Defying the Lycan King

"Surprised?"

Rolf spun round.

Lydia stood in the doorway in nothing but a red bra and panties, her robe left hanging open and untied, one shoulder resting against the frame. She was smiling at him the way a cat smiles at something small and cornered.

His brows drew together as the whole shape of it landed on him at once. He’d been played.

"What’s going on here?"

Behind him, the shadow that had been wearing Jake’s face began to thin and recede, darkness peeling back off skin until what stood on the step was simply a man.

Rolf blinked at him, and what he felt wasn’t betrayal yet. It was confusion, a disorienting kind that comes just before the floor gives way.

"How is this possible? I grew up with Jake."

"Of course you did." Lydia’s voice went soft and smooth as she crossed the room, and she trailed one finger slowly down his chest. "You just never noticed when he stopped being Jake."

"Bullshit." Rolf knocked her hand away. "How could this happen? I’m your husband. Your mate. Why would you betray me?"

"Betray you?" Lydia laughed, light and delighted. "Don’t flatter yourself, Rolf. You’ve never been anything but hungry, and it was that hunger that betrayed you."

"You despicable woman." His voice cracked with fury. "I loved you. I listened to you. I raised your daughter as my own blood, and I did it at my own son’s expense." He stopped, breathing hard. "Is that what this is? Revenge, because the truth about Scott is out there in the open?"

Lydia laughed again.

"I’m doing what my master tells me to do. Nothing more." She tilted her head. "I’ve watched the two of you for years, you and Jake both. He’s loyal, he listens. And the King’s essence needed a body, Rolf, because an essence can’t hold itself together forever without one."

Her smile turned pitying. "If I’d told you everything, you’d never have had the patience to wait for Kira to manifest. You’d have ruined it inside a week. So I gave it to Jake instead."

"You damned woman!" Rolf lunged, his eyes flaring yellow.

Lydia simply took a step back.

Jake moved before Rolf had taken another step, surging forward with his eyes burning red, and stopped dead in front of him. He didn’t strike. He just stood there and looked at him, daring him to take one more step.

Rolf stopped. Whatever was standing in front of him now, it wasn’t his Beta. There was nothing behind those eyes he recognised, and he’d led a pack long enough to know when a fight was already lost.

He backed off, dragging a palm down over his face.

"So Jake has a family." He said it slowly, working through it. "A wife, children. A whole life out there to lose." He looked up. "Why him? Why choose the one man with everything to protect?"

"Because I never had a family." Jake’s voice was calm. "Only the one in Moonfang. The one where you got into my wife’s bed and put your son in her belly."

"And that family the Lycan King’s people were so proud of digging up? That was a set piece, built to throw them off my radar."

Rolf’s mouth opened, but nothing came.

"Those people were Umbras from this place. Every piece of evidence was planted. Why do you think the Lycans found nothing about me when they first came to take a daughter from you?" Jake asked. "Then suddenly they found a family. That was because we wanted them to find it."

Rolf felt something go out of him.

All those years. All that manoeuvring, all those bodies he’d buried to keep a throne he’d stolen, and he’d been standing on a stage the entire time, performing for people who’d built the set around him.

"So you brought me down," he said, and his voice came out much quieter now. "You took Moonfang off me. Why?"

"Oh, spare me." Lydia stepped in close, close enough that their faces were inches apart. "I kept your secrets for years. Who do you imagine made that possible?"

Her eyes glittered. "Did you honestly believe you kept an entire pack silent about the true heir of Moonfang just by murdering everyone who remembered her? Is that what you told yourself? Moonfang was silent because Moonfang is crawling with Umbras and—"

She stopped.

Her frown came first, then the widening of her pupils, and her head turned sharply as though something had brushed past her in the dark.

"Something’s wrong," she whispered.

***

"Are you sure they can’t see us?" Kira whispered.

They were coming up on a knot of Umbra guards loitering at the edge of a wide courtyard, and every instinct in her body was screaming at her to stop walking.

They’d been talking for hours by then. Braxton had laid it all out for her piece by piece, and somewhere in the middle of it the tug in her chest had gone from wary to warm, and she’d stopped fighting it. This was her brother. Whatever he’d played at in that throne room, this was the real one.

What amazed her most was how much he knew. Not guesses either, properly worked-out knowledge, the sort that only comes from years of grinding away at something nobody else thinks is worth the trouble.

He’d handed her an entire plan for taking the Umbras apart, and half of it she’d never have thought of in years.

He knew about the tethers too. She hadn’t breathed a word about them, and he’d brought them up himself.

"No," he said. "They can’t."

She glanced sideways at him. "If I can compel them, why are we bothering with the invisibility at all? I could just walk in and have the lot of them dancing for me."

"Because Lydia isn’t stupid." Braxton kept his voice low. "There might not be cameras in the corridors, but I’d bet everything I own she has some way of watching what happens in this place."

"Fair," Kira conceded.

He lifted a hand and pointed towards the far gates.

"Behind those are the special forces. That’s what they’ve been building for the war they’re planning against the Lycans, and they’ve been training them for years." He turned to her. "If you can find the link running from them back to the Shadow King and corrupt it with your light, you can take control of them."

Kira nodded slowly.

"But it’s going to take time," he warned. "There are a lot of them, and you don’t have the reserves you’d normally have, not while you’re feeding energy to the twin."

He let that sit for a second. "If we can turn even a third of what’s behind those gates, the Lycans are more or less out of danger."

Kira’s head snapped round. "How did you know that?"

"Research." Braxton shrugged. "I’ve spent my whole life at it, remember. The other Nexuses were corrupted so easily because none of them ever understood what they actually were." He looked at her. "I think that’s why the goddess sent us as a pair. One twin to carry the power. One to guide it."

"Let me guess," Kira said. "Dad told you that as well."

He nodded.

She let out a breath. "He must have been a clever man."

"He was." Braxton’s mouth tugged into something almost fond. "He’d never have bothered with being an Alpha at all if his parents had given him a brother to hand it to. He’d have been a professor."

"I wish I’d met him."

"I wish you had."

They walked straight through the metal gates, their bodies passing through iron like it was nothing but a suggestion, and Kira had to stop herself from gasping at what was on the other side.

Another courtyard, far larger than the last, and it was full. Rows and rows of men in dark shielded armour, sparring in pairs.

"They’re programmed to fight," Braxton murmured. "That’s all they do. I’d say this is the first battalion."

Kira stared. "Is he planning to wipe out the entire world?"

"He’s not taking chances this time. He wants a rule nobody can undo."

He’s right, Lux said quietly. The goddess knew exactly how sly that Shadow was. That’s precisely why she made us.

"What now?" Kira asked.

"Now we begin." Braxton turned to face her fully. "Listen to me. Don’t push yourself. The second you feel your energy dipping too low, you stop. I mean it."

She nodded.

"This is only a test run tonight. We find out whether it works, that’s all." He held her gaze. "Ready?"

"Yes."

He drew a second vial from his pocket, drank half, and passed her the rest. She swallowed it down, and they became visible again, tucked behind a broad stone column at the courtyard’s edge.

"That was the last one I brought," Braxton said quietly. "So we need this to work. If you can get inside their heads, we walk out of this place tomorrow without a fight."

They’d already agreed on the rest of it. Lydia would take Nana out tomorrow to bait Derek, and they’d let her, because Braxton had handed her Derek’s location himself, on purpose, and had worked out exactly what he wanted to happen when she used it.

"You’ll need physical contact," he added. "Skin to skin. You can’t do it from here."

Kira drew in a long breath and stepped forward.

"And Kira."

She looked back at him, and there was something soft in his face now, something that hadn’t been there in the throne room or in her room or anywhere in between.

"Your coming here wasn’t a complete waste. Infuriating, absolutely. But not useless." He glanced away, then back. "I’d never have found the nerve to walk into this place if you weren’t inside it. I’d never have learned any of this. We’d have gone into that war blind."

Kira’s mouth twitched.

"Well, would you look at that. My terrible decisions finally paying off." She paused. "I’m going to need that in writing, by the way. Signed and witnessed."

Braxton laughed, and she laughed with him, and for a moment the courtyard and the armour and the war all felt very far away.

"Right." She exhaled. "Let’s begin."

Lux? Ready?

I was born ready.

Kira stepped out from behind the column and crossed to the nearest Umbra, close enough to smell the metal of his armour, and closed her fingers around his wrist.

He turned on her instantly, head snapping round, body already coiling to strike, but he never got the chance.

Lux was up and blazing before he’d finished turning, and the moment his eyes met Kira’s, everything behind them went slack.

"Now take hold of the man beside you," Kira said softly.

He obeyed without hesitation, his hand closing round the wrist of the man to his right. That one turned, met his gaze, and reached for the next. And the next.

It moved outward through the ranks like water finding a slope, each one going quiet as it reached him, until the entire section stood joined and still.

Kira closed her eyes and reached for them.

"I can see the tethers," she breathed.

"Good." Braxton’s voice was low and steady behind her. "Now feed your energy into them. As many as you can hold."

Lux surged.

Golden light bloomed out from beneath Kira’s skin, spilling up her arms in bright winding threads, gathering at her fingertips before it slipped into the Umbra’s wrist and began to spread outward through the chain, one man at a time.

It was working. It was actually working. But it lasted only eleven seconds.

"Bravo!"

The voice rang out across the courtyard.

"I truly underestimated you, bitch!"

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!