The musical chimes of an ornate clock resonated through the opulent chamber, each note a stark counterpoint to the suffocating silence that pressed down on Belle's room. Ashton, his obsidian form cast in a long shadow by the dying embers in the fireplace, remained a sentinel by her bedside. The doctor's words hung heavy in the air, a challenge that gnawed at the carefully constructed facade Ashton wore.
" A change of scenery..............," the doctor had said, his voice a grim pronouncement. The very notion twisted in Ashton's gut. He thrived on control, on the meticulously choreographed dance of power he orchestrated. A broken Belle was a discordant note in his symphony of manipulation. Yet, a flicker of something unfamiliar, a disquiet that refused to be quelled, had wormed its way int
