BOUND TO HIS MOON

CHAPTER SEVEN

Serene pushed the last spoonful of soup around the bowl before giving up on it entirely. The meal Lilian had brought sat half-finished on the tray by the window, the broth gone lukewarm an hour ago. Outside, the orange of sunset had long since drained into a deep, starless black, and still sleep wouldn't come.

She lay back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling, counting nothing. Each time her eyes drifted shut, the voice came back to her — low, almost gentle, in the way that made it worse.

*Six days from now, everything you think you are will change.*

She'd hung up on him. Twice. It hadn't mattered. The call always seemed to find her again, like he knew exactly when she'd be alone enough to answer.

Six days. She sat up and counted on her fingers anyway, as if doing it again might change the number. Her birthday was five days away — she knew that the way she knew her own name. The caller had said six. One day didn't make sense. One day too many, or maybe too few, and either way it sat wrong in her chest like a held breath she couldn't release.

She thought about telling Kael earlier and decided against it — too tired, too rattled, too unwilling to hand him one more reason to look at her like something fragile he'd been saddled with. But lying there now, replaying the stranger's voice — *you cannot outrun blood, little one* — she found she couldn't keep it to herself anymore. Not in this house. Not when he was the only person who might actually know what it meant.

She swung her legs off the bed before she could talk herself out of it.

The hallway outside her room was dim, lit only by small wall sconces that threw long gold streaks across the floor. Serene padded down one corridor, then another, increasingly certain that Kael's villa had been designed specifically to confuse anyone who didn't already live in it. Doors lined every wall — identical dark wood, identical brass handles — with absolutely nothing to indicate which one belonged to the man currently making her life complicated.

She paused outside a door that looked marginally more important than the rest, raised her hand to knock, then lowered it again. *What if this is a closet?* She laughed quietly under her breath at the idea of going door to door like an overzealous salesperson, knocking and apologizing her way down an entire hallway until she found the right one.

"Looking for something, miss?"

She was startled. Lilian stood a few feet away, a folded towel tucked under one arm, watching her with the patient, faintly amused look of someone who'd clearly seen guests get lost in this house before.

"I need to talk to Kael," Serene said, then caught herself. "— Master Kael. I can't find his room."

If Lilian noticed the slip, she didn't comment on it. She simply turned and led the way down a corridor Serene hadn't tried yet, stopping in front of a tall set of double doors near the end.

"Here," Lilian said simply, and left before Serene could ask anything else.

Serene stood there a moment, suddenly aware of how thin her sleep shirt was, how late it was, how much simpler this had sounded in her head five minutes ago. She heaved a breath and knocked. Twice.

"Who's there?" The voice on the other side was flat, edged with the particular arrogance of someone who already knew the answer and resented being asked to confirm it.

"It's me," she said. "Serene."

A pause. "Come in."

She pushed the door open and immediately regretted agreeing to have this conversation tonight. Kael stood near the window in nothing but a black singlet and loose sleep pants, the fabric doing absolutely nothing to hide the lines of muscle across his shoulders and arms. Her mouth went dry before her brain caught up with her body's poor judgment.

He turned, one brow lifting at the sight of her hovering in his doorway. "What." Not even a full sentence. Just the demand of one, wrapped in irritation.

"I—" She crossed her arms over her chest, equal parts cold and embarrassed, and forced her eyes to stay on his face. "I need to tell you something. It's important."

He gestured once, impatient, and she took that as permission to keep talking.

She told him about the call — the same low voice from before, the warning about her life changing, the six days that didn't match her birthday. She left out the part about the lullaby, the one her mother used to hum to her as a child, the one this stranger had no business knowing. That detail felt too raw to say out loud, too much like handing him a piece of herself she wasn't ready to give up. But she told him the last thing the man had said, the line that had kept her staring at the ceiling for the past hour.

"He said I can't outrun blood."

Kael went still.

For a long moment he said nothing, his gaze fixed somewhere past her, jaw working like he was turning the words over and finding none of them comfortable. Whatever he was thinking, he didn't share it.

"Go to bed," he said finally. "I'll have a name by tomorrow."

It wasn't comforting, exactly, but it was something. She nodded, suddenly very aware she was standing in a near-stranger's bedroom... a man who still hadn't told her a single real thing about himself" — midnight in an old t-shirt, and turned to leave before she could embarrass herself any further.

She managed three steps.

Her foot caught the edge of the rug and the floor tilted sideways far too fast for her body to correct. She pitched forward with a startled gasp, hands flying out — and collided directly with his chest, his arms catching her on instinct before either of them had decided whether they wanted that to happen.

"I'm sorry," she blurted, pulling back so fast she nearly tripped a second time, her face burning hot enough to rival the moon outside.

Kael looked down at her, unimpressed, arms still half-raised like he wasn't sure why he'd bothered catching her at all. "Do you have any stamina at all, kitten? Or is falling over just something you do for sport?"

"I tripped," she said, mortified. "It happens to people."

"Not in my house," he said, but something in his voice had lost its earlier edge, like the insult was more reflex than heat. He stepped back, putting space between them again, his expression smoothing into something unreadable. "Bed. Now."

She didn't argue this time. She fled the room with what little dignity she had left, her pulse refusing to settle long after the door had clicked shut behind her — and not entirely, she suspected, because of the fall.