CHAPTER ONE
709 Words
Arielle
I saw him for the first time in the back row of the lecture hall, dressed in black like he’d bled the color out of everything else he touched.
He didn’t take notes. Didn’t look up when the professor spoke. He just sat there, hood drawn, like the world had offended him a long time ago and he still hadn’t forgiven it.
I didn’t mean to stare. But there was something about the way he carried silence like a weapon. Like he’d made peace with being a shadow.
When his eyes flicked up and met mine, my stomach hollowed out.
Grey. Cold. A storm just before it breaks.
I snapped my gaze away before I did something stupid—like keep looking.
Maybe it was just attraction. Or maybe it was the way something inside me stirred for the first time in months. A heat low in my chest. A flutter in my skin. It didn’t make sense.
I was new here. I didn’t know anyone yet. I’d just transferred into Eastbourne on a late admissions scholarship and moved into a rental with my mom. A fresh start after everything collapsed.
No more crying over Liam. No more trying to belong where I never fit. I was going to focus. Be invisible. Graduate and disappear.
But then there was him.
I didn’t learn his name until later that week. People called him Kael.
No last name. No social media. Just Kael.
He didn’t sit with anyone, didn’t eat in the cafeteria, didn’t go to parties. There were whispers about a fight last semester—someone ended up in the hospital. The faculty covered it up, and Kael came back like nothing happened.
Of course, I found all this out after I’d already dreamt about him twice.
Once where we stood in a forest, breathless and bare. Once where he kissed me like he hated me for making him feel.
I blamed it on hormones. On moving stress. On the fact that I hadn’t been touched since Liam, and even then, it had felt like nothing.
This felt like something.
Friday night, I came home to candles and jazz and the smell of roast chicken.
My mom was floating—lipstick, wineglass, nervous energy all over her. “I have a surprise,” she said, smoothing her dress like it mattered.
She looked beautiful. I hadn’t seen her this happy since before Dad left.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” she added, cheeks flushed. “There’s someone. We’ve been seeing each other for a while. And… tonight’s the night.”
I blinked. “The night for what?”
She didn’t answer. Just turned to the door as it opened.
A man walked in. Expensive coat, deep voice, commanding smile. “Lydia,” he said, kissing her cheek.
And behind him—
Kael.
He stepped in, jaw tense, eyes flicking to mine and then away like a curse. He looked even taller in real life. Broader. Like he wasn’t just carrying silence—he was built from it.
My heart thudded once, hard.
No.
No way.
“This is my son,” the man said, beaming. “Kael.”
My mother smiled at me. “And this is my daughter, Arielle.”
Silence.
Kael looked at me, and in his eyes I saw it—recognition. Not from campus. Not from coincidence.
From something older. Deeper.
“Wait—” I started.
My mom laughed, touching my arm. “Isn’t this wild? We were so worried how you two would take it. But fate works in funny ways.”
Fate.
The word cracked open in my chest.
Kael stepped forward. He didn’t touch me. Didn’t speak. Just looked.
And something in me responded.
A throb. A pulse. Like the universe was waking up.
Like the bond had been waiting for this exact moment.
I excused myself. Locked the bathroom door.
And stared into the mirror as the air seemed to thicken around me.
My hands were shaking.
The boy I’d been dreaming about. The one I couldn’t stop thinking of. The one I’d wanted from the moment I saw him…
Was now my stepbrother.
And worse—
Something inside me whispered he wasn’t just that.
He was mine.
- Writer
