BOUND BY MIDNIGHT

CHAPTER 2: Half a TruthKaelen

Kaelen doesn't say a single unnecessary word for the entire drive.

I've changed cars twice, my birthday dress traded for jeans and a coat I don't remember packing, and somewhere in the last hour my father went from shouting orders at security to sitting silently across from me in the back seat, jaw tight, refusing to meet my eyes. Whatever he knows about tonight, he's decided I'm not ready to hear it from him.

"That man," I say, breaking the silence. "The one who died. Who was he?"

"Someone who used to work for the people hunting you," Kaelen says, eyes on the passing dark outside the window rather than on me. "Someone who apparently changed his mind about that, recently enough that it got him killed for it."

"You knew him."

It isn't a question, and Kaelen doesn't pretend otherwise. "I knew what he was. Not who he was, specifically. There are more of them than you'd think — people who start out serving the Order and eventually can't stomach what that requires."

"And 'the last one.' What did he mean by that?"

Something flickers across Kaelen's face — brief, controlled, gone before I can properly name it. "I don't know," he says, and for the first time all night, I'm fairly certain he's lying.

My father clears his throat. "Kaelen. A word, before we arrive."

The two of them speak in low tones I can't quite catch, and I catch myself studying Kaelen instead of listening — the careful neutrality he wears like armor, the way he answers every question with exactly as much as required and not a syllable more. Nothing about him invites trust. Everything about him demands it anyway, given that a man died tonight telling me to give it to him.

I don't like being handed decisions I didn't make.

The safehouse, when we arrive, isn't the cottage I might have expected from a man who's apparently done this before — it's a converted townhouse in an unremarkable part of the city, deliberately forgettable, the kind of place no one would look twice at. My father leaves within the hour, promising to call, refusing again to explain what he actually knows, and then it's just Kaelen and me and a silence that stretches longer than I have patience for.

"You're supposed to protect me," I say, breaking it. "That doesn't mean you get to decide what I'm allowed to understand about my own life."

"I'm aware of what my job is."

"Then start doing the whole job. Not the parts that are convenient."

Kaelen turns from the window, and for the first time, real irritation surfaces behind the careful composure. "You want the truth? Fine. The truth is that a man is dead because he tried to warn you, and I don't yet know if that means the Order has a leak, or if it means they wanted him dead specifically because of what he was about to tell you. I don't know if your household is compromised. I don't know who else in your life might be feeding information out, deliberately or otherwise. Until I know those things, every piece of information I give you is a piece of information that could get back to exactly the people trying to kill you." He holds my gaze, unflinching. "So no. I'm not going to hand you every truth the moment you demand it. I'm going to keep you alive first, and explain second, in whatever order actually keeps you breathing."

It's not the answer I want. It's also, I realize with reluctant frustration, not an unreasonable one.

"Fine," I say. "Then tell me what you can tell me. Start there."

He studies me for a long moment, some internal calculation playing out behind those unreadable grey eyes, before he finally, grudgingly, begins.

"There's an organization that's spent centuries trying to eliminate certain bloodlines," he says. "Yours is one of them. I was hired to protect you specifically because of that. That's the truth. It's also not the whole truth, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise — but it's what you get tonight."

"Why my bloodline specifically?"

"That," he says, "is a question I'm not authorized to answer yet."

"Authorized by who?"

Something like the ghost of a smile crosses his face — not warmth, exactly, more like grim amusement at being cornered. "You ask a lot of questions for someone who was told to trust me by a dying stranger an hour ago."

"He didn't tell me to stop asking questions. He told me to trust you. Those aren't the same thing."

"No," Kaelen admits. "They're not."

I don't sleep that night. Instead, I lie awake cataloging everything wrong with the last several hours — the stranger's warning, Kaelen's careful evasions, my father's refusal to look at me — and somewhere around two in the morning, restless and unwilling to lie still any longer, I slip out of the small guest room to find water from the kitchen.

I find Kaelen instead, standing in the dark at the bottom of the stairs, phone pressed to his ear, voice pitched too low for me to make out words — until I catch a single phrase clearly enough to freeze on the staircase, unseen.

"—can't confirm she's what they think she is yet. I need more time before I make that call."

What they think she is.

I don't move. I barely breathe, straining to catch more, but Kaelen's voice drops lower again, and moments later he ends the call entirely, pocketing the phone with the same careful composure he wears for everything.

I retreat to the guest room before he can notice me, heart hammering, mind racing through a dozen unsettling interpretations of what I just overheard. He's not simply protecting me. There's something he's supposed to determine — some judgment he's meant to make about what I am, not just whether I'm in danger — and the fact that he hasn't told me any of it makes every careful, guarded answer from earlier tonight feel suddenly much more calculated than reassuring.

Whatever Kaelen Ashworth actually is, and whatever he's actually here to do, I'm no longer entirely certain "protect me" is the whole assignment.

I lie awake until dawn, turning the words over and over, and by the time grey morning light finally creeps through the curtains, I've made a decision of my own — one I have no intention of sharing with a man who apparently isn't finished lying to me yet.

If Kaelen won't tell me the truth, I'll find it myself.