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Because of me.

I stopped trying to stay quiet.

My fingers moved faster, circling my clit and then dipping lower before returning to it. Each movement made the tension inside me tighten further, while the bond beneath my breastbone seemed to strengthen with it. I imagined every sound traveling down that unseen connection until it reached him.

I pictured his face and his mouth. I pictured him kneeling between my legs among the roses, his hands gripping my thighs while he held them apart. I imagined his mouth on my pussy, patient at first and then hungry enough to make me forget where I was.

My heels dug into the mattress as my back arched.

I slid two fingers inside myself and gasped at the sudden pressure. My pussy tightened around them immediately, and I imagined they were his instead, longer and rougher, his fingertips still carrying the faint scent of soil and crushed rose stems. I curled my fingers the way I wanted him to and kept my thumb moving over my clit.

Pleasure built quickly after that, concentrating low in my body until I could barely breathe.

When I came, his name left my mouth.

“Kaelen.”

The orgasm seized me hard enough to pull my entire body tight. My thighs trembled, my free hand twisted in the sheets, and my pussy clenched around my fingers again and again while each contraction sent another pulse of pleasure through me. I had never experienced anything that intense, not with Daniel and not alone.

The bond beneath my breastbone flared at the same time.

For one disorienting second, I felt something answer from the other end of it.

There was a sudden jolt of sensation that did not seem to belong entirely to me, followed by a deep, involuntary shudder that traveled through the connection and disappeared almost as quickly as it came.

Then a wolf howled beneath the tower.

The sound tore through the night, close enough to make the window glass vibrate in its frame. It was not a hunting call or any signal I recognized. The howl was long and rough, carrying across the wet roofs of Ironmoor, through the Hollow Wood, and out toward the sea.

When it finally stopped, the island went silent.

A few seconds later, wolves began answering from different parts of the fortress. Their calls overlapped unevenly, uncertain and restless, until more than a dozen voices had joined them.

I lay motionless in the tangled sheets for a long time, my heart still pounding and my thighs trembling with the aftermath of what I had done. My hand was still between my legs, and I stared at the dark ceiling as if it might explain what had just happened.

Then, for reasons I could not have explained if someone had asked me, I started laughing.

I clapped my other hand over my mouth before the sound could carry beyond the room, but that only made it worse. My shoulders shook, tears gathered at the corners of my eyes, and I could not decide whether I was laughing because I was mortified or because I felt more awake than I had in years.

Probably both.

Eventually, I forced myself out of bed and went to the window. The narrow strip of grass below was empty, pale and wet beneath the moonlight, but something had disturbed it. Deep impressions marked the ground directly below my window, too large to belong to any ordinary dog. In several places, the earth had been torn open, as though something had stood there for a long time with its claws pressed hard into the soil.

By morning, in the cold gray light, the whole thing felt considerably less thrilling. Mostly, I wanted to leave the country.

I very nearly skipped breakfast. For twenty minutes, I stayed in bed and seriously considered whether the two cookies at the bottom of my rucksack could sustain a person until the end of term. Unfortunately, the answer was no. Even more unfortunately, Kaelen had known exactly what I was doing the night before, and anyone who came close enough to me might still be able to smell whatever he had left on my throat. Hiding in the tower all morning would only make me look as guilty as I already felt.

So I got up.

I scrubbed my throat with cold water and soap until the skin was pink and sore, pulled on the largest sweater I owned, and went downstairs.

The Great Hall was already full by the time I arrived, loud with conversation and heavy with the particular kind of exhaustion that settled over everyone halfway through a Moonfever. Nobody seemed to have slept well. Tamsin was sitting at the end of the Saltmere table behind a mountain of toast, and when she spotted me, she waved so enthusiastically that she knocked over the jam.

"Did you hear it?" she whispered the moment I reached her. "Last night. The howl?"

"I heard something," I said, pouring myself a cup of tea and concentrating on it much harder than the task required.

"Everyone heard it. Half of Fenhall was up on the walls trying to work out who it was. The Saltmere prefect said it sounded like someone was having their heart cut out." Her eyes widened with obvious delight. "Oda is furious. Nobody's admitting to anything."