Chapter 113

Kieran’s POV

4 Days to The Ancient Rites.

I couldn't just sleep peacefully all through the night . I lay awake until the early hours, listening to the palace breathe. Every time I tried closing my eyes to sleep, Lucas’s face would appear in my vision like smoke: the way he was looking at Sienna with so much care and admiration. A look that was not brotherly. A look that sat with its own kind of ownership.

I told myself things I wanted to believe. That I was being paranoid. That Lucas had been softened by the poison, or by the way Sienna had handled herself through everything ,that pity could be mistaken for tenderness. The rational part of me recited familiar nonsense about Beta loyalty and battle-born devotion.

But the animal part, the old wolf that still lived under my ribs, had a primitive, smaller vocabulary: m