The snow had fallen softly throughout the night, blanketing the courtyard in silence. Past midnight, it glittered like spilled glass, but it didn’t melt beneath my boots. Cold clung to me like breath held too long. I didn’t know where I was going when I woke from my sleepwalking, and at first, disoriented, I didn’t return to my quad. I just walked. Restless.
The dreams hadn’t stopped.
They weren’t nightmares. Not exactly. But they left me flushed, disoriented, and craving something I couldn’t name. My dreams of late were a tangled mess of Halven’s frozen face and Neir’s golden eyes, the two images bleeding into one another until I no longer knew what was memory and what was a warning. Neir’s voice lingered longest. That low, steady cadence that could part silence like a blade. I didn’t trust him, not truly. But I couldn’t stay away either.
The pull to the cold, to the quiet of Wintermere, was an instinct I couldn't ignore.
When I reached the path that bordered the outside of the academy, my boots leaving shallow prints, I saw him.
The wolf.
Silver-blue fur, thick as moonlight, golden eyes glowing like embers under frost. He stood between the black-boned trees beyond the hedge line, half in shadow, half in snow. Watching me. Always watching.
He couldn’t be a creature of this world, not entirely with as beautiful as he was. His gaze found mine across the snowy expanse, and his eyes glowed with a soft, familiar gold.
He didn’t growl. Didn’t beckon. Just turned and walked.
No fear touched me. Only a deep, humming curiosity, a magnetic pull that felt as old as the moon itself. A part of me walking away, yet drawing me forward.
He turned his head, a silent invitation, and then padded gracefully back into the trees. I followed without hesitation.
Branches scraped the sky above us as I trailed his broad shape down the embankment, onto a winding, forgotten path that sloped toward the frozen lake. The air grew colder, sharper. He never looked back, as if he knew I would not stop. Until we came to the magnificent stone bridge that arched from Nivara Hall to the south, crossing Wintermere Lake.
The wolf stopped in a hollow shelter beneath the arch of the bridge. It was a secluded space, sheltered from the wind, the heavy stone arches creating a private grotto of snow and shadow.
I held my breath as he turned. His gaze met mine, steady and sure. The muted light from the snow-dusted sky cast him in shades of blue and gray. For a long moment, we just stood there, the only sound the soft whisper of falling snow. And then, like mist being pulled away from a mountain, the shift began.
It was seamless. His shape unraveled and reformed, silver fur peeling back like smoke until bare skin emerged. The man who stood in the snow was tall, lean, all sculpted muscle and quiet command. His blue-shot hair was wild, dusted with snowflakes that melted against its darkness. Steam rose from his warm skin to meet the cold air, swirling around him like a mystical shroud. And he was completely, devastatingly naked.
My breath caught.
It was just like our dreams. Every detail, down to the angle of his collarbone, the curve of his mouth. Every defined line down his body. Only now, it was real. Twice he’d been real in front of me, but not this version of him. This version that laid everything bare. The version that held me, kissed me. The line between my sleeping world and my waking one collapsed entirely. This was no longer a dream I could control or a vision I could dismiss.
My mind raced. I wanted to ask about Halven, about Lady Isa, about the magic I felt coiled in the ice of the lake. I wanted to demand the truth. My lips parted, the words forming on my tongue, but they never had the chance to escape.
He crossed the snow between us and kissed me.
The kiss was not cruel, not soft. But it was inevitable.
His mouth met mine with a quiet ferocity, as though the world had been waiting for this moment to exhale. I didn’t pull away. I couldn’t. All the questions, all the suspicions, they all dissolved under the raw, possessive pressure of his lips. My lips parted, and he deepened the kiss, hands bracing lightly at my hips, his thumbs dragging just slightly against my robes as if to say he had imagined this before, in a place beyond our dreams.
And gods help me, so had I.
When he pulled back, his voice was low and rough, still breathless, his golden eyes blazing down at me. “After that last dream, I couldn’t wait to give you everything you begged for.”
A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold ran down my spine. I remembered the dream vividly. Our naked bodies tangled on the dream-lake shore, my own voice whispering his name, pleading for him to take me, stopping just short of that final, irreversible step. He had heard. He had remembered. And now, he was here to finish what we had started.
My breath misted between us, a fragile cloud in the frigid air. I tried to find my footing, to anchor myself in the cold, hard reality of the moment, but his presence was a tide pulling me under. I needed to regain control.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to stop anything.
But I forced myself to speak. “I barely know you.”
A flimsy shield against the heat in his gaze.
He laughed, a low, soft sound that did nothing to cool the air. “Lust needs no knowledge, Little Moon.”
His hands slid from my hips to the small of my back, drawing me closer until our bodies were almost touching.
“You’re so old,” I tried again, my voice unsteady. The fact felt absurd, a desperate grasp for logic in a situation that defied it.
“Lust doesn’t care about age,” he murmured, his mouth hovering just above mine.
I tilted my head back, my heart hammering against my ribs. Was that all this was? A primal, thoughtless urge? The question clawed its way out of me, sharp and defensive. “So that’s all this is then? Lust?”
The question landed, and something in his expression shifted. The raw, predatory heat in his eyes softened, replaced by something deeper, more complex. He didn't pull away, but the passionate energy between us quieted, becoming something more intimate, more profound.
That silence almost hurt. But then he reached up, fingers brushing a loose strand of hair from my cheek.
“No. It is not just lust. Not for me.” He brushed a stray snowflake from my cheek, his touch gentle before returning his hand to my lower back. “I have been in your dreams, Rielle. I have listened while you spoke of your duty, of your fears for your people. I have seen the strength you carry, the weight of your lineage. I do not see it as a burden. I see it as a part of you.”
His honesty was disarming. He knew me. Not just the dreamer who pulled him into her fantasies, but the woman beneath. But did he also know the other part of what drove me to find him?
He leaned his forehead against mine, his eyes closing for a moment. His breath fogged between us in soft bursts. I should have stepped back. I should have drawn the line between dream and reality more firmly. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
His hands slid up my back, keeping me pressed to the heat of his bare chest. The contrast of warmth and cold made my head spin, and I closed my eyes.
I didn’t know what this was. And I knew I had to ask him about Halven, about his magic in the lake. But I wanted to know what came next.
“I would take all of you,” he whispered, the confession a raw, vulnerable thing as he cupped my cheek. “Your duty, your doubts, your heart. But I would take any part of you that you are willing to give me.”
It wasn’t a line. It wasn’t manipulation. It was quiet truth. The kind that offered no pressure, only permission. He was giving me all the control. And in that moment of surrender, a wild, desperate hope bloomed in my chest. Could this be more than lust?
Did I want more?
Did I even have a choice, because every time I thought of no longer seeing Neir in my dreams, it felt like I would lose a piece of myself, like I would no longer be whole. And in knowing that, I realized I had never been whole before.
I looked up into his gaze, his truth there for me.
“Do you believe in the Moon Fae concept of Soul Halves?” he asked.
I took a sharp breath, the air stalling in my lungs. Was he saying we were soul halves? A concept that a soul split before birth to experience different things, to live life separately, but if they found each other, there was no out running their other half.
I started to shake my head, not because I didn’t believe in soul halves, but because I was destined to marry one Moon Fae males back home.
Except...
A hope I hadn’t dared to entertain before something shifted inside me. “You told me you’re half Moon Fae.”
“Yes.”
He had been in my dreams. Heard my thoughts, spoken with me in that strange half-realm where longing and fear could mingle freely. He knew things about me no one else had bothered to learn. And when he kissed me, it wasn’t like I imagined it would be to kiss a stranger. It was like exhaling something I had been holding for far too long.
I looked up at him, at the solemn tilt of his head, the quiet ache in his eyes.
The pieces of an impossible puzzle clicked into place. “With you… it’s possible. To fulfill my duty.”
My sacred duty, to keep the Moon Fae alive. The one that now tethered me like a chain.
He could be the one. Not a temptation that would lead me from my path, but the path itself. And maybe my soul half.
His eyes didn’t waver. He didn’t confirm any of my words. But he didn’t deny it, either.
The truth was in his eyes, in the way he looked at me, as if he understood the monumental weight of what I was offering. And in his silence, I finally, completely, let go.
I rose on my toes and kissed him, and this time, it was my own choice, my own surrender.
The dream draws them together, and this time, neither one pulls away. The moonlight is sacred, the snow is silent, and desire is inevitable. Continue the story in the way that feels right for you:
Closed Door: A tender merging of souls beneath the bridge, felt, not described.
Spicy: Their bodies and magic entwine in the hush of night. Come deeper into the dream.