Defying the Lycan King

Further back, Kira and Derek dragged a half-dead Umbra between them.

The Umbra hung between them, more dead than alive, one arm across Derek’s shoulders and his feet dragging through the leaf litter.

Kira had one hand locked round his wrist, her eyes shut. Lux stretched along the invisible tether that still connected the dying Umbra to its master. The direction burned clear in Kira’s mind.

"That way," she said, pointing through the denser part of the forest. "She’s heading for the borders. If she reaches human territory she can mask her scent completely."

Derek’s head turned. "How far?"

"Nine miles, maybe less. We must not let her go."

Derek’s huffed out a breath. "She won’t make it." He turned to her. "Do you think you can see the tether without this one?"

"I’ll try?" Kira replied, opening her eyes.

They dropped the body and started running.

The woods went past in a blur of black trunks and wet ground, and for a while neither of them spoke because there wasn’t breath spare for it.

"Kira."

"Yes?"

"Let me take her," Derek said. "The physical fight. Let me put her down and hold her there, and then you finish it however you need to."

"Derek—"

"You’ve been drained twice tonight. You burned a vessel out of a body less than an hour ago and I watched the colour go out of your face while you did it." He glanced across at her. "And you’re carrying two."

Kira ran three more strides.

"That’s not fair."

"No, it isn’t. I’m doing it anyway."

She wanted to argue about how she was the Nexus and this was hers to do and she hadn’t come this far to be handled like something breakable.

And then she thought about the small, fast heartbeats she’d been carrying through three days of that stronghold, and she swallowed the whole thing down.

"All right. You handle the body. I’ll handle the rest."

Derek nodded and they moved faster.

They came over a rise, and caught a flash of deep red between the trunks a few yards ahead.

Before they could close the distance, Umbras exploded from nowhere. They came in from three sides at once, out of the trees and out of the bracken and from behind them.

Derek took the first three before they’d finished arriving.

Kira went back to back with him without a word and let the light off her hands in a wide arc, and four of them came apart and dropped where they stood.

When the last one fell, Derek was already turning towards the ridge. Kira’s body opened up into white, Lux pouring out through her in a rush of light and muscle, and beside her Derek’s Lycan tore up out of him.

They closed the distance in under a minute.

Lydia was still running in human form when Derek’s beast slammed into her from the side at full speed.

The impact sent her flying. She hit the ground hard, rolled twice, and scrambled up with a snarl.

Darkness exploded around her. In seconds a huge black wolf stood in her place — larger than any wolf either of them had ever seen, eyes burning pure red. She towered over even Derek’s Lycan.

She was bigger than Derek.

Well, Lux said quietly. She is such a massive thing.

She had a wolf.

All those years, Lydia had sat at that table in Moonfang with her sad little story, telling anyone who’d listen how the rogues had come for her. How she’d never shift again. How Rolf had married a broken woman and hadn’t that been generous of him.

She had never lost her wolf to rogues. She had been an Alpha-level beast the entire time.

When Lydia’s beast snarled at Derek, Kira felt no real fear for her husband. Derek’s father had bound Lydia’s supernatural power years ago. Tonight she could only fight with muscle and teeth. And Kira trusted Derek’s skill completely.

The two beasts crashed together.

Lydia was good. Kira would give her that much, watching from twenty feet back with her light banked and her body ready. She was fast for her size, and she fought like something that had been fighting for a very long time, driving forward, trying to get underneath and get her jaws round Derek’s vulnerable parts.

But Derek didn’t fight like that.

He fought with cold strategy. He avoided her wild snaps and struck at joints, throat, and ribs. Every time Lydia lunged for a killing bite, Derek’s greater speed let him twist away and punish her.

He was taking her apart piece by piece and she hadn’t noticed yet.

Lydia lunged for his throat and he ducked under it and raked her ribs open on the way past. She spun and snapped and caught air. She threw her full weight at him and he simply wasn’t standing where he’d been.

Finally he leapt high and locked his jaws around the thick fur of her neck.

Lydia’s wolf shrieked in agony and thrashed violently. Shadows swirled and lashed around them, but Derek held on, teeth sinking deeper.

She heaved. She slammed him into a tree and he held. She rolled and dragged him under her and he held.

Then she flipped her head with everything she had left and flung him off her, and the effort ripped a chunk of her own neck flesh away in the process ans she staggered.

Derek hit the ground rolling but he was up before she’d finished screaming.

He went low this time, straight for the hind leg, and his jaws closed above the joint and he shook his head hard.

A sickening crack echoed through the trees.

Lydia’s wolf howled and came down on her side, and Derek was already moving to the foreleg. He seized a front leg and snapped it with one brutal twist.

The pain forced Lydia back into human form, black fur receded in a rush and left a naked woman lying in the leaves, sobbing for breath, one arm bent the wrong way beneath her and one leg twisted out at an angle.

Derek and Kira shifted back as well. Kira walked straight to her, planted a bare foot on the broken leg, and pressed down hard.

Lydia screamed.

Kira dropped down and sat astride her, pinning her to the forest floor, and took a fistful of that beautiful hair.

"Twenty years," she said, and slapped her. "That was for treating me like dirt my whole life," she said.

She slapped her again.

"That was for poisoning me."

Slap. Lydia’s mouth was now bleeding.

"For killing my guards. For hurting Claudia. For everything you did to my mother."

Lydia was crying now, and Kira had absolutely nothing left in her to feel it.

She placed both palms flat on Lydia’s chest.

"You don’t get tomorrow."

And she poured everything she had into her.

The light went in and Lydia’s back arched clean off the ground, and a raw, inhuman howl tore from her throat as golden-white light flooded her body.

A thick, writhing mass of pure shadow tried to claw its way free, latching onto Kira’s energy and drinking greedily. Kira’s arms shook. Her vision blurred at the edges.

Derek had been standing back with his fists clenched at his sides, giving her the space she’d asked for, but when he saw her face twist, he couldn’t stand it anymore.

He took a step forward, ready to intervene, but at that exact moment Lydia’s body ignited. White-gold fire roared over her from the inside out.

For a second the shadow screamed — a sound like tearing metal — then the entire form collapsed into thick black smoke that scattered on the night wind and vanished.

Kira swayed.

Derek caught her before she could fall, pulling her firmly against his chest. "I’ve got you."

Kira!

Braxton’s voice exploded into Kira’s mind, bright with triumph.

THEY’RE GONE! He was shouting. Kira! You did it! They’re gone — every single Umbra just dropped! You actually did it!

Kira let her head rest against Derek’s shoulder. A breathless, almost disbelieving laugh escaped her.

"We did it," she said, voice cracking with relief. "We actually did it."

He was smiling down at her. "You’re fucking amazing," he said quietly.

Then he gripped her tighter and kissed her — deep, hungry, and full of everything he had never put into words.

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