Chapter 280. The Vows

The priest’s voice, a sonorous, practiced instrument, faded into the expectant hush. The legal preliminaries were complete. The space he left behind was not empty, but charged, a vacuum waiting to be filled by a truth more powerful than any sacrament.

Anton turned to face Sabatine, his hand still clutching hers as if it were the only solid thing in a universe of light and emotion. The carefully memorized words from the library, the ones he’d wept over, were gone. In their place was a simpler, more terrifying need: to speak from the raw, unedited centre of himself.

He took a breath that shuddered in his chest. His voice, when it came, was not the clear, commanding baritone of the boardroom, but a rough, intimate scrape that barely carried past the first pew.

“Sabatine,” he began, and her name alone was a vow. “You asked me once what I was most afraid of.” He paused, his throat working. “I told you it was betrayal. I was lying.”

A faint ripple went through the congregation, a collective intake of breath.

He didn’t notice. His world had narrowed to her face, to the quiet, listening light in her eyes. “I was most afraid of this. Of standing in a room, utterly known. Of having no walls, no secrets, no place to hide. I was afraid of the terrifying, glorious exposure of being… loved. By you.”

A soft, choked sound came from Jessica’s direction. Anton didn’t hear it.

“You didn’t just walk into my life. You dismantled it. Brick by brick. You showed me the prison I’d built and called a fortress. And then…” His voice broke. He swallowed, forcing the words out. “Then you built a home with me in the wreckage. You taught me that trust isn’t the absence of fear. It’s the choice to be afraid… together.”

Tears, unchecked, traced hot paths down his cheeks. He made no move to wipe them away. “So my vow to you is this: I will never ask you to be less than you are. I will stand beside your strength, I will cherish your scars, and I will spend every day of my life trying to be a man worthy of the relentless, beautiful truth of you. I vow to be your partner in every shadow we face, and in every moment of light we are given. I choose you. Today, and every day that follows, until my last breath.”

The silence that followed was absolute, stunned. It was not the silence of ritual, but of witnessing revelation. Then, from somewhere in the rows of security personnel, came a muffled, masculine sob.

It was Sabatine’s turn. She looked at him, at the man weeping before her, his heart offered up in his trembling hands. She felt no pressure to match his poetry. She had only her own stark truth.

She lifted their joined hands, her thumb stroking over his knuckles. Her voice, when she spoke, was low, clear, and carried the weight of a lifetime’s solitude finally being relinquished.

“Anton,” she said, and her voice held a quiet steadiness that was an anchor in the storm of his emotion. “My whole life, I was a weapon. A tool pointed at a target. I was defined by my function, by my failures, by the damage I could do or the damage done to me.”

She paused, her gaze never leaving his. “You were the first person who looked at me and saw a person. Not an operative. Not a tragedy. Not a solution to a problem. You saw me. And in your reflection, I began to see myself. Not as broken, but as… complete. Even with all the cracks.”

Her own eyes filled, but her voice remained firm. “You gave me a country to belong to. Not a battlefield, but a home. You gave me a family.” She glanced briefly at Leon, at Jessica, at the rows of their chosen people, her meaning clear. “So my vow to you is not one of protection. You don’t need my protection. My vow is one of presence. I vow to stand with you, not in front of you or behind you. To be the one who knows your silences, who shares your burdens, who celebrates your joys as if they were my own.”

She took a step closer, the silk of her dress whispering. “I vow to bring my whole self to you—the soldier, the investigator, the woman who is learning how to laugh. I vow to choose you, every day, with the same fierce certainty I choose my next breath. You are my peace, Anton. And I am yours. Forever.”

She finished. There were no more words.

Around them, the dam broke. Jessica wept openly, her hands pressed to her mouth. Gina, stoic Gina, buried her face in her husband’s shoulder. Leon stood like a granite cliff, but tears streamed unheeded through the stubble on his cheeks. General Thorne had his head bowed, a single tear spotting the pristine knee of his trousers. Throughout the church, handkerchiefs appeared, shoulders shook. It was not a polite sniffle; it was a congregation undone by the sheer, unvarnished humanity of the promises they had just witnessed.

The priest, a man who had presided over a thousand weddings, blinked rapidly, his own composure shattered. He fumbled for his book, his voice unsteady as he tried to reclaim the ceremony. “The… the rings, please.”

Leon, with hands that shook only slightly, produced them. The simple platinum bands were cool and heavy.

As Anton slid the band onto Sabatine’s finger, over the engagement ring, his touch was reverent. “With this ring, I marry you,” he whispered, the words meant for her alone. “All that I am, I give to you.”

She took his ring, her own hands perfectly steady, and slid it home. “With this ring, I marry you,” she echoed, her voice a vow in the quiet space between them. “All that I am, is yours.”

The legal vows that followed were a formality, an echo of the profound truths already exchanged. When the priest finally pronounced them husband and wife, the words felt almost redundant. They had married each other moments before, in a language of scars and salvation that needed no official sanction.

The kiss that sealed it was not a passionate claim, but a soft, sealing touch—a gentle confirmation of the monumental reality they had just spoken into existence. As they parted, foreheads resting together, the sound that filled the ancient church was not applause, but a deep, collective exhalation of wonder, as two hundred guests released a breath they hadn’t known they were holding.

The vows were over. Raw, real, and drenched in tears, they hung in the sunlit air, a permanent, beautiful scar on the memory of everyone present. The marriage had begun.

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