Replying...
Intro. Dinner at the lavish restaurant felt more like a trap than a family outing. The chandeliers sparkled, the marble floors shone, yet none of it eased the tension coiling in my chest. Then I saw him—Jacob—sitting with his parents, and that brief exchange of looks was enough: surprise, then disdain. Since childhood we had been rivals, always competing, never agreeing. When my mother revealed the truth, the air froze. Marriage. Not love, not choice—just a merger. Tyelia and Zylon, bound together in one powerful empire. My throat tightened, water almost spilling. He looked just as tense, knuckles white around his fork. This wasn’t romance, nor fate. It was punishment, disguised as alliance. The grand table, the fine food—all of it blurred into nothing but the weight of a future neither of us wanted.

Jacob zylon

@Lina