Defying the Lycan King

Two Umbra guards came through first, dragging something between them. It took Kira a full second to understand that the something was a person, and another second after that to understand who.

Nana.

Her silver hair had come loose from its usual neat bob and hung in ragged strands around her face. Her cardigan was torn at the shoulder, one sleeve dark with dirt, and there was a scrape along her cheekbone that had already started to bruise.

She stumbled between the two of them, her wrists bound in front of her, and when they reached the middle of the floor, they shoved her down hard onto her knees.

The sight of Nana in that state went straight through Kira like a blade.

Viktor strolled in behind them with his hands in his pockets, grinning like a man arriving at his own birthday party.

"There we are," he said cheerfully. "Now. Are you surprised?"

Every Umbra around the table had turned to look at her. Kira could feel their eyes crawling over her face, waiting, hungry for whatever she gave them. So she gave them nothing.

She exhaled slowly and let one eyebrow lift.

"What makes you think I’d believe that’s Lady Genevieve Wolfe?" she said, her voice light, almost bored. "You lot wear faces the way other people wear coats. For all I know, that’s one of yours playing dress-up."

Viktor’s smirk widened into a grin. "Now, that’s just insulting."

"Is it?" She gestured lazily towards the kneeling figure. "You’re wearing Viktor. Half the people at this table are wearing werewolves I know. Forgive me if I don’t take your word for anything anymore."

Something ugly flickered behind his eyes, but he covered it fast. "Fine. Then pick her memories. Isn’t that what your kind does?"

Kira turned her head slowly and looked at Nana properly for the first time.

The old woman lifted her chin. Her eyes were wet, but there was steel underneath them, and when they met Kira’s, something passed between the two of them that nobody else in the room could see.

"The night of my wedding," Kira said quietly. "What did you put in my room?"

Nana’s voice came out broken and thin, but it came out steady. "Lingerie. A red one."

Kira’s heart slammed against her ribs so hard she was certain the whole table could hear it.

It was her. It was really Nana.

Everything she’d planned, every careful calculation she’d made walking through those corridors, came apart in a single breath.

She’d come here to play small and helpless, to sit quietly and learn their weaknesses and choose her moment. She could afford to be patient when the only life on the table was her own.

Now there was a rope around Nana’s neck, and Kira was holding the other end of it.

Let me out. Lux surged up beneath her skin, snarling, all teeth and fury. Let me out right now and I’ll tear his spine through his throat before he blinks.

No.

Kira, we are powerful enough to end everyone here.

I know, but remember we’re not just here to end everyone. We’re here to make sure the Shadow King goes extinct forever. So, we need more wit than brute for now.

Kira subdued Lux, forcing her own pulse to slow, dragging her face into something flat and unbothered. If we move now, they’ll know exactly what she’s worth to us.

Lux went quiet, seething.

Kira picked up a water glass, took a small sip, and set it down again.

"So," she said. "What exactly is this?"

Viktor spread his arms. "I think you know exactly what this is."

"Do you know," Kira said, tilting her head, "I actually thought you were clever. I did. All those times sitting across a desk from you, I genuinely believed there was something going on behind your eyes. But you’re even duller than I imagined, aren’t you?"

Viktor’s smile faltered, his jaw working, and when he spoke, all the cheer had drained out of his voice.

"Watch your mouth."

Kira didn’t so much as blink. "You think she’s leverage?" She let out a short laugh and jerked her chin at Nana. "You dragged that woman across half the packs thinking she’d make me sit up and beg? I’ve never liked her."

The words landed in the room like a dropped plate.

Viktor’s brow creased. "What?"

Kira folded her arms over her chest, and fixed Nana with a glare that could have stripped paint.

"Go on, then." Her voice went cold. "Tell them. Tell them how you’ve spent every day since I arrived pretending you could stand the sight of me. Did you think I couldn’t tell? All those months of pretending to care about me while secretly wishing Derek had married someone more suitable? You never liked me."

For a moment, Nana just stared blankly at her. Then something clicked behind the old woman’s eyes, and her face shifted into something twisted and bitter.

"Ungrateful!" Nana spat, her voice rising with fury. "You ungrateful little bitch. I took you into my home. I put you at my table. I defended you to my own grandson when the whole court said you weren’t fit to stand beside him."

"Defended me?" Kira barked out a laugh. "You tolerated me. There’s a difference, and don’t think I never noticed it."

"You wormed your way into my family—"

"I was dragged into your family—"

The Umbra around the table exchanged confused glances. Even Viktor looked slightly lost as the two women continued hurling insults at each other.

"He deserved better than a half-blood nobody with a chip on her shoulder!" Nana said.

"And you deserved to choke on your own tea, you miserable old bat!"

"ENOUGH!"

Viktor’s roar broke across the hall, and both of them fell silent at once.

He stood there breathing hard, his eyes darting between the two women, his whole face knotted with confusion.

Kira smiled inwardly. Perfect. Confusion was what she had hoped to achieve.

Viktor didn’t know. He had no idea what she and Nana actually were to each other, because whatever had crawled into his body had only crawled in recently, and it didn’t have any of Viktor’s memories.

Everything he knew, he’d been instructed to know. Kira caught it and held it tight, filing it away with everything else she’d collected since she’d arrived.

None of the Umbras were thinking. Not one of them at that table had a single thought that hadn’t been put there.

They were puppets, all of them, and somewhere in this stronghold was the hand inside the glove. She was going to find it and turn it.

Kira unfolded her arms. "Honestly," she said, "if you’d wanted something to hold over me, you should have taken my mother or my brother. Nobody in Dravengard means anything to me. Only my blood does. But then you’d have needed to actually pay attention, wouldn’t you?"

Viktor’s face darkened, and he moved across to Nana in three strides, fisted a handful of her hair and yanked her head back so hard she cried out.

He put a small knife against the old woman’s throat.

"Well then," he said softly. "If she’s no use to you, she’s no use to us either."

Kira’s blood turned to ice.

She had perhaps two seconds, maybe less. And if she screamed, if she lunged, if she let one flicker of what she was feeling reach her face, then they’d know. They’d know exactly what Nana was worth, and they’d use her again and again and again until there was nothing left of either of them.

So she made herself yawn.

"You really are thick, aren’t you," she said.

Viktor’s hand stilled.

"She might be nothing to me," Kira went on, examining a chip in her nail, "but she’s still the Western Lycan King’s grandmother. Do you have any idea what that man is capable of?"

She looked up and met Viktor’s eyes. "Derek would tear continents apart for me, but for her, he’d tear apart the fabric of reality itself."

She watched his face as her words began to sink in.

"Kill her now, and all you’ve got is a body and a very quiet room. Keep her breathing, and you’ve got the perfect way to draw him out."

Kira shrugged one shoulder. "Lycans lose strength when they are emotionally broken. Right now Derek is at his weakest because both his wife and his grandmother are missing."

She smiled, thin and cold.

"What better way to bring down the notorious Lycan King than to bait the trap with that wretched old woman?"

For a long moment nobody moved. Then Viktor let go of Nana’s hair and stepped back, the knife disappearing back into his sleeve.

"Take her below," he said.

The Umbra guards hauled Nana up, and as they dragged her past the table, the old woman spat on the floor by Kira’s feet.

Kira didn’t look at her. She couldn’t. If she looked, she’d break.

***

Somewhere deep inside the stronghold, Rolf sat in front of a large monitor, watching every second of the exchange.

He’d been sitting there since the moment they’d brought the old woman in, arms folded, waiting to see the girl break. He’d been looking forward to it, if he was honest. He’d wanted to watch that smug little face fall apart the way his had in that council hall.

Instead he’d got this.

A slow smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth as Kira’s voice came through the speaker, calmly explaining exactly how best to use Genevieve Wolfe as bait.

"Bitch," Rolf murmured, and there was something almost admiring in it. "You’d throw anyone at all under the bus to save your own neck, wouldn’t you."

He exhaled slowly, his smile widening as he turned away from the screens.

Soon the Shadow King would take his body as a vessel. His body would become the vessel for something older and hungrier than anything that had ever walked this realm.

He’d lost a pack. So what. When Kira’s nexus power merged with his own, he wouldn’t need a pack. He’d have every pack, every territory, every throne, every miserable elder who’d sat in that hall and stripped him of what he’d spent his whole life building.

Rolf tipped his head back and laughed, and the sound of it bounced off the cold stone walls with nobody there to hear it.