Chapter 213: A Neat Little Chain
"This is my Beta, Oliver," Braxton said, gesturing to the man on his right. "And this is my head, Gamma, Gavin."
Kira acknowledged each of them with a warm smile and a small nod. The two men bowed their heads in return.
"Welcome, Your Highness," they said together.
"Thank you," Kira replied. Then, gently, "Although, if it’s all the same to you, I’d be grateful if you’d drop the ’Your Highness’ for now. Please."
The two men glanced at one another, then at Braxton, uncertain. Braxton gave them a small, easy signal with his eyes, and they relaxed, dipping their heads in acceptance.
Kira didn’t explain why. She couldn’t, not without unravelling all over again. But the truth was that every single time someone called her Your Highness, it dragged her straight back. To Derek. To Dravengard. To the cold fury in his eyes and the words that had broken her open. The title felt like a wound now, and she could not bear to keep pressing on it.
Braxton walked her over to the dining table, where the servants had laid out a truly sumptuous spread. Kira’s stomach gave a loud, undignified grumble at the sight and smell of it all.
She was starving, properly starving, after days of barely touching the food Brian had set in front of her. She settled into her seat and had to fight the very real urge to simply fall on the food and gobble it down like an animal.
Oliver, Gavin, and Milo took their seats around the table, and they all began to eat.
For a few moments, there was only the comfortable clink of cutlery and the warmth of a shared meal. Then, once Kira had taken the edge off her hunger, Braxton set down his fork and launched into the story she had been waiting to hear. How he had found her. How all of this had come to be.
"It started with Claudia," he said. "She came back from a mall in Aethelwulf Centralis one day, all shaken. She swore she’d seen a girl who was the very image of our mother."
He shook his head at the memory. "I didn’t quite believe her at first. But she was so certain that I started going back to that mall myself every day, watching and waiting." He looked at Kira. "And then one day, I saw you."
Kira listened intently.
"You were surrounded by guards," Braxton went on. "And when I got a proper look at the sigil on their suits, I knew exactly where they were from. Dravengard."
He gave a wry little smile. "Imagine my surprise, then, to discover that the girl who looked just like our mother was the new queen of Dravengard. The one everyone in the West had been whispering about."
He spread his hands.
"As you probably know by now, we keep to ourselves. We don’t involve ourselves with the other Western packs. Not because we’re unfriendly, but because of what I am. My hybrid nature. The secret of our mother. It’s safer for everyone if Crystal Moon stays in the shadows."
Kira nodded slowly, taking it in.
"After seeing you," Braxton continued, "I started following you everywhere. But I could never get close. You were always wrapped in a wall of guards, never alone for a moment. So when I heard that Alpha Lucas was throwing a dinner banquet, I knew I had to be there. It was my first social outing in years. The first time I’d shown my face in society in longer than I care to admit."
His voice softened. "And when I finally saw you up close, when we actually spoke to one another, I knew. Instantly. In my bones. You were my twin. There wasn’t a shred of doubt left in me."
He paused.
"That same night, after the Umbra attack, I installed a tracker in your phone before I handed it back to you."
Kira’s mind flew back to that night. The Snow Crest banquet. The chaos of the Umbra attack. And afterwards, Braxton called her, returning her phone to her. She had thought nothing of it at the time. Just a kind Alpha returning a lost thing.
"It was so difficult," Braxton admitted, "just sitting here, watching your little dot move across a screen. Following you up and down from a distance, never able to reach you. I needed real eyes inside Dravengard. So..."
He hesitated. "I paid one of your guards. Brent. To tell me everything about your movements."
Kira’s eyebrow shot up. "Brent?"
A cold prickle ran down her spine at the thought. One of her own guards, bought and paid for. If Braxton had been a different kind of man, a cruel one, or an enemy, her own security detail would have handed her straight into his hands.
Braxton caught the look and nodded grimly. "Yes. Brent. The man has a gambling problem, he’d kept very well hidden. Every coin of his pay vanishes into it. But," he added, "he held back a great deal too, because Connor was already suspicious of him. Watching him like a hawk."
He gave a small, respectful nod. "Connor’s a good one, you know. He always had your back. Genuinely."
Kira’s chest tightened, and a small, sad smile touched her lips. "I know," she said quietly. "I know he did."
Braxton went on. "When Brent told me that you’d released a prisoner from the dungeon one day, a gamma named Milo, I knew at once that he was the man I needed. So I sent Oliver and Gavin to slip into Dravengard and trail him. They found him and brought him here to me."
He glanced at Milo. "And Milo had far more reason to help me than Brent ever did. Brent did it for gambling money. Milo did it out of gratitude. And having worked on Dravengard’s own security team, he knew exactly how to slip past the cameras, where the blind spots were, and all of it."
Milo gave a small nod from across the table.
"He refused, at first," Braxton said. "Wanted nothing to do with any of it. Until you helped his wife, Lara, again. During Lady’s Ruby’s trial."
His voice gentled. "You reunited him with his family. With Lara, with his child. And after that, everything changed for him. He came on board willingly. And Lara came in on it too, which made it all so much easier. She reports back to Milo, Milo reports back to me. A neat little chain, all the way from the heart of Dravengard, straight to this table."
Kira set down her fork and let out a slow breath, looking around at all of them.
"Wow," she said softly. "So everyone around me knew things I never did. The whole time. There was an entire world moving just behind my back, and I never saw a single piece of it."
