Defying the Lycan King (Kira and Derek) novel Chapter 284

Chapter 284: Nothing But a Mirror

"Shit."

Connor stopped dead among the trees.

He’d been on Braxton for the better part of an hour, keeping well back, masking his scent, moving only when the man moved. He’d been careful. He’d been very careful.

And then he’d blinked, and the trail had simply ended.

He turned a slow circle, scanning the trees. Nothing. No sound, no scent, no movement. He’d been watching the man’s back not thirty seconds ago.

He was still standing there working it through when an arm locked around his throat from behind.

Connor threw his weight forward to break the hold, but the grip only tightened.

"Why have you been following me, Gamma?"

"Take your hands off me, Alpha."

Braxton squeezed harder. "I could kill you out here and nobody would find you until spring. Answer the question."

Connor forced out a scoff. "You can’t kill a King’s guard. You know exactly what that would cost you."

"Would you like me to test that?"

Connor knew a losing position when he was standing in one. He raised both hands slowly.

"I’m following instructions. That’s all."

Braxton leaned in, his breath hot against Connor’s ear. "Then tell me why your King is hunting me like a dog. If he wants to know something about me, he can come and ask me himself. He doesn’t need to send you creeping about the woods behind me."

"That’s rich," Connor managed, "coming from the man who hid his wife from him for a month. How exactly did you expect him to trust you?"

"I don’t trust him either," Braxton snarled. "You can tell him that, word for word." His grip loosened, just slightly. "But for my sister, I’m prepared to set every bit of it aside. Getting her out is the only thing that matters to me."

Connor went very still.

"You know where the Queen is."

Braxton let him go and stepped back.

"Tell His Grace to meet me in the Aethelwulf woods tonight. The place she was taken from. Midnight." He was already turning away. "That’s everything I’ve got for you. Now stop following me."

***

Derek stared at the Crystal Moon Alpha standing across from him.

He’d always known there was something about this man that got under his skin, and for months he hadn’t been able to put a name to it. Now, standing here in the dark with the trees pressing in around them, he finally could.

Pride.

Braxton Westwood was a proud alpha, and it showed in the set of his shoulders. And that, Derek realised, was the whole problem. They’d never got along because there was nothing between them but a mirror.

"Say that again," Derek said, his voice low and rough.

"I know where Kira is," Braxton repeated. "And I can get inside."

He didn’t miss the way Derek’s fists opened and closed at his sides.

He’d made every one of them promise to stay calm before he opened his mouth, and he’d meant it, because the man standing in front of him had been running on nothing but fury for hours and it wouldn’t take much to set him off.

"I’ve been in contact with Lydia for weeks now," Braxton went on. "And it’s not for the reason you’re all currently thinking."

"Then tell us what reason it is for," Derek growled.

"I’ve spent years researching the Umbras. Years. I’ve been building a plan to get Kira out of there and put an end to the Shadow King for good, but I can’t do it on my own, which is why I need your—"

"Why are we standing here indulging this clown?"

Kai caught his arm and held it. "Let’s hear the man out." His voice stayed perfectly level, though his eyes hadn’t left Braxton once. "Alpha Westwood. What have you got for us?"

Braxton signalled to Oliver, his Beta, who stepped forward and handed over a thick, battered notebook.

"This is exactly why I asked to meet out here," Braxton said. "Nothing in this book can leave these trees."

Kai sat down on a fallen log with the book open across his knees, and for the next several minutes he and Braxton went through it page by page, heads bent together, voices low. Diagrams. Notes in cramped handwriting. Theories built and abandoned and built again.

Derek didn’t sit. He paced the treeline with his hands laced behind his neck, hearing none of it. Declan stood off to one side with his arms folded, eyes flicking between the two of them, ready to move if anything went wrong.

"I’m going in tomorrow," Braxton said at last, closing the book.

Derek crossed the clearing so fast that nobody had time to react. He caught a fistful of Braxton’s collar and hauled him in until their faces were inches apart.

"You’ve known where my wife and my grandmother were for forty-eight hours," he said, very quietly, "and you’ve been walking around acting like you knew nothing."

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