Page 210 of Cruelly Bitten

“I could guess,” Ryder drawled, his dry sarcasm underlining those three words.

“He woke up with the same memories and feelings that followed him into eternal sleep,” Kylan informed them all. “And promptly chose indefinite rest. I’ll never disturb him again. He’s dead to me now.”

“So you mean he didn’t magically regain his sense of humanity?” Ryder asked. “Love life all over again? Feel like a brand-new man?”

“Nope,” Kylan replied, his voice flippant.

Ryder feigned shock, his palm covering his heart. “That’s so utterly surprising.”

Kylan smirked, but it lacked his usual carefree undertone, his eyes too intense to complete the look.

Ryder’s mock surprise melted into a severe expression as he refocused on the others. “If Cane went to sleep without hishumanity, he woke up without it, too. The whole concept of eternal rest is simply to pass the time and potentially wake up to something new. That’s it. Our motives and desires remain unchanged.”

“Meaning if Cane went to sleep with a yearning to enslave humankind, he woke up with that same yearning,” Damien translated.

Sounds right,I agreed.

What does?Edon asked, his mental voice tense from the lycan discussions.

I summarized what the vampires were discussing, my role in the corner being to observe and listen while he and Luna engaged with our fellow lycans.

The tension among the group had left the three of us feeling uneasy for days.

“Unless he never slept at all,” Darius said, his words seeming to silence the vampire group as he met Cam’s gaze. “He never wanted to rest. That was entirely your idea. What if he only went along with it to placate you? Maybe he had a contingency plan to ensure he didn’t actually sleep.”

Cam stared back at him for a long moment before replying, “That may be the case, but it doesn’t fix the present issue. Cane has Ismerelda and wants me to meet him beneath Vatican City in just under three hours. Which means Damien and I need to leave. Now.”

“How kind of Cane to recommend my jet,” Kylan deadpanned.

Cam faced him. “He has myErosita.If he had your Raelyn, what would you do?”

Kylan stiffened, his nostrils flaring. “Kill him.”

“Then you understand why I need your jet,” Cam returned.

The two royals stared each other down in a fashion similar to that of the lycans on the other side of the room.

We’re definitely missing something,Edon told me, his attention still on the arguing lycans.I just can’t figure out what it is, and Jolene isn’t sharing.

The three of us had suspected something was off—beyond the tension—for days. But we couldn’t define it, and Edon’s grandfather Jolene wasn’t helping. Neither was Luna’s brother, Logan.

It was as though we’d been left on the outside, all of us serving as a third party in the room.

That sensation worsened as the lycans and vampires focused solely on themselves, all of them completely disregarding the future of humankind.

It was all about taking down Lilith’s former operation.Or perhaps it’s Cane’s operation,I thought, glancing at the vampires again.

They wanted to convince the alliance to enter a new phase, to deviate away from their prior course. Yet no one had defined what that would look like, other than potentially following the Blood City model.

But that model didn’t satisfy the lycans, especially after everything they’d learned. They wanted blood.Vampireblood.

It left the two kinds divided, something Jace had been trying to resolve with Edon and Luka.

However, the efforts had felt stilted at best. While the lycans seemed to respect the royals present here, they hadn’t promised to be respectful of the entire alliance.

In fact, some of the lycans appeared to be meeting in private, their discussions taking place away from Deirdre Tower.

We only knew that because we’d stumbled upon one during a run.