#Chapter 4: Enemies Closer

“Derek,” I tried again, forcing myself steady. “What is this?”

We were in a different room. It didn’t smell like the castle. I had no idea how long I’d been sleeping.

“This…is an opportunity.” Derek exhaled like he’d been holding his breath all this time. “I’ve languished under Zavan’s rule for too long, waiting for a day that his Delta dogs would be too busy to notice the King’s prized pet being slipped out from under their noses.”

“His Deltas?” I said dumbly.

“He practically had you under lock and key,” Derek sneered. “I made every attempt to isolate you, get you alone so that I might finally get this chance, but there was always one of his loyals just around the corner.”

“But…why?” I pulled myself up to sit. The world rocked, and I slumped against the wall behind me.

Inside, somewhere sunken deep, Seren thrashed.

“Because I want the King dead,” Derek said bluntly. “And using a fated mate to lure him out will most certainly make things easy for me.”

“He won’t,” I muttered. “He’d never. He destroyed my world, my life, without second thought. I’m no one to him.”

Derek paused. “You don’t know, do you? You werewolves never figured it out.”

“Know…?”

“How the Curse affects us Lycans. Why there are so few of us now.”

I knew the curse weakened the Lycans somehow. That was what the old stories perpetuated. But how?

“It severed our connection to the Moon Goddess.” Derek looked both amused and bitter. “Very few of us have fated mates, much less are able to find them. As a result, we bear very few to no offspring.”

These pieces were making full the picture I had about Lycan society, filling in aspects I never thought to question.

The reason why so many female Lycans acted with hostility towards me in my relation to the King Alpha– it wasn’t just petty jealousy born from lusting after their liege. It was the fact that I had a bond at all.

And there were very few Lycan pups. I just never wondered about it because I was used to not being around others my age. It had been why Derek and I had gotten along.

Or so I’d been led to believe.

“You and I were supposed to run away,” I said, still in disbelief. “We were going to escape the palace– together.”

Derek scowled. “Escape is your fantasy, not mine. I'm exactly where I belong. And you... you handed yourself over, making this easier than I ever dreamed. All I had to do was wait. Whatever you thought ‘we’ were, I’ll disabuse you of it now.”

My gaze misted over. I stared, letting the tears run, finally letting it all hit me at once. I’d been had. Our private talks, the kind gestures, the soft words exchanged between us– none of our friendship was real.

Derek studied me. Then in a low, coaxing tone, he said, “But perhaps we can work together after all. You, too, want the Tyrant King dead, don’t you? Name your price. When this is done, you can have whatever you want—even your freedom.”

A folded paper envelope the size of a tea bag dropped in front of me.

“You can slip this into drink or food,” Derek, palace apothecary, said. “I’m sure you know what it does.”

The numbing void that had been left in the wake of Derek’s gutting confession was crumpling in now, burning over with utter rage.

“You would send me, a werewolf yet to fully shift, to assassinate the Lycan King?” I seethed, rigid with anger.

Seren inside me howled, teeth gnashing despite the silver handcuffs.

“You would offer me up on a platter to the murderer who felled my pack, knowing full well what he will do when he catches me?”

“Consider it, Iris,” Derek insisted quietly. His face stayed neutral as he kicked the envelope so that it slid close enough for me to touch. “If you prove successful…well, maybe we can reconsider the terms of our relationship after all.”

“Wow. What an honor! I'd love nothing more than to get more involved with the world's most accomplished liar. By the Goddess I never knew you to be a fucking idiot,” I snarled.

“I could have kept the truth hidden from you, mongrel bitch!” Derek snapped. “Without me, you'd have been cut down for fleeing the palace. You owe me for this pathetic life."

"I'd rather have died! Why should I suffer and be sacrificed for a fool like you?"

“Enough!” Derek roared, his wolf growling from within. He pounded the door– not out of anger, but in three rhythmic beats.

Several roguish Lycans entered, brawny and looming. They looked between Derek and I.

“All those years in servitude and you never learned submission,” Derek spat. “So these men will teach it to you.”

“Derek,” I said, drawing back.

The Lycan rogues moved forward, eyes hungry.

“No, truthfully?”

“I do want a taste of the Alpha’s mate.”

“King must be impotent, to leave this pretty thing alone all this time.”

“Come then, prized pet.”

“Derek!” I exclaimed, more desperate as they moved in.

“Study well,” Derek’s voice carried through the room, from behind the wall of hulking bodies. “If you manage to learn a few things tonight, Zavan may end up thanking me.”

I tried curling up but one of the rogues grabbed my ankle, stretching my body out for them to gawk at. I shrieked and thrashed and kicked, but they only laughed. More hands were feeling up my calves, my thighs– touches roamed over my hips.

Frantically, I called upon Seren. It was my birthday– I could do it– I’d trained for it. But the silver handcuffs lit my skin with burning. Seren stayed trapped.

I tried twisting away but the rogues only found this entertaining. Then I saw it. A way out: The envelope of poison.

Because what had I left to lose? What had I ever had at all?

I grasped it in my hand, ready to end it all in one dry swallow.

Thunk. One of the rogues farthest from me dropped to the floor. Another followed. By then I could parse the heavy clunk of boots stepping unhurried through the room.

The remaining rogues were just as startled as I was, but they barely had time to cry out by the time they realized what was happening.

The last rogue had it the worst. He fell to his knees, pulling himself into a corner to beg for his life– the same position I had been in minutes before. But it didn’t matter.

King Alpha Zavan closed two huge hands around the rogue’s skull and twisted. With a snap, the rogue went still.

Then it was just me, the Tyrant King, and the lifeless bodies between us.

He walked towards me, and it was as if my old nightmare memory were replaying once again. A looming figure walking past the carnage, to crouch down in front of me. Instead of a locket, I clutched the poison in my hand.

With a flick of his wrist, King Zavan ripped the chain of the handcuffs as if it were merely ribbon to him. His gaze lingered on the torn hem of my clothes, ripped by the rogue Lycan. Without a word, he shrugged off his jacket and draped it over my shoulders. The heavy fabric fell around me like a cloak, and the scent clinging to it—strangely familiar, yet not my own—brought an unexpected comfort to my still-racing heart.

Then in one effortless motion, he hauled me over his shoulder and began carrying me out the room.

“Wait, let go of me!” I said, flushed with humiliation. I didn’t want to be seen like this. “I said, let go!”

I jolted as a huge hand smacked my rear-end.

“Keep struggling like that,” King Zavan’s voice rumbled, “and I'll be more than happy to prove those rogue Lycans wrong about me.”