Defying the Lycan King

Brian paced the length of his room, gnawing at the side of his thumb as he went.

He’d heard the guards talking through the door earlier, the way they always did when they thought nobody was listening. The Queen had been taken. His grandmother too, snatched out of Dravengard. And there was a Great War coming, the kind no one wanted to fight anymore.

He’d heard something else as well, something that had sat in his stomach like a swallowed stone. Kira was pregnant—carrying the King’s pup.

But the last piece was the one that had him wearing a track into the floorboards.

Kira was the Nexus.

He still couldn’t make himself believe it. He’d watched that girl for months, and not once had he sensed anything unusual about her. Nothing at all. And now the whole world was tilting on her, and he was stuck in a plain room with a locked door and nothing to do but chew his own hand raw.

He was done with this room. He had things to do out there.

He stopped pacing when he heard the door click. It would be the young servant who usually brought his meals, coming to collect the empty plate, and if Brian let this chance slide past him, there wouldn’t be another one worth having.

He crossed to the bed in three quick strides and sank down onto the edge of it, settling into the same posture he’d worn every day. Hands clasped between his knees, shoulders slumped, head bowed, like a man who’d given up.

The boy came in and bowed low. Whatever else Brian had become, he was still a prince of the royal house, locked door or not, and the boy had clearly been raised properly. Brian didn’t lift his head. He simply sat there, breathing slowly, waiting for the boy to turn his back.

The moment he bent over the table to lift the plate, Brian was on his feet.

The boy spun round fast, faster than Brian had expected, but not fast enough. Brian’s hand snapped out and caught him hard across the side of the neck, and the boy dropped where he stood, the plate slipping from his fingers and shattering across the stone floor.

Outside in the corridor, both gammas heard it.

They exchanged a glance, passed a few clipped words down the link, and shoved the door open together.

The room was empty. Nothing but broken crockery scattered across the floor and a bed with rumpled sheets. Their eyes swept the space, hunting for the prince. One of them moved towards the bathroom door. The other headed for the heavy curtain hanging beside the window.

He got within arm’s reach of it before Brian shoved the unconscious boy straight out at him. The gamma caught the limp body on instinct, arms closing round him, and that was exactly the problem. His weight went backwards, his heel caught, and the two of them went down together in a tangle of limbs.

Brian was already moving.

The second gamma cut him off before he reached the door, and they went at each other properly, no space in the room for anything clever. But Brian had spent his whole life training under Crane, and Crane had never once cared whether his son enjoyed it.

It took him less than half a minute to leave the gamma groaning on the floor and bolted.

By the time either of them was upright enough to give chase, Brian had already shifted, bones snapping and reshaping as he tore out of the corridor and into open air.

The alarm went up behind him, whistles and shouting and gammas spilling out of every doorway.

His beast hit the treeline at full pelt, vanished into the dark between the trunks, and that was the last any of them saw of him.

***

Derek stared at the man in front of him and barely saw him at all.

The Northern King had come out to the camp himself, in the middle of the night, with six of his own men waiting at a respectful distance among the trees. He was talking. He’d been talking for some time. Derek had a thin branch gripped in one fist and his knuckles had gone white around it.

"So what do you say, King Wolfe?" The old man spread his hands. "It’s a good alliance. A sensible one. You cannot fight the Shadow King alone and you know it better than any man here. And who’s to say your Nexus wife hasn’t already been turned? Three days in that place. Four, by tomorrow."

Derek said nothing. He simply looked at him.

"Marry my daughter," the Northern King went on, "and I’ll bring my special army to this fight, and I’ll bring the other alphas with me. You know as well as I do that when that girl comes out of there, she may well be pointing her power at you."

He took a step closer. "Or let’s be generous. Let’s say you get her out with her mind intact. Are you truly going to let some fickle infatuation stand between you and becoming the most powerful man alive?"

In that moment, something inside Derek snapped. He didn’t fight it. For three days he’d been holding Leo down with both hands and nowhere to unleash his fury, and now here was somewhere, standing right in front of him, offering itself up.

He let go. The shift tore through him, and he hit the Northern King like a landslide. The old man had clearly been expecting it, because his own beast came up to meet him, huge and grey, and the pair of them crashed down onto the forest floor in a snarling knot of teeth and claws.

The Northern King’s gammas surged forward. Derek’s men met them halfway.

Within seconds the whole clearing had gone up, bodies slamming into bodies, snarls and roars rolling out through the trees, and nobody left standing who was inclined to stop it.

***

Meanwhile, Rolf lay in the dim room watching Lydia sleep.

He’d been watching her for a while now. The slow rise and fall of her chest and the faint little snore. She looked ordinary like this. Almost harmless.

After a long moment, he eased himself off the mattress, gathered his clothes from the floor and dressed without ever taking his eyes off her.

He was finished playing by her rules.

She kept telling him to wait. Wait for the girl to soften, wait for the shield to crack, wait, wait, wait, while she quietly held back gooddess knew how much else from him. He’d stopped believing she’d ever hand it over willingly.

But he’d learned one thing worth having in all these years beside her. Lydia was frightened of the Shadow King. Properly frightened, in a way she’d never been of anything else. And if that power went into him, then she’d fear him too, and fear made her obedient.

He tiptoed to the door and eased it open, wincing at the faint groan of the hinge. One last look at her, sleeping soundly in the wreckage of the bed. Then he slipped out.

The corridors were empty and dim, and he made his way through them towards the one chamber he’d watched her disappear into more than once. He didn’t have a key. He hadn’t needed one, because he’d come prepared, and picking a lock was a skill he’d learned long before he’d ever learned to lead a pack.

Odd, he thought as he knelt at the door, that a stronghold this size had cameras in the dining hall and nowhere else. He’d wondered about it for days.

He didn’t wonder about it now. He was after one thing.

The lock gave with a soft click.

Rolf stayed still for a beat, listening. Then a slow smile spread across his face, and he pushed the door open and looked inside.

The room stopped him where he stood.

It was long and narrow, lined on both sides with shelves that ran floor to ceiling, and on every shelf sat rows upon rows of glass jars filled with liquid so dark it seemed to swallow the lamplight rather than reflect it. At the far end, on a raised step, sat a throne.

And above the throne, turning slowly on itself, hung a mass of shadow.

Rolf’s breath caught.

There it was. The essence of the Shadow King, right there, close enough to walk into.

He moved down the room, past the jars, his footsteps quickening, all his caution draining out of him with every step. He was already opening himself up as he went, letting his mind and his soul spread wide the way he’d rehearsed a hundred times in the dark, ready to be filled.

Then the shadow shifted.

It drew in on itself, folded, thickened, and began to take shape. Shoulders. Arms. A head. Within seconds a full-grown man stood on the step in front of him, formed entirely of darkness, features carved out of it like smoke that had learned to hold still.

Rolf knew that face.

He’d know it anywhere. He’d looked at it across tables and battlefields and strategy rooms for the better part of his life.

"Rolf Thornclaw," the shadow said, and even the voice was right. "Eager, aren’t we?"

Rolf stumbled back a step, his eyes going wide.

"Jake?" His voice came out thin. "You. You’re the Shadow King? How?"