Defying the Lycan King

"Shit."

Connor stopped dead among the trees.

He’d been on Braxton for the better part of an hour, keeping well back, masking his scent, moving only when the man moved. He’d been careful. He’d been very careful.

And then he’d blinked, and the trail had simply ended.

He turned a slow circle, scanning the trees. Nothing. No sound, no scent, no movement. He’d been watching the man’s back not thirty seconds ago.

He was still standing there working it through when an arm locked around his throat from behind.

Connor threw his weight forward to break the hold, but the grip only tightened.

"Why have you been following me, Gamma?"

"Take your hands off me, Alpha."

Braxton squeezed harder. "I could kill you out here and nobody would find you until spring. Answer the question."

Connor forced out a scoff. "You can’t kill a King’s guard. You know exactly what that would cost you."

"Would you like me to test that?"

Connor knew a losing position when he was standing in one. He raised both hands slowly.

"I’m following instructions. That’s all."

Braxton leaned in, his breath hot against Connor’s ear. "Then tell me why your King is hunting me like a dog. If he wants to know something about me, he can come and ask me himself. He doesn’t need to send you creeping about the woods behind me."

"That’s rich," Connor managed, "coming from the man who hid his wife from him for a month. How exactly did you expect him to trust you?"

"I don’t trust him either," Braxton snarled. "You can tell him that, word for word." His grip loosened, just slightly. "But for my sister, I’m prepared to set every bit of it aside. Getting her out is the only thing that matters to me."

Connor went very still.

"You know where the Queen is."

Braxton let him go and stepped back.

"Tell His Grace to meet me in the Aethelwulf woods tonight. The place she was taken from. Midnight." He was already turning away. "That’s everything I’ve got for you. Now stop following me."

***

Derek stared at the Crystal Moon Alpha standing across from him.

He’d always known there was something about this man that got under his skin, and for months he hadn’t been able to put a name to it. Now, standing here in the dark with the trees pressing in around them, he finally could.

Pride.

Braxton Westwood was a proud alpha, and it showed in the set of his shoulders. And that, Derek realised, was the whole problem. They’d never got along because there was nothing between them but a mirror.

"Say that again," Derek said, his voice low and rough.

"I know where Kira is," Braxton repeated. "And I can get inside."

He didn’t miss the way Derek’s fists opened and closed at his sides.

He’d made every one of them promise to stay calm before he opened his mouth, and he’d meant it, because the man standing in front of him had been running on nothing but fury for hours and it wouldn’t take much to set him off.

"I’ve been in contact with Lydia for weeks now," Braxton went on. "And it’s not for the reason you’re all currently thinking."

"Then tell us what reason it is for," Derek growled.

"I’ve spent years researching the Umbras. Years. I’ve been building a plan to get Kira out of there and put an end to the Shadow King for good, but I can’t do it on my own, which is why I need your—"

"Why are we standing here indulging this clown?"

Kai caught his arm and held it. "Let’s hear the man out." His voice stayed perfectly level, though his eyes hadn’t left Braxton once. "Alpha Westwood. What have you got for us?"

Braxton signalled to Oliver, his Beta, who stepped forward and handed over a thick, battered notebook.

"This is exactly why I asked to meet out here," Braxton said. "Nothing in this book can leave these trees."

Kai sat down on a fallen log with the book open across his knees, and for the next several minutes he and Braxton went through it page by page, heads bent together, voices low. Diagrams. Notes in cramped handwriting. Theories built and abandoned and built again.

Derek didn’t sit. He paced the treeline with his hands laced behind his neck, hearing none of it. Declan stood off to one side with his arms folded, eyes flicking between the two of them, ready to move if anything went wrong.

"I’m going in tomorrow," Braxton said at last, closing the book.

Derek crossed the clearing so fast that nobody had time to react. He caught a fistful of Braxton’s collar and hauled him in until their faces were inches apart.

"You’ve known where my wife and my grandmother were for forty-eight hours," he said, very quietly, "and you’ve been walking around acting like you knew nothing."

"Derek." Declan stepped closer. "Calm down."

"Don’t tell me to calm down."

"This," Braxton said through his teeth, entirely unbothered by the hand at his throat, "is precisely why I said nothing to you. You’d have gone charging in there on day one and got every one of them killed, including her."

"And why the hell should I trust you?"

"You shouldn’t. I don’t need you to." Braxton’s eyes didn’t waver. "I need to get my sister out of there. That’s all this has ever been."

Kai moved in and tried to prise Derek’s fingers loose from the man’s collar, but the grip held, Derek’s eyes burning gold into Braxton’s face.

"Your Grace." Braxton’s voice stayed steady. "So are we doing this? Are you going to punish me for keeping my mouth shut until I’d worked it all out, or are you going to help me save my sister, get your wife and Nana back, and finish the Shadow King for good?"

For a long moment nothing moved. Then Derek shoved him away. Braxton staggered a single step, straightened his collar, and stood exactly where he’d been.

"Your plan had better be extraordinary," Derek said.

Braxton cleared his throat and looked around the clearing. "Gavin. Show yourself."

The air shifted in the middle of the gathering, and Gavin simply appeared, standing among them as though he’d been there the whole time.

Which, of course, he had.

Derek’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing.

"I go in carrying nothing," Braxton continued. "Gavin follows me invisible. He’ll be carrying the vials and every antidote we’ve got."

"I’m coming with you," Derek growled.

"Absolutely not." Braxton didn’t even pause. "With respect, Your Grace, I don’t trust your temper. I need you outside, and I need you to come in when plan A falls apart. Not before."

"And how exactly am I supposed to know when that happens?"

Braxton touched the thin gold chain at his throat. "There’s a camera in this. Kai, you should be able to run it through your server and pull the feed in real time."

Kai already had his tablet out. "Give me twenty minutes."

"I’ll be able to show you how things are moving in there," Braxton said. "When it’s time, I’ll send you a signal."

"And when do we get Kira and Nana out?" Derek demanded.

"Your Grace." Braxton’s voice softened slightly. "This was never just about walking the Queen out through the front door. This is about ending the Shadow King. If we take Kira to safety and leave him standing, he’ll come for her again. Next month, next year, in ten years. He’ll never stop."

Derek said nothing. He dragged both hands back through his hair and turned away.

Braxton watched him for a moment.

"Your Grace. I need you to promise me something. When the waiting gets long, and it will, you don’t come charging into that stronghold."

"He won’t," Kai said firmly, and the look he shot Derek was closer to a warning than anything else. "Right. Let’s start moving."

"In the meantime," Braxton said, "get your men ready. Your alphas, your kings, whoever’s still willing to stand with you. We’re going to need all of them."

***

The next day, Derek stood at the edge of Lycan territory and watched them take Braxton.

He’d sent Connor in with him. For all the careful planning, for all the diagrams in that battered notebook, the doubt hadn’t left him, and if he couldn’t go himself then he’d send the one man he trusted to be his eyes.

The feed came alive briefly around midday. Braxton had turned the camera on just long enough to show them the pickup point and the route into the stronghold.

Kai had been right. The Shadow King’s pack wasn’t physical, because once Braxton and the others disappeared into a dark mist, the feed cut.

And it didn’t come back.

They waited all afternoon. Kai sat hunched over the tablet without moving, refreshing, checking connections, running diagnostics that told him nothing. Nothing came through.

By the time the light started going out of the sky, Derek could barely stand still.

"I knew we shouldn’t have trusted that son of a bitch," he barked, rounding on the camp.

"Give him time," Declan said. "Something’s probably gone sideways in there. It doesn’t mean he’s turned."

"Then what exactly are we waiting for?" Derek spread his arms. "We know where they took him. Our men are ready. We could be through those gates in an hour."

"That was never the plan," Kai said, without looking up. "And we’re following the plan."

Hours later, Derek finally gave in to his own body and lay down in his tent, fully dressed, boots still on. He hadn’t slept properly in three days, and exhaustion took him faster than he expected, dragging him under.

He wasn’t deep in sleep long when the bond flared in his chest, sharp and sudden and blazing.

He came awake with a roar.

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