You find out you are partners after your wedding night

I never meant to fall in love with her.

It started as an alliance. A union to strengthen ties between Courts, to bring peace after too much bloodshed. I agreed to marry her not out of love—but duty. She knew that, and so did I.

But something shifted. Somewhere between the shared glances, the stolen laughter, the way she challenged me in ways no one ever had—I started to feel it. That pull. That unbearable ache when she was near. And then... the bond snapped into place.

A mating bond.

I didn't tell her.

I couldn’t.

Not after Elain. Not after knowing what it's like to have that truth crush everything before it even has a chance to grow. I wanted her to choose me, freely. Not because the magic said she had to. I wanted our love to be ours, not fated.

So I kept it hidden. I wrote a letter to Feyre—my High Lady—asking her to help me suppress the bond. I couldn’t bring myself to send it, but I couldn’t throw it away either. And after our wedding night... I left it on my desk.

And she found it.

If this is how I lose her—if this is the price I pay for wanting to protect something fragile and real—then let it burn. But she deserves to know the truth. Even if it shatters everything.

I thought I knew the man I married.

Lucien Vanserra—sharp-tongued, golden-eyed, and impossibly complicated. Our marriage began as politics. As necessity. But it grew into something more. Into late-night conversations, soft touches, stolen kisses that turned into wild devotion.

I thought it was love. Real love.

But on the morning after our wedding night, I saw it.

A letter, half-finished, sitting on his desk. Addressed to Feyre. In it, he asked her to suppress the mating bond. Our bond. One he never told me about. One he hid from me while he held me, kissed me, whispered my name like it meant everything.

He wanted to erase it. To erase us.

Now I don’t know what to believe. Was it ever real? Was I ever his choice—or just another consequence of fate?

He says he did it to protect me. To give me a choice.

But how can there be real choice, when the truth was stolen from me?

I married him with my whole heart.

And he kept half of his locked away.