Reject me twice (Kira and Theron) novel Chapter 62

[Celeste’s POV]

The summons came without explanation—just a guard at my door and a single word: now.

Seraphine’s private chambers had no windows. No servants within earshot. When the door closed behind me, the silence felt like pressure against my eardrums.

This wasn’t another briefing. The room was stripped to its essentials: two women, four walls, and whatever was about to be said between them.

“The prophecy argument is finished.”

The flatness of her delivery told me she’d already moved past implications into strategy.

“The twins’ ritual was genuine—I’ve verified it through sources independent of the crown’s proclamation, and the Covenant’s acceptance is real. The theological foundation of the Order’s recruitment has been fundamentally undermined.”

She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward.

“We’re losing members daily, Celeste. Wolves who genuinely feared the prophecy are reading the proclamation and walking away, and the counter-messaging is buying time but not reversing the hemorrhage.”

Her jaw tightened.

“If we continue relying on the prophecy argument, we’ll be commanding an army that’s bleeding out from a wound we can’t close.”

“So we change the weapon,” I said.

Her smile was thin, precise, entirely devoid of warmth.

“We remove the Silver Queen directly.”

The words landed like stones dropped into still water.

“Without Kira, the twin bond shatters—Damon’s psyche is structurally dependent on that connection in ways he doesn’t fully understand. Her death would break him. Not politically—emotionally, fundamentally.”

She stood and began to pace—slow, measured, the rhythm of a mind working through architecture.

“A grief-stricken king, unmoored from the bond that stabilizes his magic and his mind, is a vulnerable king. A controllable king. And if her death is attributed to the Order rather than to any hand connected to ours, we remain untouchable.”

She stopped at the far wall and turned.

“The crown hunts ghosts while we rebuild from the shadows.”

“Do you want me to kill her?”

Seraphine’s expression shifted into something colder than murder.

“No.”

The single word hung in the dark room.

“I want you to capture her. Bring her here, alive and conscious. Death will follow, but it will not be quick.”

She crossed back toward me, each step deliberate.

“I want Kira to watch herself fade. I want her to understand, with absolute clarity, whose hand holds the blade and whose mind designed the cage—face to face, watching the architect of her ruin explain every step while her body fails her.”

I didn’t hesitate. The part of me that might once have flinched had been burned away in the months since Shadowpine.

Kira had stolen everything from me—reduced my role as Luna to a public humiliation, stripped me of dignity and position.

She sat on a throne she hadn’t earned while I hid in a disgraced queen’s estate plotting revenge because revenge was the only thing I had left.

It didn’t just feel righteous. It felt owed.

“When do we—”

The door swung inward. One of Seraphine’s court informants stumbled in, breathless.

Seraphine’s expression hardened. She did not tolerate interruptions—that her guards allowed this one meant the information overrode standing orders.

“The same compound I used on the Lycan King.”

She closed my fingers around the glass, her grip firm, eyes locked on mine.

“Slow-acting. Nearly impossible to detect through conventional healing examination. It eats from the inside out, disguising itself as exhaustion, as the natural toll of pregnancy, as the expected difficulty of a queen carrying twins while managing unstable magic.”

Her grip tightened around my hands.

“The symptoms build so gradually that by the time anyone looks beyond the obvious explanations, the damage is irreversible.”

“And the children?” I asked, and the question surprised me—not because I cared, but because I needed to know the full scope of what I was agreeing to carry.

“The compound doesn’t distinguish between host and offspring,” Seraphine said, and she didn’t flinch. “The Silver Queen’s magic will try to protect them. It will burn itself out doing so, which accelerates her decline and leaves both mother and children defenseless.”

She let that settle.

Her voice dropped to something intimate, almost tender.

“We’ve learned from every past mistake, Celeste. No rushing. No overreach. No arrogance. This time, we will be patient. Methodical. Invisible.”

She released my hands and stepped back.

“And by the time the Silver Queen understands what’s happening to her, she’ll be too weak to scream.”

I held the vial up to the torchlight. The dark liquid shifted inside the glass, and the shadows it cast on my palm looked like veins.

Such a small thing to end a dynasty.

The hunt begins.