Chapter 202: Let Me Be Wrong
When Kai pushed open the doors to Derek’s private study, his internal survival instincts were screaming at maximum volume. He walked in, fully expecting to find a room reduced to splinters, but instead, he was greeted by something far more terrifying.
The king was lounging back in his chair, looking so calm and so composed, that it set every nerve in Kai’s body on edge.
Declan was pacing slowly around the room. When he caught sight of Kai, he stopped.
"Finally, you’re here," Declan said.
Kai worked hard to keep his face neutral, willing his hammering heart down to something like a normal rhythm. Never in his life had he imagined he could feel like a traitor in his own cousin’s presence. But here he was.
Because even though Jessica had explained why she and Kira had gone to meet Lydia, even though Kai understood the reason behind it, none of that changed the cold, hard facts.
They had drugged a royal security detail. That reckless little stunt played so perfectly into the treason narrative that it made the secret meeting look like a full-blown spy operation rather than a desperate search for family answers.
And he, Kai, had just helped smuggle a potential suspect out of Dravengard. He had gone behind his own king’s back to do it. But he’d had no choice. He had to protect Jessica. His only prayer now was that everything she’d told him was the truth.
"Yes, I am," Kai said, forcing a casual tone, and tried to relax his shoulders in his usual nonchalant fashion. "How may I help you angry people?"
"Where have you been?" Derek asked.
He didn’t shout. He didn’t need to. The low, scraping roughness in his voice was enough to send a chill straight down Kai’s spine.
And in Derek’s eyes, Kai could see the feral glint, the dark thing underneath that surfaced when the king was holding himself together by a thread. His beast was completely alert and looking for a target.
"I was with my mom," Kai lied smoothly, keeping his voice light as he took a few steps closer to the desk. "She was having a bit of a dramatic crisis about her wardrobe for an upcoming pack event. You know how she gets."
Derek exhaled slowly. Then he reached out and pushed a small velvet box across the desk toward him.
"I think I might finally have found out," he said, "who’s responsible for leaking all our plans."
Kai’s brows drew together. "What?" He looked from Derek, to Declan, and back again. "What do you mean?"
Derek rose to his feet, picked up the velvet box, and held it out to Kai.
"I hope to the goddess," he said quietly, "that I haven’t been a fool this entire time. Take this. I want you and your tech team to analyze it immediately. Find out everything I need to know about where this came from."
Kai nodded slowly and took the box from his cousin’s hand.
***
Later that evening, the wind howled across the high rooftop of the Dravengard fortress. Derek stood right at the edge of it, completely ignoring the freezing cold, and stared down at the glossy photographs Uncle Crane had proudly brought into the war council.
He had looked at them a hundred times by now. Studied every pixel, every edge, hunting for the seam, the flaw, the proof of forgery.
There was none.
They weren’t photoshopped after all. They were real. Kira had been meeting her stepmother behind his back. Kira had been slipping away, wearing cheap disguises, and sitting in dark corners to meet the wife of the man who had slaughtered his people. Kira had been feeding them information.
My loyalty lies with myself...
Her words came back to him, clear as the day she’d said them, sitting in that hot tub with the dark pressing in around them.
But she had also looked him dead in the eyes, only nights ago, her hands cradling his face, and told him she could never betray him. Not in this lifetime. Not in any of them.
"Liar," he growled, and crushed the photograph in his fist.
She had used his emotions against him. She had taken everything soft and unguarded in him, everything he had finally, foolishly, allowed himself to feel, and she had turned it into a weapon.
No. She’s not Sarah. She’s the one who’s going to break yours. The exact same way.
Declan’s words, from that night on this very roof flooded into his mind. All of Declan’s warnings. All of them circled back now, landing like blows.
His mind raced through scenario after scenario, each one worse than the last. And then it caught, snagged hard, on one particular memory. That night.
The night after he and Kira had fought so bitterly, the night they had finally fallen into each other, when he had held her against his chest in the dark and told her, softly, trusting her completely, that he meant to attack Rolf the very next day.
And what happened? Rolf and his camp were perfectly prepared, waiting in ambush like they had read the royal battle strategy beforehand.
Derek let the crushed photograph fall from his fingers, watched it tumble and skitter across the floor. He shoved both hands into his hair and let out a ragged grunt, the sound torn out of somewhere deep and wounded.
He shut his eyes and tipped his head back toward the night sky, as if he could simply will the whole nightmare out of existence.
Goddess, he thought, let that chip on her ring have come from somewhere else. Anywhere else in the world. Anywhere at all, just not from Rolf. Not from anything to do with him. Please. Let me be wrong about this.
***
The following morning, inside the high-tech security laboratory of Kai’s intelligence unit, Kai sat staring at the computer monitor, his eyes wide with speechless horror.
He and his team had spent the entire previous day on it, tracing serial numbers, cross-referencing manufacturers, picking the thing apart with painstaking, meticulous care.
He had wanted to be certain. He had wanted, more than anything, to come back with proof that cleared her. Now he sat in front of the evidence, and he was speechless.
He dragged a hand slowly down his face.
"Goddess," he muttered. "This is not good. This is not good at all." His chest tightened as he stared at the screen, at the undeniable trail laid out in front of him. "Kira. You can’t possibly be a spy. You can’t be."
