The Perimeter of Us

The frontier doesn't just test your courage; it demands your soul.** Governor Elias Thorne was sent to the Oakhaven Territory with a singular mandate: transform a wilderness of vice into a bastion of justice. But in a land where the law is a whispered hope and every shadow hides a political assassin, Elias discovers that the heaviest burden of leadership isn't the threat of rebellion—it's the slow erosion of his own humanity. To survive the brutal isolation of power, he needs an anchor. He finds it in Elena Moreno. Elena is a rancher who belongs to the earth, not the elite. Her quiet strength offers Elias the only "Off-Switch" he has ever known—a precarious sanctuary where he is just a man, not a monument. But in the lawless West, privacy is a luxury the powerful cannot afford. Between the watchful, suffocating gaze of the U.S. Marshals and the predatory ink of cutthroat editor Jia Ling, Elias and Elena's secret love is dragged into the searing light of public scrutiny. When a national emergency shatters the frontier, the "shadows" are incinerated. Forced into the open, Elias must make an agonizing choice: uphold the meticulously crafted image of the solitary leader, or risk his career and Elena's safety by declaring the truth—that his strength doesn't come from his office, but from her. As political rivals like Senator Silas Vane move to weaponize their intimacy as "clandestine influence," Elias and Elena must forge a new kind of perimeter. They aren't just fighting for a territory; they are fighting for the right to love without losing themselves to the "Public Heart." **In a world that demands a leader be a statue, can a man remain human?