The sound from the forest was still with me when I woke up – that low, resonant thing I couldn't name, that I'd been trying to convince myself I hadn't actually heard.
I saw Kael leave just after sunrise.
He moved across the courtyard, already dressed for the day, already somewhere else in his head. Two men fell into step beside him without a word.
He didn't look back.
I told myself I didn't care.
Then I waited until he disappeared past the far building before I went inside.
His office was exactly where I remembered it, the door closed but not locked. I stood there longer than I should have, listening to the silence, half expecting someone to step out of nowhere and ask what I thought I was doing.
No one did.
I opened the door.
The room smelled like him.
A large desk faced the window. Shelves lined one wall, filled with binders and old ledgers. On the opposite wall hung a series of maps and not the decorative kind. Lines drawn in pencil, areas circled and recircled, routes marked with small symbols I didn't recognize. The forest had been divided into sections, each labeled with short notes and dates. Some paths were crossed out entirely, as if access had been revoked.
I stood there longer than I should have, trying to understand what I was looking at.
This wasn't a private estate someone had inherited and didn't know what to do with. It was territory — managed, monitored, controlled and whatever was being controlled, it wasn't just land.
A folder lay open on the desk. I told myself I wasn't going to touch anything. I reached for it anyway.
Supply numbers. Delivery schedules. Rotations that looked less like work shifts and more like patrols. I didn't understand half of the abbreviations, but the structure was obvious. Everything ran on a system.
My gaze shifted to a heavy book set apart from the rest.
It didn't match the binders or the modern paperwork. The cover was dark, worn smooth at the edges, stamped with a symbol I had seen before without realizing it mattered: the outline of a wolf's head, stylized into something almost heraldic.
I picked it up.
It was older than anything else in the room, the pages thick, the print uneven.
A passage near the center had been marked with a strip of paper.
I shouldn't have opened it.
I did.
The language was formal, archaic in places, but the meaning was clear enough.
It described a bond between a leader and a chosen woman, something written as fate rather than decision. It spoke about a mark given at the throat, a physical sign of belonging that tied their lives together. It called the woman a stabilizing force, the one who balanced strength with restraint.
It called her the Luna.
I almost laughed. It was a ridiculous word, the kind that belonged in the sort of novels I'd stopped reading at fifteen. My skin prickled anyway, and I hated that it did.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway.
I closed the book too fast, nearly dropping it. There was no time to put it back exactly where it had been. I pressed it flat against my stomach under my shirt and grabbed the first folder I saw, opening it like I had been searching for something ordinary.
The footsteps passed.
I counted to five before moving, forcing myself not to rush as I returned the folder to the desk and left the room, closing the door quietly behind me.
The book stayed hidden under my shirt all day.
Every time I bent to pick something up or reached for a shelf, I was aware of it pressed against my ribs like a secret that could be seen through fabric.
Work blurred. Numbers, lists, polite conversations I barely followed. Once Lina asked if I was feeling well. I said yes too quickly.
By evening I escaped to my room with the book still hidden.
I showered, changed into sleep clothes, and sat cross-legged on the bed with the lamp on low, the book open in my hands.
It read like mythology, and I kept reading it anyway.
Stories of leaders who could sense their partners across distance, who reacted physically to their presence, whose control slipped when they were close. It described the mark as both painful and intimate, something that bound not just bodies but instincts. The kind of thing that, once given, couldn't be taken back.
I should have found that absurd.
Instead I kept touching my throat, pressing two fingers against my pulse like I was checking for something.
I remembered the way his hand had hovered there the night before. The way he'd looked at me afterward, not like a man who'd stopped himself from doing something inappropriate, but like a man who'd stopped himself from doing something inevitable.
It was coincidence. The book was old and dramatic and I was sitting alone in a quiet room letting it get to me. That was all.
I almost believed it.
A knock sounded at the door.
I flinched, the book slipping from my hands onto the blanket.
Before I could reach for it, the door opened.
He stepped inside.
"What wasn't in your résumé," he said, closing the door behind him, "was an interest in breaking into private offices."
My mouth went dry.
"I didn't break in. The door was unlocked."
"That's not a defense."
He crossed the room slowly, eyes moving once to the book and back to me. I pushed it behind my leg instinctively, which only made it more obvious.
"You took something that doesn't belong to you."
"I was looking for information," I said. "You won't answer any of my questions."
"That doesn't give you permission."
"Then give me a reason not to look for answers myself."
He stopped close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his skin.
"What exactly were you hoping to find?" he asked.
"The truth."
"That's not what you were reading."
My fingers tightened on the edge of the blanket. "It's a book. It's fiction."
"You don't believe that."
I didn't answer.
He reached for it.
I grabbed it first, pressing it to my chest.
"You shouldn't be reading things you don't understand," he said.
"Then explain them."
"You wouldn't believe me."
"Try."
His hand slid from mine to my wrist, thumb resting over my pulse, my breath hitched.
His gaze lifted to my face, watching that reaction closely.
He stepped closer.
My back met the wall beside the bed. The book was still pressed against my chest, his body close enough that I could feel the steady rhythm of his breathing.
"What are you looking for, Mara?" he asked.
"You," I said.
It came out before I could stop it .
His jaw tightened.
"That's a mistake."
"Then stop giving me reasons to think you're hiding something."
His hand lifted slowly, giving me time to move if I wanted to.
I didn't.
The back of his fingers brushed my throat, right where the book had described the mark, and the shiver that went through me was sharp enough that I had to press my shoulder blades against the wall just to stay upright.
His breathing changed, his thumb came to rest just below my jaw, not quite touching my pulse, close enough that I could feel the heat of it.
He looked at my neck the way you look at something you've been trying not to want.
He leaned in.
The air between us went very still.
His mouth was close enough to my throat that I felt the warmth of his breath, and my hands found the front of his shirt without me deciding to put them there. The book pressed between us, forgotten. His hand slid into my hair, tilting my head back slow, giving me every chance to stop him.
I didn't.
He inhaled, low and unsteady, his lips grazing my skin just below my jaw, and whatever he sensed there hit him like something physical. I felt the change move through him, the tension that had been coiled all evening suddenly pulling tighter, something darker surfacing behind the control.
Then he went very still.
And stepped back.
He put distance between us and stood there for a moment with his back half-turned, one hand braced against the wall, breathing like he'd been running.
"You need to stop looking at me like that," he said, his voice barely above a breath. "Because I'm running out of reasons not to.."
He left before I could answer. The door closed behind him.
I stayed where I was, back against the wall, the book still in my hands.
My throat was warm where his mouth had been. My pulse was doing something I didn't have a name for. And the worst part, the part I couldn't talk myself out of, was that I understood, now, why he'd stopped.
Not because he didn't want to.
Because he was afraid of what came next if he didn't.