Two days of pretending. That's what follows the kiss—two days of Rhys's hand on my waist in hallways, his lips brushing my temple between classes, every public gesture perfectly performed. And not a single word about what happened behind the equipment shed.
He acts like nothing changed. Plays the boyfriend with the same cold precision as before, except now his fingers hesitate a beat too long on my hip. Now his jaw tightens when I catch him staring. Now the air between us hums with something neither of us will name.
Thursday arrives. Training night. I show up at the cottage at eight because the deal is the deal, and whatever is sitting between us doesn't rewrite contracts. He's already inside, rolling out mats with mechanical precision, not looking up.
We train in silence. No teasing. No lingering hands correcting my stance. Just combinations and drills and the bruise-colored tension of two people pretending they didn't taste each other against a wall.
The sky opens fifteen minutes in.
Not rain—a detonation. Water hits the roof so hard the lanterns rattle, and a crack of thunder shakes the floorboards beneath our feet. I'm mid-combination, fist aimed at his palm, when lightning whites out the windows and the battery-powered lanterns flicker once and die.
"Power's gone." His voice comes from somewhere to my left. "Storm must've hit the campus grid."
"When will it pass?"
Another crack of thunder answers for him—closer, louder, the kind that vibrates in your teeth. Rain hammers the walls from every direction, and water begins seeping under the door, pooling across the threshold.
"Not soon." He moves in the darkness, and I hear him checking the windows. "Road's already flooding. We're not getting back to campus tonight."
Tonight. The word lands between us, heavy with everything that happened by the equipment shed. The kiss I can still feel on my lips. The silence that followed. Two days of avoiding each other while pretending we weren't.
"Great." I lower myself onto the training mat, pulling my knees to my chest. "Trapped in a cottage with you. Every girl's dream."
"You could try the flood." His voice is dry. "Might be better company."
Lightning illuminates the room in sharp white flashes—his face appearing and disappearing, jaw tight, eyes fixed on the window instead of me. The space between us feels vast and suffocating at the same time.
"We should talk about it," I say.
"About what?"
"Don't do that." My voice comes out harder than I planned. "Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about."
"The kiss." He says it flatly, still facing the window. "Is that what you want to discuss?"
"You kissed me, Rhys. No audience. No performance. You kissed me and then walked away without a word and haven't spoken to me since."
"What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to tell me the truth." I pull the mat tighter around my legs. "Was it real?"
He turns from the window. Lightning catches his face again—the tight jaw, the shadows under his eyes, the way he's holding himself together with visible effort. "Does it matter?"
"It matters to me."
"Why?" He moves closer, and I feel the temperature shift—the cold that follows him, mixing with the damp air. "We have an arrangement. Business terms. Your words."
"My words." I laugh, and it comes out bitter. "You're the one who shoved a wolf away from me because he offered to carry blocking pads. You're the one who said you couldn't breathe when I walked into the ballroom. Those weren't business terms, Rhys."
He sits on the opposite end of the mat. Close enough to touch if I reached. Far enough to pretend distance means something.
"Tell me about your mother."
The pivot is so abrupt I get whiplash. "What?"
"Your mother." His voice has changed—softer, stripped of its usual edge. "You never mention her. Nobody at Blackmoor seems to know anything about her."
"She died." The words come out automatic, rehearsed. "When I was six. Pneumonia. Wolves heal fast, but she was human, so she just... didn't."
"Were you close?"
"She used to sing to me when the transformations started." I don't know why I'm telling him this. The darkness makes it easier—his face just a shadow, his presence just warmth and cold existing side by side. "My first shifts started early. Three, maybe four. Incomplete, agonizing. She'd hold me through them, sing this song I can't even remember the words to anymore, just the melody."
My throat tightens. "After she died, the shifts got worse. Nobody held me through them. My father tried, but Grayson would scream if Dad spent too long with me—said he was choosing the halfblood over his real son. So Dad started leaving me alone during the shifts. Shutting the door. Letting me scream it out."
The rain fills the silence between us, and Rhys doesn't offer comfort. Doesn't say he's sorry. Just sits in the dark and listens, and somehow that's worth more than every empty condolence I've ever received.
"I grew up believing I was a mistake," I continue. "Not because anyone said it—though they did, plenty—but because my body told me every time I shifted. Every incomplete transformation. Every bone that cracked wrong. My own blood rejecting itself."
"You're not a mistake." His voice is rough. "Your blood isn't the problem. The people around you are."
"Is that personal experience talking?"
Silence. Long and loaded. I hear his breathing change—faster, shallower.
"My father—" He stops. Starts again. "My family has... expectations. Standards that can't be deviated from. When those standards aren't met, the consequences are—"
"Are what?"
Another flash of lightning, and I see his hand move to his back—an unconscious gesture, protective, like shielding an old wound.
"Severe," he finishes. "The consequences are severe."
"Rhys. What happened to you?"
"I can't." The words come out strangled. "Not yet. Maybe not ever."
The cottage groans under a gust of wind, and I shiver—actually shiver, my wet training clothes clinging to my skin. The temperature's been dropping since the storm hit, and the damp air cuts straight through the fabric.
"You're freezing." He's beside me before I register him moving. "Come here."
"I'm fine."
"Your teeth are chattering, Sloane." His hands find my arms, pulling me backward until my back presses against his chest. "Body heat. Basic survival."
"Since when do vampires generate body heat?"
"Since when do you argue with someone trying to keep you alive?" His arms wrap around me, and the cold of his skin gives way to something warmer underneath—the wolf hidden beneath the vampire surface, radiating heat he shouldn't possess.
I should pull away. Should maintain the distance that keeps this thing between us manageable, contained, fake. Instead I lean into him, my head falling back against his shoulder, and his arms tighten.
His hands start moving. Slow circles on my arms, my stomach, spreading warmth through the damp fabric. His palms press flat against my ribs, thumbs tracing the undersides of my breasts through my shirt. My breath catches.
"Still cold?" His lips brush the curve of my neck, and my spine arches involuntarily.
"You know I'm not."
"Then tell me to stop." His teeth graze my pulse point, and my hand flies back, gripping his hair. "Tell me this is fake. Tell me you don't want this."
I can't. Because his hands are sliding beneath my shirt now, palms hot against my bare stomach, fingers tracing up my ribcage. His mouth opens against my neck—tongue and teeth and the scrape of something sharp that makes me gasp his name.
"Again." The word vibrates against my skin. "Say my name again."
"Rhys—"
His hand cups my breast, and the sound I make doesn't belong to any version of me I recognize. I twist in his arms, facing him, and his mouth finds mine in the dark—slower than the kiss by the shed, deeper, his tongue sliding against mine while his hands map every inch of skin beneath my shirt.
My fingers pull at his collar, his hem, needing contact. His chest is bare under my palms—hard muscle, warm skin, the ridge of that scar beneath my fingertips. He flinches but doesn't pull away this time. My legs wrap around his waist, and his hips press forward, and the friction draws a groan from somewhere deep in his chest.
We stay tangled together on that mat for what feels like hours—hands everywhere, mouths everywhere, clothes shifted and pushed aside but never fully removed. The line between too far and not far enough blurs until I can't remember which side I'm supposed to be on.
After, we lie in the dark. My back against his chest, his arm draped heavy across my waist, his breath warm and steady on my neck. The storm has quieted to a steady drum against the roof.
"What are you really, Rhys?"
His body goes rigid behind me. Every muscle locks, his arm turning to iron across my stomach.
Lightning cracks outside—one final burst that floods the cottage in white light. I turn my head and catch his reflection in the rain-streaked window. His eyes blaze amber. Full, undeniable, wolf-gold burning through vampire gray.
The light fades. The amber doesn't—not immediately. It lingers for three, four, five heartbeats before the gray swallows it back.
He says nothing. His arm stays locked around me, his heart hammering against my spine, and the silence between us holds more truth than any answer he could give.