Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 41 - Chapitre 50

Ciara's POVI couldn't sleep.I had changed, washed my face, sat on the edge of the bed and told myself firmly that the evening was over and there was nothing left to think about. That Isolde was simply a woman from Draven's past and past was exactly where she belonged. That the way she had looked at me across that dinner table was not my problem to solve tonight.I told myself all of this very reasonably.Then I got up and walked to the window and stood there looking out at the dark courtyard because sitting still wasn't working.She had known exactly where to touch his arm at dinner. Exactly how close to lean when she spoke to him. The familiarity of it had sat in my chest all evening like something I couldn't digest. And the conversation after dinner, all that warm concern wrapped around something sharp —My wolf stirred, low and restless."I know," I said quietly. To her, to myself, to no one in particular.I turned away from the window and decided that what I actually needed was

Kaden’s POVI had no answer for that."Ciara—" I said, trying to think of something."Do you know what that night was like for me?" she asked, her voice went an octave lower. "Not the rejection itself. After. Standing outside my father's house in the snow, kneeling on the steps because he told me to, because I had nowhere else to go and nothing left to go to." She held my gaze steadily. "I thought about not getting up. Genuinely thought about it. The cold was already in my bones and it would have been so much easier to simply — stop." She paused. "That is where your decision left me, Kaden. On my knees in the snow, considering whether surviving was worth the effort."The air went out of the space between us."I didn't know—""No," she said. "You didn't. Because you walked away and you didn't look back to see what you left behind." She wasn't attacking me. That was the hardest part. She was just telling me the truth with the steady, tired calm of someone who had already made her peace

Kaden's POVI walked fast.I would not run, would not give anyone watching the satisfaction of seeing the heir flee a training yard — but fast enough that the wolves I passed in the corridor moved aside without being asked, reading something in my face that made stepping out of the way the obvious choice.Good. I had nothing left for anyone right now.The maid came around the corner carrying a stack of folded linens and walked directly into my path. The collision sent the linens scattering across the floor, white fabric spreading across the stone, and she went down on one knee with a startled sound."I'm so sorry, my lord, I didn't see you, I—"The words hit me like a spark to dry tinder. The control I'd been gripping with both hands shattered instantly."Didn't see me?" My voice came out wrong, too loud, scraping against my own throat. "Didn't see me? I am the only person in this corridor wearing a lord's colors and you didn't see me?"She flinched backward, still on her knees, still

Kaden's POV"You want her, don't you?”she said. "Ciara." She said the name like it cost her something. "Don't stand there and insult my intelligence by denying it. I watched your face in that yard today. I watched you pull her away from him." She paused. "That wasn't politics, Kaden. That was a man who realized too late what he'd thrown away.""You don't know what you're talking about.""I know exactly what I'm talking about." She moved toward the window, restless, her composure cracking slightly at the edges in a way I hadn't seen from her before. "You rejected her and handed her directly to him. And now she looks at him the way she used to look at you, except worse — because what she feels for him is real and chosen, not arranged. And you have to watch that every single day in your own pack house."I said nothing.I couldn't. My jaw was clenched so tight my teeth ached. My hands were shaking. I wanted to hit something again. I wanted to hit her. I wanted to scream until my voice gav

Ciara's POVI did not walk back to my room.I ran.I wasn't sprinting — I had enough presence of mind to keep it just below that, to move fast without making it obvious to everyone I passed that I was a woman in full internal crisis — but fast enough that two maids flattened themselves against the corridor wall as I went by and a guard at the staircase turned to watch me with open confusion.I didn't stop.My door. Key. Lock. I threw the bolt across and then stood with my back against it and my chest heaving and stared at the ceiling.Then I threw myself face-first onto the pillow and screamed into it.A proper scream. Muffled by goose down but entirely real, the sound of someone who had done something spectacular and irreversible and needed somewhere to put the shock of it.I kissed him.I kissed him.I had kissed Draven. In the training yard. In front of Kaden, in front of Marcus, in front of every wolf who had stopped their drills to watch the heir of the pack lose his mind — I had