Chapter 78

• Celeste’s POV
• The wrong had already been done. Kane was dead. No tearful confession, no desperate repentance could bring him back. Even the fiercest howl of grief could not rewind fate. I knew that. And Kane… he knew it too. He was far too intelligent to waste his dying moments on illusions of fairness. Yet the bond he shared with Michael, that fragile thread of brotherhood that had endured childhood miseries and Emberwood Pack’s ruthless hierarchy, had been enough to blind him to the cruelty of human—and wolf—nature.
• Michael’s face was pale, almost translucent under the Moonviel City streetlights. I watched him, the weight of guilt pressing into his frame like a predator crouched at the edge of a kill. His eyes, usually so composed, shimmered with desperate pleading. “My brother… did he… leave me a message?” he whispered, voice cracking like ice underfoot.