The interruption was soft, polite, but final. Julian’s voice had that careful precision of a man who never wasted a word. He crossed the stone floor, his boots making almost no sound. When he reached the table, he stopped, resting one hand lightly against its edge, his gloved fingers brushing the chalk line she had drawn earlier.
His expression was unreadable, though the faint crease between his brows told her he was already cataloguingeverything, the sigils, the book titles, the scent of burnt herbs in the air.
“Do you often work at this hour?” he asked.
Her mouth opened and closed. “Sometimes,” she managed, “the quiet helps.”
Julian glanced toward the scattered books. “You read dangerous things to pass the time.”
Layla’s pulse jumped. She followed his gaze and immediately wished she hadn’t; the topmost book was open to the page about ley lines, old witch sigils drawn clear as moonlight across the parchment. She moved to shut it, but his hand came down lightly on the cover, stopping her.
“Leave it,” he said. His tone wasn’t cruel, only indifferent. He didn’t look at her as he turned the page, scanning it with the focus of a man studying a weapon, “Where did you find this?”
“I—” She hesitated, knowing that whatever she said next would matter. “It was here when I took over the bookshop. Some of the older volumes weren’t catalogued.”
“Mm.” His eyes lifted, sharp, pale gray in the glow of the candles. “And you decided to read them. Out of curiosity?”
Layla swallowed. They’d had this conversation before. She wondered if he’d known then, if he’d suspected. “Knowledge isn’t a crime.”
“It depends on the kind of knowledge,” Julian said. His voice was quiet enough to make her heart skip. “Especially when that knowledge defines what you are.”
He looked at her, and she had the sudden, awful certainty that he already knew. That he wasn’t here to discover anything.
“I’m not—” she began.
“Don’t lie to me.”
The words landed like the quiet click of a trap closing.
Layla froze.
Julian didn’t raise his voice, didn’t move, but the air in the room shifted. He wasn’t angry; he didn’t need to be. He was the kind of male who could whisper, and death would follow on swift wings.
“Do you know why I’m here?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Because I pay attention,” he said, “and because I’ve seen things like this before.” He lifted one of the notebooks she’d been writing in, her list of dreams, the drawings of the aurora, the half-finished runes. He read them in silence, lips moving faintly as if translating a language only he knew.
When he finally spoke, his voice was calm again. “What do you want with the northern lights?”
Her breath caught. “How—”
“As I said,” he replied, cutting her off gently, “I’ve seen things like this before. Was it a vision you had? Of the northern lights over Aurora Peak?”
She felt dizzy, her fingers gripping the edge of the table to steady herself.
Julian looked up from the notebook. “Tell me, Layla. When you dream, do you wake with your mating mark hurting?”
Her hand twitched instinctively toward her palm before she could stop it.
That was all the answer he needed.
He stepped closer, the space between them shrinking until she could smell the faint traces of cedar and iron that clung to him. “I have read about such things,” he said softly. “Rare, but not impossible. There are stories, witches bound to wolves. Power shared, amplified. Dangerous.”
The word hung in the air.
Layla’s voice trembled. “I’m not a witch.”
