Defying the Lycan King

The security control room of Aethelwulf Shopping Centre was much smaller than Kai had expected.

For a place that claimed to have cameras covering practically every corner of the vast building, he had imagined something impressive. Instead, there were several desks crowded with monitors, two half-empty coffee cups, and enough cables under the desks to strangle a small army.

The place smelled of stale coffee and overheated electronics, which was not doing anything helpful for Kai’s temper. He walked in first, with Derek beside him, while Dennis and four gammas followed closely behind them with the careful silence of men who had seen their Alpha shout at the sea and were not entirely certain what version of him they would get today.

A large man in a security uniform greeted them by the door, nodded once, and walked past without breaking stride. Kai’s eyes followed him automatically. Lycan, definitely. The build, the gait, the way he moved through the space like he owned slightly more of it than other people. But Aethelwulf was crawling with both humans and Lycans for generations, and a lycan on the security payroll was about as remarkable as a lycan behind a coffee counter.

The two remaining security men rose from their chairs when they recognised who had walked in. The older of the two, a thin man with a permanent look of mild panic, cleared his throat.

"Mr Mondragon," he said with a slight bow. "We’re honoured to assist. What exactly are we looking for?"

"My wife." Kai did not bother with pleasantries. He had used them all up three years ago. "Pull up everything from yesterday’s footage. The eastern concourse. Around three in the afternoon. Ground floor, clothing section, escalators and the eastern exit."

The older man blinked, but his hands were already moving across the keyboard. "Right away, sir. I’ll pull up the feeds from that timeframe."

Kai dragged a chair across the linoleum and sat down hard enough to make it protest. Derek took the chair beside him, saying nothing, and Dennis stationed himself at the door with two gammas flanking him like bookends. The room went quiet except for the click of keys and the hum of servers.

"There." The security man sat back. "This is the eastern concourse camera, from 3:00 p.m. Is this the right area?"

Kai leaned forward, his heart already doing something stupid in his chest. The footage played out in grainy colour: shoppers milling, a child dropping an ice cream, a woman with a pram the size of a small car. No ginger curls. No Jessica.

"Keep going," he said.

The man clicked forward. More footage. More nothing. A section of the file suddenly pixelated, the screen filling with grey static, then cleared again. Kai’s fingers drummed against the desk.

"Corrupted," the security man said, almost apologetically. "Happens sometimes with the older cameras. I’ll try the next angle."

The man clicked another angle. Kai watched himself walk into frame with Dennis at his shoulder, saw his own head turn sharply toward something off-camera. His heart kicked. This was it. This was the moment.

The video glitched again. The screen filled with static, then jumped forward thirty seconds. When the image cleared, Kai was already running, shoving past his Beta, and the space where Jessica should have been was empty.

"What the fuck?" Kai’s voice came out sharper than he intended.

"System glitch," the security man said again, nervous, already moving to the next file. "Yesterday was bad for those. Lost about forty percent of our archived footage to corruption."

Kai said nothing. They tried the angle after that. Each time, Kai felt something cold gathering in his stomach, some mixture of dread and fury that he could not quite separate out.

Each footage showed fragments of the chase without ever showing her. His own figure appeared again and again—running, stopping, speaking to Alicia with his hands half-shifted and hidden against his chest. He looked deranged. He looked exactly like a man who had lost his mind.

He could feel Derek’s eyes on him. Not saying anything. Just watching.

"There." He jabbed a finger at the monitor. "There. Pause that."

The security man paused the footage. A woman with her back to the camera, half-obscured by a promotional display, wearing the exact navy blouse and grey trousers Kai remembered from yesterday.

The hair was right. The height was right. The way she held her shoulders—that was Jessica’s posture. She was running away from the camera, toward the escalators, one hand raised to her ear as if holding a phone.

"That’s her," Kai said. He turned to Derek, and something desperate and fierce lit up his whole face. "That’s Jessica. Look at the hair, the way she moves. That’s her."

Derek studied the screen with careful neutrality. "Can you get us a frontal angle? Something that shows her face?"

The security man clicked through more files. Each one either glitched at the crucial moment or showed the wrong angle entirely. Kai felt the frustration building in his chest like steam in a kettle, pressure without release.

"What the fuck happened to these videos?" he demanded, rounding on the older man.

The security man raised both hands in a placating gesture that Kai found personally offensive. "We had a glitch yesterday, sir. A proper malfunction. Lost about forty percent of our stored footage, and another thirty percent has corruption issues like you’re seeing. We’re working with the vendor to—"

"A glitch." Kai’s laugh was not a pleasant sound. "And let me guess. Every single file with my mate in it just happens to be in that forty percent?"

"Sir, I understand your frustration, but—"

"Do you?" Kai was on his feet without remembering standing. "Do you understand that I watched the woman I love run away from me yesterday? That I haven’t seen her in three years? That everyone keeps telling me she’s dead, and now I finally, finally have proof that she’s not, and your glitch is standing between me and—"

"Kai." Derek’s hand closed around his wrist, firm and grounding. "Calm down."

Kai sat back down. He sat back down because Derek was his cousin and his friend and because somewhere underneath the roaring in his ears, he knew that terrifying a security guard would not actually make Jessica appear on screen. But his hands were shaking. He pressed them flat against his thighs and willed them still.

"We... we lost footage from all over the shopping centre, not just that section. Look—" The security man pulled up another stream, showing a loading bay where the image skipped and juddered. "See? Corruption everywhere. It’s not targeted, it’s just bad luck."

Kai shoved the older man aside and started to work on the keyboard himself. He pulled the footage where he had seen Jessica’s back. He rewound. The footage jumped backward in stuttering frames, the woman returning to the top of the escalator, her back to the camera once more.

"There," Kai said, pointing at the screen with a finger that trembled slightly. "That’s Jessica. I’m telling you, that is Jessica."

"Kai. I am not doubting you," Derek said carefully. "But cuz, that’s a woman with her back to the camera. Ginger curls aren’t exactly rare round here. I’ve counted five women with hair that colour just walking in from the car park."

"It’s her."

"I believe you believe that."

Something in Kai snapped loose. He slammed both hands flat on the console table, the crack of his palms against metal making everyone jump. He shoved back from the chair, and had the security man’s collar bunched in his fist before Derek could get a hand up to stop him.

"Where are the real videos?" Kai’s voice had dropped to something barely human, Phantom’s growl threading through every syllable. "Who paid you to hide her?"

The security man’s eyes went wide. He smelled of fear suddenly, sharp and sour.

"Kai." Derek’s hand closed around his shoulder, firmly. "Kai, look at me."

Kai did not look. He could smell Jessica’s scent memory in his head. He could feel her hand in his from the dream that was not a dream. He could not bear another person telling him she was imaginary.

"Kai," Derek said again, and this time he stepped into Kai’s line of sight, forcing eye contact. "I believe you."

The words hung in the air. Kai’s grip loosened slightly.

"I believed you before we walked in here," Derek continued. "I believe you now. But this—" he gestured at the corrupted screens, the frozen images, the whole maddening apparatus of proof that refused to cooperate—"this is not helping us find her. If Jessica is in Aethelwulf, then we need to be out there looking, not shouting at security guards."

Kai stared at him. The rage was still there, hot and ready, but Derek’s certainty had given it somewhere else to go. He released the security man, who stumbled backward and clutched at his collar with both hands.

"Get out," Kai said to him, not unkindly, just exhausted. "All of you. Leave the footage. We’ll take copies."

The security men needed no further encouragement. They filed out with the speed of men who had just discovered their building was on fire. Dennis and the gammas followed, positioning themselves in the corridor.

Kai stood alone with Derek in the humming room, surrounded by screens that showed everything and proved nothing.

"Come on," Derek said, and took his elbow like he was escorting a drunk man home. "Let’s get some air."

On the way out, Kai instructed Dennis to get copies.

By the time they reached the parking area, Kai had regained enough control to look less like he intended to personally dismantle the shopping centre. He leaned back against the bonnet of his car and dragged both hands down his face.

Derek stood beside him, hands in his pockets, studying the concrete. "If I didn’t believe you before," Derek said. "I believe you now. Because that whole room stank of something off. Every single file that mattered just happened to fail. That’s not a glitch, Kai. Somebody’s been in that system, and they were good enough at it to make it look like rotten luck."

Kai closed his eyes. The relief of being believed was almost painful, like blood returning to a numbed limb.

"I know," he said. "Someone is keeping her from me. Someone has been keeping her from me for three years."

He opened his eyes and stared out at the anonymous rows of parked cars, the ordinary life of Aethelwulf continuing around him while his whole world had tilted on its axis. "When I find them," he said. "I am going to destroy them. Slowly. And I am going to enjoy it."

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