Chapter 3 — THE GIRL WHO SMELLS LIKE THE FULL MOON (2)

She closes the fridge door. Her voice comes out a little rough.

"...Thanks. Even though you're a creep."

"You're welcome," Kane says.

Luna wanders the apartment and ends up in front of the bookshelf — she's curious what kind of books a man with a blacklisted apartment owns. The top shelf holds a row of neatly arranged volumes:

Proper Care for Fevers.

Rebuilding a Sense of Safety After Childhood Trauma.

Balanced Nutrition for People Who Live Alone.

How to Take Care of Someone Who Never Eats Breakfast.

She pulls one out and flips through it. The pages are worn, folded, read a hundred times. There are pencil lines under the chapter titled "How to Make an Anxious Person Feel Safe." Whole paragraphs, underlined.

Luna looks up at him. "Your bookshelf knows my life plan better than I do."

Kane doesn't answer. He pours her a glass of water and sets it down. "Drink."

"You haven't answered me."

"The answer is on the second shelf." He says it without turning around. "Far right. It's a book about remembering the things people say without thinking."

Luna looks at the second shelf, then puts the book back. She doesn't say thank you. She just drinks the water, all of it, and it's the warmest thing that's happened to her all week.

That night, Luna spikes a fever.

She doesn't know it's the first flare of her blood waking up. She only knows she's freezing, bones dipped in ice water, while her forehead burns hot enough to cook on. She curls under the blanket, shivering, drifting — and then someone picks her up. Steady. Careful. The way you'd carry something fragile.

Kane carries her to the window and pulls the curtain back an inch. Full moonlight pours in, spilling across her face. She blinks up at him, half-delirious, and in the moonlight his eyes are gold — not flickering now, but burning, something huge pacing behind them like a beast in a cage.

"They say," his voice is barely a whisper, "you smell like the full moon."

"So what." Luna's voice is slurred with fever, but her mouth still works on its own. "You gonna turn me into a collectible?"

"No."

He sets her back on the bed. Then he kneels, bringing his face level with hers, moonlight between them, and says it slowly, one word at a time:

"The whole pack wants your blood. I'll guard your life."

Luna's fever-addled brain grabs onto the sentence and holds it, even if she can't process it. She blinks. "...Is that a confession? It's too poetic, I won't remember it."

"That's fine." He reaches out and brushes a strand of hair off her forehead, and his fingertips pause just shy of her skin, like he's afraid of burning her. "When you know me for real, you can decide whether to be afraid of me then."

"I'm nineteen," Luna says, "and I've been afraid of a lot of things. Tuition. Rent. Getting sent back to the system. Spending my birthday alone. You're not even on the list."

Kane looks at her for a long time. Then, very softly, the corner of his mouth moves — a ghost of something almost like a smile. Luna has known him for three days, and she's pretty sure that's the first one.

"Good," he says.

Later, when the fever breaks, Luna only remembers that she said a lot of nonsense. She has a vague memory of asking, through the fog: Why are you... so good to me?

She doesn't remember the answer, because there wasn't one. In the moonlight, Kane tucked the silver thing in his pocket a little deeper, like he was afraid she'd see it.

She sleeps with the black jacket from the first day folded under her pillow, because the fever dreams keep pulling her under — and every time she surfaces, there's a glass of water on the nightstand, still cold.

Three days later, there are three nights until the full moon.

Luna stands in front of the bathroom mirror of the safehouse and watches the crescent mark on her left wrist glow — silver light threading up her veins under her skin, like moonlight flowing through her. She stares at it, and for the first time, a feeling she can't name moves through her, half cold, half burning.

In the living room, Kane receives a transmission from the pack. The Alpha's order is one line, and it arrives like a blade:

On the night of the full moon, the entire pack will capture the Moonblood girl. Any wolf who disobeys is a traitor to the pack. Kill on sight.

Kane reads it once. Twice. A third time, the way you check a wound to see if it's still bleeding. Then he crushes the transmission in his palm and looks out the window.

Below, in the shadows of Blackmoon City, golden eyes are opening — one by one, two by two, like lanterns being lit across a dark city.

He walks to Luna's door, and sits down with his back against it. He sits there all night, turning a small silver ring over in his fingers — an old thing, worn smooth, a tiny crescent carved into the band — rubbing it the way you'd touch something you've been waiting years to hold.

At dawn, Luna opens the door and finds him there. Sitting in the hallway, back against the wall, the silver ring in his hand.

She crouches down to his level and asks the question she's wanted to ask since the first day:

"Kane. How long have you known me?"

Kane looks up at her. Morning light catches his eyes, and he says it quietly — quietly enough to pin her to the spot:

"Longer than you've known yourself."

The silver ring is still in his hand. He doesn't put it away. It catches the dawn light, and for the first time Luna notices it's worn smooth on one side — the way you wear down a stone by turning it over in your fingers, year after year, waiting.

Three nights to the full moon.

And before the sun is fully up, the first howl of Blackmoon City tears through the dawn.