My fingers toyed with the edge of a page, distracted, my mind still tangled in the dreams I couldn’t explain.
Then, without warning, I felt him.
The shift in air. The pull at the back of my mind. The pressure in my chest.
I looked up—and he was standing there.
He didn’t speak. Just watched me, arms at his sides, posture relaxed like he belonged in this room. As if this were any other meeting. As if we’d spoken before.
I rose slowly, heartbeat climbing fast and high.
“You,” I whispered, breath catching in my throat. “You’re real?”
His lips curved—not smug, not mocking. Just faintly amused. “Did you think I’d stay in your dreams forever, Little Moon?”
My throat tightened.
“You’ve been in them for weeks,” I said, voice quieter now. “But you never... I never knew your name.”
His eyes—shadow-rimmed and golden beneath dark lashes—held me still. I couldn’t tell his race. Too many conflicting markers. Gold eyes belonged to Summer creatures, but his blue hair came from Winter. He couldn’t possibly be born of both Summer and Winter, the two strongest seasons and opposing magics. Those creatures either didn’t live long or they were so powerful, others hunted them down and destroyed them.
Who is he?
“You never asked.”
That made her blink. “What?”
His head tilted slightly, and he took a step forward. She backed up, her calves bumping into the chair.
“You’re braver in dreams,” he murmured. “Bolder.”
“I apologize for summoning you. I’m not sure how I can even do that when I don’t know you.”
“You didn’t,” he said. “You didn’t summon me, but I was there, waiting, and you invited me. Every night.”
I swallowed. My palms were warm. I wiped them on my robes. “Why were you waiting?”
“Is that the question you really want to ask me?”
Hesitantly, I shook my head. “What are you doing here? In the real world?”
He took a slow step forward. “That’s a longer answer.”
“Will you tell me?”
“I would like to, Little Moon.”
I waited for his explanation. He didn’t answer—not with words. Instead, he reached out, brushing a strand of hair back from my cheek. His fingers lingered just barely—cool against my heated skin.
“You look just like you do in the dreams,” he said.
“You look clearer,” I murmured. “I’ve never seen your face.”
“Does it disappoint?”
“No,” I said, breathless. He was gorgeous even if I couldn’t tell his race. “Not even close.”
After that, I didn’t know who moved first.
Maybe it was him. Maybe it was her.
But the distance closed between us like breath caught on a current, like fate snapping shut. His hand slid to the back of my neck, firm and sure, and my lips found his like they’d done it before—over and over, in all those dark dreamscapes where logic didn’t matter and longing was louder than rules.
It was heated. Mutual. Deeply familiar.
And real.
So painfully, impossibly real.
That part terrified me.
His lips were warm, confident, coaxing me deeper, desire lit my inner being, and I wanted him—but it wasn’t a dream. This wasn’t a safe, secret illusion to dissolve when I woke. This had weight. Consequences.
The reason Halven and I broke up.
I pulled back abruptly, breath unsteady, my fingertips still pressed to the edge of his coat.
“I can’t… I shouldn’t. This can’t happen. I’m Moon Fae. My people… my future… it’s already decided.”
He watched me for a moment, unreadable. Then, with a glint of something too clever in his eyes, he said, “Good. Then let’s not talk about the future.”
The words disarmed me more than the kiss had.
I blinked. “Then tell me what you are doing here.”
He tilted his head slightly, the faintest hint of moonlight touching his cheekbones, filtering through the blue in his hair.
“I’m a guardian of old magic,” he said quietly. “Lady Isa asked me to visit. To check on the magic surrounding Nythral.”
I stared at him, trying to process that. Perhaps he was a special race I’d never learned about. The mystery caught me deeply. “What are you?”
“Something different.”
This thing between them still affected me, and I wonder if it was the same for him. I slid my hands up into his hair and stood on my tiptoes to press my lips against his.
He welcomed my advances, a groan low in his throat.
When I thought his desires matched mine, I broke our kiss and asked my question again. “What are you?”
His chest rumbled with his chuckle. “You’re sneaky, Little Moon.”
My brow furrowed. “Even though you wait for an invitation into my dreams, you are there every night, like a stalker. You come into my dreamscape, never saying a word, only kissing me. We’ve had more kisses than words exchanged between us. And when I ask a simple question of who you are, you can’t even give me your background or your name.”
His expression turned serious. “You make me sound like a villain out to steal your virtue.”
“There’s no virtue to be had. Besides, I like your kisses. But that’s not the point.”
“I suppose it isn’t. Well, then, my name is Neir. I have no race as I’m one of a kind, but I do have a people. I was raised among the Sun Clan of the Lunarclaws.”
“A werewolf?”
“Partially.”
When he didn’t add more, I said carefully, “I didn’t know werewolves could be guardians of anything magical, having no magic themselves.”
He smiled at that. A slow, crooked thing that made the air between us warm again.
“I’ve heard that before,” he said, taking a single step closer. “But like I said, only partially werewolf.”
The moonlight from the window caught his hand as he lifted it, and to my surprise, something shimmered—a soft silver glow coiling faintly around his fingers. Not showy. Not sharp. Just magic, elemental and sure, like fog curling over a frozen lake.
He has magic! My breath caught. And not any magic, but Moon magic. I felt it’s signature in the air. Users of the same element can tell what is being done with the magic. For a second, I almost panicked. A werewolf of the Sun Clan meant his very essence came from Summer but his magic was Winter.
Again, those opposing magics should kill him, or make him entirely too powerful and a possible threat to all of the world. Then another thought struck me.
Sun Clan werewolves were an antithesis of themselves. The Sun God’s magic bound with the Fire God’s magic worked in opposition to the Moon Goddesses blood during the genesis of the Sun God’s attempt to make his own werewolf. Because of that...
“There’s no eclipse. How are you in human form?”
“Aw, Little Moon. I can tell you’ve done your homework.” He brushed fingers over my cheek with his compliment.
Heat flushed my face, and not just from embarrassment.
He didn’t remark on my reaction. “Now you see why I came to you in your dreams. Once I saw you, I knew I wanted to know you. I didn’t realize you’d pull me into a performance right away.”
Now embarrassment did make my cheeks hurt. The first time, and almost every time since, Neir had come into my dreams had been to replace Halven with whom I was often sharing intimacies with.
But if what he said was true, then how was he in his human form now?
“The other half of my lineage allows me to take this shape from time to time, but it is very taxing.” With one hand sliding into my hair, his other snaked around my waist to pull me flush against him. “Let’s not waste what time I have left.”
All that heat—the pull I’d fought for weeks in my dreams—rushed up again like a wave crashing in my chest.
I didn’t want to stop this time.
Our mouths met in a kiss that was sharper, hungrier, hotter. I didn’t care who started it. I didn’t care what time it was, or where I was, or what I was supposed to be doing. His hands were on my hips, then sliding up my back, and my fingers tangled in his coat as if holding onto him could somehow explain all the pieces I didn’t understand.
I didn’t want to understand them. Not right now.
But somewhere, just beneath the kiss, a realization bloomed like ice across a windowpane.
This wasn’t a dream.
And in real life—there was always a cost.
My lips slowed.
I pulled back, heart thudding so hard I could feel it in my palms. With eyes still closed, I said, “I’m sorry.”
I stepped back, the cold of the stone floor finally registering through the soles of my boots.
His hands dropped slowly to his sides, not reaching for me again, not pushing me away either. He just stood there, watching me the same way he had in my dreams—like he already knew what I was going to do before I did it.
I didn’t move.
Not at first.
But then my voice found me again, quieter than before. “We can’t do this.”
His expression didn’t shift.
He only said, “We can.”
I swallowed, throat tight, something unsaid burning behind my teeth.
I left before I could ask another question. Before I could change her mind.
The sound of my footsteps echoed soft and shallow down the marble hall, swallowed quickly by distance.
I didn’t look back.
But I could feel him there, still standing in the shadows, still watching me go—as if this wasn’t the end.
As if it was just the beginning.
A Private Encounter
