Chapter 196
At midnight, long after Declan and Kai had finally retired, Derek stood alone by the window of his study, a whiskey bottle in one hand and a glass in the other.
He poured a splash of the amber liquid into the glass and downed it in one go. He didn’t even blink. He poured again. And again. The burn of it barely registered anymore.
Kira, where on earth are you? he thought.
Inside him, Leo had gone quiet. The beast had stopped its endless snarling and pacing, and what had replaced it was worse, a kind of hollow withdrawal, a creature curling in on itself in grief. Derek could feel it, that absence, like a missing tooth his tongue kept finding.
He could barely think straight. He had not slept properly in two days, and the exhaustion had soaked into his bones and into the spaces behind his eyes.
And still his mind circled the same question, over and over, like a wolf worrying a bone. How had Rolf known? How had the man understood his exact plan, anticipated his every move, laid a trap of that size and precision and waited for Derek to walk straight into it?
It was not possible without help. Without someone on the inside.
He closed his eyes, trying to picture the faces of every single warrior in his inner circle, trying to figure out who the traitor could be among his men.
He went through them one by one, every gamma, every man he trusted, and could not land on a single one. Not one of them fit.
Bruce had died in that explosion. But it couldn’t have been Bruce. A man did not lead his own brothers into a slaughter only to be torn apart by it himself. That made no sense.
The thoughts went round and round until he could not stand them anymore.
Tired of his own head, Derek crossed to the music player and put on something slow and aching, a sad melody that filled the room.
Dancing had always been an escape.
He closed his eyes and began to move, swaying and dancing to the melancholy tune by himself.
But the grief and the alcohol were a terrible mix. Within seconds, the sadness turned into pure, uncontrollable madness.
He hurled the glass against the wall and it shattered. He smashed the bottle after it.
He swept his arm across the desk and sent everything on it crashing to the floor, papers, ornaments, a lamp, and through it all he was screaming, raw and wordless, all the fury and helplessness and terror of two days pouring out of him at once.
When at last he had nothing left, when his voice had gone hoarse and his strength had drained away, he sank to his knees in the middle of the wreckage he had made, and pressed both hands over his face, hiding his eyes as he began to let out breathless whimpers on the floor, his broad shoulders shaking in the dark.
Meanwhile, just outside the slightly open door, Nana stood watching him through the narrow slant.
She had heard the crashing and come to see, and now she stood very still and didn’t go inside. She knew her proud grandson would hate for anyone to see him like this.
Tears streamed down her face as she listened to his painful grunts.
Wiping her eyes with her hands, she quietly walked away into the dark corridor, leaving the King to weep into his bloodied hands.
The next morning, the gammas filed into the war council one after another, and Derek paced the front of the room like a hungry predator.
His fist clenched and unclenched at his side, his knuckles still scraped and bruised from his midnight meltdown. He didn’t say a word.
He just glared at every single man who entered, his eyes raking over each face in turn, and every one of them dropped their gaze and hurried to their place, none of them daring to meet the look on their king’s face.
When they had all assembled, old hands and new alike, Derek swept his eyes across the room.
“Where,” he said, “is Uncle Crane p>
The gammas nervously exchanged glances, shifting their weight from foot to foot.
Finally, one of the brave captains cleared his throat and muttered, “He… he is on his way down, Your Grace. He was delayed in his quarters p>
Derek’s jaw tightened.
And then he let his pheromones loose into the air.
It rolled out of him like a wave, the raw dominance of an enraged Lycan king, and the entire room buckled under it. The gammas grunted and gasped, knees folding, dropping one after another to the floor under the sheer crushing weight of his power.
Derek hated using it. He had always hated it, this brute force of presence that turned grown warriors into trembling things. But his control had worn through, and his grief had nowhere left to go.
“Are you trying to kill us all?” Declan choked out from where he had gone down on one knee, straining against the pressure.
“Maybe that,” Derek said coldly, “would give me the satisfaction I’m looking for p>
He began to drill them, his voice hard and relentless, pacing between their kneeling bodies.
“Someone in this room, or someone connected to a man in this room, has been feeding Rolf Thornclaw my plans.
“It was a classified operation! Rolf should never have known we were coming for him, let alone setting a trap of a size that takes weeks to prepare p>
His voice rose. “I was the one hunting him. After a careful, secret investigation. So how? How did he get that information? And someone had better answer me p>
The gammas whimpered and writhed under the weight of his aura. Some of the weaker, younger ones had collapsed flat onto their faces, gasping into the floorboards, begging wordlessly to be released.
“Answer me!” Derek barks, his eyes glowing a fierce, unnatural amber. “Give me a name before I start tearing heads off p>
But just as the tension reached a literal breaking point, the heavy double doors of the council room swung open.
“Perhaps,” came Crane’s smooth voice, “you shouldn’t go killing your own gammas just yet, dear nephew p>
Every head that could turn, turned. Crane strolled into the room, unhurried, entirely untouched by the pheromones still thick in the air.
“Your mole,” he said, “is a great deal closer than you think p>
He walked to the centre of the room, and the pressure of Derek’s aura eased just slightly as the king’s attention fixed on him. Crane raised a small sheaf of photographs in one hand.
“Here is what I’ve managed to find out,” he said. He looked around at the kneeling, gasping gammas, savouring the moment. “This. This is your precious queen p>
And he dropped the photographs onto the table.
Derek’s eyes fell to them.
And he froze.