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“Before she died.”

The rain continued pounding against the roof.

I looked at the set of his shoulders beneath the white shirt. “Mine too,” I said quietly. “I was four. They told me it was a car crash. I don’t remember her.”

For a moment, he did not move.

Then, in a voice that had lost its usual coldness, he said, “I’m sorry.”

It was the first thing he had ever said to me that felt entirely unguarded.

“Someone’s been leaving roses on my step,” I said. “These roses. One every week, with all the thorns left on.”

“I don’t give roses,” Kaelen said, “to people I’ve rejected.”

He said it calmly and kept his eyes on the plant in front of him.

His ears, however, had turned slightly red.

I said nothing.

Instead, I watched him move to a younger plant in a nearby pot. One of its long green thorns had caught against another cane and driven into the bark. Kaelen worked it loose carefully. With the same large, soil-stained hands that had cracked an oak table in half on my first night at Ironmoor, he eased the thorn free a fraction at a time so he wouldn’t damage the stem.

I watched his fingers for much longer than I should have.

The thought came suddenly and without permission: I wanted to know what that gentleness would feel like against me.

I hadn’t meant to reach out. I only wanted to touch one of the dark roses beside him and see whether the petals felt as soft as they looked.

A thorn pierced the pad of my thumb.

“Ow—”

Kaelen turned immediately.

His eyes dropped to my hand and then to the bright bead of blood forming on my thumb.

I watched the gray of his irises change.

Gold spread gradually through them until none of the gray remained.

“Give me your hand,” he said.

His voice had gone rough.

I let him take it.

His hand closed around mine, large, hot, and gritty with soil. He turned my thumb toward the light, found the thorn, and eased it out with the same extraordinary care he had shown the rose.

When it was gone, he did not release me.

He stood there holding my hand and staring at the drop of blood. Then I heard him breathe in slowly, the sound uneven enough that I understood at once that he was no longer looking at the injury.

He was smelling me.

The Moonfever surged through me.

The heat that had been building for days sharpened instantly. His touch seemed to travel through my entire body before settling in a deep ache between my thighs. My nipples tightened beneath my wet shirt, and I became acutely aware of how aroused I already was.