My mouth dropped open when I realized I’d not only met but spoken to the moon goddess. Could that be why she felt familiar? Honestly, I don’t even remember how she looked now. Only her presence stuck in my head. Her aura was unforgettably beautiful. It was like she left an indelible mark on me just by being there. The way she spoke, and moved, everything about her felt otherworldly and mesmerizing.

I should have known.

Bracing myself against the stone wall beside me, I ground myself as the warmth from the goddess” touch slowly drained from my chest.

Caelum walked closer, slower than usual. Almost a bit cautious. As if I was fragile, or even sacred. He looked around like he was looking for her.

“My whole life, I’ve tended to this place. Kept the flames burning. Offered words that never felt like they were mine. But she’s never spoken to me.”

I turned to face him after he said that. The way he spoke was too casual for someone who usually sounded cryptic and all that.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“She’s never appeared here.” His voice was quiet. “Not once. Not to me.”

My eyebrows furrowed. “But you’re the Temple Keeper.”

He gave me a dry, almost bitter smile. “Exactly.”

I blinked at him. He said it like that truth had long since stopped hurting. Then again, maybe it hadn’t, and he’d just built walls around it.

He stepped closer, but I didn’t back away. I caught his scent again; the earth after rain, pine needles, old magic. It disrupted my equilibrium and threw me off-balance. The sensation made my skin prickle and my heart beat quickly.

It stirred up the mate bond. More visceral and harder this time. I should’ve asked him to step back, but I didn’t.

Instead, I turned toward the low table in the corner, the one with the ceramic canister I hadn’t noticed before.

My throat clenched. “Why are you watching me like that?”

He hesitated, then said, “Because you look like her.”

That threw me for a loop. “The goddess?”

He nodded. “No, not to your face, I have no idea what she looks like. In your presence.”

I had no name for what I felt after hearing that. “I don’t feel like her,” I said softly. “I feel like a mistake everyone’s waiting to either worship or burn.”

There was no laughter or reaction from him. All he did was step closer. “You’re not a mistake.”

Those words shouldn’t have meant anything, but they did. He stopped a breath away from me, his gaze fixed on mine, and I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want his scent to intoxicate me.

“Is that tea?” I asked, the words spilling out before I could catch them. Getting away from him was the best thing for me.

Caelum followed my line of sight to the low table, then moved past me without speaking. He knelt and began preparing it with a silence that made it feel like a ritual.

“Tea or wine?” he asked without looking at me.

“Excuse me?”

He poured hot water into two stone cups. “You’ve had a long night,” he said. “Tea or wine?”

I stared at him. “You’re offering me tea after I had a spiritual ambush from the goddess of the moon?”

“I find that’s when tea is most useful.”

With a huff, I said, “I would’ve thought it called for wine.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Wine dulls the mind, tea sharpens it.” He held one of the steaming cups to me. “And I think you’ll need clarity tonight.”

I stared for a moment, then walked over and took the cup from his hand. “Fine,” I muttered.

We sat in silence for a while, my palms warming against the cup. It wasn’t anything special, just a simple, comforting sensation that made me feel more connected to myself. As for the aroma, it was pleasant, not too overwhelming, just soothing.

“She said I’d have to make a sacrifice,” I muttered, collapsing into the nearest chair. “Then she said I already knew what it was.”

I didn’t get a response right away. He just watched the steam rise.

“You do know,” he said finally.

I lifted the cup but didn’t drink. The steam curled around my fingers, warm but useless.

“If I say I don’t, will you lie to me and say it’ll all make sense soon?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“Didn’t think so.” I stared down into the tea. “In her words, I am both a weapon and a wound, and the hinge on which Anarion turns.”

The tightening in my throat got worse. I didn’t mean to share any of this. But once I started spilling, I couldn’t stop.

“The most frustrating part is that I’ve never wanted to matter. Not like this. I just wanted to survive. Maybe have something that belonged to me. A choice. A life that didn’t feel like a test I forgot to study for.”

Caelum was quiet.

“You’re not the first person to feel that way,” he said finally. “But you might be the last one to pretend otherwise.”

When I set the cup down, it hit the table harder than I wanted. “So what’s next? You keep Damien on a leash, and hope I don’t implode before the convergence starts?”

I couldn’t tell if it was because of Damien’s name or the convergence, but his jaw tensed.

“The convergence,” I said. “What is it?”

His jaw flexed, then he exhaled.

“It’s the final unbinding,” he said. “The moment when the bloodlines split by the goddess are drawn back together. It’s a collapse. A drawing in of every fractured line in the dominion—wolves, witches, hybrids, gods. All of it.”

I felt my stomach twist. “And I’m supposed to pull it together?”

“You’re the only one who can,” he said. “Your blood carries both the past and the price. You were born where the threads break.”

“Born to unravel,” I said.

This time he didn’t smile. He just stared at me with that infuriating stillness.

“Anarion falls if the convergence fails. Not to war, but to stagnation. The river will rise. Magic will fracture. Our people will fade into myth,” Caelum explained.

“And if it succeeds?”

He looked down at the tea in his hands. “You’ll lose something you’ll never get back.”

There was a slight break in his voice, and suddenly the room felt claustrophobic. He took a deep breath and met my gaze again. “But it’s not just about what you’ll lose. The convergence will change you irreversibly.”

“You speak like you’ve seen it,” I whispered. “Like it’s already happened.”

“I’ve dreamed of it,” he said with a small shrug. “Since I was a boy. I didn’t know your face, but I knew your absence. I felt the ache where you were supposed to be. I carried it like an old injury. And when I finally saw you, it stopped hurting.”

“I don’t understand.” I breathed.

“It’s not something I can explain easily,” he said. “But now it’s back. Every time I close my eyes, I see it again—the way things could break. I see the river overflowing, the magic unravelling, and I hear the silence where our people once stood. It’s all there, waiting.”

I felt a tug in my chest. It was almost violent, like he needed me to console him. Taking a shaky breath, I tried to ignore how much my hands were trembling. With each shaky breath, my pulse raced. He was staring at me like I was real, like nothing else he’d ever seen before.

“You’re” perplexing,” I whispered. “For someone so rigid, you seem’” I tried to think of a good word. “Open. In here, at least.”

He smiled a little. Almost sad. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you since I first dreamed about you. But now that you’re here, it feels like I’ve known you forever and yet not at all. It’s strange, like trying to hold onto smoke, familiar yet elusive.” The look in his eyes was a combination of longing and doubt. “Maybe that’s what makes this so hard to explain.”

I wasn’t sure how to react. I hadn’t expected to have this conversation at all with him. He had a vulnerability in his gaze that drew me toward him despite my protests.

“It didn’t help to know you’re already in love with him,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

My chest tightened. “You have the gift of premonition, then?” I asked softly.

He nodded. “Not in flashes or visions. Just feelings. Impressions. Sometimes I see pieces. Sometimes I just know something before it happens.”

I hesitated, then asked what I’d been thinking about. “There are a few things I don’t understand. Can you clarify for me?”

“Of course.”

He didn’t even hesitate.

I looked around the shrine again. “You said nobody finds this place unless they’re called.”

His expression changed. “Until you found it, I was the only one who knew about it. It exists between planes, outside the reach of the dominion, even the Pale Grove’s outer borders. It’s where I go to remember who I am, not what’s expected of me.”

He turned toward the stone altar in the corner, which appeared to be pulsing with magic. “It was my sanctuary, and now it’s yours.”

I swallowed hard. “Nobody else knows it’s here?”

“No one,” he said. “Not even Fabian. They’ve all passed it, walked near it, and seen nothing but mist and overgrowth.”

I moved closer to him without realising it. Our shoulders brushed, but he didn’t move. The bond flared again. Louder now. Familiar in a way that made my breath hitch. It wanted me closer, like our souls were caught in a slow orbit.

“What will I have to give up?” I asked.

He didn’t answer immediately. “The convergence demands a loss for balance.”

My pulse stuttered. “What kind of loss?” But I already knew it.

Caelum looked down at his hands. “Love. Loyalty. Maybe even life. I don’t know the shape of it. But I know it must matter.”

It was suddenly cold, so I wrapped my arms around myself. “I hate that,” I admitted.

“I know.”

I squinted at him. “You’ve known me for what—an hour? And you think you know that well?”

“I don’t think, Luna,” he said gently. “I feel it.”

I looked at him in full face, trying to read something in his eyes. “I feel a stronger bond with you than Fabian,” I said slowly. “Why is that?”

He stared at me, almost like he was deciding what to tell me. Those golden-amber eyes of his darkened, and his pupils dilated a little, as if the bond had just breathed through him.

Then he blinked and looked away.

“It would only make sense if we explored who your true mate is and why it matters who you mate with,” he murmured.

I wasn’t sure what I expected, but that wasn’t it. Here I thought he was done being cryptic with me. I stared, not sure if I was supposed to respond, argue, or ask the question I was suddenly afraid to ask. But Caelum turned and walked across the shrine toward a low cabinet carved into the stone wall.

He opened it, retrieved a small jar, and held it up to the low light. A dark, shimmering liquid sloshed inside.

“You’ll need alcohol for this conversation, Luna,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow, but didn’t argue.

He poured two measures into thin glass cups, as if handling something volatile. Which, in a way, we were.

He handed one to me and held the other in his palm for a beat before speaking again.

“Your bond with Fabian is real,” he said. “It’s nature.”

I swallowed a sip. The flavour was sharp and honeyed, and it burned a little bit on the way down.

“But with me,” he continued, “it’s order. You feel mine more because this is a design.”

I tensed up. “A design?”

“The goddess doesn’t deal in random chance. When she created the divide, she seeded a path to reunite it. One bloodline. One hinge. One mate to the wolf. One to the witch. But not just any wolf. Or any witch.”

I said nothing.

He stepped closer. “You were meant to bind the houses of power,” he said. “Wolves and witches alike. I was born to hold the legacy of the covens. And Kael’”

When I flinched, he stopped, as if he had said too much. But I wasn’t sure if I was flinching from the idea itself or from how easy it was becoming to accept it.

“I don’t want Kael,” I whispered.

“I know.” Caelum said softly. “And yet,” he continued, “you were drawn to him. Even before the bond awoke.”

“I was raised around him,” I snapped. “Admiring him from a distance as a remarkable alpha doesn’t mean I want to share a bed with him.”

He nodded but didn’t argue. “And Damien?” he asked.

I looked down at the cup in my hand. “He’s the only thing I’ve ever really chosen.”

The expression on Caelum’s face didn’t change, but his gaze burned.

“And that’s exactly why he can’t be part of it,” he said.

My eyes were wide open. “What?”

“You were never meant to choose,” he said, stepping closer. “You were meant to bind. To give. And in doing so, you will lose what you love most.”

The words sucked the air out of me, because I already knew.

Damien.

It was always going to be Damien. That was the cost. The sacrifice the goddess hadn’t named because I already knew what it was.

Then I stumbled back, breathless, and Caelum was there to steady me. His hand found my waist, and that touch alone set my soul on fire.

He leaned forward, his mouth near my ear, his breath warm against my skin.

“You feel it too,” he murmured. “Don’t you?”

I didn’t answer. There was no need to. Our connection had taken on a life of its own.

And my heart was already moving toward him.