All Chapters of Kill Me Alpha, Before I Do (Beast Of Flames Book 1): Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Rowan POVEvander returned forty minutes later carrying a different medical case.By then Romy had stopped visibly shivering, at least enough that her teeth were no longer threatening to chatter every few minutes–but the cold still clung to her skin. I could feel it every time I touched her wrist or brushed my knuckles against the side of her arm. She kept pressing her hand to the centre of her chest without seeming aware she was doing it.Every few minutes, her fingers flattened briefly against her chest before dropping away again.I had moved her from the floor to the sofa once I was sure she’d gathered a little strength. She sat tucked into the corner cushion now with one knee drawn halfway up beneath the oversized blanket Pamela had brought down herself. Her hair had fallen loose around her face sometime in the last hour. Exhaustion sat heavily on her, but she was still watching everything.The room. The door. Me.She had asked me twice to stop staring at her, but I had ignored

Romy PovThe cold had been getting worse in slow increments since I barricaded the door.By the time I admitted my breathing had become difficult in a way that went beyond exhaustion, I was also admitting that spending the next thirty hours alone in this room was no longer realistic.I moved the wardrobe away from the door.It took longer than before. My arms felt weak, and by the time I’d cleared enough space to open it, I was breathing hard enough that I had to lean against the frame.I opened the door to find Rowan sitting in the corridor. He sat opposite my room with his back against the wall and his legs stretched out in front of him.He looked up immediately.For a second, something flickered across his face before it disappeared. He had been there the whole time.I didn’t know why that surprised me.He crossed the room in three strides and cupped my face. His expression darkened the second he felt the heat of my skin.Without a word, he guided me back to the bed.I didn’t argue

Rowan’s POVThe council chamber was already full when I walked in at nine fifty-five pm.The room became quiet the moment they noticed me standing in the doorway.Vance was sitting at the head of the long table, his papers arranged neatly, almost like he had spent the whole morning rehearsing this. His collar had a damp patch despite how cold the weather was.Three allied councillors sat to his left. Aldrey occupied the end seat, hands clasped, her expression neutral.Silas sat at the far end, resting his arms folded loosely as if he hadn’t staged the whole thing.Aaron stood against the wall with his jaw set and his eyes forward.As soon as I sat down, Vance opened the folder.He had been thorough with his investigation–i’d give him that.Seven incidents. Numbered, dated, phrased. The mountain walk. The escape attempt. The frozen ridge at four in the morning.The corridor walk incident was listed as a public display of pressure done by the Alpha against the ‘supposed’ Luna. The rece

Rowan’s POVThe tomb was forty minutes from the estate by car and twenty more on foot through the pine forest that ran along the eastern ridge.I had been making this walk for thirteen years. Always alone. Always before anyone at the estate woke up I left at five in the morning while the sky was still fully dark, the kind of dark that sat heavy between the trees and made the mountain feel like it belonged to no one. The air had that particular early-winter bite to it, the sort that froze the inside of your nose and turned every breath into a small white cloud. Aaron knew where I was going. He had figured it out the first year and never asked about it again–which I was grateful for.The forest path was uneven, broken by tree roots pushing up through the frozen ground every few feet. My feet remembered the route well enough that I barely needed to look down. Thirteen years of the same walk had carved it into my muscle memory. Pine and damp earth filled the air around me. Above, the

Romy povThe ground under my cheek wasn’t tile.For one stupid second, my mind reached for the villa anyway–for the cold marble floors, the echoing halls, the polished prison I had learned to hate with every breath I took inside it.But this wasn’t marble.This time it was wet, broken, root-tangled earth pressed hard against the side of my face. Mud had found its way into my mouth. Something sharp scraped my lower lip when I tried to breathe. The air smelled of rot, rain, and old iron, thick enough to choke on.Above me, the remains of a stone arch leaned against the storm as if it had been trying not to fall for a hundred years and was finally tired. Mist crawled under it in pale strips, clinging to the mossy stones, sliding over my hands, my boots, my ruined clothes.I tried to lift my head, but the pain exploded in me.It came from my shoulder, then my chest, then everywhere at once. A slow, ugly burn spread under my skin, deep enough that it no longer felt like a wound. It felt l