Defying the Lycan King (Kira and Derek) novel Chapter 15

Chapter 15: The Ruthless King

"What did you just say?" Kira asked, her voice trembling as the air in the room grew heavy.

"You want to know why I erased everything about her? Fine." Rolf sank into his chair, suddenly looking worn down. ’If you think your mother was a saint, think again, because she cheated, and the entire pack knew about it. She betrayed me."

Kira stared at him. This was the man who had given her nothing but hatred all her life, yet now he looked painfully broken. The sorrow in his eyes, the slump of his shoulders, the way his voice trembled. Whatever memory he was reliving clearly weighed heavily on him.

She wondered, in that moment, what it must feel like to love someone that deeply.

"I gave her everything. My love, my time, my devotion. And what did she do? She cheated on me. She disgraced me in front of my court. She knew how much I loved her," he went on, his voice bitter and raw. "She broke me. I forgave her. I did. We started again, tried to heal from all of it, and then you came and took her away from me." His eyes hardened. "So you don’t get to stand there and talk about Lydia like that. She’s the one who put my broken pieces back together."

Tears welled up in Kira’s eyes, and this time, she didn’t bother blinking them away. "Was that why you poisoned me?"

Rolf looked up sharply. "Why would I do that? You really think I care enough about your existence?" He scoffed. "If not for Lydia, you wouldn’t even be anywhere near me. You don’t know how good that woman has been to you."

Kira couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Was he talking about the same Lydia who hated her guts and the very air she breathed? "Maybe Lydia isn’t as good as you think she is, because someone was poisoning me from this pack, and I’m sure they had a reason."

"The only reason anyone should poison you would be to get rid of you," he spat, the venom flooding back into his voice. "You’re a psycho who would poison herself just to prove a point."

"I didn’t poison myself," Kira said firmly.

"You crave attention so much that you poisoned yourself so he would notice you, didn’t you?"

Kira shook her head. "No, I would never do that."

"Of course you would," Rolf sneered. "You once hung yourself and ran in front of an oncoming car to get my attention."

Her cheeks burned with shame. "I was ten. I wouldn’t do that now."

She remembered those days too well, the desperate things she had done as a child just to be seen. But they had only made everything worse. He had cut her off from the main house completely and stripped away her birthright, declaring her unfit to be his heir. She had grown past that now, learning to build her own happiness in other ways.

"Wouldn’t you?" he mocked. "Little wildcat didn’t get any attention from the Lycan king and decided to play tricks to hide her weakness."

"I didn’t—"

"Tell me," he cut in cruelly, stepping closer, "did you poison yourself to cover up your weakness? To blame aconite and fadevine for your inability to shift?"

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