Luna Priestess

The Line

Rhys found me still standing in my doorway, one hand gripping the frame like it was the only thing holding me up.

“Was that him?” he said. Not really a question.

“Rhys...”

“Was that Kaius Draven, at your door, in the middle of the night, during the one night of the year every wolf in this pack is out of their mind with wanting something?”

“Nothing happened.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

I didn’t answer. He looked at me for a long moment, jaw tight, and then he just nodded, once, like he’d already known the answer and hoped I’d tell him something different.

“Go inside,” he said. “Lock the door. I’ll be right here.”

He didn’t come in. He didn’t yell at me either, which somehow felt worse.

He just sat down on the floor outside my door like a guard dog and didn’t say another word, and I lay awake the rest of that night listening to him not sleep either.

The next evening was worse.

The Moon doesn’t burn out in one night. It builds for three, peaks on the second, and by the time the second sunset came around, the whole pack house felt like a held breath about to break.

I’d been asked to check on an injured pack wolf in the east wing, a young one who’d hurt his leg in a scuffle the night before, and I went because staying in my room with nothing to do but think sounded worse than being useful.

I didn’t expect Kaius to be there, too.

He was crouched by the boy’s bed when I walked in, checking the bandage himself, which surprised me until I remembered he was Alpha, and Alphas carry their pack’s pain whether they want to or not.

He looked up when I came in, and something passed between us, fast, before either of us could stop it.

“Priestess,” he said, carefully formal, for the boy’s benefit more than mine.

“Alpha.” I kept my voice just as careful.

We checked on the boy together, kept it professional, kept three careful feet of distance between us the whole time.

It should have been easy. It wasn’t. Every time our hands came close over the bandages, I felt that same pull from the border rite hum under my skin, and I could tell from the way his jaw kept tightening that he felt it too.

The boy fell asleep before we finished. We stepped out into the hallway together, and that was the mistake.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” I said.

“You shouldn’t have either.” His voice had dropped, rougher now that we weren’t performing for an audience. “I told myself I’d keep my distance tonight. I meant it, Lyra.”

“I know.”

“Doesn’t seem to matter what I mean.”

We were standing too close. I knew we were standing too close and I didn’t step back, and neither did he, and the hallway had gone quiet in that particular way that means the rest of the world has stopped existing.

“Kaius.”

“I know,” he said, before I’d even said anything else. “I know what you’re going to say. I’ve been telling myself the same thing for two days.”

“Then why are we still standing here?”

He didn’t have an answer for that. Neither did I. His hand came up, slow, like he expected me to stop him, and brushed a strand of hair back from my face, and I felt that touch everywhere, every place he wasn’t touching me at all.

“Tell me to stop,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “Tell me to stop, and I will.”

I didn’t tell him to stop.

His hand slid to my jaw, tilting my face up, and I could feel his breath against my mouth, and every rule I’d ever been taught went quiet at once, drowned out by the roar of my own heart.

“Lyra...”

“Alpha Draven.”

We broke apart so fast I stumbled, catching myself against the wall. Rhys stood at the end of the hallway, sword hand resting on his hip in a way that looked casual and wasn’t, his face carved out of stone.

“The east wing needed checking,” he said, flat. “I heard there was an injury.”

“It’s handled,” Kaius said, just as flat.

“Good.” Rhys’s eyes moved to me, and whatever he’d almost walked in on, I could see in his face that he knew exactly what it was. “Lyra. Walk with me.”

It wasn’t a request.

I looked at Kaius once more. He gave me the smallest nod, like he understood, like he was letting me go even though it clearly cost him something to do it, and I followed Rhys back down the hallway in silence, my whole body still humming from a touch that had barely happened at all.

Rhys didn’t say anything until we were well out of earshot. Then he stopped walking, turned to face me, and I saw something in his eyes I’d never seen before. Not anger. Something closer to fear.

“I saw you,” he said quietly. “Both of you. Before you noticed I was there.”

“Rhys...”

“I’m not going to tell the Council.” His voice cracked slightly on it.

“I want you to know that. Whatever this is, whatever’s happening to you, I’m not going to be the one who gets you killed for it.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me.” He looked away, jaw working.

“I’m not doing it because I don’t care what happens to you and him. I’m doing it because I care what happens to you more than I care about anything else, and I need you to understand that means something, even if you never let it mean what I want it to.”

I opened my mouth, not sure what I was even going to say, and he shook his head before I could get a word out.

“Not tonight,” he said. “Just...not tonight, Ly. Go to bed. Lock your door. We’ll figure the rest out when the Moon’s not making everyone half out of their minds, including me.”

He walked away before I could argue, and I stood there in the dark hallway a long time, caught between the man who’d almost kissed me twenty feet back and the one who’d just walked away carrying a secret he had no reason to keep for me except that he loved me, and hating myself a little for not knowing what to do with either truth.