Esme feared one thing: being captured as a thief by the city's guardsmen and executed for her crimes. Her worry was so ingrained that she increased her risks by being distracted in the middle of a heist.
That's when she runs into Althalos Fourthborn: Inner Circle Guardsman, one of the many princes of the realm, an Aelif (Dark Elf, local dialect)...and her betrothed by treaty. (That was something her almost human mind could not handle.)
She calls off the heist, gets demoted into a far more risky job, learns the true bitter depth of what this treaty's bond is like, and lands safely by her prince's side....sort of. There were people who still wanted her dead, even if she was in what most people would call a Happily Ever After.
That and her prince had his own living fears that were gnawing at any chance they had. And with her old fear in the past, she might just lose her mind from everyday tedium.
But the one she couldn't wrap her all-too human mind around was that she would one day grow wings and fly away from her almost Happily Ever After to live in a hive with ancestors more alien than a hottie with pointed ears and abandonment issues.
~~~
This story is dedicated to my mother. Grappling with her death pushed me into writing, and this is the first results of that grief.