Defying the Lycan King (Kira and Derek) novel Chapter 103

Chapter 103: The Voice of Reason

Ruby knew this was bad news for her. If the King’s attention truly shifts, she would lose the respect of the ladies of the court. She won’t allow it.

She was still pulling that thought apart when laughter reached her from below.

She looked down instinctively.

Derek and Kira were crossing the courtyard below, moving through the pool of lamplight near the main fountain. Kira was saying something, one hand pressed dramatically to her forehead as though she were about to faint, her face turned up towards him.

And then Derek, without a word, scooped her clean off the ground, cradling her in his arms as though she weighed nothing at all, while Kira shrieked with laughter and grabbed his shoulders, her legs kicking out as he held her bridal-style against his chest.

He leaned down to whisper something against her ear that made her laugh even harder. Then, the King of Dravengard, the man feared by every pack in the West, began to run toward the palace front doors, carrying his wife like a prize, their joined laughter echoing through the silent night air.

Ruby stood very still at the window.

She had known Derek since they were children. She had been there through his brooding teenage years, through the cold fury that followed the massacre of their families, and through the bitterness of Sandra’s betrayal.

She had been there through every cold, closed year that followed, and she had tried. She had tried in every way she knew how, with competence and loyalty and carefully managed closeness, and the most she had ever earned was a chuckle and a brief, distracted smile.

He had never laughed like that. Not once and not for her.

The thing in her chest was not heartbreak. Ruby had stopped allowing herself heartbreak a long time ago. What it was instead was something older and darker, a jealousy so sharp it had teeth, and a rage underneath it that was very quiet and very dangerous.

Her breathing was coming faster than she wanted it to.

"Ruby? Ruby?!" Sasha’s voice came from somewhere behind her. "Are you alright? You’ve gone pale."

Ruby blindly shoved the wine glass into Sasha’s hands. "I’m fine. I just... I need water. Get me some water!"

She heard Sasha move, heard her quick footsteps moving towards the door. The moment her friend was out of the door, Ruby walked back into the room, reached out and grabbed the edge of her bedsheet.

She yanked it off the bed in one violent motion, and the scream that came with it was low and brief and muffled in the fabric before it could reach the walls.

She stood there for a moment, breathing hard, the crumpled sheet in her hands.

Then she let go of it, smoothed her hair back and stood up straight.

She would not allow it. She had not spent years building her position inside this palace, had not sacrificed and schemed and endured, to watch a wolfless little werewolf walk in and take everything that should have been hers.

A pregnancy would complicate things significantly. An heir from that runt would change everything.

She would not allow it.

***

"She’s beginning to ask questions."

Declan looked up.

Derek said nothing.

"Derek." Declan leaned forward. "She is asking questions now. Do you understand what that means? She is probing. She is looking for something she can use." He paused, choosing his next words with the carefulness of a man walking across uncertain ground. "She is a Moonfang woman. Her father is—"

"I know who her father is," Derek said quietly.

"Then you know that trust is a luxury you cannot afford with her," Declan reminded him, his voice dropping to a warning growl.

"Their blood is built on deception. Whatever you’re feeling, you need to remember the mission. And now she is asking why you married her." He shook his head slowly. "Finally, she is trying to extract information from you. I knew it would come."

Derek’s gaze drifted back to the window.

That was what unsettled Declan the most. In the past, a conversation like this would have sharpened Derek immediately, pulled him back into the cold, methodical thinking that had kept him alive and in power since he was twenty years old.

Instead, he looked like a man who was somewhere else entirely, turning something over in his mind that had nothing to do with strategy.

Declan would rather chew broken glass than trust a woman from Moonfang. Everything inside him resisted it, every scar from his own experience, every year of watching Derek carry the weight of what had been done to their people.

If it turned out that Kira was her father’s instrument, that all of this warmth and humour and apparent openness was a performance, then whatever Derek had allowed himself to feel would not just hurt him.

It would destroy him.

And Declan could not watch that happen.