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“Moonrise is in ten minutes,” he said, his voice cold again. “Run, Hale.”

Then he walked out into the rain without looking back.

I stayed where I was, trying to understand what he had just told me.

Alive.

His father ran the Council. Forty-one years ago, that same Council had erased an entire bloodline, and someone had removed the same year from Ironmoor’s records. I did not know which part of that history Kaelen believed could kill me, but the word no longer sounded protective or romantic. It sounded literal.

Then I thought about the roses.

The first one had stopped me from signing the release form for one more morning. If Kaelen truly believed Ironmoor could kill me, why had he given me a reason to stay? The only explanation that made any sense was that leaving in a Council cuff might have been even more dangerous.

I remained against the glass while my heart hammered against my ribs. My throat burned where his jaw had dragged across it, my thumb was still bleeding, and my entire body protested the sudden absence of him. I could still feel where his cock had pressed against my stomach, an insistent memory of pressure that made the ache between my legs worse. I had to squeeze my thighs together before I trusted myself to walk.

When I finally managed to cross the Glasshouse and reach the door, something moved beyond the rain near the garden wall. I caught only a brief flash of white feathers before the storm obscured it again.

For a second, I tried to tell myself it had been a gull.

I did not believe myself.

Delphine?

If it had been her, Kaelen had not noticed. With rain pounding against the glass, hundreds of roses filling the Glasshouse with their scent, and my blood directly beneath his nose, I was not sure he had been capable of noticing much beyond me. The thought came and went before I could examine it because I was still shaking too badly to concentrate.

I ran all the way back to the tower with the moon rising behind the wall. Once I was inside, I bolted the door and stood with my back against it in the darkness until my breathing began to slow.

Sleep never came.

I lay in the narrow iron bed with the lamp extinguished while the storm gradually spent itself against the window. Behind the thinning clouds, the full moon rose higher, and the Moonfever that had been simmering inside me for three days grew steadily worse.

By then, the heat had spread through my entire body. My skin felt oversensitive and painfully warm, and even the sheets were too rough wherever they touched me. I had stripped off my damp clothes and climbed into bed wearing only an old T-shirt, but even that felt unbearable. The fabric dragged across my breasts every time I breathed, and I could not seem to stop breathing too quickly.

I could still smell him on me.

That was what made it impossible to settle.

He had deliberately rubbed his scent into the skin of my throat, leaving cedar and cold air clinging to me even after I washed my face and brushed my teeth. Every time I turned my head, I caught it again, close and unmistakable, and my body remembered the Glasshouse before my mind could stop it. I remembered his mouth near my neck and the solid pressure of his erection against me.

I raised my fingers to the side of my throat, where the scrape of his jaw had left the skin tender. When I pressed lightly against the sore place, sensation shot through me and settled low between my legs.

Oh.

That was a problem.

I had not touched myself since Daniel left. Not once in six months.

I had blamed exhaustion, grief, and work, and none of those explanations had been false, but there had been another reason that I had refused to examine too closely. Daniel had never liked me touching myself. He had never explicitly forbidden it because he had not needed to. Once, he had walked in and found me with my hand between my legs, and the quiet distaste on his face had been enough. I had pulled the comforter to my chin and apologized to him.

I had apologized for touching my own body in my own bed.

After that, I had gradually stopped wanting to do it, or at least convinced myself that I had. Then Daniel had left. I had still wanted other people since then, so my body had clearly remained capable of desire. What had never returned was the simple urge to give myself pleasure because I wanted it.

Tonight, it had returned.

I lay in the darkness with my fingers resting against the tender skin of my throat and allowed myself to remember what had happened. I remembered Kaelen pinning my hand against the cold glass and the heat of his body through my wet clothes. I remembered the rough drag of his stubble along my neck and the sound he had made when I tipped my head back for him. I remembered his mouth hovering close to mine and the gold in his eyes while he stared at my lips.

Most of all, I remembered the hard pressure of his cock against my stomach and the certainty that he had wanted me as badly as I had wanted him.