Bound by moonlight

Chapter 4

I forced myself to focus on the assignment sheet. Something about enzyme reactions, data collection, a short write-up. Straightforward. Manageable.

“Do you want to split the sections?” I asked finally, glancing sideways at him.

Kaelen leaned back slightly in his chair, scanning the page with unreadable calm. “Could. Or we work on all of it together.”

His voice was low, even, the kind that made you listen a little harder.

I tapped my pen against the paper. “Together’s fine. Less chance of one of us messing up.”

That earned the smallest flicker of something amusement, maybe?before it smoothed out of his face.

“Alright,” he said. “Together.”

We fell into silence again, the hum of the lab filling the space. Other pairs were already talking, arguing, laughing too loudly. Beside me, Kaelen made a neat column of notes in sharp, deliberate handwriting.

I glanced once, then quickly back at my own notebook. “You write small,” I blurted before I could stop myself.

He lifted a brow, pen pausing. “Is that a problem?”

“No.” I felt heat creep up my neck. “Just… an observation.”

Another pause, then the corner of his mouth twitched, like he was suppressing a smile.

We worked in quiet for the rest of the period, trading only the necessary words. But when the professor dismissed us, Kaelen turned to me as he slid his notebook into his bag.

“When do you want to start?”

I blinked. “Start?”

“On the project.” His gaze held mine steadily, patient but expectant.

“Oh. Um… tomorrow? Library?”

He nodded once. “Library works.”

And then he was gone, moving through the crowd like water parting around a stone, not lingering, not looking back.

I packed my things more slowly, the ordinary noise of the lab rushing back in.

Tomorrow. Library.

I told myself it was just a project. Nothing more.

Kaelen’s POV

Partnerships were always trouble.

I’d learned to keep to myself back row of the classroom, corners of the library, shadows at the edge of a crowd. Attention was dangerous. Attention meant questions, and questions led to truths no one here could ever know.

So when Professor Hale said her name, when he said mine alongside it, I almost asked for a reassignment. Almost.

But then her eyes found me.

Serenya Vale.

I’d noticed her before. The night of the bonfire, when the firelight caught her hair and she laughed at something her friend said, though she didn’t laugh as loudly as the others.and again in the library where I sat beside her,She’d stayed focused, but every so often, her brow furrowed in thought, and I’d found myself watching longer than I should have.

Now we were partners. By chance. Or maybe not.

She filled the silence in lab with small words—suggestions, observations, the kind of things people said when they weren’t sure if quiet was too heavy. Her voice was lighter than mine, her pen tapping against the desk when she thought.

When she said “together’s fine,” like she trusted me already, something tightened in my chest. People didn’t trust me. They weren’t supposed to.

I kept my answers short. Controlled. But when she asked if my handwriting was too small, and I caught myself almost smiling I knew I’d already let too much slip.

At the end of class, I asked when she wanted to meet. Practical, simple. She suggested the library. Of course.

As I walked out, I didn’t look back. I couldn’t.

Because the truth was, I’d already crossed a line just by letting her name stay in my head longer than it should.

I never belonged in a normal family. Not really. My mother had left when I was too young to remember much, and my father… well, he wasn’t human in the sense that most people understand. He was a pack leader, the kind who demanded obedience, discipline, loyalty above all else.

I’m not just a werewolf.

I’m the product of a curse older than most of the trees surrounding our forest home. My bloodline every male and female before me was bound to it, marked by a relentless cycle. Strength, yes. Speed, senses that humans couldn’t dream of. But always at a cost.

Control wasn’t optional.

A misstep, a moment of weakness, and the curse would twist the power into something violent, something uncontrollable. Families before mine had broken under it, turning on each other, on outsiders. The elders called it a test. I called it a trap.

My father trained me relentlessly before he died . “Never let it rule you,” he said. “Never let it see what you truly are. Humans are fragile, Kaelen. You cannot afford to be tempted.”

College was supposed to be my camouflage. A place to hide in plain sight, to live among humans without ever drawing suspicion. A normal life if “normal” meant constant vigilance, constant restraint, and the gnawing knowledge that one slip could ruin everything.

It wasn’t just the curse I feared. I was on the run. Not from the police, not from some faceless enemy from my own kind. The pack I was born into calls itself family, but when blood and power mix, the rules change. They wanted to use me, to bend whatever twisted advantage the curse gave into something savage and obedient. I left because I could not be owned. I left because staying meant learning to kill on command.

my bite can kill members of my own kind. It’s not something I say out loud. It isn’t a dramatic warning for movies it’s a fact that tastes like iron and fear in my mouth. Whether it’s the blood, the curse, or whatever old-world rot laced our lineage, the result is the same. I’ve watched lesser disputes become funerals. I’ve seen a single reckless act turn a rival into silence. That knowledge makes contact dangerous in a way that ordinary secrecy never could. You don’t hug me. You don’t reach into my shadow.

So I practice distance the way others practice speech: reflexively, until it becomes second nature. A nod instead of a conversation. A slow step back when someone comes too close. College was supposed to be the place where I learned to be invisible, to file myself into the dull gray of lecture halls and late-night libraries. But then she Serenya keeps happening in my periphery, quiet and steady and for the first time ever me wanting to distance myself was hard for me.