Moonroom is here!
Nora, Doyun, Riven, and the rest of AURORA7 are back, and things are only getting messier.
Hello Kittens
Moonroom is officially here, and I keep typing that, then staring at it, because this book took a lot out of me. It was messy, emotional, stubborn, and there were definitely days when I wondered why I had done this to myself, but I am so proud of where it landed. Nora means the world to me. Mara does too. Doyun and Riven have my whole heart. I even have a soft spot for Jae, which, honestly, has been complicated for everyone involved.
Moonroom is book two in the Starbound Idols series, so if you have not read Afterbite yet, this is me gently pointing you toward book one first. Afterbite is the bite, and Moonroom is the aftermath, when the shock wears off, the room gets quiet, and nobody gets to pretend what happened was simple.
This story stays with the hard part. Nora is cared for, but care does not magically make her okay. Jae feels sorry, but sorrow is only the beginning of repair. The bond is real, but fate does not get to fix everything or excuse the damage.
Moonroom is about consent, trust, damage, repair, and the very uncomfortable space where being wanted and feeling safe do not always line up. Nora has been pulled into a world she did not ask for, surrounded by instincts, guilt, need, and very loud opinions about what should happen next, but she still has to be the one who chooses, and that choice is the center of the book for me.
Nora is funny when she is overwhelmed, stubborn when she is scared, and trying to understand her own body while the world around her keeps insisting it already knows what she means. Mara is beside her, loud and loyal and ready to fight absolutely anyone who looks at Nora wrong. Doyun is soft, careful, and stronger than people expect him to be. Riven watches more than he says, and once he moves, he means it.
AURORA7 remains AURORA7, which means they are beautiful, supernatural, emotionally complicated men with entirely too many secrets, not nearly enough coping skills, and a group dynamic that makes me want to shake them and hug them at the same time. So, obviously, I wrote another whole book about them.
If Afterbite was the moment everything changed, Moonroom is the room after: the place where Nora has to figure out what safety feels like, where chosen touch means more than fate, and where desire, fear, and trust are tangled together, because healing is not clean, and love does not erase what hurt.
Moonroom is live now, and if you have been waiting to fall back into AURORA7’s mess with me, it is ready for you.
You can grab your copy here:
http://www.books2read.com/moonroom
If you read it, review it, share it, yell at me about it, message me about it, or quietly sit with it and have feelings, thank you. Truly. Indie books survive because readers show up for them, and every review, every post, every recommendation, every “okay but Riven though” helps more than you know.
Thank you for loving Nora. Thank you for being furious for her. Thank you for understanding Doyun. Thank you for letting Riven be quiet until he is ready. Thank you for giving this messy, damaged, supernatural idol pack a place in your head too.
Welcome back to the Moonroom.
XOXO,
Kat
Chapter 1 - Seoul Is Not Home - Nora
I had agreed to Seoul in writing, which turned out to be very different from watching it rise through the clouds beneath me.
I had read my return ticket confirmation seventeen times between Chicago and Seoul. My thumb knew the path to the file without looking. Confirmation number. Passenger name. Vale, Nora. Chen, Mara. Departure: Seoul. Arrival: Chicago O’Hare. The date sat there in black text, ordinary enough to be insulting after what it had taken to get anyone to put it there: legal pressure, managers, idols, and one alpha wolf who had finally learned that not speaking for me was the bare minimum.
The plane dipped, and my stomach followed half a second later. I made a small sound through my nose and tightened my fingers around the armrest. Mara had been pretending to sleep with fierce commitment, probably because she knew I would tell her to rest if she opened her eyes. The second I made that sound, her head lifted from the seat beside me.
“You’re green,” she said, her voice rough from the hours of bad sleep she had managed in pieces.
“I’m not green.”
“You’re airport-bathroom green.” She blinked hard and tightened her hand around the edge of her blanket. “That’s a concerning shade.”
“I’m fine.” My voice came out too thin to be convincing, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “I’m not going to throw up.”
“That’s exactly what people say right before they ruin everyone’s shoes.”
“I’m not ruining anyone’s shoes.” I swallowed hard as the plane gave another subtle tilt. “I might embarrass myself badly enough that dignity gives up on me.”
Mara reached for my hand, and I gave it to her without pretending I did not need to.
Her fingers were cool and familiar around mine, her thumb sweeping once across my knuckles. She smelled like stale coffee, airport soap, and the last stubborn trace of the vanilla lip balm she kept losing and rebuying. I knew the rhythm of her breathing, the tiny catch in it when she was trying not to cry, and the way her hand tightened right before she made a joke, because Mara never let fear have the room for long.
Behind us, someone shifted, and I did not turn around because my body already knew too much. AURORA7 filled the cabin in layers I did not know how to sort yet, seven bodies behind me, muted under blockers and still impossible for my new omega senses to ignore. Doyun was warm sweetness somewhere behind me, fox only because I knew now and could not unknow it. Riven was darker, quieter, tucked so tightly under blocker that I had to work to notice him until my pulse did it for me. Hajoon carried the faint trace of citrus candy because he had been handing them out three hours ago, as if sugar could steady a room full of people who did not know what to do with me. Taeho was coffee, paper, ozone, and something strange enough that I kept catching myself tracking the cabin lights like they might blink in code.
Maybe Doyun only registered as fox-warm because Mara had spent months pairing his face with charms and fan edits, and maybe Taeho only felt strange because I knew, now, that the raven had never been just branding, but my body did not care. It kept sorting them anyway.
Jae was underneath all of it, the one scent I did not want and could not mistake. He sat several rows back on the opposite side of the cabin, angled toward the window with a focus that looked forced even from where I sat. He had not touched me since the hotel. He had barely looked at me unless someone asked him a direct question that involved my safety. He had done exactly what I told him to do, which should have made breathing easier, but the mark at my neck still throbbed with the steady, awful awareness of him.
I had known bond bites were serious before any of this. Everyone knew. There were laws and counseling recommendations and family horror stories and public service campaigns with soft lighting and serious beta narrators explaining consent like people with teeth could not be trusted to remember it on their own. I had known what a claim meant in the world I thought I understood, but I had not known a person could sit twenty feet away and still feel like a hand pressed under my ribs.
Mara looked down at the place where our hands were locked together. “I really did forget the Dramamine.”
A laugh slipped out of me, weak and startled. “You realized that already.”
“I’m realizing it again with more shame.”
“You remembered card sleeves for a concert that got interrupted by a secret shifter mate-bite crisis.”
“They were already in my bag.”
“You remembered three portable chargers.”
“Those are survival tools.”
“You remembered printed copies of my return ticket confirmation because you said digital copies were how people got trapped in thrillers.”
Mara lifted my hand and pressed it briefly against her forehead. “And yet, I failed you in the motion sickness aisle.”
“I’ll add it to the legal review.”
That got a real smile from her, small and exhausted, but enough that something in my chest loosened. The last twenty-four hours had taken pieces out of both of us. I could see it in the faint smudge under her eyeliner, the tension around her mouth, and the way she kept checking the aisle even when no one moved. Mara used to fill silence because silence bored her. Now she watched the aisle every few seconds. She smiled at me, then checked whether Riven had caught the joke. She made jokes with her thumb still pressed over my pulse, like she could hold me in place by touch alone.
In the hotel, she had put her body between mine and the door before security finished saying the word transport. She had asked every question twice when the first answer came too smooth. When my voice got buried under the heat, the bite, and the awful relief of Jae’s scent, Mara had leaned close enough for her hair to brush my cheek and said, “Blink once if you want me to keep being a problem.”
A soft chime came through the cabin, and one of the flight attendants stepped into the aisle, polished and calm in a way that made me feel worse. “We’ve begun our descent into Seoul. Please make sure your seatbelts are fastened.”
The word Seoul did not have to be repeated. Doyun lifted his head. Riven opened his eyes from where he had been resting with one hand loose around Doyun’s wrist. Hajoon stopped halfway through folding a blanket he had absolutely already folded twice. Taeho looked toward the window as if the city might send him a coded message before we landed. Seven’s posture sharpened. Yul went very still.
Behind me, Jae’s breath changed, one inhale too deep, one exhale held half a second too long, and the bond caught it and pushed it through me like it had a right to be inside me. Something sour and heavy slid through my ribs first, the same pressure that had lived under my skin since the hotel, the same silent apology I had never given him permission to send through me. Under that came a cold snap, then heat, immediate and hard, buried so violently my own jaw tightened with the effort. The wolf moved under his skin, restless and contained, because we were descending into his territory with his bitten omega sitting far enough away to be a rule and close enough to be torture.
I closed my eyes and shoved against the thought before it could settle. The bond did not care how hard I resisted. It pressed meaning into me through pulse, heat, and the awful awareness of Jae forcing himself still behind me. Maybe he felt the edge of my refusal. Maybe shifter bonds came with emotional trespassing in both directions, because my refusal must have reached him. His breath stopped behind me, and mine tried to copy it.
I opened my eyes and stared down at my phone, where the ticket was still there. My name. Mara’s name. Dates we had chosen because I had refused to get on this plane without proof that leaving did not mean surrendering the shape of my life completely. The flights were booked both ways, which had become more than a travel detail somewhere between Chicago and the clouds. They were proof that I had made them leave one door open.
I did not open the document. I did not have to. I could see the lines in my head because I had watched Mara type them with both thumbs while Riven stood by the hotel window and said nothing unless we asked him. Outside legal review before signatures. Jobs and apartments handled only with approval. No one spoke for us. No private access for Jae. No forgiveness hidden inside logistics. This trip meant answers, medical support, shifter information, and a return date I could point to if anyone forgot I had one.
The screen stayed open until the letters started to swim. Mara had made me screenshot it. Riven had watched me email it to myself. Doyun had quietly suggested sending a copy to Dr. Patel too, because he had listened when I talked about my boss and understood, somehow, that proof felt more real when someone from my old life held it.
The words old life formed before I could stop them. My throat tightened, and for one stupid second I could see my couch exactly as I had left it, the blue blanket tucked into the corner because I had crossed the room to straighten it even though I was already late.
Twenty-four hours ago, my apartment had still smelled like clean laundry, old coffee grounds, and the vanilla candle I kept forgetting not to buy. My couch blankets had been folded the way I liked them. Riverbend Animal Care had been my job, and Mara’s concert had been the disruption, one loud, expensive night I was going to survive because I loved my best friend.
Now the skin beneath my collar pulsed with damage I could not undo. Heat moved under my skin in waves I had no language for yet. Beneath the clouds, the world kept getting larger every time I looked, unfamiliar morning pressing against the small oval window.
“You’re doing that thing,” Mara said.
“What thing?”
“The thing where your face gets very calm and your hand tries to break mine.”
I loosened my grip immediately. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just maybe don’t turn my fingers into paste.”
I rubbed my thumb over the side of her hand in apology, and she leaned her shoulder into mine. The contact helped. It should not have been enough, but it helped. The plane banked, and the world beyond the oval window tilted into view.
For a second, all I saw was cloud. Then Seoul came into view in pieces, roads and towers and water cutting through gray morning haze, too much city for my tired brain to turn into anything useful. It did not look like the curated clips Mara had shown me, all neon streets and stage-lit rooftops and soft-focus café windows where fans imagined their idols drinking iced Americanos between heartbreak and choreography. It looked real, which was worse. It looked like it would still be there no matter how badly I wanted to wake up somewhere else.
My stomach turned again, but this time I did not think it was the plane. Mara followed my gaze. “Oh,” she whispered.
For once, she did not add anything, no trivia, no fan context, no breathless explanation of which district mattered for which music show, which bridge had shown up in which tour VCR, which neighborhood HALO swore Riven had accidentally leaked in a reflection once. She just looked, hand tight around mine, and let Seoul become real beside me.
Across the aisle, Doyun shifted, and I felt him before I looked at him, which was another entry on the growing list of things I hated needing to understand. He did not lean into the aisle. He did not reach for me. He only turned his head and waited until I looked back, and somehow that restraint made my skin prickle. When I turned, he was watching from two rows ahead, seatbelt fastened, hair sleep-mussed, eyes gentle and too awake.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
His English was quiet and carefully pitched not to carry, but Riven heard it. Hajoon did too. Across the aisle, Mara’s thumb pressed once into my hand, and apparently my okay-ness had become a group project.
I wanted to say yes because it was easier. “No.”
Doyun’s face changed, not dramatically, not in a way anyone else might have noticed from farther away. His mouth softened. His shoulders dropped a fraction. Something quick moved behind his eyes, too fox-sharp to be only human and too kind to look at for long.
“Okay,” he said first, too quickly, like he wanted to fix the answer before it could hurt. Then he caught himself, swallowed, and softened. “Thank you for telling me.”
That nearly undid me more than if he had tried to comfort me, which was deeply unfair.
Riven leaned forward from beside him, one forearm braced on his thigh. He did not soften the way Doyun did. He watched the cabin, the staff, the faint reflection of Jae in the window behind me, and then me.
“We land, private customs, then vehicles,” he said, and his eyes flicked once to Mara before coming back to me. “Security knows she stays with you. Nobody separates you. If someone forgets, I remind them.”
My brain grabbed the sequence because order was easier than fear. Land. Customs. Vehicles. Stay with Mara. Nobody separates us. The words lined up neatly while my pulse refused to follow.
Mara lifted her chin. “I can remind them too.”
“I know,” Riven said, and there was the faintest edge of approval in it. “That’s why I said it where they could hear me.”
Her mouth pressed together like she was trying not to like him, and under different circumstances, I would have saved that look for later mockery. Instead, I tucked it beside the return ticket and the copies of my terms, another small thing I could point to when my body tried to confuse carefulness with safety.
No one reached without pausing first. No one shifted closer without checking my face. Even their quiet had edges, all that control pressed around me until I could feel the shape of the space they were leaving open.
The plane dropped lower, and my ears popped. The skin at my neck prickled, and the pressure in my chest tightened, pulling backward before I let myself turn my head. Jae did not move in any way anyone could see, but the bond pulled my awareness back to him, sharp and unwanted as Seoul came closer. My body supplied the words home ground, even though the thought did not feel like mine.
Korean moved softly between the flight attendant and one of the guards near the front. Jae did not look away from the window, but the guard glanced back toward him before answering. It was small, maybe nothing, but my body noticed anyway. Around him, people adjusted before he spoke.
Mara glanced at me, her eyes narrowing in the way that meant she had caught something but did not know which piece of it mattered most. I breathed through my nose, which was a mistake because the cabin was still full of them, and the blockers were not enough anymore. Maybe it was descent. Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe my body had decided that blooming late meant making up for lost time by noticing every breath, shift, and heartbeat in the cabin.
Hajoon stood as much as his seatbelt allowed, then remembered the seatbelt and sat back down immediately. The sudden movement made my shoulders jump, and he froze, apology already written across his face.
“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I have ginger candies.”
“That’s very on brand,” Mara muttered, her fingers tightening around mine until I looked back at her instead of the aisle.
Hajoon blinked like he was trying to decide whether he had been insulted.
Mara lifted one shoulder. “Not an insult. Probably.”
A tiny, helpless laugh moved through the cabin. Taeho smiled at the window. Doyun looked down at his lap. Even Riven’s mouth shifted, barely. Jae stayed silent behind me.
Hajoon reached into the bag beside his seat and produced a small tin. He hesitated before passing it to Doyun, as if even the offer needed permission to cross the aisle. Doyun handed it to Riven, and Riven held it out without moving into my space. Three pairs of hands, no one leaning too close, no one asking me to be grateful for the distance. I took one before my throat could decide what to do with that. “Thank you.”
Hajoon nodded once, relief bright and painful across his face. “They help me after long flights.”
“You get motion sick too?”
“Sometimes.” He glanced toward the window, then back at me. “Mostly when I wait too long to admit I’m not.”
I looked down at the candy wrapper instead of answering, because apparently even ginger came with an uncomfortable amount of truth. Sugar and ginger bloomed sharp enough to cut through the stale air, and my stomach did not settle, exactly, but it reconsidered its more dramatic options.
The landing gear lowered with a mechanical shudder, and my whole body locked. Mara squeezed my hand. “Breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
“You’re doing the decorative version.”
“I hate flying.”
“I know.”
“I hate landing more.”
“I know that too.”
“I hate that I’m doing it in a plane full of men who can probably smell fear.”
Taeho leaned enough into the aisle for me to catch one dark eye over the seat back. “Only a little.”
Riven turned his head slowly from the row ahead of me. “Taeho.”
“What?” Taeho settled back with both hands raised where Riven could see them. “I said only a little.”
Mara twisted in her seat, still holding my hand. “That was not comforting, bird boy.”
Taeho’s eyebrows lifted. “Bird boy?”
“You heard me.”
He looked delighted, which made no sense and also somehow fit him perfectly. “I’ve been called worse.”
“Focus,” Riven said, but his voice had less bite than it could have.
Taeho glanced toward the window, then back at me, and the joke softened on his face before he could push it too far. “I’m choosing not to make it worse.”
“Growth,” Mara muttered.
I should not have laughed. It came out breathless and a little broken, but it was still a laugh. Doyun’s shoulders lowered. Hajoon sat back against his seat. Even Riven looked down for half a second, mouth softening before he caught it.
Then the runway rose to meet us, and the wheels hit hard enough to punch the breath out of me. The cabin rattled, engines roaring as the plane slowed. Mara’s hand clamped around mine. My shoulder pressed into hers. Heat flashed under my skin. Pain sparked under my collar. My fingers dug into Mara’s until she hissed through her teeth, and some new, animal part of me slammed hard against my ribs because the metal tube was moving too fast and every person around me seemed to know what happened after it stopped.
Jae did not move in any way anyone else could see, but the bond surged hard enough that my vision blurred. Wolf and man both hit the limits he had forced around himself, then stopped hard when he held the line. His need to come to me hit hard enough to make my jaw ache. He stayed where he was, and the awful part was that my body noticed before my anger could reject it.
The plane slowed. The engine noise dropped from a roar to a heavy whine. My ears rang in the sudden almost-quiet, and Mara leaned close until her cheek nearly touched my shoulder.
“Welcome to Seoul?” she said.
I stared out the window at the runway, the service vehicles, the distant terminal buildings, and the pale morning sky over a city that was not mine. My phone was still open on the ticket. The mark under my collar still pulled toward him. My best friend still held my hand, and behind me, the bond still knew exactly where he was.
Ginger burned at the back of my tongue. The ticket glowed on my phone screen. Heat gathered under my collar, and Seoul sat outside the window, waiting. Seoul was not home, just the place I had agreed to enter because I had an exit door in writing.
