Defying the Lycan King (Kira and Derek) novel Chapter 304

Chapter 304: The Proof of Nothing

The security control room of Aethelwulf Shopping Centre was much smaller than Kai had expected.

For a place that claimed to have cameras covering practically every corner of the vast building, he had imagined something impressive. Instead, there were several desks crowded with monitors, two half-empty coffee cups, and enough cables under the desks to strangle a small army.

The place smelled of stale coffee and overheated electronics, which was not doing anything helpful for Kai’s temper. He walked in first, with Derek beside him, while Dennis and four gammas followed closely behind them with the careful silence of men who had seen their Alpha shout at the sea and were not entirely certain what version of him they would get today.

A large man in a security uniform greeted them by the door, nodded once, and walked past without breaking stride. Kai’s eyes followed him automatically. Lycan, definitely. The build, the gait, the way he moved through the space like he owned slightly more of it than other people. But Aethelwulf was crawling with both humans and Lycans for generations, and a lycan on the security payroll was about as remarkable as a lycan behind a coffee counter.

The two remaining security men rose from their chairs when they recognised who had walked in. The older of the two, a thin man with a permanent look of mild panic, cleared his throat.

"Mr Mondragon," he said with a slight bow. "We’re honoured to assist. What exactly are we looking for?"

"My wife." Kai did not bother with pleasantries. He had used them all up three years ago. "Pull up everything from yesterday’s footage. The eastern concourse. Around three in the afternoon. Ground floor, clothing section, escalators and the eastern exit."

The older man blinked, but his hands were already moving across the keyboard. "Right away, sir. I’ll pull up the feeds from that timeframe."

Kai dragged a chair across the linoleum and sat down hard enough to make it protest. Derek took the chair beside him, saying nothing, and Dennis stationed himself at the door with two gammas flanking him like bookends. The room went quiet except for the click of keys and the hum of servers.

"There." The security man sat back. "This is the eastern concourse camera, from 3:00 p.m. Is this the right area?"

Kai leaned forward, his heart already doing something stupid in his chest. The footage played out in grainy colour: shoppers milling, a child dropping an ice cream, a woman with a pram the size of a small car. No ginger curls. No Jessica.

"Keep going," he said.

The man clicked forward. More footage. More nothing. A section of the file suddenly pixelated, the screen filling with grey static, then cleared again. Kai’s fingers drummed against the desk.

"Corrupted," the security man said, almost apologetically. "Happens sometimes with the older cameras. I’ll try the next angle."

The man clicked another angle. Kai watched himself walk into frame with Dennis at his shoulder, saw his own head turn sharply toward something off-camera. His heart kicked. This was it. This was the moment.

The video glitched again. The screen filled with static, then jumped forward thirty seconds. When the image cleared, Kai was already running, shoving past his Beta, and the space where Jessica should have been was empty.

"What the fuck?" Kai’s voice came out sharper than he intended.

"System glitch," the security man said again, nervous, already moving to the next file. "Yesterday was bad for those. Lost about forty percent of our archived footage to corruption."

Kai said nothing. They tried the angle after that. Each time, Kai felt something cold gathering in his stomach, some mixture of dread and fury that he could not quite separate out.

Each footage showed fragments of the chase without ever showing her. His own figure appeared again and again—running, stopping, speaking to Alicia with his hands half-shifted and hidden against his chest. He looked deranged. He looked exactly like a man who had lost his mind.

He could feel Derek’s eyes on him. Not saying anything. Just watching.

"There." He jabbed a finger at the monitor. "There. Pause that."

The security man paused the footage. A woman with her back to the camera, half-obscured by a promotional display, wearing the exact navy blouse and grey trousers Kai remembered from yesterday.

The hair was right. The height was right. The way she held her shoulders—that was Jessica’s posture. She was running away from the camera, toward the escalators, one hand raised to her ear as if holding a phone.

"That’s her," Kai said. He turned to Derek, and something desperate and fierce lit up his whole face. "That’s Jessica. Look at the hair, the way she moves. That’s her."

Derek studied the screen with careful neutrality. "Can you get us a frontal angle? Something that shows her face?"

The security man clicked through more files. Each one either glitched at the crucial moment or showed the wrong angle entirely. Kai felt the frustration building in his chest like steam in a kettle, pressure without release.

"What the fuck happened to these videos?" he demanded, rounding on the older man.

The security man raised both hands in a placating gesture that Kai found personally offensive. "We had a glitch yesterday, sir. A proper malfunction. Lost about forty percent of our stored footage, and another thirty percent has corruption issues like you’re seeing. We’re working with the vendor to—"

"Do you?" Kai was on his feet without remembering standing. "Do you understand that I watched the woman I love run away from me yesterday? That I haven’t seen her in three years? That everyone keeps telling me she’s dead, and now I finally, finally have proof that she’s not, and your glitch is standing between me and—"

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