BOUND BY MIDNIGHT

CHAPTER 7: What We Don't Say

Priya and I wait in the shadow of a loading dock two blocks away, both of us too tense to speak, my eyes fixed on the plant's silhouette against the night sky for any sign of what's happening inside. Every minute that passes without word feels like an hour, and by the time the chamber doors finally burst open, I'm halfway to convincing myself I need to go back in after them regardless of what Kaelen asked.

Kaelen emerges first, favoring one side, blood soaking through his shirt in a way that makes my chest seize with fear — and then Anneliese follows, limping but upright, and the relief that floods through me is so overwhelming I nearly forget to breathe.

"You're alive," I breathe, closing the distance to Kaelen before I can think better of it, hands hovering over the wound at his side, uncertain whether touching it will help or hurt.

"Barely," he admits, though something in his exhausted expression softens at the sight of me, relief plainly visible despite his attempt to mask it with professional composure. "The gantry crane worked. Trapped it long enough for us to disable the binding mark before it could break free entirely."

"Is it dead?"

"Weakened. Dormant, for now." Anneliese answers instead, leaning heavily against the loading dock wall. "It won't stay that way forever, but it bought us time we didn't have an hour ago."

Priya, who has been staring between all of us with an expression caught somewhere between shock and reluctant acceptance of a reality she didn't sign up for, finally speaks. "I have approximately four hundred questions," she says, "starting with how any of you are still standing after what I just watched, but I feel like now isn't the time."

"Now isn't the time," Kaelen agrees, though something almost like dry humor flickers across his exhausted expression. "We need to move before more enforcers arrive to check on the ones who didn't report back."

We regroup at a second safehouse — one Kaelen insists is entirely off any record, reached through three separate vehicle changes designed to shake any possible tail — and it's only once Priya is finally settled, shaken but safe, that the adrenaline of the last several hours starts to properly wear off, leaving something rawer and more uncertain in its wake.

I find Kaelen alone on the small back porch, staring out at nothing in particular, the wound at his side finally cleaned and bandaged though clearly still paining him more than he's willing to admit.

"You should be resting," I say, settling into the space beside him.

"I will. Eventually." He glances at me sideways, something unreadable in his expression. "You didn't listen to me back there. When I told you to run and not look back."

"I got Priya out. That was the actual instruction, if you remember correctly."

"That's a technicality and you know it."

"Maybe." I study him for a long moment, the exhaustion carved into every line of his face, the careful distance he's clearly trying to maintain even now, after everything we just survived together. "You could have died in there."

"I've faced worse odds."

"That's not an answer."

Kaelen is quiet for a long moment, and when he finally speaks, his voice carries a weight I haven't heard from him before. "I made you a promise before that fight," he says. "I intend to keep the promises I make, Sera. That's the only answer I have."

It isn't the answer I want, not entirely, and something in my chest aches at the careful distance he's maintaining even now, in the quiet aftermath of nearly losing each other. I recognize, with sudden and unwelcome clarity, exactly what that ache means — and I push the recognition away as quickly as it surfaces, unwilling to examine it too closely, unwilling to add one more complication to a night already overflowing with them.

It's just adrenaline, I tell myself. Just relief that he's alive. Nothing more than that.

I don't entirely believe it, even as I think it.

"Anneliese," I say instead, changing the subject to something safer. "What happens to her now? She just burned every bridge she had with the Order to help us."

"I don't know," Kaelen admits. "That's not a small thing, what she did back there. The Order doesn't forgive defection easily, and after three centuries of them holding influence over her mind, I genuinely don't know how she survives being fully cut off from whatever control they've had over her all this time."

"You still care about her."

It isn't an accusation, though I notice Kaelen studying my expression carefully, like he's checking for one anyway. "I do," he says honestly. "Not the way I once did. But I owe her more than I've given her, and tonight only made that debt heavier, not lighter."

Something in his careful honesty settles the small, unworthy spike of jealousy I don't want to examine too closely either, and I find myself grateful, not for the first time tonight, that whatever else Kaelen Ashworth is hiding, dishonesty about his feelings doesn't appear to be one of them.

"For what it's worth," I say, "I think you were right to help her. Even knowing what it cost."

"Was I?" Something bitter crosses his expression. "I've made choices before based on protecting people I care about, Sera. They haven't always turned out well."

"This one might be different."

"Might be," he agrees quietly, though I catch something guarded resurface behind his eyes, old caution reasserting itself even after the raw honesty of moments ago. "I should check on Priya. Make sure she's actually resting instead of just pretending to."

He rises before I can respond, retreating back toward the house with a deliberateness that feels less like duty and more like escape, and I'm left alone on the porch with the cooling night air and the uncomfortable, undeniable knowledge that whatever I'm starting to feel for Kaelen Ashworth is far more complicated than simple gratitude for being kept alive.

I don't chase the thought further. I bury it instead, the same way he apparently buries his own, and I tell myself that's the safer choice for both of us — right up until my phone buzzes with a message from an unknown number that drives every other thought instantly from my mind.

"Tell Ashworth the evaluation report is due in seventy-two hours. If he hasn't filed it by then, we'll assume he's compromised, and we'll send someone who isn't."

My stomach drops. Whatever fragile peace the last hour bought us, it's already running out.