Defying the Lycan King (Kira and Derek) novel Chapter 121

Chapter 121: A Feelings Problem

The car moved through the evening traffic. Derek sat in the back seat of the moving car, one elbow resting on the door as the city blurred past the tinted windows.

Beside him, Kai was lounging with his usual effortless grace, one leg crossed over the other, listening to him.

Derek had been talking for ten minutes, recounting the disastrous exchange he’d had with Kira that morning. He needed Kai to validate him.

"She’s being unreasonable," he said.

"Oh, really?"

"I explained myself. I gave her a clear, logical reason why I wasn’t there. She said she understood, and then proceeded to behave as though I had committed a criminal offence."

"Right." Kai nodded thoughtfully. "And you think the problem is her."

"I think the problem is that she won’t accept a valid explanation."

Kai looked at him for a long moment. "Valid? Derek, you absolute iceberg. Is that really the word you used with her?"

Derek’s jaw tightened. "I’m being serious."

"So am I."

"Why would the truth be a problem?"

"Because," Kai said, throwing his hands up as if pleading with the heavens, "that is not how women or humans in general actually work!"

Kai shifted to face him properly.

"Listen to me carefully because I am only going to explain this once. Kira was not angry because you missed the event. She was hurt because in the middle of something that mattered so much to her, something she had worked on for weeks, she was alone and couldn’t reach you and didn’t know why. That is not a logic problem, Derek. That is a feelings problem. And the solution is not to hand her a better argument."

Derek opened his mouth.

"Don’t," Kai said. "Don’t tell me your reasons were valid. I know your reasons were valid. That’s not the point. Kira didn’t need a lecture on ’valid reasons.’ In that moment, she needed you to validate her feelings."

Derek looked out the window, watching the buildings slide by. He said nothing.

Kai sighed. "Just apologise, yeah? Properly. Also, your coronation is around the corner. I would strongly recommend not walking into it with your wife barely speaking to you."

Derek kept staring out the window. He knew Kai was right, but he wasn’t going to say it to him.

The silence in the car stretched.

As the silence stretched, Derek’s mind began to drift back to the night of the fundraiser. It had been picking at the back of his mind since yesterday.

Nana suddenly oversleeping, even though she had been ready. Kai getting held up at the last minute. And that Umbra alert turned out to be nothing but a false alarm. It was too convenient. Too perfectly timed to pull every important person away from Kira when she needed them most.

Three separate things. Three separate people. All of them were removed from Kira’s orbit on the same night.

He turned it over carefully. If someone had wanted Kira exposed and vulnerable in that room, they had done it remarkably.

But who?

"Driver, pull over here. I’ve got some errands to run."

Derek surfaced from his thoughts. Kai was already reaching for the door handle. He stepped out onto the pavement and then ducked back down, one hand on the roof of the car, looking in at Derek with an expression that had lost its usual lightness.

"Think about what I said," he told him. "Not the logic. The feelings." He started to straighten up, then stopped himself. "And Derek. If you actually care about her?" He held his cousin’s gaze for a moment. "Maybe it’s time to tell her the truth."

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