudged, mascara under my eyes like fading war paint. There's a faint bruise blooming on my collarbone.
And around my finger, catching the early morning light, is a diamond ring.
A wedding ring.
My lips part, but no sound comes. I tear it off, dropping it onto the dresser like it burns.
What the hell is going on?
Before I can move, a deep voice cuts through the silence.
"You're awake."
I turn sharply. The man is sitting up, watching me. His dark eyes take me in — not startled, not angry. Calm. Familiar. As if he's seen me like this a hundred times before.
"Where am I?" I whisper.
He smiles slightly. "Home."
I blink. "Who are you?"
His smile fades. "Ava… it's me. Julian."
The name means nothing. The way he says it sounds like it should.
"I don't… I don't know you."
He rises slowly, like a predator who knows the prey has nowhere to go. "You're my wife."
I freeze.
"What?"
He gestures to the ring on the dresser. "We were married three days ago. You don't remember?"
I shake my head. "No. This has to be a mistake. I don't— I don't even know how I got here."
He steps closer. I flinch.
Julian stops. His eyes darken, not with anger — with something colder. Something unreadable.
"You fainted at the reception," he says carefully. "You've been disoriented ever since. The doctor said it might be memory trauma."
"I don't remember getting married," I whisper.
He nods slowly. "I know."
Silence stretches between us, taut and trembling.
Then he says something that chills me to the bone.
"But you will."