Under The Oak Tree Manga Apr 2026

It was a chaste kiss. A wife's kiss. But it burned him down to his soul.

"That's not what I asked." He turned his head to look at her. Firelight played across her delicate features. "Are you happy? Being my wife? Being the lady of this ruinous land?"

She reached up and unbuttoned the first button of her dress herself. "D-don't you dare," she said. And she smiled. It was the first real smile he had ever seen from her—crooked, shy, but radiant. Under The Oak Tree Manga

He pulled back to look at her. Her silver hair was fanned out on the pillow, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright with a mixture of fear and fierce determination. She was not the trembling girl from their wedding night. She was his wife. His partner. His equal.

He lifted her from the chair as if she weighed nothing. She gasped, wrapping her legs around his waist instinctively. He carried her to the bed— their bed—and laid her down on the fur blankets. It was a chaste kiss

"R-Riftan," she said, her voice a soft, scratchy whisper. "Y-you are l-late."

A sob escaped her, but it was a laugh, too—a wet, beautiful sound. And then, she did something that undid him completely. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his forehead. "That's not what I asked

"Because I am afraid," he confessed, the words tearing out of him like a dragon's roar. "I am afraid that if I touch you, you will shatter. I am afraid that the desire I feel will terrify you. I am a brute, Maxi. I have killed more things than I can count. And you… you are sunlight. I would rather freeze on the floor for a thousand nights than be the reason for a single one of your tears."

Their first night as man and wife remained a splinter under his skin. He remembered the tremor in her hands as she unlaced her dress, the way her breath hitched, not with passion, but with sheer, unadulterated terror. He had stopped. He had to. The look in her eyes—a trapped animal's—had doused the inferno in his blood. He had slept on the cold floor that night, and every night since, telling himself it was enough to simply have her near.