KieranI waited three days after the council dinner before I brought it up, mostly because I'd learned enough from that evening to know timing mattered as much as intention.We were in the garden behind the east wing, one of the few places in the palace that hadn't been designed to impress anyone, just rows of winter herbs and a bench nobody important ever bothered sitting on. Leah liked it there. I'd started liking it more since I noticed that."The council raised something today," I said. "I want to tell you before it turns into a rumor instead of a conversation."She didn't look up from the herb bed she'd been examining, but her shoulders set slightly, some old readiness for bad news that I doubted would ever fully leave her. "Go on.""They want a formal naming. Luna, in front of the pack, not just the bond mark most of them have already guessed at." I chose the next part carefully. "It doesn't have to happen soon. It doesn't have to happen at all, if you tell me you don't want it.

POV LeahI found him in his study long after most of the palace had gone quiet, papers still spread across his desk that he wasn't actually reading anymore, just staring past."You should be asleep," he said, not looking up right away."So should you."He set the papers down when he saw my face, some instinct in him always alert to the difference between me being fine and me needing to say something that required his full attention.I'd spent most of the evening working up to this, turning it over the way I used to turn over a suspicious ledger, checking it from every angle before I trusted it enough to act on. I still wasn't entirely sure I'd found the right words, but I'd learned enough these past weeks to know that waiting for perfect words usually just meant waiting."The bite wasn't something I chose," I said. "I want you to understand that I know that. I was unconscious. Your father was holding a chalice over my dying body and you made the only decision either of you thought yo

Kieran I woke before she did, which wasn't unusual, except that for once I didn't reach for my phone or start running through the day's obligations before my eyes were fully open. I just watched her sleep, her hand loose against the pillow where mine had been an hour earlier, and let myself feel something I didn't have a lot of practice naming. She stirred eventually, found me watching, and didn't look away or make a joke to cover it, which told me how far we'd actually come. "You look like you're bracing for bad news," she said, voice still thick with sleep. "I'm not." "You've got the face you make in council meetings. The one where you're deciding how much of the truth to give someone." I hadn't realized I had a face for that until she said it, which meant she'd been paying closer attention to me than I'd been paying to myself. "My mother left when I was six," I said. It came out plainer than I meant it to, no lead-up, no careful framing, just the fact sitting between us in t

LeahI was in the training yard, watching Kael practice the knife work Dex had finally agreed to teach him, when the sound of an engine cut through the quiet, low and expensive, the kind that didn't belong to anyone on staff.Kieran straightened before the car had even cleared the front drive, some old reflex answering a sound I hadn't learned to read yet."Who is it?" I asked."Seraphine," he said, and something in his voice, easy and unguarded in a way I rarely heard him use for council business, made me look up from the blade Kael was still holding wrong.A silver sports car pulled up outside the main entrance a minute later, and the woman who stepped out of it moved like she already knew every eye in the yard would find her before the door had finished swinging shut behind her. Dark hair loose over one shoulder. Sunglasses pushed up, a laugh already started before she'd said anything worth laughing at, aimed at Kieran the moment she saw him."You've gotten taller," she said, cross

All Chapters of Finally Done, Ex. I Am Mate, Not Maid: Chapter 61 - Chapter 64

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