Kira’s first instinct had been to turn and run.

But she was done with that. She had been done with it for a long time, and she was not about to start again now, not in her own home, not when he had stood in front of her and promised her fidelity with his own mouth.

Something built inside her chest without warning. It rose fast and hot and completely beyond her control, a pressure that had no name, climbing until it filled every part of her and had nowhere left to go. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Her fingers closed around the water bottle in her hand until the plastic buckled under her grip.

Then it broke through.

She was moving before she had decided to move. The fire that had been flickering through her veins for weeks now roared to life all at once, consuming everything else, and her hand found Ruby’s hair and yanked.

Ruby left the sofa with a shriek that bounced off every wall in the room. She flew across the study, hit the bookshelf with a crash that sent papers and books scattering, and crumpled to the floor in a heap, whimpering.

The fire died as suddenly as it had come. Kira stood over her, staring at her own hands. Her chest was heaving.

She had no idea how she had done that. Ruby was taller than her, heavier than her, and Kira had thrown her across a room like she weighed nothing at all.

"Kira," Derek called, voice thick.

She turned to look at him and the anger came back in a fresh wave, burning through the confusion.

She didn’t want an explanation. She didn’t want to stand here and listen to him talk his way around what she had just walked into. She raised the water bottle and threw the contents directly into his face.

Derek gasped. The cold hit him like a slap, cutting through the fog that had been sitting over his mind, and for a few sharp seconds, the world came back into focus.

"You know what?" she snarled, chest heaving with hurt and rage. "You two deserve each other."

She turned on her heel and stormed out of the study, leaving the door wide open behind her.

Everything that followed happened very fast.

Derek shoved himself to his feet, still unsteady, the aphrodisiac not entirely gone from his system, his legs not entirely his own yet. He went after her.

Behind him, Ruby picked herself up off the floor.

The humiliation of being thrown across a room by a wolfless girl burned through her like acid, and whatever calculating, patient part of her had kept her in check for years simply switched off.

Rational thought left her completely. There was nothing left in her but rage, and a conviction so distorted it had become its own kind of madness.

She deserved to be the queen of Dravengard. She deserved to bear his pups.

She had given everything to this pack. Her youth, her time, her loyalty, years of herself poured into Dravengard while other women her age were living freely.

She had made herself indispensable, made herself necessary, told herself that one day it would mean something. That he would see it.

And then a wolfless girl with a traitor for a father had walked through the door and taken everything Ruby had spent years positioning herself to receive.

If that runt wasn’t carrying his child, he would have seen her by now. She was certain of it.

She bolted out of the study.

The corridor ahead was long and straight. Kira was almost at the top of the stairs, moving fast, and Derek was behind her, calling her name, still not fully steady on his feet.

Ruby ran past him.

"Ruby!" Derek barked. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Putting her in her damn place!" Ruby snarled, not stopping.

Kira heard the footsteps and spun around, but she was too close to the top of the stairs and there was no time.

Ruby’s hands connected with her chest and shoved hard, and Kira’s balance went instantly, her arms flying out with nothing to grab, her eyes going wide with a terror that lasted only a fraction of a second before she was falling.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion.

The bannister caught the side of her head first. The sound of it made Kai, who had just stepped through the front door below, look up in time to see her tumbling down the staircase.

He lurched forward but the distance was too great and he was too far and there was nothing he could do but watch.

"Kira!" Derek screamed moving forward.

Kira hit the bottom of the stairs and went still.

The silence that followed lasted less than a second, but it had a weight to it that pressed down on everything in the house.

Then Leo surged forward.

There was no gradual shift, no warning. Derek’s clothes tore as his body changed, bones cracking and resetting with a sound that filled the entire stairwell.

Dark fur split through skin, and when he opened his mouth the sound that came out was a roar that shook the very foundations of the building.

A king’s beast announcing itself, his pheromones flooding the air so thick and so dense that the oxygen seemed to leave with them.

Kai dropped to his knees on the spot, his own Lycan fighting desperately against the weight of it, his eyes watering, his forehead pressing to the floor before he could stop it.

Even Ruby couldn’t withstand his fury. She slumped to the ground, curling up.

The fury that had blinded her drained out in an instant, replaced by something far older and more fundamental. Fear. Pure involuntary fear.

Too late.

Leo had already turned on her.

His hand closed around her hair and she was moving again, this time with no control over where she went.

She yelped and tears streamed down her face.

"I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—"

Leo was not swayed by her tears.

He slammed her into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster, and when she tried to find her footing his fingers found her throat instead, wrapping around it, the claws pressing into the skin of her neck, and then her feet left the ground.

Ruby’s hands flew up to his wrist. Her fingers clawed at him uselessly.

She could hear herself making sounds she had never made before, desperate, animal sounds, and she could feel the blood leaving her face and her legs kicking at nothing.

Her beast whimpered inside her, cowering from Derek’s beast and fury. She became so scared, and the little girl inside her pushed forward.

"Derek," she choked. "Please—"

He didn’t hear her. Leo heard nothing.

Her vision began to swim. Her limbs were getting heavier. The clawing at his wrist was slowing down without her permission, her fingers losing their strength, and the edges of the world were going dark and soft.

She had never seen Derek this furious. She had never felt him release so much toxic aura.

Her life didn’t flash before her eyes the way people said it did. What came instead were memories. Happy ones.

Back when Jasper was alive, when she tagged along. Back when Derek had been a happy boy running with his friends through the hills and Ruby watched and cheered them with her friends.

Back when everything was peaceful, back when it was good.

Even after her family’s death, how they had taken her in, treated her like a Wolfe, when he had come to her graduation.

When Derek was walking ahead of her through the palace grounds when they were young, he looked back over his shoulder to make sure she was keeping up.

The times they had walked out together in public hand in hand. They were so good together.

He always said he would protect her forever.

He had committed to that promise until now. Did that mean he truly loved Kira?

Her hand fell away from his wrist. Her body went limp.

Then she dropped.

Kai had somehow made it up the stairs. He hit Leo from the side, throwing everything he had into it, and the two of them went down together.

Kai pinned his cousin’s arm, his own body shaking with the effort of holding a feral king in place.

"Derek!" His voice was strained to breaking point. "I need you back! Right now, I need you back!"

Kai knew that if Derek’s feral beast finally killed Ruby out of temper, Derek would blame himself heavily for it. He would feel like he had failed his friend, Jasper.

Ruby lay where she had fallen, unable to move a single limb, her throat burning, the air coming back into her lungs in shallow pulls.

Declan appeared at the front door. Kai had mind-linked him. He took one look at the bottom of the staircase and went completely pale.

"Goddess." He crossed the floor in seconds and dropped beside Kira, pressing two fingers to her neck. "What in bloody hell happened here?"

He didn’t wait for an answer. He gathered her up, mind-linking Connor and the gammas in the same breath, his instructions clipped and rapid.

Then he was moving, carrying Kira’s limp body through the front door and toward his car at a run, not looking back.