Defying the Lycan King

Chapter 197: Too Far Gone

"What the fuck?" Kai muttered under his breath, his casual demeanour completely evaporating.

He abandoned his spot by the wall and pulled closer to the long table, his eyes widening to the size of saucers as he stared down at the photographs that Uncle Crane had proudly spread out across the polished wood.

The images were clear and very devastating. There was no mistaken identity here. It was a collection of secret photographs capturing Jessica and Kira together.

Jessica was wrapping Kira’s hair in a scarf, sunglasses on her nose. But the most damning photograph was the one showing Kira sitting deep inside a secluded restaurant, looking completely relaxed as she sat directly across from her stepmother, Lydia.

"I always knew it was very dangerous to trust anything that came from Rolf’s bloodline," Uncle Crane said, letting out a sigh as he gave a dramatic shrug of his shoulders.

He looked around the room at the terrified, kneeling gammas, soaking in his moment of triumph. "To think that you actually brought this snake into our sacred home and made this traitorous girl our queen. It is a big joke."

That was the limit. Derek didn’t even yell first. He charged at Uncle Crane with a primal roar, launching his body across the room like a ballistic missile.

He pounced on the older man with such force that the wind was knocked completely out of Crane’s lungs as Derek trampled him straight to the floor. The chairs knocked together and scattered everywhere in a chaotic mess.

Before Crane could even raise his hands to defend himself, Derek pinned him down by his collar and delivered a brutal, teeth-rattling punch straight to his uncle’s jaw.

"How dare you," he snarled, "accuse my wife of such a thing!"

"Derek, stop! Get off him!" Declan yelled, his eyes popping out in panic.

Declan and Kai rushed forward together, throwing their arms around the furious King’s broad shoulders, desperately trying to pull him off the older man before he accidentally committed family murder right in front of the entire military council.

But Derek was operating on pure adrenaline and heartbreak. He violently shrugged Declan’s grip away, refusing to let go of his target.

"You’re letting your emotions run you. Stop!" Kai said.

Derek shrugged the hand off violently and rounded back on his uncle.

"You’ve spent every single day looking for a way to paint me as incompetent, ever since I took this throne from my father’s line!" he shouted. "Every day!"

Crane only laughed, blood on his teeth. "And this is exactly how incompetent you are, Derek. Look at you. You can’t even see what’s right in front of your face."

Derek hit him again.

"You and your worthless son have been a thorn in my side from the beginning," he spat. "And now what is this? You’ve sunk to photoshopping cheap photographs to frame my wife?"

"Derek, bloody hell, control yourself!" Kai gasped.

After a very long struggle, Declan and Kai finally managed to forcefully hoist Derek off Crane, dragging him back several paces.

They held onto his arms tightly, their own muscles straining as the King’s chest rose and fell in violent heaves. He looked like a feral beast ready to snap its leash, and his eyes blazed amber.

Uncle Crane slowly pushed himself up from the floor, groaning as his old bones popped. He wiped the blood from his split lip with the back of his hand, looked at it, then looked at his nephew with cold satisfaction.

"You can deny this evidence all you want, nephew," Crane said, straightening his jacket.

"But you made a sacred vow to the people of this region to protect them with your life. You swore to fight whatever fights them and welcome whatever gives them healing."

His voice hardened. "Tell me, King Derek, how many more innocent Lycans of the West would have to lose their lives in bloody traps before you finally open your blind eyes and see the truth?"

Derek said nothing. He only glared at his uncle, his chest rising and falling, straining against the hands that held him.

Uncle Crane let out a disappointed sigh, shaking his head as if he were the only sensible adult left in the room.

"As an elder of the Wolfe clan," he said, "I am formally asking you right now to bring this werewolf traitor to book. Lock her up, or else, I will take these exact photographs straight to the high council and let them judge the matter themselves."

His eyes glinted. "Derek, you might wear the royal crown, but you are not above the law. You are not above judgment."

And with that, he turned and walked out of the war council, unhurried, leaving his words hanging in the air behind him.

The silence that followed was completely deafening. For a long moment, nobody even dared to breathe.

Then, Derek wrenched his arms free of Declan and Kai’s grip. He didn’t look at those pictures again, he didn’t look at his men, and he didn’t say a single word. He just turned around and stalked away, marching out through an opposite exit.

Declan exhaled slowly, then turned to the gammas still scattered and kneeling around the room, white-faced, having watched their king and an elder of the clan come to blows on the floor.

"Get up, all of you," Declan commanded. "You’re dismissed. Go back to your units. And I am warning every single one of you right now—nothing of what had just happened in this room today should ever find its way outside these walls. If I hear even a whisper of this in the pack, I will personally ensure you spend a month in the dungeons. Move!"

The gammas rose unsteadily and filed out of the double doors, one after another, until only Declan and Kai remained.

When the last of them had gone, Kai stepped over to the table and gathered up the photographs, turning them over in his hands, studying them in the quiet.

"Wow," he murmured, a rare, serious expression crossing his face as he shook his head.

"I haven’t seen Derek lose his head like that in a very long time. He is getting so emotional over her. It’s actually wild to watch."

Declan walked over, heavily dropping his weight against the edge of the table, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"There had better be a very good explanation for these," he said, nodding at the pictures in Kai’s hands.

"Because Derek is far too gone for this to be happening right now. His brain is completely fried. This... this was exactly why I kept warning him from day one. I never supported this ridiculous marriage contract from the very start."

Kai turned a photograph toward the light, his brow furrowed as he stared closely at the image of Jessica behind a disguised Kira.

"Well," he said quietly. "There’s only one way to find out whether these pictures are telling the truth."