Moonbound Mate

Chapter 3

Two weeks after my birthday, Kael asked me to meet him at the campus coffee shop before my afternoon lab. I almost said no. I'd spent those two weeks carefully convincing myself that the visions were just stress, that the coincidences were just coincidences, that whatever strange, magnetic pull kept dragging me back toward him again and again was ordinary attraction and nothing stranger than that.

It had been three days since the fountain conversation, three days of small, careful check-ins that had started to feel almost normal, almost like something two people could build if they were patient enough. He'd started walking me partway to my morning lecture without either of us ever quite agreeing to it out loud. It just started happening, the way certain habits do before you notice you've made them.

Then I pushed open the door of the coffee shop and saw his face, and every single one of those careful explanations fell apart at once.

I'd spent the walk over rehearsing what I wanted to say to him, something light, something that would test the waters without giving away how many nights I'd lain awake turning those visions over in my mind. Something like so, any more lucky guesses lately? I'd practiced it under my breath twice on the way, feeling foolish both times.

He wasn't sitting at the corner table we'd started to think of, unspoken, as ours. He stood near the entrance instead, jaw tight, shoulders squared like a soldier bracing for an incoming attack. Beside him stood an older man I'd never seen before, silver hair swept neatly back, an expensive dark coat that probably cost more than my whole dorm room's furniture, and eyes the exact same storm-grey as Kael's, but without a trace of the warmth Kael sometimes rarely, let slip through.

"Mira." Kael's voice sounded strange. Careful, in a way I hadn't heard from him before. "This is my father."

"Alpha Magnus Draven," the man said, though I had no idea, at that moment, why he'd introduce himself with a title instead of just a name, like it was a business card he expected me to recognize on sight. His eyes moved over me slowly, deliberately, cataloging every detail the way you'd inspect a used car you were already planning to reject. "So this is her."

"Sir?" I looked between the two of them, my stomach twisting.

"You're the girl my son has been wasting his attention on," Magnus said plainly, without raising his voice even slightly, which somehow made it land harder than shouting would have. "Human" Ordinary. No family name worth mentioning in any circle that matters."

"Enough." Kael's voice cracked out low and sharp, a tone I'd genuinely never heard from him before, something dangerous simmering just underneath the words.

Magnus ignored his own son completely, still looking straight at me, and his mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile, more like the shape a smile leaves behind after it's gone stale. "My son is bound to Selene Voss. Has been since the day he was born. It is not a request, Kael." His gaze flicked briefly at his son before returning to me. "It is law. Whatever this is, girl, end it. Quietly. For your own good, and frankly for your own safety."

The whole coffee shop had gone strangely, unnaturally quiet around us, like everyone in it was holding a collective breath without quite knowing why.

Magnus wasn't finished. He looked me over once more, the way you'd size up an obstacle rather than a person. "Do you know how many generations it took to build what my son is meant to inherit? How many treaties, how many careful alliances, how much blood spilled to keep our territory whole? And you think a pretty face in a coffee shop outweighs any of that." He said almost gently, which made it crueler somehow than if he'd shouted. "You are a season, girl. Nothing more. Seasons pass."

"Kael," I said, forcing my voice to stay level even though my hands had started to shake at my sides. "What is he talking about? Bound? Law? What is actually going on here?"

Kael's jaw worked, a muscle jumping in his cheek like he was fighting something enormous down with everything he had. For one long, agonizing second, he looked at me the way he had that first night, like a door had cracked open somewhere behind his eyes and he genuinely wanted to explain everything. Every strange dream. Every silver flash. Every impossible 3 a.m. text message that somehow always arrived at exactly the right moment.

Then he looked back at his father, and whatever door had cracked open slammed itself shut again, fast and final.

"Nothing," he said. "It's nothing, Mira. Go to your lab."

The word landed on me like a physical slap.

"Nothing," I repeated, numb all the way down to my fingertips. I grabbed my bag off the back of the chair with hands that wouldn't quite stop trembling. "Got it. Loud and clear."

I walked out of that coffee shop with my chin held high and my eyes burning, and I didn't look back once, even though every single step across that room felt like wading through wet cement.

I made it exactly to the corner of the building before my knees gave out on me and I had to lean hard against the cold brick wall, breathing in short, ragged gulps, trying desperately to hold myself together in public where anyone could see.

That's when I heard footsteps behind me. Fast. Urgent.

"Mira." Kael's hand closed gently around my upper arm, turning me to face him. Up close, his eyes had gone that strange, unnatural silver again, brighter than I had ever seen, and for the first time since I'd met him, he didn't try to hide it or blink it away. "I need you to listen to me. Whatever he said there..."

"Bound to someone since birth, Kael. That's not nothing."

"It's complicated."

"Then uncomplicated it." My voice shook despite everything, but I held his gaze steady. "Because I refuse to be some secret you're ashamed of while you go marry a woman your father picked out for you before either of you could even talk."

His hand tightened, just slightly, on my arm. His jaw stayed clenched, and for one full heartbeat I actually believed he might tell me everything right there on the sidewalk, the wolf, the pack, the law, the truth behind every impossible thing that had happened to me over the last two weeks.

Then his phone buzzed in his pocket. His father's name lit up the screen even from where I stood, and something in Kael's eyes went cold and distant again, like a door closing quietly from somewhere deep inside.

"I have to go," he said, quieter now. "Please, Mira. Just trust me a little while longer. I promise you it will make sense."

He let go of my arm and walked away before I could form a single word in response, and I stood there alone on the sidewalk in the thin autumn sunlight, wondering how a boy who watched over me like some kind of silent guard dog could vanish so completely the moment his father's name flashed on a screen.

I watched him go, that same expensive black car of his father's still idling at the curb further down the block, and I noticed, almost absently, that Kael didn't get into the passenger seat like a son summoned home. He stood outside it instead, talking through the open window, his whole body rigid with a tension that even from a distance looked like restraint stretched to its absolute limit. Whatever words passed between them, I couldn't hear, but I saw Magnus's hand come out the window once, sharp and dismissive, and I saw Kael's shoulders go rigid in response, like something in him wanted very badly to react and didn't dare.

I didn't go to my lab that afternoon. I sat on a bench outside the science building instead, staring at nothing, trying to piece together a puzzle I didn't even have all the edges to yet.

Priya found me there an hour later, dropping down onto the bench beside me without asking permission, the way only a true best friend can. "Okay," she said. "Start from the beginning. Who was the old guy in the expensive coat, and why do you currently look like someone ran over your dog?"

I told her everything, the coffee shop, the word bound, the cold way Magnus had looked at me like I was a stain on his son's future, the way Kael had said nothing and meant everything by it.

Priya was quiet for a long moment, which, for Priya, was almost unheard of. "That's not normal rich family drama, Mira," she said finally. "That's not 'my dad doesn't approve of my girlfriend' drama. Bound since birth. Law, not request. That's a cult language. Or mafia language. Or..." she paused, chewing her lip, "... I don't know what that is, honestly. But I don't like it."

"Neither do I."

"Do you think he's already engaged? Like, actually, legally?"

"I don't know," I admitted, and saying it out loud made my chest ache in a way I didn't have a name for yet. "I don't know anything, Priya. I don't know why he watches me across the quad like I'm about to get hurt. I don't know why his father looked at me like I was garbage. I don't know why I still want to see him again after all of that."

Priya squeezed my hand once, hard, and didn't offer any easy answers, because there weren't any to give.

We sat there together until the sun dropped low behind the science building, saying nothing else, and by the time I finally stood up to walk back to the dorm, my legs had stopped shaking even if my mind hadn't. Whatever bound meant, whatever law Magnus Draven thought he had on his side, I decided, walking back across that darkening quad, that I wasn't going to disappear quietly just because a stranger in an expensive coat told me to. Nobody got to decide I was nothing except me.